Extracurricular Activities

by Maggie Barbieri

  Crawford sat up and stared at the phone.

  “Detective. I’ve got your aunt. She’s with me.”

  I recognized the cadence, if not the voice, as Peter Miceli’s.

  “It would be in your best interest to meet me at Morella’s junkyard,” he said. “East 229th Street…”

  Crawford moved to the edge of the bed and lifted up the receiver. “Hello?” It was dark in the room, but by his body language, I could tell that something was wrong. “What? Who is this?” He stood, his bare back to me, and he grabbed his boxers from the floor, pulling them on. “What do you want?”

  I pulled the comforter from the bed and wrapped myself in it, feeling as though the evening were going to end on a very bad note. I stood, going around to face him. The look on his face was confused, frightened, and angry all at the same time. “What is it?” I mouthed.

  His face went white and he dropped the phone receiver. “He’s got Bea.” He raced from the room, picking up his pants on the way out.

  I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, confused.

  “Peter Miceli kidnapped my aunt.”

  Chapter 28

  After Crawford left, I stood for the longest time staring at the closed door of his apartment.

  Once I got my bearings, I grabbed the phone and called Max; thankfully, she and Fred were home. “Max, I need Fred.”

  “I haven’t been married long enough for you to be hitting on my husband,” she said, laughing. “You’re a slut.”

  “Max, this is serious. Crawford may be in trouble and I need Fred’s help.”

  Hearing the fear in my voice, she handed the phone off to Fred. The minute I heard his gruff voice, I knew I had done the right thing. I told him what had happened and that Crawford was on his way to some junkyard in the Bronx.

  “Does that idiot have his cell phone with him?” he asked, furious that Crawford had gone to the junkyard by himself.

  I looked around the kitchen where Crawford had reassembled his arsenal after being naked with me. I didn’t see the phone. “I think so.”

  “I’ll call you later.” He hung up and I was left with a dial tone in my ear. He had obviously picked up Max’s phone manners in the few weeks in which they had been wed.

  I was incapable of movement and I stood at the counter next to the kitchen, not sure what to do with myself. I chewed on a nail, praying silently that Crawford didn’t get himself killed trying to save his aunt. I was glad that I had called Fred and knew that Crawford would respond better to his help than to anyone else’s.

  I realized that I needed to call Brendan. His mother answered on the third ring. “Hi, this is Alison, your neighbor. I need some help with Trixie.”

  “Are you out tonight? Do you need us to walk her?”

  “That would be great,” I said. “Please tell Brendan that I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “Brendan! Ms. Bergerson needs you to walk Trixie tonight!” she called to her son.

  “And in the morning!” I called, hoping that my yelling would reach Brendan.

  “And in the morning!” she called to him. “We’re all set. If we don’t see you later on tomorrow, we’ll take care of her into the afternoon.”

  “Jane?”

  “Yes?”

  “How’s he doing?”

  I heard her sigh on the other end. “Let’s just say that taking care of that dog gives him more pleasure than anything else right now.”

  Enough said. Glad I could help.

  After a few minutes of standing naked, wrapped in Crawford’s comforter, I went around the living room and bedroom and collected all of my discarded clothing, stopping to sit on the couch and trying to understand what had happened. It made no sense for Peter to kidnap Bea unless Crawford had done more than I knew to piss him off. Was Crawford getting close to solving Ray’s murder and implicating Peter for the crime? Was Peter still mad at Crawford for previous transgressions like not solving Kathy’s murder and for threatening him at his house, a little tidbit that Max had relayed but which Crawford had never confessed to me? I couldn’t figure it out. I was the one Peter was obsessed with, not Crawford. I shivered slightly and wrapped my arms around myself to ward off the chill that enveloped my body.

  I took my clothes into the bedroom and got dressed. When I was done, I made the bed, restoring it to the order it was in before we started thrashing around on it. I buried my face in one of his pillows, picking up his scent. I felt at loose ends, and I looked around the room, worried about Crawford’s aunt, but curious about his life at the same time. Signs of Crawford were everywhere: a pair of jeans strewn over a wing chair in the corner, the tweed blazer that he had worn the first time we met hanging on the closet door, a pair of giant (and probably dirty) socks stuffed in the corner. As bachelors go, he was pretty meticulous about the space, but no man is that meticulous unless he’s gay. I was thrilled to see an indication that he was straight (not that that was ever in doubt), he lived alone, and he forgot to put his stuff away sometimes.

  I ran a hand over his cherry dresser; not a speck of dust anywhere. Cleaning lady, I deduced. There was a picture of him and the girls at the beach, he in a bathing suit—thankfully, not a Speedo—and the girls wrapped in towels. I looked at the cologne on the dresser, trying to figure out which one made him smell like clean laundry, the smell of him every time I got close. I opened a few bottles, but nothing approximated the scent that came off his skin. I guessed it was just his own personal scent.

  I went into the kitchen and looked around in the cabinets for coffee. Didn’t characters in movies always make coffee to calm down in stressful situations? It didn’t make sense, just as it didn’t make sense to drink coffee to sober up, but I figured I would give it a try. I laid my hands on a canister of beans in the second cabinet and I took it out, opening it up and smelling the rich aroma of fresh coffee.

  A knock at the door startled me and I choked back a scream. The coffee beans flew from my hands and scattered all over the Formica countertops and tile floor.

  “Bobby?” a woman’s voice called on the other side of the door. “Are you all right?”

  I went to the apartment door and peered through the peephole. A little woman, pudgy with a wide, bespectacled round face, peered back at me.

  “Bobby?” she called again.

  I opened the door. She took a step back, looking shocked by either me or my appearance; I couldn’t tell. “Hi,” I said. “Can I help you?” I asked, taking in her snow-white Dorothy Hamill haircut, leggings, tunic top, and the religious medal around her neck.

  She seemed taken aback at my appearance. “Hello…who…I’m sorry…where’s Bobby?” she finally asked.

  “He had to go out,” I said. “I’m his friend, Alison.”

  She smiled broadly. “Oh, yes. Alison.” She gave me a hug, her head hitting my boobs at a weird angle. To an outsider, it would have looked like I was breastfeeding a senior citizen.

  Now I was the one to be taken aback. She seemed to know me, yet I had never laid eyes on her. “Yes. Alison.” I beckoned for her to come in. “And you are…?”

  “Bea McDonald.” She held a hand out.

  I took her hand in mine, but apparently the look on my face compelled her to elaborate even more on her relationship to Crawford.

  “I’m Bobby’s aunt.”

  And you’re Gianna Miceli, I thought, as I stared at the woman coming up the stairs behind Bea.

  Gianna came into the apartment and put a gun to my temple. Peter’s goon, Franco, stood in the doorway of the apartment in his usual attire of black suit, black shirt, and shiny tie, his hands folded in front of him. Gianna pulled Bea into the apartment and instructed her to sit on the couch. Bea’s eyes were wide behind her round glasses.

  Gianna looked at Bea. “Mrs. McDonald, I presume?”

  Bea nodded, holding Gianna’s gaze, tough old broad that she was. I had no idea Gianna knew who Bea was, but if she had been planning this for a while, she was smart enough to have done he
r homework on me, Crawford, and his extended family.

  “How did you get in here, Gianna?” I asked.

  She snorted derisively. “That was the easy part, Alison. Franco here has a whole set of, shall we say, ‘skill sets’ that come in very handy in these kinds of situations.”

  That really didn’t answer my question but I let it go. “What the hell do you want with us, Gianna?”

  My first reaction to seeing Bea was that while I thought Crawford had been set up and could possibly be in danger, the call had been made to get Crawford out of the apartment. And when I saw Gianna coming up the stairs, the giant gun in her tiny hand, I realized that I was the one who had been set up. Gianna was here for me and she wanted Crawford gone. I came to the conclusion that it had been Franco who had made the phone call, sounding enough like Peter for Crawford to believe that Bea was in trouble.

  Gianna had always been impeccably dressed in college and today was no different. I remember that she always had the best and most expensive clothes and what she was wearing now was evidence of that: impeccably cut black pants, black leather boots, and a butter-soft black leather jacket. To me, it had always seemed that Peter had gotten the better end of the deal when he married Gianna; it was the proverbial Beauty and the Beast scenario with mafiosi. Gianna waved the gun in my direction. “I understand you’ve been spending a little time with my husband, Alison.”

  I looked back at Gianna, the realization dawning on me slowly. The night at St. Thomas where she told me that Peter sent his regards, the note…it was all coming together. Oh, jeez, I thought; now I’m caught in the middle of a Mafia love triangle. “Gianna, Peter has this habit of either breaking into my house or kidnapping me. Believe me,” I said gravely, “and I mean this with all due respect, I have no interest in your husband.” As a matter of fact, he makes my skin crawl, I thought, but I left that out. I also left out the part where we made out in the diner.

  Gianna looked at Franco and then back at me. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  I sighed, more out of frustration than anything else. “Gianna, believe me.” I shot Bea a look. “I’m in love with someone else. I have no interest in Peter whatsoever.” I was dancing, and dancing that fine line between denial and insult: if I denied an attraction to Peter too much, I would end up insulting Gianna. I had to tread carefully so that I didn’t end up with a bullet in the face.

  I looked over at Bea, who had a huge grin on her face. “In love?” she mouthed silently.

  “Oh, this Detective Crawford character?” Gianna asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She motioned around his apartment. “You’re in love with a guy who makes a dollar ninety an hour and will retire with a city pension? Spare me, Alison.” She looked down at my feet. “The shoes you’re wearing cost more than that guy makes in a week.” She tossed her blond mane over her shoulder and smirked.

  She was right—about the shoes, that is. They were expensive, but I never would have bought them for myself, good old-fashioned French-Canadian thrift being part of my makeup. “They were a gift, Gianna. From Max.” I knew they cost a lot. More than Crawford made in a week? Highly doubtful. But Gianna was on a tear and I wasn’t going to stop her. She was the one with the gun.

  She grabbed me by the collar and pulled me toward the door; I was surprised by the strength in this petite woman. “Let’s go.” She turned and looked at Bea, who was hunched over on the couch, her hands between her legs. “Are you going to join us or do I need to have Franco”—she searched for the right word—“persuade you?”

  Bea hoisted herself off the couch and resignedly walked to the door. I noticed a piece of paper flutter to the ground before Bea walked away from the couch. Gianna tightened her grip on my collar and pulled me out into the hallway and down the stairs. The limo was idling by the front door of the house.

  I looked around before Franco pushed me into the car, but nobody on the busy street seemed to find it unusual that Bea and I were getting into the limo or noticed our obvious distress. “Where are we going, Gianna?” I asked her.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said, and tapped on the glass for Franco.

  I thought about the situation. It was hard for me to believe that this woman—someone with whom I had only a nodding acquaintance fifteen years ago—was back in my life, accusing me of being attracted to her husband, and threatening my life. But she certainly meant business. My heart was thumping in my chest, and I reached across the seat to grab Bea’s hand. She curled her chubby little fingers around my own and squeezed.

  We hurtled down the West Side Highway, through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and onto some highway I was sure I had never traveled. We passed acre after acre of warehouses and rundown apartment buildings and houses and it finally occurred to me that we were probably in Brooklyn. We sat in silence for the entire ride, me casting a glance at Bea every now and again, noticing that her face revealed nothing. She didn’t look scared, but twenty minutes or so into our trip, I noticed her lips moving in silent prayer. After traveling for about a half hour, we crossed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, paid the toll, and traveled farther on a road I knew I had never been on in my life. We finally turned into a landfill and my heart stopped thudding and seemingly ceased to beat. Unless we were on a scavenger hunt, this was going to end badly.

  Franco pulled into a spot between two heaping mounds of refuse about two miles into the landfill and cut the engine. He got out of the car and opened the door, motioning for the two of us to get out. Once Bea and I were out of the car—our noses filling with the stench of garbage—Gianna got out, the gun still in her hand. It drooped a bit, not pointed directly at us, and it occurred to me that she was finding it heavy. She waved it at us and told us to move away from the car.

  “This time, I’ll make sure the shot hits you,” she said, smiling slightly. When she saw the puzzlement on my face, she elaborated. “I almost got you the first time, Alison. Under the el?”

  I instinctively put my hand to my injured arm.

  “You know that saying? ‘Good help is hard to find’? Very true. The kid I hired to take you out couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” she said, shaking her head. “Let’s just say we’ve given him a desk job.” She chuckled. “I’m afraid we’re also turning into the gang who couldn’t shoot straight. Right now, we’re the gang who can’t shoot, maim, or dismember with any efficiency at all. When all of this is over, I’ll be cleaning house.”

  I rubbed my scar from the gunshot wound.

  “I almost don’t mind Peter having his fun with anonymous sluts. But you? That was too much to bear.” A tear ran down her face.

  “Gianna, I can’t impress upon you enough how wrong you are,” I said. I ducked as a seagull flew dangerously close to my head.

  “She’s in love with my nephew!” Bea exclaimed, still apparently delighted with that news.

  “Right. I’m love with her nephew,” I agreed, nodding enthusiastically.

  “First, my daughter is found, like trash, in the trunk of your car. Then you start spending time with my husband. Is there anything else you can do to make my life more miserable than it already is?” she cried, the gun falling down to hip level.

  Franco stood behind her in his usual stance, hands folded in front of him. He didn’t seem fazed by this psychodrama and watched everything with a robotic detachment that I found more disconcerting than Gianna’s meltdown.

  “And to learn that Kathy had been pregnant, probably by your pig ex-husband…” She drifted off, her mind elsewhere.

  “I told Peter, Gianna. It wasn’t Ray. He’d had a vasectomy.” I paused. “I promise you, it wasn’t Ray.” No use going into the whole stupid story again. “You killed him for nothing.”

  She smirked. “It was really you that I wanted gone, Alison. And I didn’t want you to have any warning that it would happen. I will never forgive you, Alison,” she said, and raised the gun. “Even after you’re gone.” The gun dropped again.

  Part of me felt sorry
for her. I had known her daughter and knew what a lovely girl she had been. I had buried two parents as a young adult yet I had no idea what it might be like to bury a child. I almost understood Gianna’s insanity, but I couldn’t figure out why I had become the object of it. “Who killed Ray, Gianna? Did you do it or did you have someone do it for you? Who was it?” I don’t know why it was so important for me to know, but it was.

  She looked at me and smiled. “Oh, some stupid kid. He was supposed to kill you, but when he found Ray, he did him instead. I got sick of waiting around for you, Alison. I figured that I’d do it myself.”

  So, it was me she wanted. Not Ray. When the cold reality of having cheated death twice entered my consciousness, I shuddered. “Why do you want me dead so badly, Gianna?”

  “If you can’t figure that out, Alison, then you’re not as smart as Peter gives you credit for.” Her lips quivered as she fought the urge to cry. “And if it wasn’t for Peter, you’d have been dead six months ago.”

  It was all starting to dawn on me. “Peter didn’t have anything to do with any of this?” I asked, not really understanding any of it but coming to the conclusion anyway.

  “No,” she said.

  I decided to go for broke. “What’s he going to do when he finds out that you’ve been ordering hits on your own?” Peter was in charge of the family and, if I had my Mafia rules straight, only he could order a hit.

  A look passed across her face, but I had no idea what it meant. “Why would you think that I couldn’t order a hit?” she asked.

  “Because Peter’s in charge,” I said.

  “You think Peter had something to do with all of this? You think Peter’s in charge?” she asked, wonder in her voice. “Huh,” she said, amazed that I had drawn that conclusion. She regained her composure. “I’m always amazed that nobody has figured this out. And especially you, Alison. Peter’s always talking about how smart you are. Let me fill you in on something, Alison: Peter is a moron.” She blessed herself—the name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit. “God forgive me.”