Tony waved back. “Hell of a kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Just like his grandfather.”
Dory swatted him lightly on the chest. “Sure.”
They watched as Joey stopped in the middle of the lawn, staring up at the sky, head cocked, squinting. Trask hadn’t moved.
The door opened, and Ari said, “Thank you, dear. You’re very kind.”
“Any time, Ari,” Patty said. “You want me to find you a sweater or something?’’
“No, but thank you. Some people,” and he raised his voice, “worry about other people freezing to death in the open.” He lowered his voice again, a laugh there now. “I’m fine. That wind thing, it kind of shook me, but I’m fine now. The sun’s nice and warm again.”
“Good,” Patty said. “Just let me know if you need anything.”
Something about her, the tone, the cadence, made Tony look over, leaning back a little to see around Dory. When Patty looked at him with a quick smile, he smiled back and tilted his head quickly—come on over here—and she did, moving down the steps, turning her back on her son.
“Yes, Dad?”
He looked at Dory. “What do you think?”
Dory shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.”
“Patricia,” he said, “give me your hand.”
Patty grinned. “Go to hell.”
Dory rocked back and looked at the ceiling. “Well, hot damn, it’s about damn time.”
“What?” Ari wanted to know, sounded miffed he’d been left out.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” Tony said, beckoning Patty to him. “It’s a family thing. I don’t mean to offend.”
“No offense. Just so I know. So ... do I go inside while you do your family thing?’’
Patty took Tony’s hand and squeezed it, bowed over it and kissed the back lightly. “Missed you,” she whispered.
Dory scoffed.
“Well, I did,” she insisted, managing at the same time to sound insolent and mocking.
“My daughters,” he said to Ari, “know how to worship me.”
Dory smacked him; Patty slapped his knee.
Ari laughed and wondered if maybe today they could go into town, walk around, see some things.
“Absolutely,” Tony said, grabbing the post, pulling himself to his feet. “In fact, let’s do it now. All of us. We’ll find a nice place and have dinner out.”
“In a minute,” Ari said, standing. “I have to, uh, go upstairs.” He looked sheepish. “I think I drank too much water.”
“So go already, you old fart,” Tony said with a laugh. “Make yourself beautiful.” He shooed his daughters away as well. “You, too, girls. I want every man in town to envy Tony Garza.”
“Jeans,” Dory said to Patty as they went inside. “If you wear a dress, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”
Life is good, Tony thought as he went down the steps; life is very good.
He walked over to Joey, humming until the boy looked up at him, smiling that smile that had stolen, he was sure, a million hearts already.
“We’re going downtown, Joey,” he said. “Dinner out. Look around. Maybe see a movie. What do you say?” He waited. “What do you say, partner?”
Joey tipped his hat back, pulled on the strap. “I don’t know, Grampa.”
Tony frowned. “You don’t know? What kind of answer is that, you don’t know? You want to go, you don’t want to go. Pick one. It’s easy.”
The boy crooked a finger, asking him to down to his level. When he did, hands braced on his knees, the little cowboy said, “What about him?”
Tony looked over his head at Trask. “Him? He’s rich, son, he can buy his own meal. Besides, this is family only. And Ari.”
Joey nodded solemnly. “And Daddy?”
“What? He’s here?”
“Yes, Grampa. He is.”
Tony struggled to keep the obscenities inside, said only, “He’s not family anymore, son.”
Joey nodded again, solemnly, and said shyly, “Grampa, do you know who I am?”
Tony didn’t know whether to laugh, frown, scold, tease. So he said heatedly, “You are the one and only Joseph Anthony, my favorite grandson in the whole world, and don’t you damn forget it.”
Joey grinned, and hugged him around the neck.
Tony rose with him in his arms, almost laughing aloud at the urge to stick his tongue out at the preacher, who still, for God’s sake, hadn’t moved.
Then Joey whispered in his ear, “Grampa, Daddy’s coming here soon. He scares me. Will you dance with him?”
Tony didn’t blink, didn’t answer.
Then Joey whispered, “Grampa, laugh.”
And Tony did.
* * * *
7
Rod stands by the car, his back to the street. He pulls the cotton shirt out of his jeans so it will cover the gun he’s lucked into his belt. He reaches into the front seat and grabs a baseball cap, puts it on, yanks the bill low. Adjusts the shirt. Adjusts his belt. Scowling because, after all this time, after all the dreams, all the schemes, all the hassles, he’s mad because he’s nervous.
He makes a fist and punches his chest, a scolding for being an asshole.
You’re here, he tells himself; now goddamnit, go do it.
He walks up Seventeenth to Madison, crosses at the corner, heading uptown, away from the godawful pile of stone that houses the police station across the street. Just one of scores of pedestrians on the sidewalk, his head slightly down but not too much, taking his time, noting how quickly the mess from the wind has been cleaned away, how quickly everyone seems to have gotten back to normal.
Some things have changed since he’s been gone. Not, however, all that much. Still the same shitty town pretending to be big. A shoe store, sweater store, camera store, newsstand, travel agency, more dress stores than the town has damn women to support them; an antique store, for crying out loud, where the hell did that one come from?
The Rialto movie theater between Nineteenth and Twentieth, made into two, now and flanked by a pair of luncheonettes, one of which was new.
On Twentieth’s west corner he looks over and sees the glass front of Illinois Insurance Partners, right next to First Illinois Bank, as if they were business related. He can’t see through the window, there are too many people; it’s nearly four-thirty and the ants have already begun to leave their nests for home.
Time to move, he reminds himself when he doesn’t cross at the change of light; in and out, Roddy, in and out, or you’re dead.
At the next change, some idiot in a delivery van blocking the crosswalk, he follows a pack of women to the other side and doesn’t hesitate: He walks straight to the door, pushes in, and sees Annette’s desk at the back of the large open room.
It’s empty.
He glares, yanks the cap’s bill, and moves to the gate in the low wood rail that separates the waiting area from the desks.
Her desk is empty.
A door in the back opens, and a stout woman in a stiff white shirt and tie steps out. Graying hair in waves and curls not quite to her broad shoulders. A string of small pearls around her neck. “May I help you, sir?” she asks with a blind smile, crossing the carpet as though greeting an old friend.
Rod shifts his glare from the empty desk to the woman, who finally pays attention. Falters in her progress, although the smile holds. “Do you have an appointment?” she asks. She gestures apologetically at the five unmanned desks. ‘ I’m afraid we’re a little understaffed at the moment. Perhaps I can—oh my God, oh my God.”
Rod smiles. “Hello, Stephanie.” ”
Stephanie Zwingler immediately holds up her hands. “She’s not here, Rod, I swear to you, she’s not here.” She backs away. “I don’t want any trouble, please, okay? No trouble.”
Rod is furious he’s missed the bitch, but this is the bitch who talked her out of the house and into a job. It didn’t matter that Annette was very good at it. It didn’t matter that she made more mone
y than God. It didn’t matter, because once she had left the house, it had all gone to hell.
Zwingler is near her office, and Rod sees she’s ready to bolt inside, shut the door, and call the cops.
“Just go, Rod,” she pleads, that perfect hair leaking unladylike sweat onto that perfectly made-up face. “No trouble, all right? Just go. She’s not here.”
“I can see that,” Rod said in disgust, pulls out his gun and aims it at her head.
“Oh God.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t—”
Rod yells: “Where the hell is she?”
“Chicago!” Stephanie shrieks back. “Chicago, she went to Chicago with—”
He pulls the trigger, barely flinching at the explosion, not really minding that people on the sidewalk can undoubtedly see in. He wants to make sure that old Steph, lying half in and out of her office now, is dead. So he pulls the trigger again, and Steph’s not so perfect stomach ripples as the bullet rips through it.
Shit, he thinks, and turns, yanks open the door, and hurries onto the sidewalk, tucking the gun carefully back into his belt. What the hell is she doing in Chicago? A man, right? She’s got a new man? Yeah. She has a new man, the bitch, but that’s okay because there’s still the wimp and the other bitch, and old Steph is gone and that takes care of that.
He pays no heed to the pedestrians round him. To the handful who gape, and the others who are running.
He crosses against the light, one hand out matador-style to keep a pickup from running him down.
When he reaches the other side, he breaks into a trot, then a full sprint, thinking maybe he ought to go down Nineteenth, cut through an alley so he doesn’t have to tempt anything by heading straight for the cop shop.
Someone is screaming.
No one tries to stop him.
At Nineteenth he decides to go one more block, get him one block closer to the car. Halfway there, someone bellows his name and he looks up, focusing on a man standing at the corner. Alone. With a gun.
Be damned, he thinks; it’s my old friend, Arn.
He doesn’t break stride when he pulls out his gun and fires without aiming, swerves into the recessed entrance of a bookstore and fires again just as good old Arn ducks behind a lamppost.
Funny, he thinks, how fast the streets get empty. Checks his pocket to be sure he has the extra ammunition, then crouches down, a smaller target, and aims this time before pulling the trigger.
He sees that Arn is too big to hide behind that skinny pole, sees the chief jerk when the bullet hits him someplace.
Then he hears the sirens, sees far beyond Baer a handful of uniforms pelting toward him, shotguns at the ready. Since he’s in the middle of the block, he can’t run back, they’d get him for sure, and Arn, although hit, fires again, punching a hole in the window just over his head, sprinkling him with shattered glass.
He looks at the door, and can’t believe his eyes when he sees a woman backing away quickly, panic and terror in her eyes.
Well, well, he thinks; maybe it’s not so bad after all.
He fires once more to keep everyone down, then charges the door, slamming it open, raises the gun and aims it at the woman’s head, “Hey, Vonda,” he drawls. “You know your old man’s trying to kill me?”
* * * *
8
Lisse blew her nose on the tissue Fran handed her. “I’m sorry. I don’t get this way, really.”
“I don’t blame you, dear,” Fran assured her, sitting opposite her at the kitchen table, the radio on low on the counter behind her. “It’s been a weird day.”
Lisse looked at her, and laughed. Too loudly and too hard, but she couldn’t stop. “Day?” More tears that prompted Fran to push the whole box at her. She grabbed a handful and waved it. “Day?” And didn’t stop laughing until she ran out of breath. “Sorry. God, I’m sorry.”
But she was more embarrassed than sorry. Coming into this nice woman’s house with blood on her face, babbling all the time while Fran brushed and plucked the glass from her hair, snipping away some, with constant apologies, to make sure the cuts she found on her scalp weren’t in need of more attention. Half the time neither of them made much sense, although she did learn this wasn’t the first time that thunder-and-squall had happened.
John, bless his heart, had stayed away. Being in his own state, he knew he wouldn’t do her much good, and for that she wanted to kiss him. Wanted to kiss him badly.
Once back in control, she smiled gamely at the other woman and checked the window on her left. She could see John, Fran’s husband whose name she couldn’t remember, and that cop talking. Under some trees she could see three kids talking, one of them, a girl, taller than half the men she knew.
It looked normal out there.
It looked perfectly normal.
She, on the other hand, was a perfect mess.
There were no deep cuts, just pricks and little stabs, but she did not want to see her face in a mirror. Arid her hair ...she shuddered, deciding that as soon as she had the chance, she would get a cut like Fran’s—short and easy to take care of.
Oh, Lord, she thought; now I’m babbling in my own head.
Quickly she pushed her chair back. “I think ...” A look outside again.
“It’s okay,” Fran said, her smile friendly, understanding. She waved at the table—used tissues, strands of hair, winking glass. “I’ll clean up and be out in a minute. You sure you’re okay?”
“As I can be, I suppose,” Lisse answered gratefully. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Easy. After all this, I don’t feel like cooking. You and John take us to dinner.”
“Deal,” she said, and after a moment’s fumbling for direction, found the back door and hurried out. John saw her come around the side of the house and walked toward her without a word to the others.
She didn’t mean to do it: She just walked right up to him and wrapped him around the waist, put her head on his chest, and sighed when his arms squeezed her tightly and she could feel his breath in her hair. Then he pushed her back a bit so he could see her face.
“My, my,” he said, exaggerating her accent. “My, my, don’t you look something.”
He had a scratch on his cheek, another that slipped under the hair that wouldn’t stay away from his forehead, a third, a little deeper, on the side of his neck.
“You ain’t no prize yourself.”
“So I’m told,” he said, the rasp in his voice softer.
She wanted him to say more, and maybe he would have from the look on his face, but suddenly the deputy cursed. They listened intently to the voice crackling on the radio snapped to his shoulder. “Gotta go,” Schmidt said.
“What’s up?” Les asked, unable to hear it all.
“Gillespie.” The deputy looked over at Sharon. “They got him cornered downtown.”
And he was gone, racing to the car, gunning the engine and leaving smoke in his wake as he shot down the drive as if ignited by a rocket, slamming over the debris and screaming left out of the gate.
“Son of a bitch,” Les said.
The kids, who had scattered at the patrol car’s passing, ran over, confused.
“What?” Sharon demanded of John. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. “What, Mr. Bannock?”
“Your... it’s him,” John told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Downtown. It seems the police have him trapped.”
Sharon whipped around to stare at the road. “Oh God.”
Lisse shifted to stand beside Les, watching them, wanting to say something to the girl who so obviously had a crush on John; but this wasn’t her world and nothing she could say would have any weight, much less any comfort.
Then John looked at her, hesitated, and said, “What did I tell you.”
* * * *
9
Dory and Garza flank Ari on the porch, teasing him, flattering him, while Patty stands at the head of the steps and watches her son.
F
rom the moment her father put him down, he has stood in the middle of the lawn. Looking at the sky. Looking at the house. Looking at the limousine into which the preacher and his giants have retreated. Fiddling with his chin strap. Pulling his toy gun in and out of its holster.
Something is not right, she thinks. She knows him too well, and she knows something isn’t right.
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 28