Embers & Ash

by T. M. Goeglein

  He caught himself then, wiping away the vile grin, and his true fear became clear—he was mortally terrified that someone would realize how delighted he was that his parents were dead, and that he would soon ascend to his father’s position in the Outfit.

  “Sick son of a bitch,” I said quietly.

  “Please . . . please . . . ,” he whimpered, as I stared even harder into his eyes.

  “Get this straight,” I said. “You won’t tell anyone what you know about my family. It goes with you to your grave, which will happen sooner than you think if you ever threaten me again, with words or a weapon.”

  “Yes, oh god, yes!” he cried.

  “Every pair of goggles, every pair of contact lenses, you’ll personally destroy them. Crush and torch every single one until there’s not a crimson sliver left.”

  “I promise,” he whimpered. “Just please stop!”

  “Finally, you’ll be present at the sit-down tonight and you’ll abide by my decision. In fact, you’ll be my most loyal supporter,” I said. “Whatever happens to you after I name Greta boss, you brought it on yourself.”

  Tyler wagged his head in assent, mewling like a tortured kitten, and I blinked once, setting him free. He leaned against a table, nose leaking blood, and slid to the floor.

  It was two o’clock when I left the kitchen—an hour until I had to be at the bakery.

  The bartender had finished with the lemon and was stuffing olives with blue cheese. As I passed by, he said politely, “Have a nice day, counselor.”

  According to Ms. Ishikawa, there are 229,000 words in the English language.

  I couldn’t think of one that applied less to this day than nice.

  29

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I WAS ON AN EL TRAIN, and thirty minutes after that, standing half a block from Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries on Taylor Street. This time Coffinetto’s Funeral Home had a new sign in its window, reading NOW MANAGED BY R.I.P. CO. It seemed like there were fewer Italian grandmothers monitoring the street from behind lace curtains and more slim hipsters and baby strollers. I could’ve been mistaken. My mind wasn’t really on the neighborhood.

  It was on the bakery, where I could see the glowing neon sign.

  The place had been locked up and dark for a month. The buzzing pink light was a signal—Greta was inside, waiting for me.

  A tap on my shoulder made me jump. Doug said, “Easy. It’s just me. I’m also a little early. Too nervous to wait.” He was dressed in jeans and his Blackhawks jersey, baggy over his slim frame. “So what did you learn from Tyler?” I explained quickly as Doug listened, shaking his head. “It’s always the good-looking ones,” he said. “Think they can get away with anything.”

  “He thought wrong,” I said. “Where’s the Cadillac?”

  “On a side street, where it won’t draw so much attention. A vintage car is one thing. A vintage car that looks like it drove through a firing range is another.”

  “But it runs . . .”

  “It’s a monster,” he said, looking at the bakery.

  “You have the gold brick?”

  “In here,” he said, handing me the backpack. “Where do you want me to wait?”

  “I don’t. I want you to come with me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I need you to walk my mom and Lou out of there, quickly. But you should know, Greta threatened you. The damage you did to Czar Bar.”

  “Plan B,” he said, looking across the street. “Scared?”

  “Suspicious.”

  “You have every right,” he said.

  “This is the big one, Doug, which means it’s the most dangerous. Greta wants to be boss, and wants ultimate power even more. Only I can give them to her,” I said. “My mom, Lou, you, you’re all disposable. Understand?”

  “Yeah,” he said gravely.

  “If you don’t want to go in there—I mean, it’s dangerous, you know?”

  He shook his head. “I’m all in. You know that.”

  Here I was again, putting Doug into another precarious situation. I felt guilty and selfish at the same time, but selfishness won. I needed him, and besides, I knew he wouldn’t turn back. “Let’s do it,” I said, and led him across Taylor Street. The bakery door was unlocked and I pushed through, jingling the bell. Murmuring voices died in the front room. The pinkish glow from the Rispoli & Sons sign gave off enough light to see Greta perched on the counter, ankles crossed, smoking a cigarette. She wore a shoulder holster filled with a handgun. One of her guys loomed beside her. He was tall, dark, and ugly, eyes covered by goggles, sawed-off shotgun on his shoulder. He grunted in Russian, sneering at me, and Greta chuckled through her nose. “Hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,” she said. “I kept Buddy’s keys, just in case.”

  “Where’s my mom and my brother?”

  “In the kitchen,” she said. “Where’s the gold?”

  I handed her the backpack. She opened it and removed the yellow bar, inspecting its engraving, feeling its heft. “It’s right here, in my hands,” she said, “and I still don’t trust you. You’re taking me to where you got this.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes at Doug, blowing smoke through sticky red lips. “You did a lot of damage, you little shit.” She nodded at Ugly and he marched across the room, patted me down, and then threw Doug against the wall, slapping at his arms and legs.

  “They’re clean,” he grunted, sounding like deer klen.

  Greta slid from the counter, smoothed her jacket, and aimed her crimson eyes at me. “The deal has changed. Wait . . . it’s the same as it was originally. You can have your mother, there’s not much left of her anyway. But Lou stays with me after all.”

  “No,” I said, moving toward her until Ugly stopped me with the shotgun.

  “Maybe you’ll serve me willingly if I free him. Maybe you won’t,” she said. “I once asked Buddy why his father, who could control any man with ghiaccio furioso, would take orders from the boss. Why wouldn’t the counselor use cold fury to defy the boss and enrich himself? Do you know what his answer was?”

  “Fear.”

  Greta nodded. “If you used those blue eyes on him, how would he use the tentacles of the Outfit to hurt you? But Enzo’s fear was larger and less selfish. He was terrified of what the Outfit would do to his family. Something you didn’t have to worry about,” she said, “until they reappeared.”

  “I won’t use it on you,” I said. “You have the lenses. I can’t.”

  “But I need you to feel the fear, every day, that Lou could die at any moment. Call it an incentive to do your job properly,” she said, crushing the cigarette under a stiletto heel. “I wouldn’t have brought him today, but I wanted you to feel for yourself how much he hates you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Let’s see,” she said. “Bring them out!”

  The kitchen door swung open. The first person through was another of Greta’s men—short, thick, and red-faced, a goggled fireplug in need of a shave, carrying a shotgun. His gaze flicked from me to Greta. She nodded, dipping her peroxided head.

  A ghost drifted into the room.

  It was as if someone had taken an eraser to my mother, fading the silken blackness from her hair, the olive tone from her smooth skin, the life from her eyes. She was barely past forty but, like my dad, now appeared so much older—body bent and shrunken, moving with a shuffle. The beautiful hands that had stroked my hair were bony fists, held out before her in steel cuffs; the jagged red scar where her index finger had been sliced off by Juan Kone was sickly visible. She was dressed in a pair of stained pants and an oversized sweater with gaping holes—Dumpster-wear for an expendable person.

  “Teresa. Teresa!” Greta barked. My mom shuddered, lifting her head guardedly, scared of what she’d see. “Say hello to your daughter.�
��

  My mom turned toward me, her face twisted in confusion until, slowly, her eyes widened. “Sara Jane?” she mumbled. “My . . . daughter. Darling . . .”

  “Mom,” I said hoarsely, flooded with half a year’s worth of terror and love. I pushed past Ugly’s shotgun and went to her, folding my arms around the frail, broken apparition. No cold fury coursed through me, no flickering flame; only pervasive sorrow, and regret at how terribly I’d failed her, too. Her bluish lips grazed mine, she touched my forehead with hers, and then she tried clumsily to reach me with her bound hands.

  “Take off the cuffs,” Greta said. “She couldn’t harm a flea.”

  Fireplug unlocked her wrists and my mother pulled me into a weak embrace. When our heads were together, she whispered, “Lou . . . isn’t . . . what . . .”

  “That’s enough,” Greta said. Fireplug yanked us apart and gripped my mom’s arm tightly. Greta grinned at me and said, “Louis!”

  The door swung open and my brother strode out, or at least a version of him did. This Lou was rangier than the thirteen-year-old I’d last seen at the Ferris wheel, now in the process of taking on the long tallness of a Rispoli. His head was shaved so that only a black five o’clock shadow dusted his skull. A wave of shock rolled through me at the Soviet red star earring, hammer-and-sickle ink on his neck, crosses tattooed across the knuckles that gripped a .44 Magnum pistol—and worse, the crimson eyes trained on me. It was a piercing look that could cut diamonds. He moved toward me with a cockiness I’d seen in the most seasoned of enforcers, muttering, “Sara Jane . . .”

  “Lou,” was all I could say before he spit in my face. It oozed down my face but I stood still, transfixed by horror.

  “Our savior,” he crowed, and Greta laughed with him. “Our failure is more like it. The needles, the knives. Juan Kone ripped us to pieces! And what did you do? Betrayed us! Kept yourself safe by serving as counselor-at-large!”

  “That’s not true. You don’t understand—”

  “We were his lab rats while you hid inside the Outfit! You were supposed to hate it, like I did!”

  “Lou, don’t,” my mom whispered.

  He moved so close I could feel him vibrating. “You left us for dead, counselor, and we would’ve been if it wasn’t for her,” he said, turning his head abruptly toward Greta.

  “No, I was there, at the lab . . .”

  “Our true savior.” He turned an absent gaze on our mother. “You want her. Take her,” he said, facing me again. “My life is with Aunt Greta.”

  Finding the voice of the older sister who protected and never lied to him, I said, “You’re a hostage to her and nothing else. It’s the drugs—psychotropics, Lou—strong, deadly drugs. She brainwashed you to hate me and to make you dependent on her. Look at your arms.” His eyes quivered, flicking down to the needle marks and bruised veins lining his skin. “Why does she give you drugs? Think . . .”

  “He knows the reason,” Greta said. “The damage done by Juan Kone has to be repaired, isn’t that right, Louis? It’s for your own good. Without it, you’d die.”

  “I’d die,” he repeated, teeth clenched.

  “Think! Use that big brain! I would never leave you for dead! You know me. I would never have served as counselor unless I was forced to!”

  “Except you did,” Greta said. “His place is with me now, with us.”

  “They killed your dog.”

  The room turned as one to Doug. I was about to tell him to be quiet for his own safety but I swallowed my words, understanding his lie. He was trying to drill down to the part of my brother that hadn’t been manipulated by Greta—that still felt something stronger than the drugs.

  “Harry?” Doug said nervously, beginning to shake. “Remember?”

  A tremor crossed Lou’s shoulders and he moved his head oddly, as if a fly was pestering his ear. “My dog . . . what the hell do you know about Harry?”

  “I know bravery and love. I know what it meant to have him as a friend.”

  “Louis, that bastard drove into Czar Bar,” Greta said. “Let’s do it Russian style. Cut him.”

  Lou pulled a knife from his belt and crossed the room in three steps. “Where?”

  “Start with his nose,” Greta said, “in memory of Vlad.”

  In that split second, I saw my friend’s eyes change and I heard the confidence he injected into the lie as he said, “He’s the one—Vlad. He killed Harry. Held him underwater and drowned him, left his body at the bottom of the Chicago River. You knew Vlad. He’d do that to a dog, wouldn’t he? He loved to torture.”

  Without lowering the knife, Lou aimed his eyes at me. They were distant but the pinpoints had expanded, drawing in light.

  “It’s true. Every word,” I said, and his gaze lingered, inspecting me.

  “Vlad laughed about it, didn’t he, Sara Jane?” Doug said, glancing from the knife pointed in his face to me. “They all had a big laugh about it. I bet Aunt Greta laughed the loudest.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” she said, bored. “I’ve changed my mind. Shoot him.”

  Lou put the knife away and lifted the .44. I lunged, but Ugly did, too, ramming the shotgun deep into my stomach. I gasped, struggling to remain on my feet, and then the same shotgun was aimed at my head. Lou moved the pistol to Doug’s forehead, saying, “Harry is my friend. You didn’t even know him.”

  “Knew him and loved him,” Doug said, in a tone that was flooded with the truth. “He’s dead. Our friend is dead. All that’s left of him . . .”

  “Do it, Louis,” Greta said, lighting a cigarette. “Now.”

  “Is this,” Doug said, pulling back his sleeve.

  Lou’s brow furrowed, seeing the dog collar with Harry etched in bronze resting on Doug’s wrist. For a second, he looked like my little brother again, the one who was uncertain to the point of fear about walking into the first day of preschool. His gun hand began to tremble.

  “Louis,” Greta said, almost a sigh, “it was just a damn dog.”

  “We’re Rispolis, Lou,” I said. “We stick together—”

  “Even when we’re not together,” he said quietly, turning, eyes pinned to mine.

  “Filthy little dog.” Fireplug chuckled. “Who cares if it’s dead?”

  “I do,” Lou said, and he turned and fired twice into Fireplug’s chest, knocking him off his feet, the Russian dead before he hit the floor. And then the room was a contained whirlwind as Ugly shot at Lou, ripping a hole in his arm, and Greta put her gun on me while another explosion echoed through the bakery. And then all was still and quiet.

  Lou bicycled on the floor, writhing in pain.

  Doug stood against the wall, face ashen, chest heaving.

  My mom held Fireplug’s shotgun, both barrels smoking. Ugly examined the hole in his stomach and said, “I’m . . . dead,” before collapsing in a pile.

  With a clatter, my mom dropped the rifle. “He shot Lou,” she whispered.

  “I’ll shoot your daughter if anyone—!” Greta screamed, grabbing me by the hair, reminding me of Elzy, and I hammered my skull into her mouth. She stumbled toward the window as the back of her head crunched into the neon sign.

  What followed was disgusting and riveting, anchoring me to the floor.

  First came the pop of glass tubing breaking and then the hiss of scalding neon, and then Greta’s otherworldly shriek as her hair smoked and her skin sizzled like bacon in a hot pan. She lunged away from the window, retaining the presence of mind to point the gun at me, her other hand pressed to her head. “My beautiful . . . hair,” she rasped. Her shaking fingers uncurled and I gasped, seeing the reflection in the window—a screaming Rispoli R seared into her flesh. She flung herself at me, punching the gun barrel into my cheek, screaming, “Dead. You’re all dead!”

  “You’ll never find ultimate power,” I said. “It will die w
ith me.” The stench of melted skin and hair assaulted my nose, my guts, but didn’t make me half as sick as the unhinged look she flung at my mom, Lou, and Doug. “Kill them and you’ll have to kill me, too,” I said. “The only thing that will get me out of this bakery is a coroner.”

  She jerked me in Doug’s direction and said, “Follow us. I dare you.”

  “Doug,” I grunted, as Greta yanked me by the hair, “go.” He looked at her and back at me, nodding. “Lou’s arm—get the drugs out of him . . . both of them.”

  “Turn. Walk,” she said, and I did, gun in my spine, out the door and down the sidewalk. She shoved me across the seat of a cargo van, into the driver’s side. “Steer this thing anywhere other than directly to ultimate power and I will blow your brains out,” she said, cradling the back of her head. I dared a glance, saw moisture in her eyes, and she screamed, “Watch the road!” To herself, as if I wasn’t there, she mumbled, “Damn you Rispolis all the way to hell.”

  Cursing us wasn’t necessary.

  I sped toward the Green Mill thinking of my parents, Lou, poor Uncle Buddy.

  We’d all been in hell for a long, long time.

  30

  WHEN IT COMES TO A BUSINESS, ESPECIALLY A bar, owners tend to lock the back door in a way that could withstand military invasion. No one ever really thinks that a break-in will occur in the front, in broad daylight, where anyone could witness it.

  It was four o’clock on a normal Friday afternoon.

  I had to be at the Gray Line subway stop in precisely one hour and three minutes.

  Greta and I stood outside the Green Mill, which didn’t open until six.

  People milled around on the sidewalk doing what they do in every big city in the world, smoking and spitting, waiting for the bus, pointedly minding their own business. I still had the bent metal clip I’d used in the Willis Tower and I worked quickly, jimmying the lock. No one looked twice. We stepped inside the empty club. A thin wire over the door led to an alarm box, where a tiny red signal was flashing. I knew (from the notebook, of course) that I had only seconds to disable it before a signal was sent to the security company. A quick flick of Doug’s lighter burned the wire in two and the signal went dead. I slid it back into my pocket, thanking it for being the luckiest little gadget in the world.