Mortal Bonds

by Michael Sears

  A sixty-something bartender in a black vest and white shirt poured me an eight-ounce glass of beer and made my ten-dollar bill disappear. He looked familiar.

  “Are you an actor, by any chance? Could I have seen you on Law and Order?”

  He laughed in a gleeful, high-pitched cackle. “Nah. I know you, though. From the old P-and-G. I was a runner for Vinny. I’d come by every afternoon to lay off my book. I saw you there sometimes. You and the little guy. Whatsisname?”

  “Roger. I’m Jason.”

  We shook hands. “Antony. People who don’t know me call me Tony.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said. “I haven’t seen Vinny since they moved the bar uptown. Six months? How’s he doing?”

  Vinny the Gambler. Vinny had occupied the last barstool against the wall at P&G for as long as I had been going there. He had been more Roger’s friend than mine, but I thought I knew the man. He sat with his Racing Form and notebook and watched the overhead television screens all day. I had always pegged him for a well-dressed retiree. Then my FBI buddies, Brady and his old boss, informed me that Vinny ran one of the biggest sports books in the Northeast out of a second-floor office on Seventy-second Street.

  He pursed his lips. “You didn’t hear?”

  “No one’s heard. It’s like he dropped through a trapdoor.” PaJohn and Roger had gone by the betting parlor on Seventy-second Street, but hadn’t learned a thing.

  “Trapdoor is just about right. He’s serving three years in a minimum-security lockup upstate. The Feds shut down his offshore casino. They let him take a lesser plea. He’s got another two and a half to go. But they’ll be watching, busting his chops. He’s out of business, I think.”

  “That’s rough,” I said, but Vinny had been running a book for thirty years or more. The odds have to catch up with you at some point. “But he can do three years.”

  “Oh, sure. He can do three with his head in the toilet. It’s a shame, though. He always played straight, made his payoffs, never got greedy. Then the Internet comes along and he’s got a choice to make—go with it or go out of business, right? It sucks, ’cause now it’s a federal rap and there’s no one willing to take an envelope and look the other way.”

  “The Feds can’t be bought?” I sounded more than a little skeptical.

  “It’s not the same. Senators you can buy. FBI agents? Ya gotta be careful.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Otisville.”

  My hands felt instantly moist and my scalp felt tight.

  “I know Otisville,” I said. Otisville was where I had served my last six months in the system.

  “Nice place, if ya gotta do time.”

  “I suppose I should take a run up there sometime,” I said. “See how Vinny’s doing.” Though the very idea gave me a case of the creeps, it made some sense. Vinny might be just the person to give me some perspective on my investigation. He had done it before.

  “Do that. Tell him Antony remembers.” He cocked his head to the side. “What the hell is that?”

  I heard it, too. One of the male leads had been moaning about not having the necessary mojo to defeat the forces of evil. As an aria, it was slow, doleful, and boring, and could be improved only by major surgery. But that wasn’t what made it weird.

  A second voice had joined. A sobbing, single-note drone in counterpoint to the hero. A voice filled with infinite sadness, yet young, and therefore eerie beyond words. I knew that voice.

  “Oh, no.”

  I dashed out, down the stairs and through the double doors into the theater.

  There was an ancient, wide-bottomed and slow-moving usher ahead of me, starting down the aisle, flashlight at the ready, prepared to deal with whatever rude patron was committing such a mortal sin in her theater. It was my son, and she was not prepared for him at all.

  “’Scuse me,” I whispered, executing a perfect three-step cutout. She had to stop or trip over me. I gained another two steps on her.

  The song came to an end. A tall, handsome, shirtless man with six-pack abs that made me hate him on sight was center stage, holding a silver sword aloft and awaiting the expected thunderous applause. In that hyper-still, breathless split second following the last dying note and before the first exuberant clap, a young voice cried out—screamed—in excruciating, existential pain, “WHY DON’T THEY JUST TELL THE STORY?”

  The applause never arrived. Instead, the audience took a collective breath of amazement and released it with a howl of laughter. The guy with the sword glared out through the lights, seeking the face of his tormentor, amazed to be so attacked from the really expensive seats. His massive chest writhed with contained anger, his hands clenched in frustration. In the wings, a werewolf howled—with laughter.

  The Kid began grunting, thunderous sounds that could not in anyone’s imagination be issuing forth from such a tiny body. “Unh! Unh! Unh!”

  I almost made it. I was two rows away and closing fast, when Angie broke. She stood up, her sticklike arms flailing, her head making that forward-backward bob like a cottonmouth getting ready to strike.

  “You MAY not behave in that way, young man. Do you hear me? You MAY not. Now get yourself up out of that seat. NOW! You will come with me. NOW!”

  She reached down to grab him.

  I touched her shoulder with my fingertips. “No. Don’t.”

  She whirled on me. “Take your hands off me!”

  “Let me do this, Angie. I’ve got him. Come on, Kid. Ice cream.”

  He stopped grunting, and for a moment looked my way. Then his eyes closed and he began to rock back and forth. The chance for a quick and effective intervention slipped away.

  “He is out of control,” she yelled at me, doing her best to demonstrate that while she, too, was out of control, it was all my fault that our son was wigging out.

  “Let the lady be,” a voice behind me said. I turned. A burly man in a Hawaiian shirt was close enough to violate any sense of personal space. His hands were down at his sides, and he was leading with his gut. It’s a pose meant to intimidate, but between prison gangbangers and derivatives traders, I’d already been intimidated by experts.

  “That’s my son, sir.”

  He pushed forward, crowding me and closing in. “I’m telling you, fella. You leave the lady alone.” Do all frail-looking, beautiful women attract misguided Sir Galahads? Was it a pheromone thing? Or was it just Angie?

  I stepped into him. His eyes registered surprise, then shock. I had dropped my right hand down to his crotch and grabbed his balls through his Tommy Bahama, razor-creased, silk-blend dress pants.

  “You’re out of your fucking league, Cujo. Now, back the fuck up, or I take these home with me.”

  He backed up two steps and flopped down in his seat. I turned back to Angie. She was standing in the middle of the aisle, hands on hips, ready to take me on. The usher arrived and managed to shine her flashlight directly in Angie’s eyes.

  “Please return to your seat, Miss.”

  Angie swatted the light away. The flashlight dropped to the floor and went out.

  “Stay out of this, Jason. I can discipline my child without your interference, thank you.”

  The orchestra had started up again, a duet of violins and cello meant to convey tension and menace. The he-man, with one last angry look our way, exited stage left. The lights dimmed and four coffins opened, revealing the green-lit vampire family. The audience, most of whom had lost interest in our little drama once the Kid stopped grunting, all ooohed as the vampires rose into the air and began to sing.

  I ignored Angie. I leaned across the Kid and spoke to Tino. “I’m getting him out of here. Call me. Maybe we can still meet up later.” He nodded. Mamma paid no attention; she was staring at the stage in wonder.

  Angie looked like she was building up steam for a full-out verbal assault; I
didn’t give her time to explode.

  “Let’s talk about this out front,” I said, swooping the Kid up into my arms. He wriggled in preparation for some animal defense, and I hugged him to me and ran.

  The usher was shuffling along the aisle, trying to find the missing flashlight—her badge of office—with her feet. She saw us coming and hopped out of the way. I kept moving. Angie had stopped to collect her purse and Saks shopping bag, but I could feel she was gaining quickly.

  The Kid twisted around in my arms when I stopped to negotiate the double doors. For a moment, his head was free. A moment. That’s all it took. He lunged and sank his teeth into my chest.

  I did not scream, but I wanted to. It hurt. I pressed his head into my chest, so he wouldn’t be able to shake it, an action he was capable of that most closely resembled what a dog does with a squeaky toy.

  Once out onto the street, Angie allowed herself to explode.

  “Put him down! I am going to talk some sense into that child. This is how you let him behave? Screaming at the top of his lungs like that? I suppose this is more of the ‘therapy’ that I wasn’t getting him. You are a hypocrite, Jason. A sanctimonious hypocrite. Turn him around. Now! I want him to look me in the eye when I’m talking.”

  At any other time, she might have been causing a scene, but at three-thirty in the afternoon on a Sunday, Forty-fifth Street was almost deserted. I stepped back against the building and squatted down, still holding the Kid as tightly as I could.

  He wriggled halfheartedly.

  “Easy, Kid. You’re okay. I have you. You are safe now. We’ll get you some ice cream in a little bit and you’ll feel better.”

  He began to relax. He took his teeth out of my left pec. My own little vampire. I felt a tickling stream of blood down my side.

  Angie took a quick breath between rants, and I jumped in.

  “Angie, shut the fuck up,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice from spiraling out of control. “Right now, I don’t want to hear your shit. You’re pissed because he was acting up. I’m worried because he was stressed out. We’re not even the same species. It’s like we come from different dimensions. We both observe the same phenomena, but our conclusions are light-years apart.”

  The Kid heard the anger in my voice and was instantly a squirming, ferocious wild animal. But he was spent. Done. The spasm lasted seconds and he went limp. He did not slowly melt, he simply transformed into a liquid gel and passed out.

  “I need to get him home,” I said. He would need to nap for an hour or so and then he’d be ravenously hungry.

  Angie took a moment to decide that she didn’t need to continue her tirade on the sidewalk. She strode to the curb and put a hand in the air for a cab. I thought of telling her that she was delusional. She wasn’t going to find a cab on a cross street in the theater district until late afternoon when the shows let out. Every New Yorker knows that.

  An empty, off-duty cab came through the green light at Broadway and continued down the block toward us. Angie waved. Off-duty. It was never going to stop. It stopped in front of Angie.

  While the cab lurched up toward Amsterdam Avenue, I checked my wound. My shirt was stuck to my chest with dried blood, but when I pulled it away I could see the damage was minimal. I’d have a bruise, but no scar. I thought I might not have minded a scar. It would be something to show the grandchildren someday and tell them how I got it.

  I brushed a few sweaty hairs from the Kid’s face, marveling for the thousandth time how much he resembled his mother. Maybe we’d both be lucky and he’d outgrow it.

  “You know something, Angie? You’re going to think this is screwed up, but I’m proud of this guy. He just put a big sentence together. He identified what it was that was bugging him, and before he let himself go nuts or catatonic or wet himself or start biting people, he asked a question. A seven-word sentence! That’s not a record, but it’s damn good. Against all his natural instincts, he tried communication to get relief. That’s huge.”

  Angie didn’t say anything for three long, tense seconds.

  “I may have my failings, as a person, as a mother, but I am not a witch. I want to love my son and have him love me. But I look at you with him and I see a man drowning in self-delusion. You claim the boy is so much better, but I just saw him bite you. He has no sense of discipline, no self-control. And you seem to think that’s just fine. What exactly are you doing for him? Do you think he’ll ever be able to live around other people? He is one step from a wild animal. I believe he can be better than that, and if it takes some tough love to get him there, then so be it.”

  It was like that asinine game from Psychology 101—the one with the picture in black and white where half the class sees a chalice and the other half sees two mirror images of a face in silhouette. We both had the same information, but we interpreted the problem entirely differently. And I was right. I believed it with all my heart. So did she, most likely. And anything I said would only further convince her that she was in the right. So I said nothing. Call me a coward or call me passive-aggressive, but I did not want to fight with her. I just wanted to be left alone to raise my son.

  We pulled up in front of the Ansonia. I got out, awkwardly exiting with the Kid in both arms. I let Angie pay the fare. She had plenty of my money, she could afford it.

  Raoul, our trusty doorman, saw us and rushed over to help Angie out of the cab. I started across the sidewalk.

  The Kid moaned.

  There were four of them. Dark-skinned mestizos, all with the sloped, bony brow and chiseled noses of the Maya. They could have been the Hondurans Castillo had mentioned—or Guatemalans, or Mexicans, or they could have been born in the Bronx for all I knew. Two were in suits, white shirts, no ties. The other two wore dark hoodies in the early-summer heat, partially eclipsing their faces, each with hands thrust in the front pockets and holding something heavy. I didn’t recognize any of them, but I knew who they were.

  “You were supposed to be finding something of ours, Mr. Stafford. Is there a problem? You need to let us know if there is a problem.” The man was noticeably shorter than his three companions. In any gang situation, always be careful of the short man. He’s the one with something to prove.

  They fanned out across the sidewalk. The two hoodies backing up the short man, the other suited man facing off in front of Raoul, who looked frightened. I was, too, but I hoped I didn’t look it. Angie marched through and went straight for the door of the building, Saks bag swinging—still angry, determined, and oblivious. She disappeared inside.

  I tried a brusque brush-off. “I told Mr. Castillo I would keep him informed. I didn’t say I was working for him.”

  “Are you not taking this seriously? That would be a mistake. You see that. You are not a stupid man.”

  Great. Everyone else thought I was an idiot. I didn’t have much to offer. The bonds were still missing, and I had only a vague idea of where they might be.

  “Tell Mr. Castillo I’ll give him a call Monday morning.” I tried to push past, an impossibility while carrying my son.

  One of the hoodies stretched out a hand and stopped me. The other hand remained in the big front pocket. I didn’t need to see it to understand the threat.

  “This is your son?” the short man continued. “Very nice. Beautiful boy. He goes to school uptown, doesn’t he? Yes, and the fat girl picks him up and walks him home every day. La gordita. A long walk, and some of those blocks are not so good. By the projects, I mean. Bad things happen there sometimes. You should tell her to be careful.”

  His tone was conversational, but the message was clear. I flashed on all the possible ways that a determined man or woman could get to me or my son. We were wide open. My only defense was cooperation.

  “Believe me, I’m working it. If he wants to meet with me, just set a time and place. I’ll be there.”

  He hadn’t bothered to deny
that he was there on orders from Castillo—or one of his close acquaintances. His stare turned hard and he tried looking through me. I met the gaze. Some magic must have passed between us. I didn’t faint from fright, and he softened.

  “I think you are sincerely a man of honor. I will take that back with me.”

  Angie took that moment to stick her head out the door and call, “Jason! Are you coming? I know you wouldn’t give a thought to keeping me waiting, but I would think you would be in a bigger hurry to get our child to bed.”

  The four Latinos all smiled smugly. In one of my many impromptu language lessons in prison, I had learned that the word “esposas,” the plural of “wife” in Spanish, was also the word for “handcuffs.” Raoul didn’t smile. He was still too scared to move even a face muscle.

  “We’re just finishing up,” I said. “We’re coming.”

  The short man and I shared a look again.

  “Your wife is very pretty, too. I see where your son gets his looks.” He grinned to let me know he was both complimenting me and insulting me. And threatening me. “You will hear from us. Please have some good news.”

  They melted away—one moment a concentration of evil, the next just four vague strangers dispersing through the crowds on Broadway.

  “You all right, Raoul?” I said.

  He didn’t look so good, but he pulled himself together.

  “You know those guys, Mr. Stafford?”

  “Me? Never saw them before in my life.” I followed Angie inside.

  The adrenaline rush that had carried me out of the theater, all the way home, and through the confrontation with the four Latinos was now an adrenaline jag. My arms ached, my knees were shaky, and I felt like I couldn’t catch a full breath. Nevertheless, I managed to cross the lobby on white squares only. Angie made a point of standing solidly on a black tile as we waited for the elevator.

  “What were you doing out there?” She was not making a scene, she was simply hissing at me loud enough to turn heads the length of the building.