B009XDDVN8 EBOK

by Lashner, William

“This lot. Does anything look wrong? It seems weirdly quiet, nothing moving around.”

  “It’s a parking lot at three in the morning.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I opened the door, climbed out of the truck, closed the door again with a sharp thump. I looked away for a bit, peered into the darkness, saw nothing. Through the open window I said, “Thanks for trying to help. I guess it was good seeing you after all these years.”

  “No it wasn’t,” said Tony. “But I really am sorry about the dog.”

  “Well, to be fair, he did seem to be inordinately fond of crapping on your lawn.”

  He gave me a half smile before he drove away, Tony Grubbins, the great tormentor of my youth. He gave me a half smile, and he drove away, and I felt a strange sense of loss. And I couldn’t tell whether it was because he was leaving, or because I had finally let out my secret and the world hadn’t changed.

  I shook myself back to the present, shook my head and cleared my senses, before stepping over to my black SUV to make sure everything was in order. It seemed fine, just an anonymous car in an anonymous lot. I looked around, all seemed quiet, dark. Why did I feel so uneasy? Turning back to the car I noticed the something, just a little something, but still my neck seized.

  The magnetized PA license plate was a little off-center, just enough that some of the Virginia plate was showing through.

  Had I been that sloppy in placing it there? I remembered lining up the edges, I remembered running my fingers across all the sides to make sure it was exact. I stooped down to readjust it and suddenly had a horrible thought. I stood up again, grabbed my keys, pressed the fob to unlock the car. When I slammed open the rear hatch, the cover over the cargo bay opened up as well, exposing the contents.

  It was still there, along with the assorted detritus from my suburban life: gardening tools, leaf bags, Eric’s baseball crap, a pair of golf shoes, and the green metal toolbox, still locked as if rusted shut, as innocuous as a flower. I let out a deep breath of relief and was just about to close the rear when I heard my name, my old name, its triple syllables rattling together like the tail of a snake.

  “Moretti? Yo, Moretti.”

  34. Rampage

  I GRABBED AT whatever was in the car, found Eric’s official Little League aluminum bat, picked it up before slamming shut the hatch. Only then did I turn around.

  Richie Diffendale. Walking calmly toward me, a finger in the air as if signaling for a busboy.

  “Get the hell away from me, Richie,” I said.

  “I just want to talk,” he said as he continued approaching. “I was getting greedy in the bar, I admit it. But I’m sure we can still work something out. Maybe five figures, low fives even. Ten?”

  “There’s nothing to work out.”

  “Don’t do it for me,” he said. “Do it for Maddie.”

  I tilted my head. He came still closer and lifted his finger in the air again.

  “She gets a better life,” he said, “you get to glide away safe and free, everyone’s gaaak—”

  This last word wasn’t a new piece of Pitchford slang—you know, I’m gaaak, you’re gaaak, we’re all just gaaak—but the sound that emerged from Richie Diffendale’s throat when I slammed his face with the baseball bat.

  The bat gave off that aluminum ping as his head swiveled with the blow. His body landed with a thump as his teeth rattled along the asphalt like a turn at Yahtzee.

  I would have taken the time to admire my handiwork—my shot into the gap couldn’t help but improve his smile—but there was no time. The moment I realized it was Diffendale calling my name, even as fogged by drink as I was, it all became clear in a flash. Richie hadn’t come back to try again to make a deal, not with the way his last effort had ended. He had waited outside the bar, he had followed my car to the hotel, he had made the call to Clevenger, the opportunistic son of a bitch. Which meant the thugs were already on-site, maybe waiting for me in Edward Holt’s hotel room. Richie was in the parking lot just to ensure I didn’t simply drive off. Misinterpreting my motives at the Lexus, he had probably already called up to the room with what he was seeing before he tried to delay me. Which meant there wasn’t time for niceties or chitchat.

  So I did my small talk with an Easton Rampage, minus eleven.

  I dropped to the ground and reached for my holster, touched only my belt. Crap. I had left the gun and holster in Tony’s glove compartment.

  I gripped tight to the bat and scanned the parking lot. All clear.

  I grabbed the keys from my pocket, scooted between my car and a Honda, took hold of the driver’s door handle, swung the door open, swung myself inside. The car started like a dream. I checked the mirrors: rearview clear, side views clear, clear—clear except for a sprawled leg on the asphalt.

  The only way out was right over Richie Diffendale’s prostrate body.

  Where some see obstacles, I see opportunities, and here was one. Simply by backing out I would free myself from my immediate peril, free Maddie from her abusive husband, and right all past wrongs meted upon me by this creep. He had sold me out tonight, like he had twenty-five years ago when I got my scar, like he had whenever he laughed hysterically while Tony Grubbins pounded on my head. It was all so perfect my unconscious must have set the stage, and all I had to do was put the shifter into reverse. One little act to do so much good.

  Yet I couldn’t do it. He would do it to me, I had no doubt, he already had, but I couldn’t do it to him. Even with all that had happened, what was true in Vegas remained true. I was no torpedo. With the car still running, I opened the door, dashed back out to the lot. Richie was moaning as I grabbed him under the armpits and lifted him enough so I could pull him out of the car’s way.

  He whimpered as his shattered jaw dragged loosely behind his face. And there was something else sounding underneath the whimper, like the clicking of bone on bone, or something.

  “You touch Madeline again,” I said to Richie Diffendale as I dragged him, “and I’m going to finish the job.”

  I dropped him out of my route and ran back to the car. But just as I was about to leap into the driver’s seat, the door slammed closed and some bullet-headed brute was standing there, his hands flexing for me. Trapped on three sides, I spun around to get the hell out of there, when another brute slammed me in the gut.

  The breath left my lungs so fast the force of it sent me to my knees. A kick into my back finished the job of sending me sprawling.

  “Got you,” said the second brute, before he clamped his hands over both of my ears and pulled my head straight up. My neck screamed as my body followed. The brute leaned me against my car and slammed me once more in the stomach, holding me up with his other hand so I wouldn’t collapse again. I tried to say something, anything, and failed. I tried to swing at him, but my hand was swatted away like it was a moth.

  “You’re not going to try to give us no trouble, are you? Not like you did to Holmes.”

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Call it in, Ferdie.”

  The first man slipped away from between the cars and reached for his phone.

  “Now we’re going to ask you some questions, just like we asked your friend in Vegas some questions. Nice simple questions, like how much you got left, where it is, and where you can get more. And if you survive the asking better than your friend did, then it will be worth your while to give us some answers. Capisce?”

  “What?”

  “Understand?”

  “How much…is left…of what?”

  “Don’t be a clown, I’m not in no mood.” He took a handful of my shirt collar, gave it a yank. “Let’s go.”

  My eyes spun as he dragged me across the asphalt, toward the white van in the corner of the lot, sitting alone in the darkness. I didn’t have a bat in my hands to smash his jaw to bits. I wasn’t in my car to slam-bam into him. I didn’t have my gun to put a bullet into his murderous brain in vengeance for Augie. I had nothing, no options, no strength left in my battered body,
no way out. They had me, the bastards, and they had the rest of the money, too, though they didn’t know it yet. They didn’t have my family, which was one bright spot, but who knew what I wouldn’t give them under torture. Let’s be honest, I was a suburban dad; no matter how tough I acted, threaten my cable and I’d spill my darkest secrets.

  There was a gurgle. I thought it came from me for a moment, but no. A gurgle and then a crack.

  “Ferdie?” said the man, whipping around as he whipped out a gun. “Ferd-man?”

  A bird came hurtling through the air toward us, just bits of its silver wings catching the artificial light of the parking lot. A bird, or a bat, flying straight and hard, like it was flying out of hell. And then it wasn’t a bird. And then it smacked into the bruiser’s forehead with a thud.

  The thug let go of me and his gun at the same time, grappling at his forehead, which was suddenly stained with dark streaks. The gun clattered onto the asphalt next to the wrench that had slammed into his head. I didn’t try to figure out what had happened, I jumped away as soon as I was free, falling and then rising, and then tearing the hell out of there toward my car. Still running, I turned back and that’s when I saw it.

  A man, standing with legs spread and arms outstretched, standing like a superhero from one of the overheated comic books of my childhood, holding in his hands the bloodied bruiser of my persecution, raising him high before throwing him like a sack of recycling to the ground. No, not a man, a legend.

  El Rubio Salvaje.

  “You forgot your gun,” Tony Grubbins said to me when it was over and the second collection agent was collapsed into an unconscious heap. Tony tossed the gun and holster at me, leaned over, and picked up the wrench. “I guess the guy never played dodgeball.”

  “I was done for.”

  “Don’t forget who you’re messing with,” said Tony. “Finding Derek might be near impossible, but that’s still the easy part.”

  “I know,” I said. Awkward pause. “I guess, you know, thanks for, kind of, saving me.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now go away.”

  “Okay. Look, if I actually do find him, do you want me to let you know?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “Wait. I don’t know. Just the thought of seeing him again turns me into a scared little boy.”

  “Then maybe you ought to leave him be.”

  “No, you’re wrong. If you do find him, let me know. You ever read The Tibetan Book of the Dead?”

  “Please.”

  “It’s all about facing your demons. Maybe it’s time for me to do just that.”

  “You’ve become strangely spiritual over the years, Tony. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Things change, Moretti.”

  “Not me,” I said. “It was Richie that brought these two thugs here. I think he followed me out of the Stoneway and then made the call. He’s over there on the ground. He’s going to need an ambulance. I shattered his jaw with a baseball bat.”

  “Nice shot for the worst baseball player on Henrietta Road.”

  “I never told anyone else before about the money. No one. I never told my mother, I never told my wife.”

  “That’s a hell of a chain to have wrapped around your neck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I bet it keeps growing tighter.”

  “It does.”

  “Then maybe it’s time to let it go,” he said, “before it chokes you to death.”

  35. The Club

  WHEN I ROUSED myself from sleep the next morning in another motel on another trademark-laden strip, I was stiff and aching, lonely and hungover, unsure of who the hell I was anymore or why I was doing any of what I was doing. But then I bought a bag of toiletries at Rite Aid. I bought underwear, a fresh pair of Dockers, and a new white shirt at Kohl’s. I had a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s. I picked up a double espresso macchiato at Starbucks. Whatever the commerce of America had devolved into over my lifetime, it was exactly what I needed to prepare myself. For I was stepping up that day, rising out of the mire, and I intended to look and feel every inch the country squire as I drove into the lush landscape of my early youth.

  Impossible mansions with their mansard roofs, developments with lots large enough that each could have swallowed whole blocks of Pitchford, great estates with swaths of priceless pasture where horses leaned down to pick at the pristine grass with teeth so perfect they would make a Britisher weep. It had been decades since I had been back, and I had seen my share of glorious vistas in the intervening years, but still nothing pulled at my heart like the wealthy enclaves of Philadelphia’s Main Line. Milton could have written an epic poem about it all. In fact, he did.

  And then I found myself before a grand stone-columned entrance, standing like Lucifer before the very gates from which he had been cast down eons ago. The sun burned more brightly upon its vast lawn, its grass smelled cleaner, its air held the crisp scent of new dollar bills. The valet took my keys, the sign said NO TIPS.

  Is this heaven?

  No, Jon, it’s the Philadelphia Country Club.

  I didn’t recognize the building before which I stood. The fashionably shoddy clubhouse entrance that had been there in my day had been replaced with this gaudy front, not too different from the entrance to the golf clubhouse at Patriots Landing or any other upscale course. But still, when I handed off my keys and stepped inside I had a knot in my stomach that would have foiled Alexander. I fully expected someone to grab me by the scruff of my neck and toss me out feetfirst, but no one stopped me, no one asked who I was. An older woman standing by the door smiled at me, like the old women of the club used to smile at me because I was a Willing, and, grateful, I smiled back.

  I took advantage of the opportunity and roamed among the halls of my youthful privilege, from the great banquet room to the bar to the grill to the Polo Room with its terrace overlooking the verdant fields of golf. I was afraid of being recognized and desperate to be recognized. I didn’t belong and yet the place was in my bones. I was a lapsed Catholic strolling along the intricately decorated nave of St. Peter’s, ready to be called out and embraced at the same time. It was beautiful, and gaudy, and thrillingly sumptuous, it was everything I had ever wanted, everything I had ever felt deprived of in my life, the place where all my lurching opportunism had led me, and yet…

  And yet…

  “May I help you?” said a woman who approached me on the Polo Room terrace, as polished as the brass, with a freshly ironed suit that belonged behind the front desk of a grand hotel.

  “I’m just poking around,” I said.

  “Only members are allowed to poke, sir.”

  “I used to be a member.”

  “Then you used to be able to poke.”

  “I might have been a little young in those days.”

  The woman’s smile suddenly widened into officiousness. “How, then, may I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Willing. I called his house and was told he would be here.”

  “I believe Mr. Willing is in the Grill Room. Is he expecting you?”

  “I would think so,” I said. “He must have figured I’d show up at some point.”

  “If you wait on the terrace, I’ll see if he is available. Who can I say is here to see him?”

  “Tell him it’s Jon, Jon Moretti, with two ts.”

  “Very good. Would you like a complimentary drink while you’re waiting?”

  “That sounds about right,” I said with a wide smile.

  I sat on the terrace with my gin and tonic, watching the foursomes make their way across the eighteenth fairway and the holes beyond. As a boy, I had seen in these fields a thrilling landscape of heroic deeds and dark adult secrets; now I knew it to be just another golf course. I had sliced my ball out of bounds on better. And the clubhouse wasn’t the fabulous Shangri-la of steak, french fries, and Coca-Cola of my youth. After what was apparently a recent renovation, the pla
ce looked like nothing more than your usual four-star resort, with its plush furniture, its arranged flowers, its utter lack of mystique. I remembered old chaises where the aristocracy of Philadelphia had lounged, the stodgy locker room with its ancient metal lockers where the richest barons in the world had changed out of their knickers and golfing shoes. I remembered Olympus, not something where all that was required to get past the front door was a credit card.

  I took a sip of the drink, quite good, tangy and bracing. The glass was beaded with moisture even as I remained cool in the breeze, which seemed right. In this place the drinks did the sweating instead of the members. I took a longer sip, felt the cold of the tonic wash through me. This could have been my life, sitting here, drinking this, the ice so clean, the limes so fresh. If my father hadn’t deserted us, that would have been me leading the caddie along the pristine fairway. That would have been me taking my wedge and neatly splashing the ball out of that deep trap. That would have been me making the six-footer for par. Fat and flushed and pale all at once, in plaid pants with a white belt, that would have been me. Satisfied with all he had been given, married to a Biddle or a Wister or a Chew, with no secret darker than a fudged score on the tricky par five or an awkward tryst with the polished assistant club manager.

  Never before had I realized how much I hated the game of golf.

  “Mr. Moretti?”

  I looked up at the woman in the pressed suit, her hands clasped in front of her, her smile forced.

  “If you’ll follow me, please.”

  “Absitooviley,” I said, before polishing off my cocktail.

  She led me back through the halls of the club, down a set of stairs, past still other rooms into which I hadn’t poked, until she led me into an elegant boardroom with a long inlaid mahogany table and a number of overstuffed leather chairs.

  “This is the Founders’ Room, Mr. Moretti.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Can I get you another cocktail while you wait for Mr. Willing?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I have enough to drink in as it is.”