The Last Kind Words: A Novel

by Tom Piccirilli

  I knew the feeling well, probably because my mother liked to watch me sleep. I opened my eyes into slits. It was still dark. I checked Eve and she was sleeping soundly. The door remained shut.

  I waited.

  Moonlight splayed against the walls, the silver hue blurred by the intermittent rain. I considered that Torchy’s was undoubtedly mobbed up. Danny might’ve gotten word that Grey and I had been out on the town. It could’ve miffed him. He might want to brace Mal again. He might want to push me for showing up with attitude at the Fifth. I couldn’t imagine Danny sending Wes around in the middle of the night, but Wes had admitted there were nastier goings-on that he wasn’t a part of. Danny had a lot of worse boys around still trying to make their bones. I hung my hand over the edge of the mattress and felt for my pants. A shadow broke against the moonlight.

  Someone was standing at the window, peering in.

  I slipped out of bed on a roll and slid my trousers on in a fluid move. The forward momentum carried me across the bedroom. I rushed to the window. There was a patch of glass that the water diverted around, like someone had wiped it down to see inside better and the oil from his fingertips had caused the rain to deflect.

  I turned the latch and hefted the window up. The screen stopped me. If I was outside trying to get in, I could pop it loose in half a second. But right now I was so keyed up that I couldn’t get it to unlock from the track.

  Eve woke and said, “What is it? What are you doing?”

  The sound of someone running across the wet lawn made my heart hammer, and I finally just put my shoulder to the jamb and bulled my way through the screen. The metal track squealed and the molding cracked like a gun going off. I took a header into the bushes and lurched across a lawn gnome that practically impaled me. I tasted dirt. I came up in a crouch and wasn’t sure which way to go. I didn’t have my bearings yet.

  Eve hadn’t put on the outside light, and the streetlamp didn’t provide much illumination. I spit out blades of grass.

  An engine started up the block. Trying not to slip in the mud, I loped in that direction, but it was already too late. A car pulled away from the curb a couple of houses away. No headlights, no shouting, and no mad screeching as he turned the corner. I couldn’t tell the make or model. Whoever it was accelerated smoothly and popped on the lights just as he faded from my sight.

  I ran to my car but it was a lost cause. Eve’s porch light came on.

  She stepped out onto the veranda, dressed in a robe, and hugged herself as I walked back to her. She gave me a perplexed grin. “I’ve had guys try to skip out before breakfast, but you even left your shoes—” Then she caught my expression. “What is it? What was it?”

  “Someone was staring through the bedroom window at us.”

  “Who?”

  “I didn’t get a good look.”

  She was nervous but tried to play it off. “Well, we were certainly worth watching, especially during the second go-around, but—”

  I put my arms around her. “It’s okay, Eve.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m actually spooked. Come inside.”

  We walked back into the bedroom. I reached over the windowsill and pulled the busted screen back up. I’d wrecked it good. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, who cares about that. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stared over my shoulder at the dark front yard. “What did you see?”

  “Just a shadow.”

  At the door was a knock. “Mom?”

  “It’s all right, Rox.”

  “What’s all the noise?”

  “Nothing, dear.”

  Roxie huffed in agitation. “You’re sure?”

  “Go talk to her,” I told Eve.

  She left the bedroom and spoke with Roxie for a few minutes, then returned. I asked, “You have any jealous boyfriends that might be hanging about?”

  “None.”

  “Your daughter have any dirty-minded beaux? I heard her arguing on the phone.”

  “She’s twenty and it’s her first serious boyfriend. They’re discovering all the joys and pains. Perhaps it was one of your fellow unsavory types?”

  Leg-breaking I could understand. But not window-peeking.

  Someone had simply been watching Eve and me sleeping.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my pulse driving harder through my throat, my scars burning as I thought about my father creeping houses again, standing at the bottom of Kimmy’s bed, watching her, moving silently to Scooter’s room, looking down at the baby sleeping in her crib.

  I got dressed. Eve offered me an early breakfast but I declined. I held her for a while and we kissed deeply, but I think we both knew this was a one-night venture. We didn’t promise any further rendezvous.

  “Take care of yourself,” she told me.

  “I’m not the one cracking beers with Manson,” I said. She laughed and I pressed my lips to her forehead and cut out.

  I caught a few hours’ sleep at home. I woke up late, almost nine A.M. I showered and came downstairs feeling refreshed but a little out of sorts. A lot had happened yesterday and I hadn’t had any time to sort through it.

  My mother was cleaning dishes. All she seemed to do was cook and clean dishes and stuff Old Shep with cereal. She was making a big breakfast for the family but no one was around. She said, “Sit. In ten minutes I’ll have pancakes and scrambled eggs. But no bacon, we’re out of bacon.”

  “Don’t bother with it, Ma.”

  “It’s no bother.”

  “Have you eaten yet?” I asked.

  “Of course I have. All I do is eat.”

  My mother, beautiful as she was, looked tired and too thin to me. The morning light caught in her auburn hair, the red highlights blazing. She gave a soft smile. She was worried about me. She had always worried about me, but now I was back under her roof, within reach. She would share my burden willingly.

  “Ma, coffee is good. Leave the—”

  “You talk like I need to get to the office, Terrier. As if I have to check my daily organizer first to see if I can fit in making a meal for my son. Sit, drink some milk, eat.” She enjoyed waiting on her children. I knew that every time she turned around and looked at the kitchen table, she’d see Collie in his usual place opposite me.

  She poured me a glass of milk and stirred pancake batter. I thought, There’s plenty of money. They could put Gramp in a home. They could hire a nurse. “Did you have a good time with Grey?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I’d hesitated a half second too long.

  “What happened? Trouble?”

  “No. Is he here?”

  “No. He stayed out last night.”

  “He set me up on a double date. That reporter and a journalist friend of hers.”

  “That Vicky.” She nodded and stirred eggs around in one pan with a spatula, then flipped a huge pancake in another. “You’d think he suddenly wanted to be in the limelight, for them to write about us again, after all this time. Maybe he does. It’s attention, and he loves attention. Did they give you a hard time, asking questions?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “He should know better.”

  “He does know better, but I think he genuinely likes her.”

  “Grey doesn’t genuinely like anybody. But she is young, and that’s a powerful bouquet to a man like him.”

  “Who’s ‘a man like him’?” I asked.

  “An older man who can’t let go of his own youth, who’s preoccupied by the past. He acts like he’s twenty. Too much silk and not enough sand.”

  “Do women like sand?”

  “Women love sand.”

  “Well, he’s got style anyway.”

  “He looks foolish running around with dim girls like that Vicky.”

  I’d never heard her say anything like that before. I drank my milk. My mother finished cooking and set the food down in front of me. She pressed syrup in my direction. She didn’t sit but started cleaning up immed
iately. I wondered about the grandparents I never knew. I tried to imagine what would have happened if my mother had listened to them and stopped seeing my father. She’d be married to a stockbroker and be vacationing every year in Saint-Tropez.

  When she’d drained the sink and folded her gloves neatly across the drainboard, I asked, “Why don’t you and Dad ever travel?”

  “Travel?” The word appeared to be poisonous in her mouth. “What do you mean? Where would we go?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere.”

  “Why would I want to go anywhere?” she asked. It was a genuine question.

  “People do. They go on vacation. They visit Europe.”

  “But what would we do in Europe?”

  “I don’t know what you would do in Europe, Ma. You’d be a tourist. You’d eat European foods. You’d see the sights of the world. The Coliseum. The Eiffel Tower. Go look at the Rhine.”

  She pulled a face like I’d just suggested the silliest thing she’d ever heard. Maybe I had. Either way the topic was dead.

  She said, “I need you to run to the store for me.”

  She handed me a list of items she needed. A lot of green leafy vegetables, bottles of vitamins, ginkgo biloba, and fish oil. Plenty of chicken. Turkey burgers. Salmon. A frozen turkey. I knew I should get used to eating this stuff.

  She also had listed a lot of munchies. Potato chips, cocktail peanuts, candy, and mint chocolate chip ice cream, which was my favorite. “I don’t eat this crap anymore, Ma.”

  “You’re too thin. Here.” She tried to shove money into my hand but I refused to take it.

  “I’ve got it, Ma.”

  “Don’t steal the groceries.”

  “I’m not going to steal groceries.”

  She squinted at me. “I still have to shop there.”

  “I’m not going to steal the goddamn groceries.”

  I drove over to the market. Out in front were those same nickel rides that had been in the strip mall by Wes’s place. These I’d ridden myself twenty years ago. A rocket ship that went up and down, beeping with lights blinking. Kids were tugged past by their parents. I flashed on Scooter giggling excitedly, with me cheering her on. I thought of Kimmy and Chub bringing her to the Mother Cabrini Feast. It was a tradition when we were kids, fronted by St. John’s Church. A second-rate carnival that still seemed like something special. Chub and I used to warn the rubes away from the worst of the rigged games.

  It took me twenty minutes to get everything on my mother’s list. I hated boiled cabbage, but I would start eating it. I would have to. I picked up bottles of vitamin A and C and E. Flaxseed. They all helped with memory and cognitive function. I’d have to learn to start taking them.

  I paid and carried out the bags. I got to the car and was halfway through loading the groceries in the trunk when I saw Higgins coming for me.

  Fingers had been too tight to hire another goon. He really should’ve sprung for somebody better, like I’d told him.

  Higgins had no cool. He’d taken our fracas too personally and his anger made him stupid. He hadn’t given his foot time to heal. His face was swollen with bruises, and his lip was badly split. He came gimping along on an intercept course with a Glock held down tight against his leg. His new sunglasses burned like twin camera flashes in the sunlight. There were kids around, families walking to their cars.

  He started to raise his gun. He wasn’t going to make any kind of a speech or take the time to get off a wiseass tough-guy phrase. He just wanted me iced. I was a little surprised by his single-mindedness.

  I did the only thing I could do. I hurled the frozen turkey at him.

  It was a huge twenty-five-pounder. It struck him high on the shoulder and I heard his collarbone snap. The pain was so intense he couldn’t quite scream. A choked groan stuck in his throat, his mouth open as he tried to suck air through the agony. His arm went dead and he dropped the pistol. I was shocked it didn’t go off.

  I made it to him in three steps and hooked him twice under the heart, then put a forearm into his face. His glasses broke and flew off. I hadn’t noticed before that his eyes were beady and black and too close together. No wonder he kept them covered. I grabbed the gun and dragged him into the space between my car and the one parked next to me. I reached into his back pocket and came up with his blackjack and put him out.

  He’d be unconscious for hours. I stuck him in the passenger seat and grabbed up the dropped groceries. At first I was surprised as hell that no one had seen anything, but then I realized the fight had lasted no more than twenty seconds. I pulled out and drove over to the mall, parked close to the main doors, and started roaming various stores and shops. Within twenty minutes I’d clipped three wallets from daddy fat cats who didn’t look the type to ever be intimidated and were bound to make a serious stink.

  Higgins was still out cold. I transferred the credit cards, driver’s licenses, and cash to his wallet. I wiped my prints off the gun and stuffed it back in his pocket. Then I drove him over to Gilmore’s precinct, dumped him at the curb, and split.

  The cops wouldn’t know what to make of him at first, but they’d hold on to him tight. His record would speak for itself, as would his association with Fingers Brown and the skirted gunrunning allegations. Loaded with fresh charges, they’d sniff around the bowling alley again and Fingers would spook and cut him loose. The only question was whether Fingers was angry enough to take a run at me on his own. I didn’t think he had the heart.

  I drove home and carried the groceries in. As my mother started unpacking them she said, “This turkey’s starting to thaw.” She looked up at me in surprise. “Something happened, I can tell by your face. Where’ve you been? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Your cheeks are flushed.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Her face hardened. “I hate when I’m lied to.”

  I helped her put the groceries away. Everything went in the same place as when I was a kid. That would never change, not in five years, not in fifty. There was something comforting in the familiarity. Another minor symbol of saccharine sentimental value.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Mal and Grey, who knows. Your father’s in the garage with his collection.”

  It stopped me. “What collection?”

  She turned and grinned. “Oh, you haven’t been introduced to his hobby yet?”

  “Dad’s got a hobby?”

  “He has for some time. Go look at it.”

  “It?”

  “Them. Go ahead. In the garage.”

  “Am I going to want to see this?” I asked. I didn’t know what I thought might be out there, but I had trepidations. My father with a hobby? What might that entail? Stamps? Coins? Empty beer cans from around the world?

  The other day I’d worried about him being bored after his retirement. Now I knew he was still doing a little second-story prowling, and not just to keep himself busy. But was there more going on?

  “You look scared,” my mother said.

  “I’m not scared, I just never thought of him as having a hobby.”

  “It’s not porn.”

  “I didn’t think it was porn. And I don’t think porn can actually be a hobby either. And it wouldn’t scare me.”

  “I’m just telling you, that’s not it,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Retirement gives people too much time to think. They have to do something to stay busy and focus their attention.”

  “How about you?” I asked. “What focuses your attention?”

  “I take care of the family,” she said simply. “I’ve got an old man inside who needs as much care as a newborn. I’ve got a teenage daughter dating a creep. Worrying about her is a full-time job on its own. And I have to clean a house three times bigger than we need, because half the space is for loot. I even clean the loot sometimes. It’s all junk. We should get rid of it, but it would take as long to dig it out of the house as it took to
put in. You know some of the shit that’s hidden away? But who knows, there could be a de Kooning or a Pollock stuck in these walls. Those three, they don’t want to get rid of any of it, because they think the police are watching. The cops who were chasing all that crap have been dead thirty years. We should have a garage sale and really put some money in the bank.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “Well, when you get out there, try to talk your father into it.”

  I went out and around to the garage. The side door was ajar. I stepped into the huge work area where my grandfather and his brothers had done most of the woodwork for the house’s secret rooms. JFK heard me and clambered to his feet and moseyed over.

  I was expecting rebuilt classic cars. My old man hadn’t been much of a car thief, but he had taught me how to boost the muscle speedsters of his teenage years. I thought he might be looking to the past and trying to get back in touch with his youth.

  It wasn’t a car.

  My father was spraying glass cleaner and wiping down an enormous display case with six lengthy glass shelves and mini-track interior lighting.

  He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Hello, Terry. So what do you think?”

  “Well … it’s not porn.”

  Inside were figurines. I estimated there to be at least a hundred pieces. Most of them were of Asian men and women and children, pulling rickshaws, feeding barnyard animals, playing with dogs. I didn’t find them beautiful. I didn’t think them ugly. I forced myself not to frown. I made myself keep my hands at my sides instead of reaching up to scratch my head. My father opened the case and started spraying the inside of the glass door with no-streak cleaner.

  I said, “Can I touch them?”

  “Sure.”

  I picked one up. It was hollow and very light. It felt cheap to me. There wasn’t a speck of dust on it. I turned it over. I was surprised to see the words “Made in Occupied Japan.”

  “Why these?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” my father said. “Gramp had a couple of them around when I was a kid. They caught my attention somehow. I’d snatch one every now and again from some house, kept them in a cache hole in one of the crawl spaces. For the last couple of years I’ve been hunting through antiques shops. Gives me something to do with myself.”