[2010] The Ghost of Blackwood Lane

by Greg Enslen

  When Tony had decided to drift back to his mob roots, it was reportedly out of desperation—Rugio reported that the organization had sunk all of its free cash into the gambling ships docked along the Mississippi River.

  One of Tony’s old capos had resisted the change in direction, but Tony had evidently overruled him—the man had been found dead in his home, supposedly a suicide.

  Tony and Vincent were taking the family back to where it had begun. They were moving into coke, and there was low-level talk of loan sharking and even some low-rent prostitution.

  Shotgun flipped the page, reading about the brothers themselves. Tony lived alone, dating occasionally, a workaholic. Shotgun looked at the man’s home address and pictures of the large house, contemplating the home’s guards and security systems, then turned the page.

  Tony wasn’t the dangerous one. Vincent appeared to be influencing his brother to go down this new path, and it was his contacts and suppliers being used to expand their influence. He lived in an old house outside of O’Fallon on Blackwood Lane, a half-mile from the nearest residence. Vincent had a wife, and Rugio had included in his folder some reported instances of abuse, something Shotgun hated to see. Vincent’s wife looked like an attractive woman, but her face was covered in each of the pictures they had. The only good photograph showed her face with a nasty patch of bruises covering one cheek and a long laceration along her chin.

  Vincent wasn’t a man to respect, but evidently he was a man to be feared. Maybe if something were to happen to him, his brother’s fervor about the current war would subside.

  Maybe if Vincent were out of the way, Tony and Shotgun could come to some kind of agreement. Shotgun set the folder back down on his desk and sat back in his chair, thinking. There might be a way out of this that didn’t involve a war, or even much bloodshed.

  Chapter 24

  She could hear his Mustang coming up the driveway—he was early today, but then his schedule had been erratic since he’d gotten back into the family business. She was going to have to figure out a way to get more warning.

  Judy slipped the palette of paints back into the battered “Mama’s Sausage and Pepperoni” pizza box, trying to keep it flat as she walked it out to the laundry and put it back in the big icebox that seemed to take up half of that small room. The paints would keep—they always did, but she was worried about them sliding together and blending. It was so hard for her to buy more paints, and she wanted to be careful with what she had.

  Judy ran back into the living room and picked up the painting and easel, carrying them both back into the laundry. This was the one room he almost never went into, and she either kept her paintings in here or up in the attic. Stuff she was working on, like this seascape with a tall palm tree leaning out over the water, went behind the washer.

  He came in loudly just as she turned a talk show on and plopped down on the couch. She could hear him move immediately into the kitchen, and she heard the refrigerator open and the sound of a can popping open. She’d bet her last dollar that it was a beer.

  Vincent came around the corner and looked at her. “What a lazy bitch! What are you doing, woman?”

  She pointed at the screen. “I was watching Springer. Something on adult film stars, the things they go through. Did you know that they have to get tested for HIV infection every three weeks? And they have to bring proof to the set every day before they start filming?”

  He just looked at her. She loved moments like this, when he was simply stunned into silence—they were like little diamonds for her to hold onto and treasure against the other times.

  Vincent shook his head and turned, heading toward their bedroom. And she smiled to herself. As long as she could keep her sanity, things would be okay.

  Thinking about her dreams helped, too—especially the strange dream she’d had the night before.

  She’d been sitting in her bed, alone, brushing her hair with her big, silver hairbrush and thinking about Chris O’Toole, wondering what he was doing. Funny how she could remember what she’d been thinking in her dream. Chris’s face had been right there. She’d glanced into her hand mirror and for a moment, it had looked like his eyes staring back at her.

  That was when the yelling had started, and she’d dropped the brush and pulled the sheets up around her tight. The bedroom door was closed but she could see it outlined in white, like there was some kind of really bright light on the other side, and then it had burst open. Vincent. He came stumbling in, anger written all over his face, and she saw that he was limping and that one of his arms was wrapped in a sling. The other hand was behind his back, and he walked over to her fast—yet at the same time, it seemed like it took an eternity for him to cross that eight feet from the door to the bed. There was a dark sweatshirt tied around his waist, one she didn’t recognize.

  She was looking up and his eyes were practically glowing with anger—his hair was all messed up and there was spittle around his mouth. He looked absolutely mad.

  “You...little...bitch,” he’d said, looking down at her, and that was when she had suddenly woken up, sweating and startled.

  Judy Luciano glanced around at the white walls of her prison, and shook her head. She didn’t understand the dream fully, but she knew it was telling her one thing. She had to get out of here soon—one way or another.

  Chapter 25

  “Just up and leaving, huh?” Mike asked. Gary had not been firing on all cylinders the past few months, but now Mike was wondering when his good friend had stepped completely over the brink.

  Gary nodded. They were sitting in his apartment, facing each other over the low IKEA coffee table. There was nowhere else to go, and the suitcase was sitting on his bed, visible through the doorway to his bedroom, still packed from their Sacramento trip.

  “I’m taking a week off,” Gary said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  Mike smirked, and started to say something, but Gary interrupted.

  “I know Simmons is going to be pissed, so I’m working to finish up those hospital plans. I can have them done by Thursday if I crank. I’ll leave Friday and take next week off.”

  Mike nodded, listening. “And you think this is going to help you...figure things out?”

  Gary reached around behind him. “Did you see what was in the envelope my stepmother gave you?”

  Mike shook his head. “No, of course not. And I’m sorry about that—she said you shouldn’t look at it, whatever it is, alone, but it was so late and I was so tired, I didn’t realize it was missing until I got inside. And by then, you were gone.” Mike felt horrible —whatever had been in the envelope had had a serious effect on Gary, big enough for him to suddenly take a week off from work and fly back to St. Louis.

  “Don’t worry about it. It was actually better that I was alone. Here,” he said, handing a small color photo over to Mike. “Take a look at this and tell me what you think.”

  Mike looked at the photograph and was, for a moment, confused. The boy in the center looked like a younger version of Gary, maybe from high school. There was a cute girl on his lap and a birthday cake on the table in front of him.

  But the name on the cake was wrong.

  Mike glanced up at Gary, suddenly worried. “Why does this say ‘Chris’ instead of ‘Gary’?”

  His friend’s face tightened at the mention of the name. After a moment, Gary slowly smiled and leaned forward. “Well, evidently my name isn’t Gary.”

  One hand drifted up to his head, and Mike could see the pained expression on his face.

  “Wow, these things come on fast,” Gary said. “Anyway, my real name’s right on the cake.”

  Mike looked at the picture again.

  “And the girl. A girlfriend? She’s sitting on your lap and she’s getting ready to kiss you.”

  “That’s what my stepmother says. We were...pretty serious there for a while, she says.” His eyes were closed when Mike glanced up at him and Gary was pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb
and forefinger.

  “You okay?” Mike asked.

  “Comes every time I look at the picture, or think about my real name, or think about her. Evidently—you’re going to love this one, I promise—I was hypnotized before I left St. Louis. My father had some of my memories forcibly suppressed.”

  Mike chuckled. “Sounds like a story from a bad soap opera.”

  “Yeah. I guess when my father testified in that trial, I didn’t want to leave St. Louis. I fought and fought, trying to get back to her,” he said, nodding at the photo. “The FBI suggested that temporary memory suppression could be helpful to get me to cooperate, so my father agreed. Only the memory suppression wasn’t removed as planned, and I’ve never gotten those memories back.”

  Mike was stunned. “That sounds like some crazy bullshit to me.” If he were hearing the plot of a movie being described to him, he’d keep his six dollars in his pocket. But then, what was with the picture? A prank played on a younger version of Gary? After a moment, Gary hadn’t disagreed with him, and Mike continued. “You don’t remember the girl at all?”

  Gary was quiet for a minute, thinking, and Mike wondered if what he had heard was true. Could someone’s memories be suppressed, and for that long? And what kind of psychological damage would result if all of the memories suddenly came back? His friend should be spending the next week in an institution, or getting some therapy, not traipsing around the Midwest, looking for some mystery girl from his past.

  “No, Mike, I don’t remember the girl at all. After the trial, I disappeared and never contacted her again, so I guess she just went on with her life.” He was quiet for another long moment, and Mike looked at him, noticing that his hands were shaking, like he’d just drunk six cups of coffee. “But I’ve seen her recently.”

  “What? You’ve seen her here, in Los Angeles?”

  “No,” Gary said, looking up at his best friend. “She’s the one in the dream.”

  ------

  Mike was home, looking at the picture again. Gary had insisted that Mike take it with him, saying the urge to look at it was uncontrollable and always left him reaching for the Advil.

  Gary had also asked Mike to go with him to St. Louis. Mike couldn’t decide what to do—he wanted to help his friend, but wasn’t this whole thing just about ten steps past crazy?

  The picture didn’t lie—it was clear and focused and apparently genuine, three things that Gary no longer appeared to be. There was no arguing with the image of the girl on the younger Gary’s lap, or the cake with the wrong name on it, or the friends around the table that obviously knew Gary. Gary said the faces were vaguely familiar and that one guy’s name was Tom or Tim, something like that. Gary said that the headaches didn’t come when he thought about the guys in the picture—just the girl and the cake.

  Mike had some vacation time at work and could wrap up the Austin airport plans—he’d been dragging them out anyway, trying to do a really good job and spread out the billable hours as much as possible. But the airport concourse and buildings were done; he was left with working on the entrance and approach roads, something he could knock out in a day. So it wasn’t the logistics or the vacation time that made Mike nervous.

  No, it was the effect all of this was having on his friend.

  Gary swore up and down the girl’s eyes were the same as the woman’s eyes in the dream he’d been having. It was insane. If that were somehow true, then this girlfriend he couldn’t remember was in trouble—a fact that Gary couldn’t ignore.

  Gary had been too busy to think about it, but Mike had been wondering ever since he’d heard about the girl’s eyes—what if there were some kind of crazy, tenuous connection between the two of them? Could she be calling out to Gary because she was in trouble?

  Mike didn’t think it was possible for such a thing to happen. He wasn’t the kind of person to believe in all that sappy romance surrounding love—it had never happened to him, and he didn’t think it was even possible. Sure, love and dating could have their pleasures, but there was no special “connection” between people. There were no “kindred spirits” or “soulmates” or any of that other happy-crappy spewed out by romance novels and cheap date movies.

  There was nothing but physical attraction and mutual affection, and the women in Los Angeles had taught him that. They weren’t interested in long romantic walks or shared candlelit baths or quiet evenings at home putting puzzles together. All that concerned them was which model BMW you drove and who you knew in the business that could get them a screen test or a script reading or an agent. It was all so superficial and useless that Mike had long ago stopped thinking about the possibility of deep, truly romantic love.

  But Mike was worried about his friend. Worried about these blackouts Gary was having. If looking at the picture made his head hurt so bad that he passed out, what would Gary do when he actually got back to St. Louis?

  More than anything, Mike’s concern for Gary’s welfare made him decide. He got the suitcase back down from the top shelf of his closet where he’d just put it the night before and started packing.

  And Mike was curious, curious about the possibilities, about a tenuous and impossible connection. Did that kind of love really exist, the kind that could span the years and the miles between them? Could it somehow be calling Gary back to her? Mike didn’t know, but he was open-minded enough to want to find out.

  Chapter 26

  “And?” Vincent said, trying to get more out of his brother. It was Wednesday night, three nights after they’d moved in earnest against the East Dogs’ territories, and two of the Lucianos’ men had turned up dead this morning.

  Vincent knew it was only the beginning.

  Tony just sat there like a bump on a log, saying nothing. Nothing pissed Vincent off more than when he asked someone a question and didn’t get an answer. But he needed to find out how the phone call had gone, and his brother was clammed up tight.

  “Look, Tony, I told you things were going to get ugly. This is a big business, and there’s a lot of money to make. And the people already in the business want to keep that money, not share it, and certainly not give it up to somebody else, capiche?”

  “Yeah. The East Dogs are serious about it, and Shotgun wants a ‘summit’ to discuss our movements into his territory. I think Scott and Gino getting killed was just a sign to us that they’re serious.”

  Vincent was stunned—the resignation in his voice was apparent. His brother had said he wanted to get into more profitable, less “legit” businesses, and now that they were doing it, he was shirking from the duties at hand.

  This was disappointing, to say the least. Vincent thought he’d have to step in at some point, but the look on his brother’s face, brought on by the reported deaths of a couple of family old timers, told Vincent he’d have to move up his timetable.

  “Listen, Tony. Wars are not necessarily a bad thing—we could use one now, if only to clean out some of the dead weight in our organization. And if...I mean when we win, we’ll wipe out the East Dogs and take over a very profitable business.”

  He looked at his brother, but nothing was happening. Vincent wondered if his brother had it in him to run a large and illegal operation—had the guy only been fooling himself? Vincent didn’t think so—he thought his brother only needed a little “seasoning,” a taste of what this life could be like, and he’d come around. But in the meantime, he’d have to keep an eye on his brother. Somewhere in the space of the past twenty-four hours, after the reported deaths within the organization, Tony had gone soft inside.

  Vincent tried another tactic.

  “Wars are a glorious thing, too,” he told his brother. “Tony, you know the history of our family, the histories of the other families better than anyone I know. Lucky would never have been able to seize power in the ’30s and make all of his reforms if he and Frank Costello hadn’t started a war and taken out Mangano. Look at what came out of that war—Luciano took Mangano’s template for the new Cosa Nostra an
d made it infinitely better. Lucky started the idea of a council made up of each of the familia’s bosses, sharing the power across all the families.”

  Tony was coming around—Vincent could see it in the way he was nodding along, his eyes a little glossed over when anyone talked about the family history. The man was obsessed with it—Vincent knew that his brother could lose himself for hours, watching old gangster movies or reading books on the history of the Mafia.

  “You’re right,” Tony was saying, agreeing with Vincent. “It’s going to be like any other territorial dispute, but since there’s no council, we have to go to war. Should I meet with Shotgun?”

  Vincent thought about that. “If there were a way to meet with him and also cap him, it would be a good thing. But he’ll be looking for that, and I know how smart he is. We’ve had our share of run-ins. Let me work on something, but until then, don’t answer. Just work on planning the war and recruiting new soldiers through your capos.”

  Tony nodded. “If we win...well, this is what I’ve wanted for a long time.” He looked up at his brother. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting it to be so ferocious.”

  “Well, Tony, it’ll get a lot worse before it gets better.” Vincent said, standing and looking down at his big brother. The man wasn’t even close to being ready to run this organization properly—Vincent knew that now. And that changed things.

  Chapter 27

  Los Angeles International Airport, better known to travelers as LAX, was not a friendly airport.

  Getting into and out of there was a nightmare. The airline terminals were all arrayed around a huge central parking garage, or more accurately, a series of about ten massive parking garages. Gary finally found the correct garage across from his airline’s terminal and pulled into a spot. The parking was an insane $10 a day—he made a mental note to save some cash to pay for the parking upon returning from St. Louis.