The Mongol Reply

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  Garfield depressed the hold button and put Polansky through.

  “Yeah, Chet. What’s up?”

  “Where’s your client, Al?”

  “Out at the weight room, why?”

  “Well, he’d better get his ass over here right now.”

  “Where’s here? What’s going on?”

  “Wifey-poo just pulled up in front of the school. I think she’s gonna try to snatch the kids.”

  “Great. Get photos. Don’t call the police until she actually takes the kids out of school. I’ll get my client over there immediately. Boy, has she shot herself in the foot.”

  Garfield switched lines. “Tom. Serena has shown up at school. Polansky thinks she’s going to try to snatch the kids.”

  “I’ll call the school. They know not to let her have them.”

  “No, don’t do that. Just get over there right away. If she convinces them to let her have the kids, that’s good for us. Let her get out of the building, then stop her.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Any way you have to. Those are your children she’s trying to steal.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Serena Tully sat in her car across the street from the school. She still hadn’t decided what she wanted to do. Or what she dared to do. She wanted to race into the school, sweep Tommy up in her arms and disappear with him. Tina was at home with Felicia, the nanny. By the time she left here, they’d call Tom. He’d call the police. Then she’d be in jail. Not a step forward, she concluded. Every time she tried to call the house she got the damned answering machine. Tom had changed the message so that it was in the children’s voices. Every time she heard them it hurt.

  Tom was legal custodian. She guessed that meant that she couldn’t do anything with the children without his permission. Maybe she could just go in and ask to sit in Tommy’s class. Just to watch. Not to say anything. Just watch him play or work. He was learning to do so much. Addition and subtraction. Reading. Making his letters. Serena found herself walking into the school, although it felt more like floating. She drifted past the sign that read: “ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN AT THE MAIN OFFICE.” Tommy’s class was on the right at the end of the hall. The playground was just outside. Maybe they’d go there to talk.

  Chester Polansky watched her walk into the school. This was going to be one short case. If there was anything judges had no tolerance for, it was child snatching, especially in violation of a court order. Showed you had no respect for the law, or the child’s relationship with the other parent. A parent like that couldn’t be trusted. Couldn’t control their own feelings well enough to think about the impact on the child. He’d heard all the arguments. This lady was digging her own grave. Custody my ass, by tomorrow she’d be lucky to qualify for supervised visitation.

  He looked into the rearview mirror as the Cherokee pulled up behind him. Tom Tully bounded out.

  “Where is she?”

  “She just walked into the school. They may turn her away without the kid. It’s the boy, right?”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “She’s home with the nanny.”

  “What took her so long? You called about twenty minutes ago?”

  “I don’t know. She just sat there staring at the school. Like she was trying to make her mind up or something.”

  “That’s her. A fucking space cadet. You talk to her and she doesn’t hear a word you say. Used to drive me crazy. I’d have to tell her everything twice. I think they closed her up before they finished putting all the wiring in.”

  Polansky listened. Thirty years of listening to other people betray themselves more than their worst enemies had taught him the virtue of silence.

  “Why don’t you wait a couple more minutes? She comes out with him and we’ve got her,” Polansky suggested to Tully’s receding back. “Well, make sure you check in at the office.”

  Serena stood outside the door to Mrs. Nash’s first grade class. She searched for Tommy’s blond head. There he was in the corner. Coloring with another child, a dark haired girl with long braids and a very serious look on her face. Staying inside the lines was hard work.

  Tommy stretched and looked her way. She smiled and his face radiated joy and relief. Serena pulled the door back and stepped into the room. All heads turned toward her.

  Mrs. Nash, reading to a circle of children, followed their distraction to its source. As soon as she saw Serena, she cringed. Another civil war was being fought in her classroom. Tommy had been alternately morose and frantic all day. Coloring finally had calmed him down for a while.

  Tommy scooted out of his seat and dashed into his mother’s arms. She picked him up and pressed him against her chest while she whispered in his ear. “It’s all right Tommy. Mommy’s here.”

  Serena looked past Tommy’s head and met Mrs. Nash’s stare. She thought about saying she was only going outside to talk to Tommy for a minute but she didn’t. She knew she wasn’t. She was going to run with Tommy and Tina as fast and as far as she could. She knew she couldn’t let go of her son, and he had now locked his legs around her waist. Whatever happened, it would happen to them together. Love’s promise to us all.

  Serena Tully spun around and stepped out into the hall. Then she saw her husband and the principal walking toward her. Holding Tommy around the waist, she pushed open the door and began to run toward her car.

  Tom Tully reacted on instinct, like a dog with a mailman, a lion and an antelope. Accelerating rapidly, he closed the distance in seconds. Out the door, he skidded, trying to change direction, and then came up on his wife. He raised his arm to slam through the back of her head when he saw his son’s open-mouthed terror. Pulling up alongside his wife, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her off her feet. She staggered backward. Tully slipped an arm around his son’s waist and pried him loose. By her hair he threw her away from him. His son kicked and screamed, “Mommy, Mommy.” She saw her son, tears running down his cheeks, imploring her with outstretched arms not to leave him again. Tom Tully walked away without a backward glance just as he had done after he hit Cisco Conway. His son flailed and wriggled, trying to escape. Tom Tully just increased the pressure until the boy’s cries were of physical pain not grief. He relaxed his grip a bit and the boy fell silent, gasping for air.

  Serena Tully scrambled back to her feet and swept her hair out of her face. This time she didn’t think about all the things that could go wrong. She sprinted after her husband. Grabbing the arm that held her son, she pulled with all her might. Tom Tully shook his head in disbelief as if Cisco Conway had come back to life. He reached out and grabbed his wife’s face in his hand and prepared to hurl her away. She slipped her face loose from his grip and bit down hard on his forearm. Tully yelled, dropped his son and punched his wife in the side of the head. Her head snapped back and she released his arm. Serena Tully was out before she crashed.

  Tom Tully looked around for his son, now trying to burrow underneath her crumpled body. He reached down and pulled his son out by an arm. Staring down at her, all the rage he had been titrating burst through. He looked at her pale white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair and saw a doll, a fragile china doll whose pretty little head would shatter as soon as he kicked it. Tully stepped forward, shifted his weight and Chester Polansky stepped between him and his wife’s body.

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Get out of my way, fat man.”

  “Not a chance. You don’t kick someone who’s down. Not on my watch. You got the kid, I got the photos. She’s in a lot of trouble. Go home, call your attorney. See if he wants you to press charges. Things like this, the first one to the magistrate wins. Leave now before you fuck this up. I’ll call the police.”

  Tom Tully was amazed at the fat man. He had twenty years on him. He could kill him, but the guy was not afraid.

  He turned away, tucked his sobbing son under his arm and walked back to his car.

  Chester Polansky knelt and felt for a pulse.

/>   CHAPTER TWELVE

  While Chester Polansky put the finishing touches on the immolation of Serena Tully, her husband drove home, dropped his son with the nanny and left a message for Albert Garfield. Then he called some friends about money for the evaluation. Garfield might be right. Getting her in front of a shrink right now might be a good idea. Trying to fight him. Man, the bitch had lost her mind.

  As Tully drove up I-95 to Baltimore, Chester Polansky was telling the police that he had pictures of Serena Tully running with her child away from the father who had legal custody and that he had pictures of her assaulting him and that Mr. Tully’s response was entirely in self-defense. It was unfortunate that Mrs. Tully had some loosened teeth and an apparent concussion. However, her husband panicked when she bit him because he had asked her to take an AIDS test and she’d refused. The police and paramedics standing there with their latex gloves on all nodded in understanding. The principal confirmed that they had received notice that she wasn’t to take the child and that she hadn’t checked in with the office. He also confirmed Polansky’s story from his vantage point in his office. The officers asked Polansky where the father was. He said he told him to take the child home to spare him any more trauma and get his arm looked at. He wasn’t sure whether Mr. Tully would want to press charges but they should call his attorney, Albert Garfield.

  Realizing that she probably was no longer on her husband’s health insurance, Serena Tully refused to be taken to the hospital for observation. The police wouldn’t let her drive and she had to be picked up by Denise Fargo. After some deliberation with the watch commander the officers let her leave, but warned her that if Mr. Tully chose to press charges she would be arrested and that she might want to consult a criminal defense attorney.

  Tom Tully took 395 through South Baltimore, past Camden Yards Baseball Stadium, right on Conway to the inner harbor, around the shopping pavilions, the tall ships, the submarine tours and then up Calvert Street. Just north of Pratt, Tully parked and walked down Baltimore Street to “The Block.” These days it’s shrunk to two blocks of peep shows, pornographic video stores, latex love enhancers and topless and bottomless clubs.

  Tom Tully made his way down the street, gliding past the hallucinating homeless, dodging the dancers late for work jumping out of cabs wearing buckskin jackets and nothing else and ignored the doormen touting the delights of each club.

  He stopped in front of the door to the Passion Pit. Its name was painted in pink letters over the black paint that covered the glass door. He stepped inside and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The cigarette smoke was so thick you could chew it. He walked down the aisle between the tables and the raised dance floor and eyed the girl on the stage. She was arched in a bridge with her heels touching her wrists. Tilting her head back, she attempted to slide an entire long neck down her throat. For her efforts the patron whose beer she’d just engulfed held up a five-dollar bill. Once she righted herself she smiled and slipped it into her garter.

  The man who sat by the door marked “Office” was so big he ordered his clothes in latitude and longitude. His hair was combed straight forward and cut short in a straight line across his brow. Thick down-turned lips and a permanent frown made him look like he was pondering an especially difficult math problem. His egg-shaped head was repeated in his slope-shouldered torso. When his hands weren’t in use he wrung them constantly. He always wore black from his orthopedic shoes to his sausage skin turtlenecks.

  “Hey, Carmine. How ya doin’? Vinnie in?” Tully asked from a respectful distance.

  “He’s busy.”

  “When will he be free?”

  “When he’s done.”

  “I called. He said I should meet him here. We’ve got things to discuss.”

  Carmine swiveled slowly. “He’s busy.”

  Tully had seen him wrap his hands around another man’s and break fourteen bones, all the while calmly telling him he should leave the club before he really got hurt. Tully decided to wait.

  Twenty minutes later a young girl with thick shiny black hair like a mink’s pelt staggered out of the office. Her eyes were out of focus and her lipstick was smeared from her chin to her nose.

  Vinnie, “The Bat” Colabucci stepped into the doorway. He saw Tully and smiled. “That was an audition.” He laughed, “She passed. Come on in.”

  Tully stepped past Carmine and entered the office. Vinnie closed the door behind them and went back behind his desk.

  “You should’a seen the look on her face when I pulled it out. She looked like a python trying to figure out how to eat a twelve-point buck. She did okay though. Started to cry after a while, so I let her catch her breath. But she finished strong. So what’s this evaluation you need the money for?”

  “I’ve been ordered by the court to be evaluated by some shrink so I can get my kids. I’m getting a divorce.”

  “Nah. Really? You’re dumping your old lady? She’s a prime piece of ass. What the fuck, you been running around on her as long as I’ve known you. What’s a matter, she frigid?”

  “Yeah, but now she’s running around on me. No way I’m going to stand for that.”

  Vinnie nodded in silent agreement. “So why do you need an evaluation? You just tell her to get the fuck out of the house and don’t ever come back or you’ll kill her.”

  Talks like this reminded Tom Tully that as hard as he was, he’d only killed a man by accident. Vinnie Colabucci talked about killing people like he was ordering carryout.

  “Yeah, well, my attorney says this is the best way to go. Get it done with real quick. If I get the kids she doesn’t get any support. We’re going to prove the adultery and a bunch of other stuff. That way she doesn’t get any alimony either. No kids, no money, no nothing.”

  “So this evaluation is going to show that you should get the kids.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who’s doing this evaluation?”

  “Some shrink. His name is Morgan Reece. I need to front the money for the whole thing. We’ve cut Serena off from any dough. We’re trying to strangle her and get her to quit.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Eight grand up front. We’ll probably get most of it back. Serena really fucked herself up today. She tried to snatch Junior and we got the whole thing on tape.”

  “This evaluation, what’s the guy looking at?”

  “I don’t know. He wrote a book about what he does. My lawyer wants me to pick it up tomorrow and study it so I’ll know what to say when he asks me questions.”

  “Any way that he’s gonna be looking into your job and where your money comes from?”

  “No way. Why should he? That doesn’t have anything to do with me being a father.”

  “Eight grand. That’s four weeks’ salary I’m advancing you. The interest on the first one’s on me. You get paid on Friday. The interest on the other three is a thousand a week. Next week instead of two, it’s three.”

  Tully figured he’d just hold onto the next few paychecks and return them to Vinnie. In a month he’d be clear.

  “No problem. This isn’t going to last that long.”

  “Hey, I know you’re good for it, Tommy.”

  “This is a done deal. A mortal lock. No way my wife’s not going to fold under the pressure.”

  “You should know. You married the broad. Keep me posted.”

  “Sure, Vinnie. No problem.”

  That said, Vinnie turned to the safe behind him and withdrew eight bundles of ten one-hundred-dollar bills each, handed them to Tully and the meeting was over.

  After Tully walked out, Vinnie shook his head. “A mortal lock. You putz. If you could pick winners, we wouldn’t own you now.” He made a note to follow up on this evaluation nonsense.

  On the way out of the club, Tully stopped in the bathroom and wrote, “For a good time call Serena or Denise. Trains leave every hour on the hour.” Then he scrawled the phone number. He repeated the message in the bathrooms of every bar o
n the block.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  At Denise’s, Serena lay on the sofa with a large ice pack against the side of her face. She was rapidly going chromatic, heavy in the blue-purple end of the spectrum. All the aspirins in the world would not keep her teeth from aching.

  Denise had given up trying to get Serena to go for X-rays. She sat nursing a drink and stared at her friend. The last few days had left her secretly reassessing her own marriage. “If that bastard presses charges, don’t worry, I’ll post bond,” she told Serena. “You won’t go to jail.”

  “Thanks.” Serena mumbled behind her icepack. “I can’t seem to do anything right. Every move I make, Tom has anticipated and cut me off. When I do do something, it’s the wrong thing. I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t accept whatever Tom wants and put an end to all this. You should have seen Tommy’s face when his dad took him away from me. I can’t let him go through that again. If I agree to stop fighting, at least I’ll have some time with the kids. When Tom gets over his anger, he’ll realize that he never wanted to take care of the children. Maybe it’ll take awhile, but I could get them back that way.”

  “Serena, you’re dreaming. You woke up to the man Tom Tully was years ago and from what you’ve told me, you tried everything under the sun to make him happy. It didn’t work. What makes you think he’ll get over his anger? Everything I’ve ever seen tells me that Tom Tully is his anger. Without it, I don’t know what else there is. I think you should hold on until this Dr. Reece starts to see you and Tom. If he’s any good, he’ll see the truth. You could do a lot better, a lot quicker.”

  “But I don’t have any money for this. The guy wants four thousand dollars just to start.”

  “How about your parents? I know you aren’t close, but if you tell them what’s been going on, I’m sure they’ll lend you some money.”

  “I hate to ask them for anything. I’ve never been anything but trouble to them.”

  “Serena, cut the ‘poor me’ crap. Your parents weren’t Ma and Pa Walton, not if half of what you told me is true. Those scars on your wrist aren’t proof of a perfect childhood. Give them a chance to do the right thing.”