Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

by Stevi Mittman

  There’s no question the guy behind us is quickly closing the gap, now on my tail and probably drunk, considering the way he’s weaving.

  I try to find my cell phone without taking my left hand off the wheel. Staying awake, controlling the car and dialing involves one task too many.

  “Maybe you should pull over,” Bobbie says, a quiver in her voice.

  “He’ll hit us if we slow down,” I tell her. “Call Drew.”

  “Oh, like he can help us now,” she says. “Turn into a driveway, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Do you see a driveway?” I yell back at her. “It’s pitch freakin’ black. Why don’t these people need lights?”

  “They’ve got money,” she says just as I feel a tap against my bumper and realize the car behind me has made contact. Made contact and is staying there, pushing me forward.

  “Shit! Shit! Call Drew. Tell him we’re being forced off the road. Call 9-1-1.”

  The speedometer is speeding past eighty-five and I try hitting the brake, but I can feel the tires skidding when I do. I graze a tree on Bobbie’s side and cut the wheel carefully so that we don’t go careening off the road.

  “Are you calling?” I scream at her.

  “We’re gonna die,” Bobbie shouts at me. “I told Mike he could go screw himself and anyone else he was already screwing and now we’re gonna die and he’ll think he has my permission.”

  “Are you calling the police for God’s sake?” I ask again.

  “Mike first,” she tells me, and it’s almost enough to make me take my eyes off the road.

  “Reach over and honk the horn,” I tell her, not daring to take my hands off the wheel.

  The car behind us backs off slightly and I try to navigate the curve. Just as I think I’ve mastered it, he speeds up and smacks into my left rear. And we are aloft. It feels like slow motion and all in just a heartbeat at the same time.

  The car comes down on its right wheels, travels I don’t know how far up someone’s horse meadow and finally lands on its side a few yards from a house.

  “Bobbie?” Please, let her be all right. “Are you okay?”

  “Let’s just say my foot doesn’t hurt anymore,” she says. “Not compared to my shoulder.”

  I lean on the horn because I don’t know what else to do.

  THE EMERGENCY ROOM PERSONNEL are getting as familiar with me as they used to be with my mother, who would attempt suicide—feebly—on a rather regular schedule.

  Bobbie’s got a cut above her eye, which the plastic surgeon assures her will not leave a scar, and a bruised but not dislocated shoulder. Not only will she not be able to help me meet my deadline, I’m not sure she will ever speak to me again.

  I’ve got bruises and contusions, but no permanent damage. The doctor tells me I just need to take it easy for a few days. “Bed rest and time is about all you can do for this sort of thing,” he tells me, after telling me how lucky I am no matter how many times I tell him that I need to finish my job or I won’t get paid. “And some ibuprofen wouldn’t hurt.”

  If that’s true, it’s the only thing that won’t. Hurt, that is. I think even my eyelashes are paining me.

  Mike comes to retrieve us. If I thought that Bobbie was mad at me, it was only because I had nothing to compare her anger with.

  “He ran me off the road,” I say for the millionth time tonight, first to the couple whose probably-beautiful-in-the-daylight meadow I destroyed, then to the police, the EMS workers, the people at the hospital and to Bobbie and Mike.

  No one cared.

  In fact, I’m not sure anyone believed me. Not even Bobbie, who was there and is now pretending I forced her to go to Dunkin’ Donuts with me.

  DREW AND HAL show up at my door at an ungodly hour, looking very somber.

  “Teddi Bayer, you—” Hal starts, but Drew stops him.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he tells his partner. He looks at the bump on my head which has turned an ugly shade of purple and winces. “Hurt bad?”

  “Not good,” I say, showing him the bandage on my wrist. “And I’ve got to get to work.”

  Drew shakes his head. Hal says he doesn’t think so, before Drew shoots him a look.

  “You nervous yesterday, Ted?” he asks me.

  Aren’t I always? I ask. He smiles, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  He shoves his hands in his pockets, a sure sign that he’s nervous, too. “So what’d you do about it?”

  He’s lost me. I ask him what he’s getting at and Hal seems to lose patience. He pulls out his cuffs and says that I was driving under the influence.

  “Of what?” I ask, like he’s crazy. “Coffee?”

  But no, it’s not coffee and it’s not sugar, both of which I consumed. He says it’s narcotics.

  “Impossible.”

  Only they don’t appear to be kidding.

  “What are you going to come up with next? That I was hallucinating about someone chasing me up Route 106? That I set out to maim a horse?”

  Drew is quick to assure me that someone definitely chased me up Route 106, and that he hit the back of my fairly-totaled RAV4. Just when I’m feeling vindicated, he adds that the tests they ran at the hospital revealed a considerable amount of diazepam, better known as Valium, a medication my mother is always pushing at me, in my system.

  I tell him that’s ridiculous. “I’m not about to take something that is going to relax me at this point in the game,” I say. “I need all my wits and energy to get the damn bowling alley done.”

  “It is possible, though unlikely, that there could have been a mistake,” Drew says.

  “Yeah,” Hal agrees. “Hers.”

  Drew argues that hospitals screw up all the time. Tests results get switched, reports get mislaid. “Come on,” he says. “You know she’s got a point. How likely is it she’d take downers rather than uppers with what she’s got on her plate?”

  “Wait a minute,” I say, not any more thrilled that they’d believe I’m on uppers rather than downers.

  “Look, you don’t like her,” Drew says to Hal matter-of-factly. “She doesn’t like you. Is that a crime?”

  “No,” Hal answers. He pauses for effect and then adds, slowly and deliberately, “DUI is a crime. And that’s what she did.”

  “Didn’t,” I insist.

  “Did,” Hal repeats.

  “Didn’t,” I say again, more adamantly.

  Hal says, “This is ridiculous,” and reaches for his handcuffs.

  “No, that is ridiculous,” I say, pointing at them. “This is harassment, you realize.”

  “Let me handle it,” Drew says, this time to me and not Hal, who I think he’s told that to several times already.

  I sense that Drew is going to call in a favor and I really don’t want him doing that on my behalf, especially since this is totally bogus.

  “Where were you coming from at one-thirty in the morning, anyway?” Drew asks.

  I tell him I’d just left a john at a swinger party where we all did meth. He tells me I’m not really helping myself.

  “Fine. I was at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Jericho Turnpike.” I don’t think breaking my diet is a crime in their book, though it’s possible that in my mother’s Handbook it’s punishable by a colonic.

  Hal wants to know why I had to get a doughnut at 1:00 a.m. From the look on Drew’s face, I think he’s figured it out.

  I don’t think telling the police you were investigating a murder cuts much ice with them. They seem to think that’s their job.

  “So you go to Dunkin’ Donuts and you go inside? Or you stay in the car?” Drew asks me.

  This gives me the opportunity to avoid why I was there, so I go into a whole song and dance about how we went in, how we couldn’t decide between crullers and doughnuts and which have more calories, how we sat at a booth at the back and had several cups of coffee and how yes, lots of people saw us.

  “Lots of people? At one o’clock in the morning?” Hal says.

/>   “Half-a-dozen women, I’d guess,” I say. “A few men, but I’m not sure they noticed me.”

  This, of course, earns Hal’s usual smirk.

  I tell Drew I really have to talk to him, in private. By now Hal seems to be losing interest and agrees to go out to the car.

  “It’s the lottery,” I tell Drew, who looks thoroughly disgusted at my inability to let this thing go. “I know, I know,” I admit, but then I tell him what the nurses told me and his ears perk up.

  Could any one of them have possibly put something into my coffee? And then followed me out of the shop and up 106?

  Before I can answer, there’s a commotion outside my front door. I turn to see two of Carmine’s men following Hal into my house.

  “Friends of yours?” Hal asks me, but he’s looking at Drew like See? I told you she was trouble.

  “Actually, yes,” I say. I look at Vito and the other one, whose name I can never remember. “Coffee?” I offer, gesturing to the pot on the counter.

  They’re quick to tell me they’ve got their own, like they’ve been warned about mine.

  “You okay?” they ask me. “We heard about your accident and the boss is not too pleased.”

  What do you say to that? Especially in front of two cops? Sorry?

  “We shoulda been there,” Vito says.

  “She shouldn’t have been there, is more like it,” Drew says. And then he seems to brighten. “I take it you guys want to look after Ms. Bayer. Am I right?”

  Vito and his pal don’t answer, looking for the trick to the question.

  “Hey, it’s all right with me,” Drew says. “Better than all right. Because if anything happens to her, I’m gonna hold you two responsible. So what I suggest is this…”

  And he huddles with Vito and friend, who keeps looking over his shoulder at me while they talk.

  “Come on,” Drew says to Hal. He gives me a wave and heads for the door.

  “Just a sec—” I say, going after him. Vito and friend block my path.

  “Kinda like house arrest,” Vito says. “Ya got anything to eat?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Don’t underestimate the effect of just one thing on everything else. The wrong color, the wrong scale, the wrong style. The right rug, the right window treatment, the perfect room divider. Just one piece of the puzzle can make or break the picture.

  —TipsFromTeddi.com

  Turns out one mafia boss trumps two cops. It takes a simple phone call to Carmine to get his goons to back off and agree to watch me from a distance so that I can meet my deadline.

  This is good.

  Carmine tells my mother what’s going on.

  This is bad.

  “You’re out of your mind,” my mother says when I answer my cell in the back of Vito’s car. “The whole world has gone nuts.”

  She’s telling me? I’m being chauffeured in a black sedan by Carmine De’Guisseppe’s driver and she’s telling me the world is outta whack? Still, I resist asking if the pot isn’t calling the kettle black.

  “First your father and now you,” she says. “I’d swear it’s a plot to make me meshuggener.”

  “Honestly, Mom,” I say, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. “It’s not about you.”

  Dead silence.

  “Can we talk about all of this after Friday?” I ask. “I’m at the alley and—”

  I stop because I see a man, a very familiar man, carrying the end of a long length of molding, the end of which is being held up by Mark. The man is wearing overalls, a ratty jacket I remember from a hundred years ago, and a smile so bright you need sunglasses to focus on his face.

  “Mom?” I say. “What’s Dad been doing to drive you nuts?”

  The tirade starts with how he isn’t going to the doctor despite the fact that all he does is sleep all day. Of course, this is because he gallivants all night long, going she doesn’t know where. He’s full of aches and pains and she’d swear he was having an affair, but she knows Carmine would be the first to tell her if he was.

  Vito opens the door for me and I can hear my father whistling. It stops the moment he sees me.

  I tell my mother not to worry about my father. I have a feeling he’s better than he’s been in years. I hang up on her stammering.

  “You look awful,” he says to me when I come up to him. I tell him I’m great, but that I’m going to get better. “I just stopped by for a minute,” he says, glancing at Mark.

  “Elves?” I ask my carpenter.

  He shrugs. “What are you gonna do? If we make it, it’s your dad that did it.”

  “A couple of nights,” my father says. “That’s all. Nothing much. I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Mind?” I say. “Mind? Why didn’t you tell me you were helping? I would never have let you…I mean, you could have gotten hurt. You didn’t let him—” I start, turning to Mark.

  “That, mammela, is why I didn’t tell you. You’d have treated me like a fragile old man.” He hefts the molding onto his shoulder and starts off toward the saw Mark has set up in the lot.

  “He’s done almost as much work as I have,” Mark tells me, watching him walk away. “I nearly had to carry him to his car the first night. Now he all but carries me.”

  I remind him that the man is nearly seventy-five years old.

  “Dad!” I yell, signaling for him to cut the power to the saw.

  “Look at him, gorgeous,” Mark tells me. It’s true. There’s spring in his step, he’s kibitzing with some kid in the lot, he’s grinning from ear to ear. “Don’t make him go home. Don’t make him useless.”

  My father cups his ear, waiting for me to tell him what I want. His eyes are sparkling in the cold air and his cheeks are rosy.

  “Hurry up!” I yell. I hold up my bandaged wrist. “I need help inside when you’re done here.”

  He salutes me and blows me a kiss before turning back to his saw.

  “You think he could maybe work for us part-time?” I ask Mark. “Kind of be your helper? That way we could at least keep an eye on him. No doubt he’ll try to join the steelworkers’ union if we don’t.”

  Mark tells me that Bobbie called and told him about the accident. “Of course she tends to be a bit melodramatic. Someone didn’t really run you off the road, did they?”

  I tell him I must be close to figuring out this case. “So close that someone wants me dead,” I say.

  “Jeez, Teddi,” he says, pushing back the hair I’ve tried to cover my bruises with. “You’ve got to give it up. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I say. And I mean it.

  Really.

  Only…

  “Let’s say that one of The Slices has the winning lottery ticket all The Slices were supposed to split. Only he had a deal with Joey that they’d knock off the other Slices and then split the money. Joey tells the doc this before his surgery—”

  Mark grabs me by the arm and I shout from the pain. “What is it going to take to stop you?” he asks as Vito and friend come running at my cry. “Did your brains get scrambled in that accident? Someone tried to kill you, Goddammit.”

  “Back off, buster,” Vito says, and his hand is in his pocket pointing something at Mark.

  “Friend,” I say. “Pal. He’s just doing the same thing you’re doing. Trying to protect me from myself.”

  Vito warns Mark to keep his hands off me and then takes his hand out of his pocket. In it is a banana, which he proceeds to peel and eat with a grin.

  Mark points out how I’m not going to be able to touch up the trim around the light switches with my wrist wrapped up. Vito says he can do it and takes off toward the alley.

  “You ought to feed this crew,” my dad says as he walks past me with several pieces of molding which I know he measured twice so that he would have to cut only once. He manages to reach into his pocket and hand me a twenty. “Go get some pizza,” he says, pointing with his chin toward Pastaeria.

  “Dad, you know you’re not
supposed to have—” I start.

  Mark nudges me toward the restaurant. “He likes it with hot peppers,” he says.

  I can just hear my mother complaining tomorrow.

  I ORDER THE PIZZA and sit on a stool to wait for it, resting my arm on the counter because it feels like there’s a lead weight attached to it.

  “Yeah,” I hear Raymond, one of the counter guys, say into the phone. “Where in Hicksville? Yeah, we deliver there.” I listen with half an ear while he repeats the address, which sounds familiar. “Yeah, Blumstein. Got it.”

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks to let me deliver that pizza,” I hear myself say. Raymond can’t believe it any more than I can.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Dave’s a friend from the alley,” I say. True, no? “I want to surprise him.” Again, true.

  Raymond knows me. Hell, I’ve been in nearly every day since I started the alley job, and loads before that with the kids.

  “I’ll need to use your car,” I say. “With the Pizza Delivery sign on the side. So he doesn’t guess before I get to the door.”

  He pulls the keys off the pegboard and tosses them to me. “Knock yourself out,” he says, putting the pizza in a box and sliding it across the counter to me. “Car’s out back. We’ll keep your order warm.”

  I SEE THE CURTAINS MOVE as I pull up to the house Dave shares with his mother. I wait until they stop moving to get out of the car. That way he’ll be on his way to the door and unable to see me. I struggle with the box, my hand almost as useless as my wrist. It looks more swollen than it did this morning. Which isn’t a surprise since the doctor told me to keep it elevated.

  I ring the bell. “Pizza delivery,” I shout when he asks who’s there.

  Dave opens the door and I quickly stick my foot in, realizing as I do that it’s about the only thing that doesn’t hurt and that could change in an instant.

  “Teddi?” He seems surprised, but not threatened. He opens the door wider to let me in. “I didn’t know you worked two jobs,” he says. “What happened to you? Did you walk into a door?”

  Mrs. Blumstein comes out from the kitchen with an apron on as if she’s been cooking, though clearly I’m the one who is supplying lunch. She hears the tail end of my cock-and-bull story about how I hit a tree avoiding a squirrel. I watch for a reaction from either of them.