“Why, what have you done to them?”
“I haven’t done anything to them! Maybe they’ve done something to me.”
“I doubt that.”
“Anyway, so all I need is someplace to stay until the wedding. So what do you say?”
“I say you should have been at your grandfather’s funeral.”
“He’s going to kill me.”
“Well, then, I’ll be at your funeral.”
Click.
* * *
“So what time did youse get to the hotel?” Tony said, staring out as they drove.
“Around two,” Michael said quietly.
“And why you go there?”
Michael glanced up to the rearview mirror at Lisa and she leaned forward.
“Because I wanted to leave. So I changed my clothes and we left.” She said with a hint of annoyance. “Is that all right? I mean you’ve dragged me around for a day now, my car—” She sat back. “Oh my God, Michael, the car. It’s still sitting up there.”
“I’m sure it will be okay.”
“But it’s not even mine. What if they tow it?”
“I don’t think—”
“What do you mean, it’s not yours?” Tony interrupted.
“It’s … a friend’s.”
“Where’s your car?”
“I can’t afford a car, Tony.”
This was his chance, the in he’d been looking for. He cleared his throat.
“You can’t afford a car! That’s the worse thing in the world! Not having a way to get around.”
“Well, it’s not so bad—” she began.
“Oh yes it is.” He looked over at her and took a deep breath. “You want a car? I’ll give you a car,” he said, presenting it to her proudly.
“What?”
“Tony—” Michael began.
“Any kind you want. You want a Lincoln?”
“No, I really—”
“Tony, you can’t just give people cars.”
“Why not?” he said, sneering at him.
“I—”
Lisa looked back at Michael and motioned him to be quiet. She would take care of this. She turned around toward Tony and began slowly.
“No, Tony, but thank you, anyway. I don’t want a car.”
“You don’t want my car,” he said, and his eyes narrowed.
“No, no, it’s not that.” She thought fast. “Where would I keep it?”
“The street.”
“They’d tow it, then what would happen? I’d owe money on it.”
“So … keep it in one of them places, whatta they—garages. You throw ’em fifty a month and—”
“Not in my neighborhood. Garages cost up to four hundred dollars—”
“A month? You gotta be kidding! You could rent it an apartment in East Harlem for that.”
“I know.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“So, you could park it on the street next to one of them meters. Then they couldn’t tow it. You just throw in change now and then and no problem. They never check them things.”
“They do in her neighborhood.”
Tony turned around and stared at Michael.
“Was anybody talkin’ to you?”
“No, he’s right, they check them a lot,” she interjected. “And besides, I’d be out there every thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes? How much you gotta give them?”
“Fifty cents.”
“For thirty minutes? That’s robbery. I don’t know who your assemblyman is, but someone’s on the take down there. Jeez, fifty cents for thirty minutes! Whatta racket they got going.”
“I know. So you see, I couldn’t have a car because I have no place to put it. It would cost me hundreds, just in meter quarters alone,” she said, and Michael smiled at her.
“Jeez, I didn’t think it was this much trouble, givin’ somebody a car … fifty cents…”
“Yup,” she said, sitting back.
They sat in silence for awhile, staring out at the drive along Long Island. Even though the air conditioner was blowing directly on her, the sun through the windshield was strong on her arms. She leaned back on her seat. The fuzzy maroon upholstery was soft on the skin on the backs of her arms.
She looked out. The L.I.E. was full of cars with surfboards strapped to their hoods and station wagons filled with kids and dogs and Styrofoam picnic baskets. They slowed as the traffic began to cram up around the first big beach, and the highway looked shimmering and liquidy in the heat. Lisa stared at all the cars, listening to the whir of the air conditioner, and thought about how nice it would be to be in one of those other cars with Michael on their way for a lovely day at the beach.
“Madonna!” Tony said, hitting the top of the steering wheel. “I know, I’ll steal youse a parking meter!”
“What?” she said, then glanced in the mirror at Michael.
“A parking meter. I’ll buy you the car and then steal youse a meter to go with it.”
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked, leaning on the seat back.
“Jeez, don’t you see nothin’? Look, when she puts out the meter next to the car, she can just keep the same quarters in it.… And here’s the beauty of the plan, when she’s using the car, she keeps the meter out so she can collect on all the dumb bastards puttin’ in quarters every thirty minutes, capisce? She could make enough for gas. She might even make the insurance, who knows?”
“Tony, you’re talking about stealing something that’s cemented into a New York City sidewalk.”
“Yeah,” he said, not following what the problem would be.
She turned to Michael, who gave her a shrug. She was on her own with this one. She faced forward again as the vision of Tony tearing a parking meter out of the sidewalk filled her head. She glanced over at the girth of his upper arms.
He probably could do it that way, too, she thought. Then she got an idea.
“Well, don’t you think the meter maids would notice an extra meter, kind of … chained next to a car?”
“Well…” Tony began, and gave a loud exhale.
This was beginning to get on his nerves. Why was this so complicated for Michigan? Angela’d have snapped this deal up. Didn’t this one have no brains? Here he offers her a beautiful new car and she’s gotta get all wrapped up in the details of the thing.
“You could take it in when they come around,” he offered finally.
She sat in silence.
“Well, they’re a little bulky to carry around … parking meters,” she squeaked.
“Look, you just think about it and get back to me, eh?” he said tiredly.
They all fell silent again.
He’d have to think of something else with this one. Jeez, maybe Angela wasn’t so bad.
She stared out the windshield at a station wagon. A little boy in the back had caught her eyes. He was busy playing with a little girl. She could see that they were laughing. After a few moments, the little boy noticed her and he smiled and waved at her. Lisa smiled and waved back, and they began to play peekaboo, with the little boy ducking under the window and then after a few seconds shooting up to the window and giggling. Lisa would give an exaggerated, startled expression and he would burst into laughter.
She kept this up as they inched along behind the car, and Lisa made her expression grow and grow as a kind of sadness swept over her. She leaned her back against the car door and she darted a glance at Michael.
Michael was gazing happily at her playing with the child, and the sadness seemed to lift as she let her eyes rest there for as long as she dared with Tony in the car. It had been an unspoken agreement that Tony should not be told what had gone on. Michael’s lips moved with words she couldn’t understand and she looked puzzled. He shook his head, mouthing that he would tell her later.
She looked back to the little boy, to find that he had busied himself with another game.
* * *
The road alongside
the Sonders’ home was mobbed with reporters. Like a large cancerous growth, vans, trucks, and cars clogged the highway running alongside the beach. Out, over the water, helicopters dipped and darted and hovered as bathers on the public stretches of beach looked overhead, pointing and trying to read the logos on the sides.
Security had been hired by the Sonders, who had stated in interviews and press releases that this was a sacred, private affair. The caterer had been sworn to privacy; the dress designer and even the groom’s barber were forbidden to talk to the press.
Delivery vans had been pulling up to the Sonders’ house for several days, unloading boxes and bags covered in a peculiar lilac shade of paper to provide even more privacy—and also to whet the appetites of photographers who had been camped out on the roadside for several days.
The large house looked as if it was under siege. Security checkpoints had been set up along the outside gates, and anyone not showing an invitation was cordially, or physically, escorted down the road and away from the house.
This being a public road, and the only one with beach access, all traffic had been successfully snarled in either direction for miles. Anyone unfortunate enough to own a beach house on that stretch of road was also totally inconvenienced. Several of the Sonders’ unamused neighbors got caught up in the overzealous security measures, along with an entire tour bus of Japanese car manufacturers who wound up stuck on the dead-end road. After an hour, they had gotten out and were busy taking pictures of the whole mess, and laughing at it all.
* * *
Morris sat behind the wheel of his Jaguar, listening to the music blast. He’d bought a system with four speakers, capable of blowing the windows out if it was cranked up full.
He adjusted his sunglasses, trying to ignore the brightness of the sun and the pounding sound of the surf alongside the car. He couldn’t figure out why people had houses on the beach. It was so fucking loud and bright.
He glanced down at the clock, coughed, and began leaning on the horn.
He’d been sitting out here on the highway forever. He had to get to that dimwit’s wedding.
What was the fucking holdup?
He stood to make excellent money on this. He figured he could clear forty grams minimum in an hour.
The guest list read like his client list.…
He continued leaning on the horn, and began cursing out loud in that tight, clenched-teeth voice he’d developed over the last three years. Morris always sounded like a kid, ready to explode.
That prick, Henry.
He’d show up, sooner or later. Morris rubbed his stubbled chin with his free hand.
He’d cut his fuckin’ balls off.
* * *
“That botherin’ you, Michigan?” Tony asked, staring at the black Jag next to their car.
Lisa was holding her ears with her hands, trying to insulate herself from the horrible blast from the car in the next lane.
“There’re a lot of assholes in this world,” Tony muttered.
A man in a red sedan in front of the black Jaguar got out of his car, and they watched him walk back over and slam on the guy’s window.
Morris looked up at him, gave him the finger, and went back to the horn.
The driver of the sedan began screaming into the car, and Michael watched Tony unlock his door.
“No—” Lisa’s chest tensed.
The car ahead began to roll slowly forward.
“But—”
“Look, we’re beginning to move,” she added quickly, pointing to the car in front of them.
Tony sat back down fully in his seat and began to inch along the highway, and she relaxed.
Twenty-five minutes later, they inched their way past the Sonders’ house as security waved them on. Michael looked back in time to see the Jaguar roll up to the front gate and unroll the window. He passed a piece of paper to a guard and the gates opened, allowing the Jaguar and several limousines to slide inside.
* * *
Henry sat in the back of the cab, carefully. The seat was burning hot from the sun and the new tuxedo he’d just bought felt itchy from all the sizing, and smelled of it. It was pearl gray, a color that almost exactly matched his skin shade at this point. He’d bought a brush and run it through his hair, which was now greasy, and he put it back into a ponytail. He looked at his face in the rearview mirror of the cab. He needed a sauna and a rubdown, and a shave. He noticed that his cheeks were sunken and realized that he was losing weight rapidly. He should go to a gym.…
Mother. She was going to get a piece of his mind. Who the hell was she to treat him like this? She was the one who’d insisted he take this lousy job. She was the one who’d threatened to cut off his trust if he didn’t. So why the hell should he have to go to some eccentric old fart’s funeral? He barely knew Grandfather Foster. The man never came out of this kind of odd greenhouse he’d built. A hundred and seven degrees and humid as hell, and this loon was always sitting in the center of it, bundled up in blankets, like Nanook of the North.
“Hurry up!” he barked at the back of the driver’s head.
Let his sister get dragged off to these things. She loved them. Tiffany had always been an ass-kisser. Always there when Mother sneezed. He glared out the window at the beach.
All right, she wanted to play it like this, he’d play it like this. What exactly would he do?
He sat up on the seat as the idea came into his head. He felt the corners of his lips curl up in a grin. A scene. The one thing that would make his mother’s skin crawl. A nice big, screaming, embarrassing scene in front of all her society friends.
The cab pulled up to the large front gates of the house he’d remembered playing in as a child.
He’d actually always hated the Sonders. They were assholes. Most people were assholes. That’s why they weren’t permitted to all the places he hung out.
Morris. That scuzzy little bastard. Threatening him. Another person he’d settle with. He should be happy just supplying him, a leading New York magazine publisher.
If there was one thing he’d learned from his family, it was this: The rich don’t pay for anything.
Hell, Henry’s family was one of the 2 percent of this country who owned 90 percent of the wealth, and his father had to pay only one hundred dollars in taxes last year.
A guard rapped on the window and Henry rolled it down.
“Wedding invite, sir?”
He grumbled, dug into his pocket, then handed the man a crumpled, ripped invite. The gates opened and Henry pulled in.
* * *
Tony grabbed at his necktie and pulled on the knot to loosen it around his collar. He flexed his thigh muscles, trying to get some kind of circulation back in them.
Michael sat in the backseat, staring out at the road from the shoulder onto which they had pulled. He kept going over things, deals he could offer Tony to offer Solly to get him off the hook, deals to stop the hunt for Lisa’s boss.
Lisa sat rigidly still every time Tony looked over at her. There was the strong smell of after-shave, which added to her fear of him. Even when she wasn’t looking directly at him, even when she was trying to block him out of her mind, the scent refused to allow it. She looked over at him. He had an odd expression on his face that she couldn’t quite read. She didn’t like it at all. And she’d just noticed that his nose seemed to point at her even when he was looking straight ahead.
At that moment, she felt the tips of Michael’s fingers brush the back of her neck as he leaned forward on the backseat. As they touched her, the zinging pulses that went through her body seemed overwhelmingly large for the lightness of the touch. Short memories of the night before went through her like small thunderbolts going through her legs, making the muscles on the tops of her thighs twitch and a tightness start deep in her pelvis. She felt her breathing becoming shallower and shallower, and her eyes began to close as the memories of him being all around her, the softness of his tongue as he explored her mouth, and the shaking—he
shook—overtook her, making the car melt away for a moment.
Tony coughed and she snapped back to alertness, and Michael’s hand quickly pulled away. Her body now felt stiff and scared. She looked around at Michael, wondering whether touching the back of her neck had set off the same pulses in him. Or was it only her?
What was she thinking? This man had kidnapped her. Then the terrible thought reoccurred to her. God, maybe she was one of those crazies who liked that kind of thing?
She ran it over in her mind. She had certainly never asked anyone to tie her up and stick a gun in her face before going to bed. She hadn’t slept with that many men, to tell the truth. She’d had a boyfriend in high school, there were two guys before Andrew, and then there was Andrew, and she had been faithful to him for almost five years.
When had she first had thoughts about Michael? What could possibly have attracted her to him?
Her eyes looked at him. He was sitting on the seat, looking …
That was it. That was when she knew he was safe. He had looked embarrassed by all this.
Then she had the odd thought about what it would be like to spend her life with Michael, away from all this. There was a twitching in her as she thought of Michael in Michigan. She would march into the newspaper office and get a job. Look, she would say, I have four years of experience on Smug. I can proofread; I can write blurbs; I know what to do.
And Michael would go to school and find a career. And they would go to dinners with people, and live in a big house, and they would go to PTA and lodge meetings. And she would not be stuck getting humiliated day after day by this jerk of a man, coming home to listen to her answering machine, praying Andrew would show some human compassion and call.
And no one in Bliss would ever even imagine this life. No one would know about him or how they met, and it would be a secret that would bind them together.
“How did you meet Michael?”
“He kidnapped me with a gun, because he was with the Mafia and was ordered to kill my boss.” She could see the faces twist up confused at that, and then, as they giggled at the absurd idea, he would wink at her.
It made her chest tingle. There was something erotic about having this dark secret that they would look back on from a safe distance. It was dangerous. She was still in grave jeopardy; they still had to stop Tony. She felt a zinging in her pelvis again, and she suppressed a smile, because this was the first time in several years she’d felt excitement in her life.
Wiseguys In Love Page 18