by Keri Lake
I thought about shooting him, but a blade just feels more personal. More fitting for the way my wife and daughter were slaughtered in their sleep.
I come to a stop along the curb in front of my father’s unimpressive Colonial in Corona, one of the only single homes on a block that’s packed with duplexes and apartments crammed together. Where one might expect a small front yard there’s nothing but a slab of concrete, upon which my dad’s Bonneville he bought back when I was a teenager sits parked. For a man who hoards enough blood money to man his own army, he lives a rather unassuming life. By choice. He told me once, when I was just a kid, that kings without castles never fall. By staying ‘low to the ground’, as he called it, living in the same working class neighborhoods as the people he screwed over, he could keep a pulse on what was going on.
The dull buzz of a flickering street lamp is the only sound as I make my way toward the dark and quiet house. Neighboring yards stand unkempt, with toys and kids’ rusted old bikes lying about. A light dusting from an early snowfall does little to hide the patches of brown grass where dogs have undoubtedly pissed. Place hasn’t changed much.
Memories of hot summers and kids playing in the streets are quickly tamped down by the bone chilling breeze that brushes over my skin. The lingering hum in my blood is my nerves acting up again.
Last time I visited my father was just before Val and I took off to California, when I told him I wanted no part of the family business. I had no idea back then I’d be back less than a decade later to settle a score with him.
I slip through the narrow gap between my father’s house and the neighbor’s, toward the back door. For a criminal who’s amassed as many enemies as he has, his security system is a simple keypad lock on the door that, once entered, bypasses the alarm settings. Anyone watching him long enough could’ve easily learned the code by now, but I guess, when a man has been dubbed The Savage of Corona, based on his rather unconventional kills, people tend to keep their distance.
I punch the familiar code, my birthdate, into the keypad, wondering if he changed it after I took off. At the green light, I turn the knob, greeted by a cold blast of air and darkness, and enter the small mudroom. In high school, the room smelled like sweaty gym shoes and the ammonia my aunt used to scrub the floors when she came to help out my dad a few times a week. Now it smells stagnant and unused, like damp wood and mold.
The mudroom opens onto the kitchen, and I quietly pad through, taking note of only a few dishes in the sink and a lineup of pill bottles on the counter. The streetlamp outside offers just enough light through the window over the sink to make out both his name and those of the medications. Some kind of stool softener, oxycontin, a vitamin, and a few others I can’t begin to recognize. I could almost think he’s swiped them to sell, if his name weren’t printed on every bottle. A surprise, considering he always hated doctors.
The house is still on my quiet pass through the dining room, and toward the staircase, across from the front door. Avoiding the creaking first stair, I take slow and careful steps, skirting where I know the wood is old and weak, until I arrive at the top.
Somehow, the air feels thinner here, my heart pounding against my ribs as I stare down the hall toward my father’s closed bedroom door. Hand gripping the hilt of the blade I purchased my first night here, I glance down at the weapon I intend to use on my father. One of sturdy steel and jagged teeth.
My thoughts drift back to the night he came home late with blood on his hands. I was thirteen when I woke to the sound of him stumbling in drunk, washing his hands in the utility sink. I asked him what happened. Thought he’d gotten hurt, and was bleeding out from some wound. Instead, he smirked at me, before going back to washing, and said, “A man does what he has to, in order to protect his family. Even if it means killing his own.”
I had no idea what that meant. If he killed my mother and lied about how she died, or murdered the man who killed her. He didn’t say then, and as the years passed, he didn’t say much at all about his comings and goings. It was the only night in my entire childhood that he exposed me to the man he was outside of this home. The ruthless legacy he hoped to pass down to me.
I make my way toward his bedroom, pausing at the door to listen. An incessant whooshing sound bleeds through the door, like compressed air, a sound I recognize as a ventilator from my many visits to critical care units at the hospital. I turn the knob and open it to a dark and quiet room.
Scant rays of moonlight offer a luminous blanket over my father’s sleeping form, where tubes stick out of his mouth, connected to what I correctly identified as a breathing machine. Frowning, I edge toward him, fingers curled tight around the blade, and watch his chest rise and fall in time with each whoosh of the vent.
His gaunt face and white hair betrays his age, adding decades on top of the ones I missed. Bags hang from a pole beside the bed, dripping fluids into a long clear tube that disappears on the other side of him. The stench of death hangs on the air, hitting the back of my throat with sterile scents of disinfectant over the musky odor of urine and infection.
I had no idea. The last time I saw him, he had far more weight on his bones, while he sat sipping his bourbon and smoking his favorite cigar.
Aside from his lungs expanding and contracting, he doesn’t so much as flinch beneath the blade I lift to examine, and I wonder if he’ll even know he’s dying when it slices across his throat. I twist the metal in my hand, and catch the tremble that has my muscles vibrating, my chest cold with the tickle of nausea. For every inhale and exhale of the machine, I take three breaths, feeling light with nervous anticipation.
Something about this doesn’t feel right to me. I clamp my eyes closed, desperate to remember Isabella’s smile, but all I see is my father’s, as he sat in the passenger seat of his Bonneville, his arm stretched across the back of it, while I awkwardly steered the car down the street, driving for the first time at age fourteen. “That’s it, Son! Drive it like you stole it!” he chuckled with pride.
Tears blur his form, and I swallow back the memory, grinding my teeth to stoke the wrath from before.
A click from behind has me spinning me around, knife outstretched.
From the corner of shadows across the room, he darkness comes to life. The business end of a gun breaches the light first, before a figure sits forward to reveal a face I know I’ve seen before, but can’t place.
“You brought a knife to a gunfight?” The distinct clip of a Brooklyn accent only adds to my confusion.
I study the man further. “Who are you?”
“Hand over the knife.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re here to kill him?”
The urge to glance back at my father is smothered by the need to keep my eyes on this guy. “What is he to you?”
He doesn’t answer, and the slight cant of his head tells me he’s studying me with the same curiosity that I’m studying him. “These are his final hours. He asked that I give him a peaceful death.”
“You wish to kill him?” I ask.
“No. I offered to kill anyone who tried to interrupt his last moments.”
“I’m his son.”
His eye twitches with a dubious sweep of his gaze, but he doesn’t bother to lower his gun. “His son is dead, last I checked.”
“My presence must come as a disappointment, then.” I finally glance back at my father, who looks even weaker than when I first saw him this way. “What’s killing him?”
“Cancer. Stubborn bastard waited too long. He’s been going downhill fast these last couple months.”
“And you’re his bodyguard, or the man who plans to clean out his accounts after?”
With a snort, he drops his gaze and shakes his head, stuffing his gun back into its holster, and my muscles finally settle for the first time in the last ten minutes. “I don’t need his money.”
“Well, let’s see. My father never had friends, only enemies. And you don’t strike me as the type wh
o volunteers his time to help the sick and dying. So, what’s your purpose? What is he to you?”
“Same as what he is to you.”
Frowning, I rewind his words in search of clarity. “How so?”
“He’s my father.”
A burst of a laugh escapes me in my effort to understand what he just said. “Your father.” It shouldn’t surprise me, really. Good ol’ Pops certainly didn’t wait for my mother to pass before indulging in other women. I often heard her accuse him of infidelity during their many heated arguments as a kid, but he never once mentioned so much as the possibility of a brother to me.
“So, you are here to clean him out.”
“I told you. I don’t need his money. The old man took care of me and my mom. Gave us a decent place to live. Sent her money when she needed it. I’m just repaying the favor.”
“He never mentioned you. Ever.”
“He never mentioned you, either, until about ten years ago. Said he thought it’d be best if we didn’t know each other.”
“So I skipped town, and you swooped in to play house? He have you take over the business, or something?”
“I’ve got my own gig. I’m just here to carry out his final wishes.”
“He murdered my family. Ordered to have them slaughtered. He doesn’t deserve a peaceful death.”
“So, you’re here to … slit his throat? Seems a bit dramatic. Messy.” His gaze trails over me in appraisal. “You strike me as a bit more meticulous than that. Smarter. Which tells me you’re not as smart as you look, or you didn’t really have the balls to do it.”
Without a word, I spin around to the machine and grip the electrical cord.
“He didn’t do it!” His words halt my next move, and I crane my neck to see him holding the gun on me again. “He didn’t murder your family.”
“He did. I was told by the man who carried it out. He’s dead now, too, in case you’re wondering where this is going.”
“Tony sent me after Vinnie. Dumb prick stole about ten grand, killed Gus, and skipped town.”
Killed Gus? His lawyer for the last thirty some odd years was probably the closest thing my father had to a friend. “How’d he get his hands on ten grand?”
“Pop paid him to go after someone, and the punk skipped off.”
“Yeah, that someone was my wife.”
“Nah. It was someone coming after you, actually.”
“Who?”
“All I know is his people call him El Cabro Blanco and he’s known for some pretty ruthless shit. Has ties to the cartels down in Mexico. Probably lucky he didn’t find you first.”
“Vinnie killed my family. Val planned to testify against my father. He had every reason he needed to kill her.”
“You’re wrong. He offered to pay for all the kid’s treatments in exchange for your wife’s silence. Three times what that lawyer planned to give her. She agreed to it, as I understand. Vinnie was sent to deliver the deal to her, too.”
Shock settles over me as I twist to look back at my father, trying to imagine him willing to give Val anything, as angry as he was when I left New York. “No, that’s not him. He’s neither charitable, nor forgiving.”
“You’re right. He isn’t. But neither would he slaughter his own family.”
“I’m pretty certain he’s the reason my mother’s dead.”
“The same way you’re the reason your wife is dead.”
The tension in my muscles sends me to my feet, and I flip the knife into a stabbing position, teeth gritted with anger. “Maybe I’ll whet my blade with your bones, first.”
“I meant no disrespect. I’m just pointing out that your name’s a curse.”
“Thought it was your name, as well.”
“Probably be dead if Tony hadn’t insisted on my mother’s family name for me.”
It’s then I recognize his face. “You’re a … MMA fighter, or something, right? Machete something.”
“Mac,” he answers in an unimpressive tone. “MacConnell’s my mom’s name.”
From what little I’ve seen of him while living on the west coast, he has a huge following here and fought in some decent-sized venues. Doesn’t seem likely that he’d have time, or interest, in playing gopher for my father. “You seem pretty well-established. Why would he send you after Vinnie?”
“Family first. No matter what. I came from the streets. It’s in my blood. Chances are, I’ll die there, too.”
Exactly what I hoped to avoid in my life, though I’m sure he’s beyond those life lessons to bother with a lecture. “Where do I find this El Cabro Blanco?”
“No idea. Guy’s like a ghost with all the stories about him.”
Vinnie would’ve undoubtedly known where to find him. But Vinnie’s dead.
I don’t know what compelled my father to send Vinnie to make any deals with Val, but I guess that’s the nature of betrayal—you don’t always see it coming. “Can I have a minute?”
He seems to chew on the inside of his lip and flicks his fingers at me. “Knife.”
With a small bit of reluctance, I hand it over, and watch him back out of the room before closing the door behind himself.
Huffing out a breath, I twist around to face my old man once more. All these years, I hated him. I did everything in my power to avoid becoming like him, moving as far away from this place as I could possibly get. Mac is right about one thing, though: my family’s name is a curse. There’s no getting away from it. Wrath winds itself around every letter of the Savio name, strangling the life out of it, just as Father Vicio said back when I was young. It’s a poison I can’t escape, because as of tonight, I’ve just added another to my kill list. Whoever Cabro Blanco is, he’s just acquired a new enemy.
I don’t know if what Mac told me about my father is true. All I know is I can’t conjure a single reason he’d lie. Perhaps my father did try to intervene, to spare my family. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.
Maybe I never really knew him, at all.
I kneel at the side of my father’s bed and bow my head in prayer. I’ve no right to offer him any measure of absolution after the sins I’ve committed, and those I intend to commit, but it isn’t in me to let this hate go on beyond death. I offer him the Prayer of Commendation and take his cold, wrinkled hand in mine. “For so many years, I hated you more than I loved you, but I hope you’ve found peace.” My words fail to breach his slumber, as if I’m already talking to his corpse. “You would’ve loved Isabella. She had Mom’s eyes.” Through tears, I smile, recalling moments when she lay in my arms, staring up at me, as I struggled to put her to sleep. “And her feisty temper.” Rubbing my thumb over his, I sniff and keep my eyes focused on the task. “I forgive you for not being the perfect father. You didn’t come from a particularly good life, but at least you tried.”
There’s no movement.
Nothing.
Yet, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders as I push to my feet. I don’t want to be here when he takes his last breath.
I open the door and find Mac finishing a cigarette, which he stamps out in an ashtray set on a table that’s butted up to the wall. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to look through some of his old books before I go. See if I can figure out who this goat man is.”
“Don’t bother me any.” Mac shrugs, and glances back toward the bedroom. “Don’t think he’d give a shit at this point.”
“You, uh … need anything?” I ask, as he hands me back the blade.
“Nah, I got people lined up when he flatlines.”
“Why didn’t you kill me the moment I walked in? Why let me get close to him?”
He pushes up from the chair and straightens his neatly-pressed slacks. “Pops told me only one person knew that code, and there wasn’t a cold chance in hell he’d use it. Figured it must be snowing in hell somewhere.”
With a snort, I shake my head. “I’m not going to stick around. I’ve made my peace.”
He gives
a nod, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “And the funeral?”
“Unless I can assist in some way, I’d prefer to avoid it. Most think I’m dead, and I’d like to keep it that way.” I hold out my hand, not surprised by his tight grip when he returns the handshake. “Nice meeting you, Mac.”
“Yeah, same. If you’re in town again sometime, hit me up. I’ll get you front row seats to a fight.”
“Thanks. If you’re ever on the west coast, feel free to hit me up too. I’ll, uh … get you front row seats for Sunday Mass.”
“You a priest, or something?”
Good question. “Something.”
He rubs a hand down his face and shakes his head. “Sorry. Wouldn’t have held a gun on you. Or cussed so much.”
“I’m a priest. Not a saint.”
“Right. Well, it was good meeting you, Damon.” The corner of his lips kick up to a half smile. “I’d call you Father, but that’d sound kinda weird.”
“Damon’s fine. Take care.” I pat his arm on the way toward the staircase and make my way down to my father’s office.
The smell of leather and cigars hangs like a cloud of memories, as I step through the door and flick on the light, taking me back over ten years into my past. I remember sneaking into his office to stare at the picture of my mother on his desk. The only place he ever kept her pictures in the house. For hours, I spun in his swivel chair, holding the picture frame to my chest.
It’s also where I first set my eyes on Val, as she sat hunched over his books.
I never met the offspring of my father’s business partners, until her, and I remember how strange it felt to see a young woman weeding through his dirty laundry. Embarrassing, almost.
I cross the room to the file cabinet, where the key to his safe is tucked away.
My father wasn’t stupid enough to have anything but legitimate documents visible. The rest was hidden, locked up in his corrupt little fireproof cabinet.
Weeding through folders, I find the key toward the back of the drawer, in its usual place where I saw Val store it hundreds of times, and I carry it toward the closet across the room. I kneel on the floor and remove the banker’s boxes and golf equipment stored there. Once it’s cleared, I raise the carpeted panel, which looks like nothing more than a closet floor, and find the safe set inside.