“You and your friend, get in the fucking car,” Dom says, and now he’s got the gun on Amy. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance. This is what I get for being a nice guy.”
Alessandra ditches her suitcase and takes off running, looping into the St. Mary’s parking lot and then disappearing into the dark, unlit stretch behind the church.
Fred sits up, dazed. He looks shaken, but Mr. Pezzolanti helps him to his feet.
“Come on, put it down,” Fred says. “Please.”
Spooked, Dom swings to Fred with the gun.
Amy feels bad that she doesn’t have too much concern for Fred. She should be thinking about him, worrying for him—not as a daughter, just as a human being. If what happened to him had happened to a stranger, she would’ve gone to help. She believes down in her bones that people in trouble need help. But she doesn’t care about him, not really. And not caring seems to give her strength. She takes off after Alessandra, leaping over the suitcase, and cutting into the St. Mary’s lot. She waits for a gunshot, and it’s high and wide when it comes, hitting one of the glass front doors of the church, shattering it. She can hear Dom yelling for her to stop. She expects more gunshots, but there’s nothing.
The lot narrows into an alley that passes between the school and the church. A Dumpster filled with garbage bags and a few broken office chairs is pushed up against one building. Amy scans everywhere for Alessandra and doesn’t see her. The alley opens into another little lot on the Eighty-Fourth Street rectory side of the church, and she passes through the back gate and looks both ways. She sees Alessandra running toward Twenty-Fourth Avenue. She doesn’t call out. Before the end of the block, Alessandra hops a low fence into someone’s front yard and Amy loses sight of her.
The sound of an engine revving from around the corner. Tires peeling out on blacktop. Yelling. Another gunshot. No sirens yet.
Amy hustles past the rectory. When she gets to the yard where Alessandra disappeared, she turns in. A two-family brick house with an empty grotto in the front yard. Whatever religious statue once stood there is stolen or gone somewhere. Empty chip bags flutter in the weeds around it. The mailbox overflows with circulars, and the windows are darkened by heavy curtains. A note taped to the front door reads SMILE, YOU ARE ON CAMERA in bleeding-red Sharpie, the edges of the paper curled. A driveway on the right side of the house leads to a small backyard. A high chain-link fence separates it from the house next door. Amy runs down the driveway, passing a padlocked side door. She says Alessandra’s name a couple of times.
The backyard is pretty typical of the neighborhood. Cracked cement, weeds, abandoned things—in this case, a high double stack of old tires filled with rainwater, an air conditioner half-covered with a blue tarp, a rickety manual lawnmower though there’s no lawn in sight. A clothesline hangs across the yard from a hook above the back door to a telephone pole on the opposite side of the yard. Weather-blackened wooden clothespins dangle from the line. No clothes are hung, only a few sad dish towels, striped with stains. A length of broken gutter pokes down from the edge of the roof. The back of the house is dark, shades instead of curtains on those windows. No lights inside that Amy can see.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Alessandra whispers from somewhere.
Amy finds her crouched down behind the tires and joins her there. “What are you doing?” she says as quietly as she can.
“Running the fuck away, dude. Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so, or you know he didn’t?”
“I don’t think he did.”
“Jesus Christ. This place will fucking kill me yet.”
They sit in silence for a little while, listening for shots, for feet pounding the pavement, for a car. With all the yards and alleys around, with all the different ways to run, all the different places to hide, there’s no reason to think Dom will find them here.
“What’re we gonna do?” Amy asks, knocking her leg into a length of metal pipe she doesn’t notice leaning against one of the tire stacks. It clanks on the cement, the sound filling the night.
“Just shush,” Alessandra says.
A light comes on in one of the back windows of the house. It casts a golden glow over the yard. Amy peeks between the tires to see which window. It’s the one in the middle on the ground floor, light lining the edges of the shade.
“Fuck,” Alessandra says.
The shade goes up quickly. An old woman, her face fully illuminated by the light behind her, presses her nose to the glass, cupping her hands over her eyes. She has dark eyes and glasses on her head. She’s searching the yard for a sign of someone. She’s agitated.
“Just don’t move,” Alessandra says.
The old woman pulls back from the window, leaving the shade up and the light on. A tabby cat jumps up onto the windowsill and dances against the glass.
A few seconds later, the back door is thrust open. It’s an ancient door with tin panels and a sagging wooden frame, and it crunches on its hinges. The old woman comes out with a broom in her hand, swatting at the dish towels on the clothesline.
“Who’s back here?” she says. “I’m calling the police, you don’t get out of my yard.”
Alessandra puts her hand on Amy’s knee.
“You’re in the wrong place,” the old woman says. “There’s nothing here for you. My yard is my yard.” She’s getting closer to the tires, leading with the broom, its bristles scratching against the cement.
Amy’s sure now that the old woman can see them crouching there, that they’re not as well hidden as they think.
“Get out of there now,” the old woman says, hammering the broom against the top tire, as if trying to chase out a rat.
Alessandra and Amy stand up and face the woman over the tires. She’s in her seventies, wearing a bulky sweater and jeans and cheap sneakers. She lowers her glasses onto her nose. She’s surprised by the sight of them.
“What are you girls doing?” she asks.
“Please,” Alessandra says.
“There’s someone after us,” Amy says.
“A rapist?” the old woman says.
Alessandra says, “He’s got a gun.”
“I knew I heard gunshots.” The old woman’s grip on the broom slackens. “I told Joe those were goddamn shots. Come inside.”
They follow the old woman in through the back door. They’re in a little room with a warped linoleum floor and a heavy wooden door latched from the inside. Canned food on sagging shelves. Rusty pans hanging from nails in the wall.
“I’m Ginny,” the old woman says. Amy and Alessandra introduce themselves in return.
Ginny locks the back door four different ways: two slide locks, a hook, and a dead bolt. She leads them through the wooden door into a cramped kitchen. A table overflowing with newspapers, bills, church bulletins, receipts, empty Ensure cans. An old-fashioned yellow rotary phone on the wall next to a broken cuckoo clock. Some numbers penciled on a Post-it note stuck above the phone. The stove is dirty. A strong smell of stale coffee and rotten fruit hangs in the air. A pile of wet rags sits on the floor next to a plastic garbage pail lined with a brown paper bag. The fluorescent light overhead is flickering. “Sit,” Ginny says.
Alessandra pulls out a chair at the table and sits down. Amy follows her lead, settling in the chair next to her. It’s wobbly. Some kind of hair is clumped under the front legs.
“I’ll call the cops,” Ginny says.
“I already called nine-one-one,” Amy says. “A man was hit by a car. And there were the shots.”
“Who the hell was hit by a car?”
“Just some guy.”
“I got a number here on the wall for a detective named Macrorie. Personal number. He told me to call if there’s ever any trouble.” Ginny shuffles over to the phone and scans the numbers on the Post-it. “That nine-one-one is a load of shit. You’re lucky if they show. My neighbor Johnnie Annio called nine-one-one and they put him on h
old. He had a guy out pissing in his front yard, swinging around a baseball bat. Drunk. The operator finally comes on and she’s a no-good bitch. John went out and took care of it himself. Good thing he had that big can of bug spray.”
“He sprayed the guy with bug spray?”
“Raid, right in the eyes. Guy went howling away up the block. Never pissed in anybody else’s yard, I bet.” She goes to the cabinet over the stove. “You girls want some coffee? I’ve got instant.” Ginny takes a jar of Folgers from the cabinet and carries it with her to the phone. She runs her thumb along the Post-it until she finds the number she’s looking for, then clutches the jar of coffee against her chest and dials the number. Every number is an effort. She curls her finger into the dial and draws it slowly to the right, waiting for it to clack back before repeating the process.
“What are we doing here?” Amy says to Alessandra.
Ginny finishes dialing and puts the phone against her shoulder, waiting for the ringing. Instead, there’s an automated voice almost immediately. Amy can’t quite make out what it’s saying, but she can guess.
“No longer in service,” Ginny says. “Nice guy. I wonder if he’s dead.”
“We don’t need coffee,” Alessandra says.
“I’m making some anyway,” Ginny says. And then she turns to a hallway that opens up into a dark living room. “Joe, that cop’s number is no good anymore!”
“You goddamn kidding me?” Joe, whoever Joe is, calls back. An old man’s voice, wavering and frail.
“When was he here?”
Joe comes out of the living room. He’s behind a walker, and he’s wearing black-rimmed glasses and a track jacket with a big hole in the elbow and flannel pajama pants. “That was only about fifteen years ago. Number should still be good.” To Amy and Alessandra: “Who the hell are you? Look like a couple of hot tamales.”
“Joe, you keep it in your drawers, you hear me?” Ginny says, filling a kettle with water from the kitchen sink and putting it on the stove. “Nothing but a dirty old jadrool.”
“Sue me!”
Sirens outside now.
“He’s not my husband,” Ginny says. “He’s just my worthless brother.”
“Hell’s going on outside?” Joe says, lowering himself into a chair at the table, pushing the walker away as he lands with a sigh. He’s sitting right across from Amy. He gives her slobbery eyes.
“Rapist with a gun,” Ginny says.
“No shit?”
“We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes,” Alessandra says.
“You stick around as long as you want,” Joe says. “I’m just watching The Intern again. You see that one? With De Niro. He plays an old guy who’s an intern. I love it so much. That actress, what’s her name? She’s great.”
“Anne Hathaway,” Alessandra says, picking up one of the empty cans of Ensure and tapping it against the tabletop.
“What? You don’t like her? I think she’s great. Just great.”
Alessandra doesn’t say anything.
Ginny fills four Styrofoam cups with crystals and boiling water, stirring them with a paring knife and then bringing them over to the table to Amy, Alessandra, and Joe one by one. “Black okay?” she says. “We don’t have any sugar and milk. We’re out of everything. Reggie comes tomorrow.”
“Reggie’s a family friend,” Joe says. “He does our shopping for us.”
“You don’t leave the house?” Amy says, sipping the coffee. It’s terrible, flat and watery and somehow sour.
“Not in a long time,” Ginny says.
Which explains why Amy’s never seen them at church or anywhere that she can remember. And she must’ve looked right past this dump of a house. It’s like so many other places around, devastated by time. “There’s an apartment upstairs?”
“Been empty twenty years. Since the Faluticos moved to Jersey.”
Amy allows herself to fantasize for a moment about going up to the apartment with Alessandra and staying hidden for a few days. It’d be nice if it could be like it was at the hotel.
Alessandra is typing on her phone. “What’s your address here?” she says to Ginny and Joe without looking up.
“Two-three-six-nine,” Joe says.
“What are you doing?” Amy says.
“I’m trying to get the Uber driver to come here.”
“He got in touch?”
“He got lost, thank God.” Alessandra is typing again.
“That’s a good idea?”
Alessandra shrugs. “I’m getting out, one way or another.”
“You want a can of bug spray?” Ginny asks. “I’ve got some right under the sink.”
“What about your suitcase?” Amy asks Alessandra, ignoring the old woman.
“What about it?” Alessandra says. “Forget it. I’m not going back over there. There’s nothing I can’t replace. I’ve got my wallet and the check from my Aunt Cecilia. I don’t give a shit about that script. The pills I can get whenever.”
“The medal?”
“Sorry, dude.”
Amy sips the coffee. She’s glad it’s so bad. She deserves bad coffee.
More sirens from outside, though now it sounds like a fire truck. The firehouse is only a couple of blocks away, next to McDonald’s on Eighty-Sixth Street, just off the corner of Twenty-Fourth Avenue. Amy wonders if there’s a fire. Dom’s car, maybe. She pictures flames spouting from the hood of the Daytona, licking up the telephone poles, a crowd starting to gather. She hopes Mr. Pezzolanti hasn’t been shot. And Fred, she’s not sure what she hopes for him. Not death; she can’t wish death on him. But she’s not terribly bothered by the fact that he’s allowed himself to be dragged into all this.
“This is some moron you got yourself messed up with,” Alessandra says. “Why’s he even after you again? He got what he wanted.”
“You’re so good at steering clear of trouble,” Amy snaps back.
“Trouble has a way of finding me, but I get the fuck out of its way. You just had to go over to that funeral home.”
“It was your idea to try to break into the attic. If we hadn’t made that plan, we wouldn’t have gone to find Fred and then I wouldn’t have brought us to that Polish place.”
“Whatever fucking crazy-ass decisions you made led to this. I just shouldn’t have missed my flight.”
“Ladies,” Joe says, smiling, “if you’re gonna fight here, the least you could do is take off your tops.”
“Jesus Christ,” Alessandra says, standing, knocking over her coffee with a wild backhand. It goes everywhere, pooling around all the papers, dripping off the edge of the table onto the floor.
Joe gets some in his lap. He tries to stand but falls back into his chair with an oof. “Look at this mess,” he says.
Ginny swarms the table with a handful of rags. “I’ve got it,” she says.
Alessandra storms out of the kitchen into the living room that Joe emerged from a few minutes before, going for the door. Amy’s right behind her.
“Car’s here?” Amy asks.
“Any second.”
The living room is a garbage heap. Cardboard boxes stacked with magazines. Ratty recliners covered in even rattier plaid throw blankets. A TV sitting crookedly on a table not meant to hold its weight, playing with no volume. A painting of a sad clown on one wall. Browned pictures of a couple at Coney Island in what must be the forties or fifties, probably Ginny and Joe’s folks. It’s dark in the room, just a hurricane table lamp with roses painted on it giving off a dim light.
Alessandra pulls back the front curtain and looks out at the street. Amy half expects Dom to be out there with his gun, like it would happen in a horror movie. Him, waiting for them, grinning, knowing exactly where they are, even when they think they’re in the clear.
“Let me come with you,” Amy says. “To the hotel, at least.”
Alessandra feigns exhaustion. “Just stop.”
“You said you’d give me a ride to Gwen’s.”
�
�Forget it. Take the train.”
Ginny and Joe are bickering back in the kitchen. Amy can’t hear about what. This house should feel safer than being outside. It doesn’t. It feels scary, confining, alight with the fear of a toxic future. Lives get smaller, ruled by paranoia and isolation, and there’s nothing left to do but stay in retreat, stay hidden. Collect things, shield yourself, keep out of the sun.
A car pulls up out front, a white Chevy Malibu with tinted windows.
“That’s your ride?”
“Good luck, Amy,” Alessandra says, opening the front door and walking out into the yard.
Before Alessandra gets to the gate, Amy notices that her eyes have drifted to the left. Amy walks out behind her and looks at what Alessandra’s looking at. Smoke churning up around the steeple. St. Mary’s is burning.
17
Amy is stuck in place, nauseated, withering on the vine. What she doesn’t feel about Fred, she feels about the church. It’s been a refuge. No matter what she’s going through now, what confusion she’s experiencing, what loss, what dislocation, she understood—or thought she did—something in that sacred place. That will always have meaning for her. She thinks of the stained glass windows, of her St. Thérèse, the altar, the pews, the organ, the candles, the poor boxes, the smell of myrrh. She sees the faces of the people she knows intimately: Katrya, Connie Giacchino, Monsignor Ricciardi, so many others. Familiar hats, jackets, hands on missals, communion on tongues, voices singing together, the paten, the chalice, the poinsettias in winter.
She doesn’t know exactly what’s happened, but she knows this is no coincidence. The original church burned down fifty years ago and now this one is burning, too. Dom’s done it somehow, which means it’s her fault. It’s her fault. It’s her fault.
Amy Lynn Therese Falconetti, this is your legacy.
Alessandra walks to the car and goes around to the passenger side. She opens the door and looks at Amy with pity.
Amy locks eyes with her before turning back to the smoke. A fire truck has pulled onto the block from Twenty-Third Avenue, obstructing the way, its lights dancing everywhere.
The Lonely Witness Page 22