Blessed Are Those Who Weep

by Kristi Belcamino

  But he’s not done talking. “I told them if they leave me the fuck alone, their secret is safe with me. But that means staying low, off the radar. Anyone gets a hold of the originals to those letters, it’s all over. You put it in the paper that I killed Maria, they will have to come after me so they can get me before the cops do. They don’t trust me not to crack under pressure to the cops. If the cops find me, they will find me, and I’m a dead man.”

  “Who are they? The military? Does this have to do with why they lied about where you were?”

  “I was totally going to play it cool and keep their goddamn secret, but they wouldn’t give me leave to come see Maria, so I had to take off on my own.”

  It’s a gamble, but I’ll take it. “Why did you tell Maria everything in the letters? And what did you do with the copies you found under the floorboard?”

  It pays off.

  “It was a mistake.” He spits the words out. I was right—­he got the letters under the floorboard. But they were copies. Where are the originals? He goes on. “I told her before I knew she was a cheating whore. I wanted her to know to never trust the American government. They don’t care about anyone. Not Flight 93. Not you. Not me. Nobody. That’s why I’m going underground and they’ll never see me again.”

  “What?” Flight 93 was the plane that crashed in the field on 9/11. When it happened last year, I interviewed the family of one of the victims, because he was from our newspaper coverage area.

  “You think the government cares about its ­people?” he says. “It doesn’t. Flight 93 is proof of that. The government only cares about itself and its upper echelon. They didn’t know I knew everything until I went AWOL. When they threatened to court-­martial me for desertion, I told them what I heard. What I knew. The deal is they will leave me alone if I keep quiet. If the letters get out, I’m a dead man. There will be no place to hide.”

  “What do you mean? What about Flight 93?” I shoot a sideways glance at Mac’s legs sticking out my bathroom door. Did they twitch, or am I imagining things?

  “We shot it down. Our country. We did it.”

  “What?” The blood drains from my face. What’s he talking about?

  “I heard everything in that Blackhawk. They didn’t know. I heard it all.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That morning on 9/11, they ordered me to get the general to the White House safe and sound,” Martin says, tapping the sword on the counter, the vein in his temple throbbing as he grows angrier telling his story. “They forgot to turn off the headphones. I heard the whole thing. Heard the general give the order to shoot down Flight 93 before it got to the White House. Only ones who heard it was me, the general, and whoever shot the flight down.”

  I’m trying to digest what he has said, the revelation he has made. Can it be true? Is he that deranged, or is this why the military lied about his whereabouts? Because despite what he thinks, they don’t want him arrested. They want him dead.

  The United States government shot down a plane carrying forty Americans. Martin might be one of the few ­people in the world who knows about it, and he thinks they will let him live with this knowledge?

  He’s a dead man walking.

  “What’s done is done,” he says when he sees the look of horror on my face. “Now quit stalling. Get up there and get me the key. I got some business in Oakland before I split town. Hurry.”

  “Is that where Lucy is? In Oakland? Is she alive?”

  “Get up there.”

  I step from the chair onto the counter. Leaning forward, I swipe my hand across the top of the cabinet until I find what I’m looking for. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him watching.

  He sweeps his sword up and down with a swishing sound. “Is it up there or not? If you’re fucking with me . . .” He stands on the chair and rubs the smooth edge of the sword against my bare thigh. Across the room, a loud crash signals that Dusty has tried to escape his hideout behind the couch but has taken down some lamp cords and lamps with him. “What the fuck?” Martin swivels his head toward the living room for a second without taking the sword off my leg.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, I twist at the waist and bring my hand down from the cabinet right when Joey Martin turns back and finds the tear-­gas canister at eye level. I push down with my finger, and pepper spray squirts in his eyes.

  He howls and jerks, and an intense pain sears my leg. I collapse onto the small counter before tumbling, taking Joey Martin off the chair with me. We land in a thud, and I hear Martin smack his head on something. Fortunately, his chest cushions my landing. Rolling off him, I hope he’s dead or knocked out, but he’s only stunned. The sword is still in his hand. I jerk in time to hear the zing of the metal hitting something hard beside me. “Motherfucker.” He grunts.

  The samurai sword’s blade is embedded in the wooden kitchen floor a few inches away from my head. He tugs at it, but it doesn’t budge. It’s stuck in the crack of a floorboard. Thank God for these old floors. The veins on his arm bulge near my head and neck as he pulls even harder, his face growing red. I try to roll away, but he notices and kicks at me, striking my left thigh with his boot heel. I scream in pain. The floor is slippery underneath me as I try to crawl backward away from him.

  “Where is she?” The words are thick in my mouth. “Where is Lucy?”

  He keeps tugging on the sword. I wonder how long before it will spring free. I eye the front door. I’m only a few feet away now.

  “Is she dead?”

  He shrugs. “She isn’t mine. Don’t you understand a thing I said? Maria was whoring around. God knows whose baby that is. Probably that traitor Abe.”

  She’s alive. That is why he shrugged. He wouldn’t hesitate to tell me she was dead.

  “She’s yours. The DNA test proved it.” It’s a lie, but it stops him in his tracks. He looks down, hand frozen on the scabbard. For a second, he closes his eyes. His fingers go for the cell phone clipped to his belt. They linger there for a second before returning back to his side. He was going to call someone. To stop her from being killed. I know it.

  “Who were you calling? Who has her? Tell me!”

  “There was no DNA test. You’re lying to me. I can see it.”

  It’s true. He spots my lies instantly.

  “Where is Lucy? Is she dead?”

  He avoids my eyes.

  “She’s not dead, is she? You couldn’t do it.”

  He doesn’t deny it. I know I’m right. She’s still alive. For whatever reason, he hasn’t killed her yet. Relief floods me mingling with a burst of hope and adrenaline. There is still a chance to save her.

  “None of that matters.” He stands. The sword is in his hand, free of the wood. He starts walking toward me. “This sword has taken many lives. It will now take two more. I have no reason to keep that baby alive. Too bad you don’t understand what the sensei does—­death by sword is an honorable way to die.”

  A loud knock on my door echoes throughout the apartment, and he freezes.

  “Giovanni? Mac?” It’s Lopez.

  “C-­Lo!” My voice tells him everything he needs to know, and within seconds I hear a click and a bump, and the door handle turns.

  Martin gives one look at the door and sprints to the sliding-­glass doors leading to my balcony. “He’s here!” I shout it as loud as I can, but my words are stuck. I scramble toward the door as it swings open. “He hurt Mac!”

  Lopez rushes in with gun drawn.

  “The balcony,” I say. I try to stand, but there is something wrong with my leg.

  The curtains to my sliding-­glass doors blow from a slight breeze. I can’t see anything beyond them.

  He’s trapped. I live on the fourth floor. There is a reason I live this high up. I don’t want anyone able to get in my windows or onto my balcony.

  Lopez rushes toward
the balcony and rips open the curtain. Even from where I slump, I can see the balcony is empty. Lopez goes to the edge and leans over. He fires one shot, which echoes loudly.

  “Damn. Missed.” He rushes back over to me and slips in the blood on the floor, sliding into me. I wince in pain.

  “How did he get down?” I ask.

  “Dude is like fucking Spiderman or something, jumped from balcony to balcony. Come on.” He reaches and pulls me up. When he sees my leg his brow furrows. “What the fuck?”

  “Just a little samurai sword slice.”

  He races to the open door of my closet and rips a shirt off a hanger. I see it is my Calvin Klein blouse. He starts to rip it in strips. “No, not that one,” I start to protest but instead grimace in pain.

  He wraps it tightly around my thigh and says, “You’re goddamn lucky. He missed slicing your femoral artery to shreds. You should’ve lost a shitload more blood than you did. You’re still gonna need stitches, though. An assload of them maybe. I can only delay the inevitable here.”

  He pauses for a minute and draws back, looking at me with an odd expression. “Maybe your guardian angel is watching over you tonight, Giovanni.”

  “Maybe,” I say solemnly, thinking of Caterina, but I grow frantic, remembering. “Mac! He’s in the bathroom.”

  Lopez rushes over. He’s on his knees, checking for a pulse on the detective. I’m clutching my phone, waiting for Lopez to speak. “He’s alive.”

  I hear a small groan.

  “Thank God.” I breathe a sigh of relief and dial Strohmayer. “Call nine-­one-­one. Joey Martin was here. He hurt Mac. He’s going to kill Lucy. We have to get to her first. He said he had business in Oakland. He’s either heading for the dojo or to this club Fellatio in Oakland.”

  Strohmayer swears softly before he talks into his radio, his voice strained. “Officer down.” He gives my address and says to me, “We’re on it.”

  “We’re coming out and heading to Oakland. Meet you there,” I say and hang up.

  Lopez comes out and gestures to Mac behind him, who is sitting up. “He’ll live.”

  I grab my bag and open the door. “Lucy. We have to get her first.”

  “Where is she?” Lopez asks.

  “I don’t know for sure.” I hate that these words are true. “He said he had two more lives to take and that he needed to get to Oakland. There are only two places I know about in Oakland where he might be. He said Javier saw him come in with blood all over him. It has to be the dojo or the sex club.”

  “Think. Which one do you think it is?” Lopez asks, holding my arms. “Think, Giovanni. Trust your gut on this one.”

  I squint my eyes closed, and the answer leaps to my mind. The kid on the street, Tre, said he thought there were rooms that ­people stayed in at Fellatio. That would be the perfect place for Martin to hide out and keep a baby. After the massacre, he was more likely to go to a room at the sex club to change than the dojo. It has to be Fellatio.

  “The sex club,” I say, opening my eyes and scrambling to my feet as the sounds of sirens fill the streets below. Mrs. Cossetta peeks out of her apartment.

  “Mrs. Cossetta! There’s a police officer injured in my bathroom. Will you please sit with him until the paramedics get upstairs?”

  Her mouth is wide open, and I cast one last glance back at Mac’s legs before I follow Lopez, leaving my front door wide open.

  We are heading for the sex club first. I hope I’m right because if I’m wrong, Lucy is dead.

  Chapter 48

  I’M FREEZING ON the back of Lopez’s motorcycle in my ripped, bloody, velvet dress, which is flapping in the wind like a tattered flag. When I asked to go with Lopez, I didn’t realize he had his motorcycle outside. But it is infinitely faster than taking a car. At this rate, we might even beat Martin to Oakland. We ride the white line all the way across the Bay Bridge.

  My hair is whipping in the wind, so I bury my face in the back of C-­Lo’s leather jacket, clutching him around the waist and hoping we don’t crash and die before I can get to Lucy.

  Finally, we exit the bridge. Lopez parks half a block away from the sex club.

  “Stick here until I figure out what’s up,” he whispers.

  “Forget that,” I say and leap off the bike onto my good leg. Even so, a sharp lightning bolt of pain shoots up my other leg.

  “Was worried you might say that.” He hands me a gun from his ankle strap. “Try not to shoot me.”

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” I stick the gun in my purse.

  “No problem, man.”

  We hug the walls of the buildings across the street from the club, looking up at the dark windows. Every time a car pulls up, we duck into a doorway, but no vehicles stop.

  “Let’s get the kid and let’s scram and let the cops deal with that crazy fuck Martin,” Lopez says over his shoulder to me.

  I don’t see Strohmayer anywhere. Maybe he’s already inside? I dial Strohmayer’s number but get his voice mail. “Where are you? We’re already at Fellatio on Fifth Street in Oakland. We’re going to go in.”

  Lopez grabs his pick lock kit and a bump key out of his back pocket, and we slink over to the door of the sex club, looking over our shoulders every few seconds. A shadowy figure turns onto the street and we freeze, but it turns down an alley.

  Lopez ignores the doorbell. With the bump key, it only takes him a second to unlock the door. We slip inside, closing the door behind us in the pitch black. Lopez snaps on a small flashlight attached to his keychain.

  “You’re a regular MacGyver,” I say with admiration.

  “Damn straight, man,” he whispers back. “Once a Green Beret, always a Green Beret. MacGyver’s a really good show, by the way.”

  Following him up the steep staircase, I can feel the pounding of music somewhere close, vibrating through my bones.

  At the top is another door, locked. Even in the blackness, Lopez opens it within seconds. The door noisily creaks open, and we freeze again. We are in a small foyer. It is lined with coats hanging on coatracks. A man sitting in an easy chair jumps to his feet, pointing a gun at us.

  Before I can react, Lopez has the man’s arm behind his back, and the gun clatters to the ground.

  “Easy now, we didn’t mean to scare you. The door was unlocked. We’re just here to have some fun.” Lopez lets go of the man’s arm and backs off, holding one arm up and putting the other one around my neck, drawing me close. The other man, who has a tightly shaved head, keeps his eye on us as he reaches down for his gun. Lopez lifts his shirt a few inches to reveal the gun tucked into his waistband and waits until the man puts his own gun away before lowering his shirt. Lopez reaches for his wallet. He tucks a hundred-­dollar bill into the man’s palm.

  The man looks at the money in his hand and smiles. He holds out his palm again.

  Lopez extracts two more one-­hundred-­dollar bills and sticks them in the man’s jacket pocket. The man bows and presses a small button near the table lamp. A solid steel door to our right clicks open.

  “One more thing,” Lopez says, turning, as if it’s an afterthought. “If we get too tired to drive home, can we get a room?”

  The man doesn’t answer for a second. “Find Claudio. He’s got a green hat on.”

  As soon as the steel door swings open, we are greeted by low, throbbing music. The room is lit with lights that run along the floor, like in a movie theater. Long, flowing fabric hangs from the ceiling in oranges and reds and blues and pinks. A small, elevated dance floor contains stripper poles wound with tiny white lights. Nobody looks up when we come in. All the attention is focused on the elevated dance floor. On it, it looks like four bodies are pressed close to, around, and between a naked woman’s legs.

  We scan the crowd. They are dressed in a variety of gear, from three-­piece suits to lingerie with garter b
elts, to nothing at all. But nobody is wearing a green hat.

  With a hand to my back, Lopez guides me toward another doorway. My leg is smarting from the cut. It feels sticky and wet, but I don’t have time to worry if the makeshift bandage is leaking.

  The next room is a soft, hazy, red color, and the music is different, more pounding and rhythmic. In that room, a few ­couples are having sex on an assortment of plush velvet furniture flanked by Tiffany-­style lamps with red lightbulbs. One woman wears a period costume from the Victorian era, complete with hoops, and the dress is thrown up over her head as her partner thrusts against her. Another couch is home to two men and a woman wrapped around one another. In a shadowy corner, a woman in a garter belt and corset has her legs wrapped around a man who is pressed tightly into the corner clutching her ass, his head over her shoulder, biting his lip and moaning. The combined moaning in the room is nearly louder than the music. No green hats.

  We push on. This room has two doorways. Lopez motions for me to wait as he sticks his head into a particularly dark room illuminated by a large TV screen showing naked entangled bodies. Dark silhouettes cover a bevy of couches and are contorted in ways I can’t quite figure out. I’m so intent on watching Lopez wend his way through the clusters of bodies that I don’t realize someone has crept up until I feel hands cover my breasts and a body presses tightly against me from behind. I buck away right when Lopez arrives. His eyes grow wide, and I grab his arm before he swings a punch. I lean into his ear. “Look.” He follows my gaze.

  The man who fondled me wears a mask that makes his face look like a pointy-­beaked bird. On top of his head is a giant green top hat.

  “Sorry to startle you,” he says in a thick British accent. “I’m Claudio.” He takes a deep bow. “Gigi,” I say, nodding back. “This is Chris.”

  Lopez is gritting his jaw tightly but manages to nod.

  “You are new.” He says it as a statement. He wears tight jeans and an equally tight black T-­shirt that shows every ripple on his abdomen.