“It’s a deal,” the mule said, leaning back again and shutting her eyes.
The man returned to his paperback thriller.
The mule slept through the remainder of the flight into New York’s LaGuardia Airport, content and confident.
A dead baby held warm in her arms.
13
BOBBY SCARPONI, SHIRTLESS, a hand towel draped around his neck, stared into the mirror. The exposed bulb just above the hanging glass cast the small bathroom in a series of shadowy contrasts. He ran a hand along the red scars covering the upper part of his chest and running into his neck and cheek. They were hard and crusty to the touch, a constant reminder of the flames that had changed the course of his life.
Rev. Jim lived in Queens, a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a private home owned by a carpenter and his wife who seemed to be foolishly too young for him. It was the kind of apartment usually reserved for a young man starting out. It was not meant as a final stop.
Rev. Jim walked out of the bathroom, passed the small kitchen, and stopped by the open window near his bed, thin white drapes flapping in the wind. He stared down at the quiet street below, filled with parked cars and lit by the glow from a series of houses similar to the one in which he lived. It was how he spent most of his nights, his mind crowded with visions of his mother dying by his side, flames and heat surrounding his body, his mouth too seared for him to scream.
He was afraid of lying down to sleep. It only brought the visions to life, causing him to wake up bathed in sweat and tears, having ripped and torn at his sheets and skin. So he rarely slept. Rarely rested. Rarely escaped the hell that was his past, present, and future.
Rev. Jim had often thought of suicide, but knew if he was ever really going to go that route, it would have happened after his mother’s death. Rev. Jim was not the kind of man to go out with a note, a bag over his head, and a rope around his neck. He was a fighter and needed to find a better way out.
Boomer’s plan seemed just the route he sought.
He turned from the window, went over to the refrigerator, pulled out a cold can of Budweiser, popped it open, and took two long slurps. He leaned his back against a cold wall and reached for the phone, dialing a familiar number with his free hand. He let it ring eight times before he hung up. His father had always been a sound sleeper; age had only made that sleep deeper.
Rev. Jim finished the beer, tossed the empty into a silver trash can near the window, and reached for the phone again. The voice on the other end responded on the third ring. He heard Boomer grumble a hello and waited. He took a deep breath, eyes searching past the houses across the way, gripping the receiver hard enough to crush it.
“I’m in,” he finally said. Boomer stayed silent on the other end. “Good night.”
Rev. Jim hung up the phone, walked slowly back toward the open window, and waited for the morning sun to arrive and bring with it a small sense of relief.
• • •
THE MULE STEPPED out of the cab and looked up at the four-story Manhattan brownstone, the infant still cradled in her arms. She walked slowly up the front steps as the cab sped off into the New York night. She heard the dead bolt on the front door click open as an icy blast of winter air snapped against the edges of her skirt. A large man in a red silk shirt and black leather pants stood braced next to the door. He nodded a greeting as she went past.
“Which way?” the mule asked, her eyes catching a glimpse of the exposed .44 semiautomatic.
“Take the hall steps,” the man said, locking the door and turning his bulk toward the mule. “The second door on your left.”
“Everybody there?” She moved toward the center hall, her heels clacking on the slick hardwood floor.
“Everybody that needs to be,” the man said, disappearing around a corner, heading into a game room with a full bar and pool table.
The mule took the steps in a rush, gripping the baby with both hands, eager to get on with her task. She turned a sharp corner at the head of the stairwell and nudged open the second door in the hall. She walked in and rested the still baby on a large wood table, next to six hefty stacks of hundred-dollar bills, each wrapped with thin strips of white twine. Four men, sitting in hard-backed chairs spaced throughout the oak-paneled, book-lined room, stood and joined her by the table.
“Any problems?” Paolo, the smallest of the four men, asked.
“The guy next to me smelled,” the mule said. “And the food was horrible. Other than that, no hitches.”
“How much time do you have?” Paolo offered a cigarette from a half-empty pack of Marlboros.
“Flight to Atlanta leaves in two hours,” the mule said, refusing the cigarette. “I make the exchange at the airport and catch a connecting to L.A.”
“Can I have a piece of your frequent flyer miles?” Paolo asked.
“Wish I had some to give,” the mule said. “Each flight’s under a different name.”
“So much for the perks.” Paolo turned from the mule and nodded at the three men huddling around the cash. “Ready the baby and the money,” he said to them in a rougher tone than he took with the mule. “We’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“How long?” one of the three asked, already taking off his jacket and rolling back the sleeves of a black shirt.
“Thirty minutes at the most,” Paolo said, leading the mule by the arm, walking her out of the room and shutting the door softly.
• • •
JOE SILVESTRI THREW one pillow against the bedroom wall. Another clipped the shuttered windows and fell against a bureau lamp, knocking it harmlessly to its side. “Is this what you been doin’ all this fuckin’ time?” he shouted. His anger was directed at his wife, Mary, who sat under a pile of blankets, her flannel nightgown buttoned to the collar. “Cookin’ up crazy schemes on disability night?”
“Stop yelling, please,” Mary said. She kept a tight rein on her reaction and her emotions under control. “You’re going to wake up Frankie.”
“Almost losin’ your life wasn’t enough for you?” Joe continued to shout, stomping around the small bedroom in bare feet and red Jockey shorts. “Almost leaving him without a mother wasn’t enough to make you wanna turn your back for good? And almost leaving me, not that you give a shit, should at least be worth a little something after all these years.”
“All of that is important.” Mary kept her eyes on her husband, understanding his need to vent, trying not to let her words cut deeper into the frustration he harbored over never having the kind of wife he so much wanted. “Don’t think for a minute that it isn’t.”
“If you do this, Mary, you gotta know it’s over between you and me,” Joe said, stopping at the edge of the bed. “I’ve lived through a lot with you, but I won’t live with this. You lookin’ to get yourself buried, get somebody else to help you do it.”
“Look at me, Joe,” Mary said, trying not to make her words sound like a plea for help. “I’ve got scars up and down my body. I can’t even look at myself in the shower without crying. I work at a job I hate when I’m there and hate thinking about when I’m not.”
“Not many people get shot selling insurance policies.” Joe spit the words out and sat on the side of the bed away from his wife. “And they like you there. You’re doing good work for good people.”
“It’s not what I want,” Mary said softly. “And it’s not what I need.”
“Going out on a suicide job, that’s what you want? And getting yourself killed and breaking the law while you’re at it, that’s what you need?”
“I’m dead now, Joe,” Mary said, pushing back the covers and sliding across the bed to sit next to him. “You have to be able to see that. To know that. I’m never going to be the kind of wife you want. Especially not the way I am now.”
“You don’t need to tell me.” Joe stared down at the violet carpet. “I learned that a long time ago.”
“I need to try and get back to being the kind of cop I was,” Mary said. “Fo
r no other reason than to feel alive again.”
“What about us?” Joe asked, turning to face her. “What about me and Frankie? And what about me and you?”
“I love you both very much,” Mary said. “But I love you both for what you are and who you are. That’s all I’m asking from you in return. After all these years, you’ve got to know I’m not someone who keeps house. And I sure as hell am not someone who sells insurance.”
“And you’re not someone who can cook worth a shit either.” Joe shook his head and forced a smile, putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“I’m a cop, Joe.” Mary rested her head on his chest. “Like it or not, you fell in love with a cop.”
“And I’m still in love with one,” Joe said. “No matter what you might think.”
“Then let me do this,” Mary said in a whisper. “Please.”
“You want my okay for you to go out and get yourself killed.” Joe sighed. “That’s an awful lot to ask from anybody. Let alone your husband.”
“The only person I’d ever ask is my husband,” Mary said. “I’m asking you to let me go out and feel what it’s like to be alive again.”
“Who tells Frankie?” Joe asked after a long silence.
“We will,” Mary said with a slow smile. “You and me. In the morning, while you’re making us all pancakes.”
“Looks like I’m back to doing the cooking now too,” Joe said.
“And it looks like I’m back to being a cop,” Mary said, leaning against her pillow, holding Joe’s hand and bringing him along.
“Don’t die on me, Mary,” Joe said. “That’s all I’ll ask from you.”
“That’s a big step over what you used to ask,” Mary said, a full smile spread across her face now.
“What was that?” Joe said, slipping under the blankets alongside his wife.
“Not to burn the eggs,” Mary said.
In the shadows of the quiet room, they held each other tight, kissed, and slid farther under the blankets, finding warmth and comfort with each touch.
• • •
THE MULE SPOTTED Erica standing with her back to a newsstand, a small cardboard sign printed with the word STEVENS across it. She walked over, gave the woman a quick smile and a nod, and handed her the baby boy.
“Your plane’s at the next terminal,” Erica said. “Two stops on the tram.” She was dressed in a black pants suit, the jacket with too much shoulder padding. A thin shawl rested around her neck. She wore open-heeled slides and favored her right leg when she walked. She carried the baby in the crook of her left arm, more like a sack than an infant.
“I hate airports like these,” the mule said, picking up the pace, scanning the state-of-the-art mall interior of Atlanta/Fulton County with a disdainful look. “It’s like being inside a spaceship.”
“You get used to it,” Erica said, shrugging her shoulders and bouncing the baby higher up against her chest. “And you can shop while you wait for your plane.”
“You should go,” the mule told her, waiting for the doors to the computerized train to open. “Just in case you get caught in traffic.”
“Anything you want me to tell Leo?” Erica asked.
“That I need a vacation,” the mule said without a trace of a smile. “They’ve run me ragged these last three weeks. I can barely stand up.”
“We’re in the middle of a gold rush,” Erica said. “There’s too much money to make to let up now.”
“We won’t be making anything if we slip up,” the mule said. “And that’s all that can happen when we’re this tired.”
The train pulled into the stop area and a prerecorded voice alerted passengers as to their destination. The mule stepped aboard, grabbed a handrail, and looked at Erica, giving her a tired smile.
“I’ll be back Tuesday,” she said. “By then Leo should have a new baby for me. This one’s starting to get more than a little ripe.”
The mule turned her back as the doors closed, leaving behind two late-arriving passengers.
Erica stayed on the platform and watched her go, holding the baby and the $125,000 in cash sewn into the empty cavity of his body.
• • •
GERONIMO SAT ON a damp block of wood on the deserted beach, listening to a series of ocean waves batter the soft sands of the shoreline. His legs were crossed and his arms folded; his head was tilted up toward the star-packed sky. A rush of cold wind blew through the back of his dark blue sweater and sent thick strands of his hair slapping across the front of his face.
This small strip of land had become Geronimo’s favorite spot, a private beach nestled quietly away from the large clapboard homes of Ocean Parkway, down a side ramp from the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway. It was his refuge, a place to come, hole up and clear his head, re-energized by fresh salt air and marsh breezes. A place where he could feel safe and disconnected from the pressures of his life.
Geronimo was slow to recover from the multiple wounds he had suffered at the drop of a grenade from the hands of a madman. On a Brooklyn street, surrounded by caked blood, streams of smoke, and frightened screams, he had left behind a shattered stomach, chunks of his liver and kidney, and all of his small intestine. The months of rehab were painful and frustrating, and a man with less inner strength would have found it easy to quit. But Geronimo had actually thrived under the weight of such a battle, especially one so personal, and he made it his business to come out of it as whole a person as possible.
Barely able to digest even soft foods and cool liquids, he had to learn how to eat all over again. The early surgeries to piece his stomach back together were ineffective and painful. Still Geronimo would not give in, mixing weekly visits to an army of specialists with nightly sessions with a Native American mystic whose form of medicine knew no age.
Geronimo believed in the healing ways of the past and the recuperative powers of long-dormant ghosts. That was one of many reasons he spent so much time sitting in his private corner of beach, alone in darkness, lost in the shadow of the stars.
He took to his healing by walking in small steps and casting his will to the whim of past warriors, gaining from the study of their lives the strength he currently lacked and the force of spirit he had nearly abandoned after his disability.
When he wasn’t being probed by technicians or losing himself to the fog of the mystic, he stayed to himself and prayed to the gods of his mother. His prayers were more than pleas for renewed health. They were soulful cries that he be made one again and be allowed to die as he was meant to die, as he was destined to die.
As a warrior.
Down deep in his heart he knew it was an impossible request. His future looked to be as numb and dull as the emptiness he felt in the pit of his stomach. It would be a mournful life devoid of action and confrontation.
He missed those tense moments with the instrument, the precious rare seconds when he was alone, only a slight twitch of the hand away from instant death. Those hours spent in front of a bomb, time slipping before him with each tick of the clock, were the hours Geronimo felt fully alive and in total control. It was the period during which he felt most united with the spirit of his ancestors. And he would give anything to experience that feeling again. That was what he prayed for.
It was a desperate prayer from a lonely man.
It was not until his dinner with Boomer, in a restaurant whose food he couldn’t eat, that Geronimo realized his desperate prayer might be answered.
• • •
LUCIA HELD OUT her empty glass and stared across the ocean as a young waiter nervously poured from a stainless-steel pitcher filled with perfectly chilled martinis. She was stretched out on a blue lounge chair on the sun-drenched front deck of the Maraboo, a sixty-five-foot yacht her fourth husband, Gerald Carney, had bought for her as a wedding present. A black two-piece bathing suit revealed skin tanned the color of toast. Light beads of sweat dotted her thin arms, shapely legs, and flat, muscular stomach.
The boat was anchored
three miles off the Bermuda coast and carried a full working crew of seven—one waiter, one chef, a nanny, and four armed bodyguards. The nanny was there to care for Gerald Carney’s eight-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. The girl, Alicia, sat on a white beach towel and played to Lucia’s left, dressed in a polka dot swimsuit and surrounded by a gaudy array of Barbie dolls.
Gerald Carney sat across from his wife, legs crossed, white sailor shirt hanging over a plump stomach. Carney was sixty-one years old, a retired investment banker born to money and bred to silence. He met Lucia in the spring of 1980 when she came to his Manhattan office seeking advice on how best to shelter her cash flow. He knew her business was drugs and had heard rumors about the hand she played in disposing of her previous husbands. But Gerald Carney had dealt with all breeds in his four decades of investing, laundering, and skimming money. His nefarious clients had made him a very wealthy man.
Carney and Lucia were quick to move their financial conversation from his office to a nearby bar and then, within weeks, to the bedroom of his Park Avenue penthouse apartment. They married on the same rainy afternoon that Carney’s divorce from an East Side socialite was finalized. They chose to keep separate residences, Lucia more comfortable working out of her central bases of Miami and Sedona, while Carney kept to his Manhattan-Los Angeles axis. He asked few questions about her business and she asked none about his. But she grew to trust him in all matters financial. In less than a year’s time, Lucia saw her hidden stash of five million dollars nearly double. Her new husband never met any of her associates and she was quick to shun the role of hostess on those rare occasions when they were in the same town. Theirs was a business partnership that made room for occasional moments of passion.
It was the kind of marriage Lucia had always dreamed about.
A fairy tale come true.
• • •
THE CROSS BAY Lanes were shut down for the night, outside lights dimmed, front doors bolted. Inside, the large Bud sign above the bar cast a green glow across the lanes, all of them dark except for one. A corner jukebox sent out a haunting Ry Cooder instrumental.
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