by Dan Ames
“What,” she said.
“The boss is back early, ma’am. He wants to see you in the study. He says it’s important.”
Gloria sighed. Everything was important to her husband. It didn’t matter what he was doing. Whatever it was, the world would stop if it wasn’t done the way Vincenzo Romano wanted it done. There was only one thing in Romano’s life that he seemed to think wasn’t terribly important.
Her.
“He’s summoning me to his office?” she asked.
Behind the closed door, she heard Tommy Abrocci’s voice. She couldn’t stand him. He looked like a bloated pig. His small, mean eyes disgusted her. And the way he always stole looks at her body when he thought she wasn’t looking. The man was vile.
“He just said it was very important,” Abrocci said. “I don’t think he’s feeling too good right now. He needs you, ma’am.”
Gloria’s hand stopped mid-stroke. She picked up a small hand towel and wiped the remaining cream from her face. She took the towel from her head and gave her hair a quick run-through with the brush. Frankly, it sounded like bullshit. Vincenzo needing her? Her husband didn’t need anybody, least of all her.
She stood and wrapped a thick white terry cloth bathrobe around her body. She opened the bathroom door and stepped out.
“When did he get back?” she said, passing Tommy and going to the main hallway.
“Just a minute ago, I guess.”
Gloria walked down the winding stairwell that spilled out into the center hallway. Her bare feet padded on the polished oak floors. She turned right and went into the library. It was a solid room, filled with book cases and heavy mahogany furniture. Behind her, she heard the heavy door close. The room was empty and it was no surprise to her.
Gloria turned and faced Tommy.
She took in his expression. His clammy skin. The dark circles beneath his eyes. The fear in his face.
“He’s not here, is he?” she said.
Tommy pulled the gun out of his waistband and held it at his side. “Here’s what’s gonna happen,” he said. “Behind that picture,” he said, indicating a nautical painting on the wall behind the sprawling desk, “is the boss’s safe. You’re going to open it for me.”
Gloria kept her face straight. She waited a moment then said, “Two questions, dipshit." She held out her palm and grasped her first long, expertly manicured finger. Her voice dripped with condescension. "What makes you think I have the combination?" She grabbed her second finger. "And why on the Lord's goddamned green earth would I want to do that?” Honestly, she didn’t care. But she also knew her husband had cameras in the house, and maybe even a few of them were equipped to record sound.
Gloria could see that Tommy was momentarily caught off guard. He'd expected her to be scared. To cower. The stupid pig didn't know a thing about her.
She watched as he slowly recovered, like a scuba diver rising to the surface but being careful of the bends. He said: “Let me answer those in order: You’ll do it because you don’t want to die. And second, you have the combination because you’re a greedy bitch who would demand the combination from her husband. No way you’re letting the goodies sit in there without being able to get at it whenever the hell you want.”
She smiled. “You got a death wish, Tommy?”
“I got a life wish, honey. Now open the fucking safe.”
“If I open the safe, you’re gonna end up at the bottom of Lake St. Claire,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
Tommy waved the gun at her impatiently.
She crossed the room, pulled the painting away from the wall on its noiseless hinges. She spun the dial to the right, to the left, and to the right. She pulled on the chrome handle and the safe cracked open. “Voilà !” she said.
Tommy crossed the room and retrieved a suitcase from beneath the desk. “Sit there,” he said, indicating a leather club chair across from the desk. He reached into the safe and began pulling out bundles of cash. He put them in the suitcase, glancing briefly at Gloria.
She watched him, an amused expression on her face.
Tommy shoved the last of the cash in the suitcase. Sweat had begun to pour from his forehead. He wiped it with the back of his hand. Gloria noticed that it was shaking. He pulled a few boxes of jewelry from the safe and threw them in as well. Turning his back on Gloria, he slid the small cassette tapes from his pants pocket and tossed those into the suitcase as well.
He snapped the suitcase shut and slid it to the edge of the desk. He came around the desk and stood in front of Gloria. He placed the muzzle of the gun against Gloria’s forehead. Tommy glanced at the camera mounted in the corner of the room. “Maybe we ought to have a little fun before I leave,” he said.
Gloria laughed. Drummed her fingers on the top of the desk before cocking her head, raising an eyebrow and saying “You know Big Paulie Bernocchi?”
In response, Tommy manually cocked the hammer on the automatic.
“He nails me religiously every Wednesday night,” Gloria continued. "Sometimes, if I need him, he stops by on the weekend, too,” she said. “You know why they call him Big Paulie?”
“Shut up or you’re dead,” Tommy said.
She held up her hands, keeping them about a foot apart. "The other night, I gave him some Viagra,” she said. “I could barely walk the next day.”
Tommy began fidgeting.
“And if you think you’re hurting Vincenzo, you’re wrong there, too. He’s the one who set me up with Big Paulie. It’s been that way for years. You see, he wants to keep me happy, but he doesn’t want to have sex with me. So he figures it’s better if one of his own men does me than someone else, someone he can’t control. So you see, you’re not going to accomplish anything by waving that teeny little pathetic thing at me-“
Tommy clocked her over the head with his gun. Gloria’s shoulders sagged. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face as she slid down the chair to the floor.
Tommy gasped for breath. Beneath his clothes, his body was drenched in sweat. He was nearly hyperventilating. The gun shook in his hand. He looked at the camera and raised his middle finger. An act of bravado lessened by the obvious fear in the trembling hand.
He took one last look at Gloria, then snatched the suitcase from the desk and hurried from the room.
THREE
Loreli Karstens stared intently at the computer screen as her fingers flew across the keyboard. There were no pauses, no distinct rhythms, just a fast-paced non-stop gentle clicking. The only parts of her body that moved were her eyes, and those only went back-and-forth.
The last time she’d been tested, she could type over one hundred words a minute. Right now, she was doing at least that, maybe even more. Possibly setting her own personal record. She sat straight in her chair. Her arms held in front of her, her hands seeming to almost hover over the keyboard, the fingers moving in a blur of skin and fingernail polish. Her deep blue eyes raced across the monitor, never once looking down at her slim, elegant fingers.
The prestigious law firm of Ryson, Butters & Mahoney was located in the famed Renaissance Center on Jefferson, in the heart of downtown Detroit. The Renaissance Center was built to be the cornerstone of the urban recovery that Detroit was going to experience. Naturally, it never happened.
Ryson, Butters & Mahoney was in the East Tower, on the forty-fourth floor. It was a large firm, with eight departments and a grand total of fifty-six lawyers and nearly a hundred paralegals and legal secretaries. Unlike most firms in Detroit, it didn’t have General Motors, Ford or Chrysler as its main clientele. RB&M as it was known locally, had a very upscale and very private client base, which was more than happy to pay a premium for discretion.
Loreli's fingers continued to race across the keyboard. She was like an orchestra, building to a triumphant climax. Her finger hit the final key and it seemed to resonate through the space of her small cubicle perched outside the grand corner office of Carl Ryson. Since Butters was dead and Mahoney was an ailing figur
ehead with no workload, Carl Ryson was the firm's number one lawyer.
He was also Loreli's boss.
In the next room, Carl Ryson and his team of attorneys, junior attorneys and strategists were waiting for Loreli’s document regarding Ryson’s main client, Gibraltar Enterprises and the case they were working on was one of the biggest of the year.
Loreli watched as the computer completed its spell check. She'd already proofed it once, knowing that spell check sometimes missed things. Once that was done, she chose the print command and soon, the one hundred plus page document would begin spewing from the printer just outside her cube. As she listened to the printer firing up, Loreli glanced at the pictures on her desk, next to the phone.
There were two of them. In one, a pretty young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes stood behind a young boy who was a carbon copy of the woman. The boy had on a baseball mitt that was several sizes too large. The woman had on a tank top and shorts. The woman was Loreli, the boy was her son, Liam. The picture had been taken last summer.
The other photo was a studio portrait of Liam. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie. His face was deadly serious. His blue eyes looked huge, like marbles. His skin was smooth, his blonde bangs hung lightly across his forehead. Loreli’s gaze lingered on the picture. She had done everything to get him to smile, but when the photographer snapped, Liam’s smile disappeared. Now, she loved the picture. Liam was a fun-loving kid, always goofing around. Fearless, really. Loreli liked seeing this side of him. As she looked at the picture, she could literally feel his hair on her fingertips as she brushed it from his forehead. Could feel his soft cheek as she kissed him goodnight.
It was all worth it. Working as a legal secretary in the pressure cooker atmosphere of the law firm. Every time she looked at Liam, she rededicated herself to her job. To the paycheck that kept both of them going.
The computer beeped, letting Loreli know the document had been saved. She hit print and when the printer had spat out all of the pages, she made eleven collated copies, snapped them into binders and delivered them to Ryson’s office.
Carl Ryson's corner office was ridiculously large. At one point, Loreli had heard that it was actually three offices that Ryson had torn apart and converted into one single piece of symbolically powerful real estate. The office was on the eastern side of the tower, which provided Ryson with an impressive view of the Detroit River, Canada and Lake St. Claire.
As big and ostentatious as the office was, Ryson wore it well. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early sixties, although he looked at least ten years younger. He jogged everyday along the waterfront, fearless of the sometimes dangerous element that loitered along the different sections of the city. He had a carefully combed silver mane that swept back dramatically, revealing a broad, powerful face. His slate gray eyes, which could transfix juries and project nearly every emotion in the human spectrum, now twinkled at Loreli.
"Thank you, Loreli. Is a copy of the deposition ready to be filed tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, it’s all set, with extra copies ready just in case.”
“Do you have the…” he searched his note pad until Loreli spoke. “The corroborating interviews?”
Ryson nodded, putting down his note pad.
“They’re ready as well, along with clean copies of both your notes and the corresponding archival records. Just as you asked.”
“Jesus Christ, you know what I need before I even have to ask.” He smiled at her. “I’ll see you in the morning, then, before I head to court.”
“Six a.m. sharp.”
“Loreli, you are the glue that holds this place together." She smiled and turned to the door.
"Thank you, Carl. I'll see you in the morning."
Ryson nodded and she turned to go, catching the eyes of one of the junior attorneys. She ignored him, and went back to her cubicle. Loreli got hit on at least once a week in the office. A single mom, a secretary, surrounded by arrogant, overworked and overstressed young attorneys with money to burn and no time to meet anyone outside the office. It was bound to happen. She was politely insistent in her rebuttals, as she thought of them. She had no desire to piss anyone off, or hurt anyone's feelings, but she drew the line. The paycheck wasn’t much, but it was all she and Liam had. It was too much to risk for a quick fling that wouldn’t go anywhere. And although word had gotten out that she wasn't interested in office romances, the crushing workload created a revolving door of younger attorneys, who weren't aware of Loreli's policy, only of their own raging hormones and lack of life outside the firm.
Loreli straightened her desk, organized papers into their proper folders, then shut down her computer, and grabbed her purse. She walked down the hallway to the deserted lobby where she waited for the elevator. Most of the secretaries were gone, along with the research staff and the non-litigant attorneys. The majority of people who would work well into the night were the junior attorneys, trying to bill a hundred hours a week in order to garner the attention of the firm's management and begin the slow, tortuous ascent to junior partner.
The elevator dinged and she stepped inside. She hit the button for the Lower Level. The ride down was uninterrupted; forty-three floors of companies whose employees had knocked down the door promptly at five and were already on their way home. Loreli didn't blame them, nor did she envy them. She had a job to do and she did it right. Period. But now, inside the elevator, she shut off the agile mind of the legal secretary and thought only of Liam. She couldn't wait to see him.
The doors opened onto the parking garage, and Loreli walked past the Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes before getting to her beige Toyota Camry. It had a bubbling patch of rust over the right rear wheel well, and some of the rubber stripping below both doors was coming off. Each strip was bending back and every time Loreli saw them, she smiled, remembering the time Liam had told her they looked like wings.
There were other problems with the car. The speedometer worked sporadically, the air conditioner blew hot air and there were more than a few spots of rust around the car, but Loreli didn't care. The thing was paid for. And it was hers. And it got her where she needed to go.
She opened the door, climbed in and started the car up. The engine responded hesitantly, but Loreli gave it a little gas and it picked up quickly. She pumped the brakes a couple times; there was a leak in the brake line and she had just added some brake fluid this morning.
Loreli pulled out of her space, drove to the gate, held up her security card and when the giant white arm raised, drove out onto Jefferson Avenue. She turned on the radio and punched the button for her favorite rock station.
A song was playing that she liked and she turned the volume way up. One thing about her car: it was a piece of crap, but its sound system got the job done. Loreli’s left foot tapped to the rhythm of the song. She rolled down the window and let the warm air inside, then checked her cell phone for messages, but there weren’t any.
Loreli thought of Liam’s father. Which was always strange because Liam didn't really have a father. Well, technically, he did. But for all intents and purposes he didn't. Which was fine with Loreli. Liam's father was the single biggest mistakes of her life. But that part of her life was over.
She pushed that line of thinking from her mind, like a house guest who’d overstayed his welcome, and sang out loud to the song on the radio. She concentrated on the future. She wasn't going to be a legal secretary forever. She was good at it, and she would keep at it for a little while longer, but in a year, she planned to go back to college, to finish her degree and go to law school. Eventually, she wanted to start her own practice. Do lots of pro bono work for low-income single moms.
Loreli knew she could do it. She was as smart as most of the attorneys at Ryson, Butters & Mahoney. In fact, there were a few to whom she could give some pointers.
The old Loreli, the Loreli of five or six years ago probably wouldn’t have allowed a thought like that. But the new Loreli didn’t have any prob
lem making the call. If her past had taught her one thing, it was to rely on herself when she wanted to get something done.
I-696 West was crowded as usual. Loreli pulled the Camry into the middle lane and notched the speedometer at 70. Any higher and the little car would start to shudder and vibrate. She took the Van Dyke Road exit North to Thirteen Mile Road. From there, she turned onto Irene Street, a quite neighborhood of mostly blue collar workers in the suburb of Warren. Warren was considered one of the most blue collar of Detroit’s suburbs. It was home to two General Motors and Chrysler plants.
Loreli’s house was a brick ranch built in the fifties. There was a one-car garage. The flowers Loreli had planted were in full bloom. The front yard was small, but the grass was green and lush. It was a well-kept, if extremely modest house.
Loreli parked the car in the garage and walked to the front door to check the mailbox. A catalog for children's toys and the phone bill.
She went up the front steps and opened the front door.
And her mouth dropped open.
Ted Haldeman, Liam's father, sat in a chair, facing the door. Thick bands of duct tape covered his arms and legs, holding him to the chair. There was duct tape all over him. His chest. His neck. Duct tape around his ankles, around his crotch. There were even a few strips wrapped around his mouth.
Dried blood streaked down Ted’s face. A tack had been smashed into his forehead. Beneath the tack was a small slip of paper, splotched in places by blood.
“Liam!” Loreli screamed.
There was no answer.
In the chair, Ted shook his head from side-to-side.
Loreli went to him and ripped the piece of paper from Ted’s forehead. Before she even read the note, she knew what was happening.
Her worst nightmare had come true.
She read the note aloud. “Bring the money to The Venus Arcade in Troy if you want your package back."
She ripped the duct tape from Ted’s mouth.
“Uhhh,” Ted said. His head sagged and small drops of blood appeared on the skin that had been relieved of the duct tape.