I do this thing all the time now where I cry in really short, super-explosive bursts that come out of nowhere, happen anywhere and everywhere, and disappear in seconds.
First my face gets itchy and then my eyes feel fat.
And then, kaboom! I’m sobbing, shaking, and my nose is running.
And then I blink, and it’s over.
If I’m at school and I feel it coming on, I duck into a restroom or empty classroom and clap a hand over my face, muting myself until it’s done. If I’m all alone, however, I try to indulge it-I try to keep it going so I can weep deeper and deeper until I’m all cried out. But no matter how hard I try to prolong it, it always passes quickly, like a short but fervent tropical storm. Something inside my emotional core understands that while I need to expel pressure, completely dropping my guard is way too dangerous.
The first time it happened was on the subway after I escaped from Uncle Buddy.
All that I had seen and learned at the bakery was too much to process.
My brain went numb trying to reconcile it with reality, and failed.
When I blinked around the car, I realized that I’d been riding for hours. The train had risen from the tunnel and was clacking on elevated tracks. My nose itched and then I doubled over with tears, crying so intensely that it felt like I was being kicked in the chest. I was outside myself, wondering who I was crying for, and realized it was me. It ended when I accepted the bitter fact that I couldn’t afford to pity myself any longer than a couple of sweet seconds. I sat up and looked at a dozing drunk and an iPad-hypnotized geek, relieved that no one had witnessed my mini breakdown. It occurred to me then that I could probably use a good therapist after all I’d been through. And then I thought of kids who spend hours on therapists’ couches bemoaning their lives-some of which was legitimate, some that wasn’t, some who actually had ADD and some who didn’t but were prescribed Ritalin anyway-and thought, Screw therapy. What I need is my family.
I hugged the briefcase like it was my little brother.
At midnight, I stepped off the train at the station nearest the bakery.
The sidewalks were deserted as I darted to the Lincoln.
My internal-anger engine was whirring at full tilt now, and the tears had long receded. I lingered while unlocking the car door, overcome with a strange hope that Uncle Buddy would leap from a shadow so I could beat him with the steel suitcase and then spend a few minutes kicking in his teeth. But no, I was alone on the street-that pleasure would have to wait for the next encounter with my “favorite uncle.” I had what he wanted and knew that he would come after me sooner rather than later. After my long day on the train, in which my brain and heart had been turned inside out, I welcomed it.
Despite the knocks I’d taken, despite becoming a serial weeper, fear was slowly calcifying into an undeniable need for revenge.
Flexing and unflexing my fist, I hoped that one of my pursuers would suffer my left hook very damn soon.
The physical anticipation of throwing a punch made me think of Willy and how alarmed he probably was at my prolonged absence. Looking down a dark alley, I also remembered that Harry was gone. My heart ached at his disappearance, but it was now beating to a recalibrated rhythm, one that informed me that there were things I could do and things I could not. To survive, and for the survival of my family, I had to put aside the problems I was unable to affect-like finding Harry. Actions I could take-like opening the briefcase in hopeful anticipation of valuable clues-had to be executed immediately. My lips moved in silent prayer for the little dog as I started the engine, put down the convertible top, and pulled smoothly from the curb. Chicago late at night is both dark and light, with streetlights burning every few feet. My dad told me that when he was a kid, he remembered old Mayor Daley declaring with certainty that the continuous presence of light would make the city a safer place, and proceeded to plant glowing metal poles everywhere. I cruised through empty streets bathed in fluorescence, the cool, lake-smelling wind against my battered face, and it felt like being alive.
By the time I parked in the alley behind Windy City Gym, reality had returned.
Willy had covertly left open a door anticipating my return.
I entered and locked it behind me, and was alone in the dark again.
There was no light under Willy’s apartment door, so I crept quietly across the gym and shimmied with difficulty up to the Crow’s Nest, pausing every few feet to shift the heavy briefcase from one hand to another. Finally I hoisted myself inside, shut the trapdoor, pulled the shades, and turned on a lamp. A combination lock held the briefcase together, and I flipped the numbers instinctively to my birthday. Where those significant digits had no effect on the office keypad, now they fell smoothly into place. It was another sign that my dad had anticipated my survival. But at the moment, all that mattered was that the briefcase opened, and I sat back, staring at its contents.
Hundred-dollar bills were stacked in tight green bricks.
The steel skin of a pistol shimmered ominously.
A razor-thin rectangle of plastic bore my name.
The black AmEx credit card imprinted with SARA JANE RISPOLI proved that my dad expected me not only to survive, but to find the briefcase. I set it aside, along with a Sig Sauer.45 conceal-and-carry and ninety-six thousand dollars in cash. I realized that these things were my dad’s last, best attempt to protect me, especially since I would now be the protector of the old leather notebook stuffed with secrets.
In the middle of the briefcase sat the ratty, ancient thing, just as I’d suspected.
It was held together with masking tape, rubber bands, and metal clips, and its spine was cracked with age. The leather surface was patchy, dry, and wounded, like mummified skin. Carefully, I lifted and unbound it, opening to the flyleaf.
La proprieta di Nunzio Rispoli, 1922, was written in faded ink.
Below it read, La proprieta di Enzo Rispoli-Property of Enzo Rispoli, 1963.
Further down, my dad’s handwriting stated, Property of Anthony Rispoli, 2011.
The last inscription was the freshest and I touched it lightly, knowing he’d written it in secret, which made me simultaneously sad and mad. If my dad had told me about this-any of this-I could’ve done more than grope blindly from one life-threatening situation to another. I looked down at the time-worn notebook, at his words written with care, and thought, Maybe this is his way of telling me. I turned the page to a sheaf of paper that had been reattached decades ago, the tape gone yellow, and read the carefully handwritten words, La Tavola d’Indice. Below it, someone else had hastily written in English, Table of Contents. Underneath were titles of eight chapters, also written in Italian, with the first seven bearing scribbled translations-
1. Nostro-Us
2. Loro-Them
3. Soldi-Money
4. Muscolo-Muscle
5. Sfuggire-Escape
6. Metodi-Methods
7. Procedimenti-Procedures
8. Volta
The last chapter was not translated, but even I knew that volta is a common Italian word for “time.” As I flipped the pages, I saw some parts of each chapter were written in Italian and others in English. Countless names accompanied by phone numbers and addresses were scribbled, crossed out, and new ones added in their places. Dozens of ancient business cards were held fast by rusty staples. Black-and-white photo booth snapshots of dicey-looking guys were glued to pages. Scraps of paper taped here and there in some sort of order bore phrases (Toronto, Midnight, February 8, 1973), names (Ask for Joe Little), and figures (2,000 brl’s at 500 per) that had no significance, since there was no context. It was crammed with handwritten notes, some that appeared as old as Great-Grandpa Nunzio’s inscription from 1922 and some as recent as last week. Each section was baffling, and taken as a whole, the scruffy old notebook was simply overwhelming. It was like being the first person to look at the Rosetta Stone or the Bible. I knew the notebook was what Uncle Buddy was after and that it was really important, but I didn’t know why. I flipped more pages, hoping for a note from my dad, and that’s when the title of a section caught my eye.
Checking quickly, I saw that it was in the chapter titled “Sfuggire-Escape.”
I flipped back and reread two words written at the top of the page.
Capone Doors.
The section was printed in a neat, blocky script and had a textbook tone to it, with the obvious goal of educating the reader. My skull still ached from the fire truck assault, and my body, shoulders to toes, creaked with the pain of falling into the bakery. I propped up pillows, stretched out on a cot, and read.
“Capone Doors were invented in 1921 by Giuseppe ‘Joe Little’ Piccolino, the chief officer of weapons and devices, and were installed in and around Chicago between 1922 and 1950. Before Joe Little’s untimely disappearance and presumed death in 1951 (see ‘Loro,’ section II, pages 3–4) he estimated that upwards of a thousand Capone Doors had been concealed in as many locations, and that despite the ongoing teardown and reconstruction of the city, many remained functional.
“It’s important to note that only the Outfit, Chicago’s venerable underworld institution, has Capone Doors; no other city than Chicago, and no other criminal organization than the Outfit, had the foresight. Because of technological marvels like these, Outfit members were the actual ‘untouchables.’
“Officially, Capone Doors are designated as escape hatches, but during Prohibition (1919–1933) the doors were instrumental in the Outfit’s domination of bootlegging and rum-running, used to import and export alcohol without detection or interference. After Prohibition was repealed, Capone Doors continued their usefulness as conduits to secret casinos and illegal sports books, as white slavery highways and sneak-thievery pathways and as rush-hour avoiders. The ownership of and access to Capone Doors was at the heart of the bloody Battuta-Strozzini Turf War of the 1970s (see ‘Nostro,’ section I, pages 9-15) that pitted the North Side of Chicago against the South Side. The dispute was settled when it was decided by ruling panel that Capone Doors were a public utility, with all members of the Outfit allowed free and unfettered access. The panel was chaired by l’amico di tutti amici, the honorable Enzo ‘the Baker’ Rispoli.”
I paused, sitting up a little.
I reread the last few lines, picturing my small, gentle, smiling grandpa.
My mind went to the memory of when he shape-shifted into Evil Grandpa, and it clicked. I sat back and continued reading.
“A boon to Capone Doors came in 1938, when the City of Chicago began to dig subway tunnels in order to supplement El trains. A far-ranging and wide-reaching system of secret tunnels already existed beneath the muddy surface of Chicago (see ‘Soldi,’ section III, page 109–113) to which Joe Little had long ago connected many Capone Doors, and it was subsequently engineered to access the subway system as well. Since that time, many an Outfit member has participated in the ultimate turnstile jump.
“Generations of Outfit members passed on the locations of Capone Doors to the next generation, but a comprehensive list was never distributed for fear that it could fall into the wrong hands on the right side of the law. As years passed, some were forgotten, others torn down, and still others built over. In Joe Little’s original blueprints, he states that ‘the key to finding a Capone Door is to imagine them everywhere, in every type of building and location, both public and private. And to train the generally unseeing eye to spot a hidden C-the button that activates the door-which will be slightly raised from the surface.’ Of course, it should be noted that this wondrous invention was named in honor of our revered founder and inspiring force, Al Capone.”
“Al Capone. A.C.,” I whispered, remembering the photo in the office of Club Molasses. I turned the page expecting to read more, but instead of the neat, blocky script, the page contained a list written in two different hands which I now recognized as my grandpa’s and great-grandpa’s. It read:
Monadnock Building, lobby, east wall
City Hall, second floor, men’s room
Edgewater Beach Hotel, Yacht Club, behind the potted palms
Green Mill Lounge, beneath the bar
Uptown National Bank, teller cage no. 5
3rd, 11th, 19th, 33rd, and 41st Ward Precinct Houses, lock-up
Henrici’s Ristorante, wine cellar
Lincoln Park Boat House, under the dock
Biograph Theater, north balcony
St. Hubert’s Grill, in the phone booth
All elevated train stations built before 1935, electrical closets
The list continued on, some locations I recognized, others I’d never heard of, but all of them surely containing (or at least at one time contained) its own personal Capone Door. I dog-eared the page so I could come back and finish, and turned to the next page. It was a new section titled “Safe Houses,” and explained how the Outfit owned dozens of hotels, homes, apartments, warehouses, and condominiums under assumed names where any member on the lam could hide out safely. This section contained a list of addresses, and I was skimming it when my eyes drooped and my chin touched my chest. I lifted the notebook and felt something odd, something hard and bumpy. I turned to the last chapter, “Volta,” flipped the pages aside, and there it was, a tarnished brass key taped to the inside back cover. I didn’t remove it, just squinted at it with heavy eyelids.
After that, I don’t remember anything until I heard a woman scream.
I jumped awake from the cot like I’d been electrified.
The notebook tumbled to the ground as the woman screamed again.
I rolled to the floor, crawled to the window, carefully pulled back the sun-streaming blinds, and looked down into the boxing ring where Ski Mask Guy was sprawled on his back, plaid rumpled suit still buttoned, tie askew. Across from him, Willy bobbed and weaved with fists cocked, ready to deliver another Sunday punch. Ski Mask Guy got to his feet and shook his head, adjusting his mask and his bulk. The lumbering goon had his back to me and was pointing at Willy while, from somewhere unseen, a woman shrilled, “Lucky punch. Okay, two lucky punches, you cockroach! For the last time, give up the girl or get ready to meet Jesus!”
Willy pushed his glasses up on his nose, spit through the ropes, and said, “Bring it, sissy boy.”
I craned my neck, looking around the gym for the woman, and then a flash of bodies drew my eyes back to the ring as Ski Mask Guy lunged like a Frankenstein monster. Willy ducked and delivered a one-two kidney punch that doubled him over, followed by a surgically precise left hook to the chin that put the freak on his back again.
Ski Mask Guy cried out in pain.
It was high-pitched and feminine.
It was the same voice I’d heard only a second ago, and it was his.
I watched as the giant lunkhead lay prone on the canvas, seemingly unconscious, and remembered the sugary voice from the mini-camera tape. I’d assumed there was a woman present then, too, but that high-pitched tone belonged to Ski Mask Guy, and it only made him creepier. The fact that he was not Uncle Buddy was no comfort; it only affirmed what I’d been dreading, that there really were three different people out to get me-a turncoat uncle, a faceless freak, and a corrupt cop with a stable of officers at her command. Quietly, then louder, Ski Mask Guy began to giggle girlishly, and then he leaped to his feet with alarming agility. Willy crouched, hands set, but Ski Mask Guy reached out in hyper-speed and grabbed Willy’s left arm, yanked and twisted, and I heard old bone crack.
Willy did not scream.
Instead, gritting his teeth in pain, he threw a feeble right.
Ski Mask Guy halted it in midswing and broke that arm too.
Willy, still silent, dropped to his knees, his head on his chest. “You really thought,” Ski Mask Guy said, his schoolmarm voice weirdly incongruent with his hulking form, “that a flea like you could compete with a specimen like me? I was play-acting!” He wrapped his hands around Willy’s neck and lifted the old man until only his tiptoes touched the canvas. “Okay, this is really the last warning,” Ski Mask Guy said. “Tell me where the girl is, Uncle Tom, or this face is the last one you’ll ever see!”
I was pulling open the trapdoor when I heard the “Uncle Tom” reference.
It was a filthy racial curse, something only a psycho pinhead would use.
It only made the scene in the ring that much more violent and surreal, and my mind went to the.45 in the steel briefcase.
I popped the locks and looked at it lying heavily among the stacks of cash, like some sort of sleek, dangerous reptile at rest. My hand trembled as I reached for it, with everything in me screaming that what I was doing was stupid and wrong. Then Willy screamed, the gun was in my hand, and I held onto the rope and jumped. “Hey, sock puppet,” I said as my feet hit the floor. “Let go of my friend before I. . I put another hole in that mask!” I was so racked by jitters from just holding the gun that I almost dropped it before gripping it tightly in two sweaty hands.
He turned to me while still choking Willy, whose eyes bulged and body squirmed like a fish on a hook. “Well, well. If it isn’t little Miss Kick-Me-In-The-Face!” he trilled. “Hey, does that thing squirt water or pop a little flag that says bang?”
I climbed into the ring cautiously, raised the.45 directly toward him, and he giggled girlishly. That he was amused by a gun aimed at his face only unnerved me more, and I heard my voice break as I repeated myself. “I. . I said. . let him go.”
“Hey, didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to point guns at your elders?” he said, tossing Willy aside like a sack of potatoes. The old man hit the canvas hard, groaning and turning onto his side. Ski Mask Guy faced me, cracking his knuckles and rolling his horrible head on a thick neck.
The cold blue flame kindled and flickered in my gut when I saw him move like that, like a career heavyweight preparing for battle. Nervous fear drained from my brain and body, replaced by a jarring it’s-him-or-me sense of reality as sharp as the blade of a knife. The.45 suddenly felt weightless in my hands, and I licked at my lips, knowing instinctively that lowering it meant lowering my only defense against the bulky maniac. I didn’t want to shoot him, but it was plain that Willy and I were dead unless I kept the gun squarely and confidently between us, which meant that if he took even one step. .
“Gimme that thing, you silly little. .” Ski Mask Guy squealed, lunging like a crazed grizzly bear.
And then my finger squeezed metal just once, lightly, as the shot filled the room with an echoing blast and Ski Mask Guy grabbed his shoulder. The bullet had grazed him just enough to cut a line in his filthy suit and the skin beneath it. “You shot me,” he said, amazed, touching the surface wound and holding up bloody fingers. “I mean, you barely shot me, but you shot me! I didn’t think you had it in you!”
“It was easy,” I said, looking at him down the barrel, seeing that my hands had stopped shaking. “Easier than I thought it would be.”
“Sara Jane,” Willy said weakly from the canvas. “Don’t. .”
“Listen to Uncle Tom!” Ski Mask Guy said, his voice as shrill as fingernails on a blackboard. “Once was funny, a real lark, but remember. . guns don’t kill people! People kill people!”
“Where’s my family?” I said. “Tell me now, or I guarantee that next time my aim will be much better.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, backing away, holding up his hands like a TV bad guy. “Gimme that old notebook and I’ll tell you the whole amazing story, beginning to end, with no commercials! I swear on a stack of Bibles as tall as the Willis Tower!”
I stared at his thick, jumpy body, his facial muscles undulating crazily under the knit mask, and said, “You’re lying. You won’t tell me shit.”
“Quite possibly, but you’ll n-e-e-ver know if you kill me!”
“True,” I said, wanting so badly for this nightmare to end, for the terrible freak not to exist. I stepped forward, close enough to smell rancid meat, and put the barrel of the gun in his face. “Maybe I’ll never know,” I said. “But maybe I don’t care anymore.”
“No, Sara Jane!” Willy called. “Please. .”
The tone of Willy’s voice-more desperate than angry-gave me just enough pause for Ski Mask Guy to go up and over the ropes like it was Cirque du Soleil, hit the gym floor like a ton of bricks on two feet, and run for the exit. I watched him go, watched him bow dramatically at the door, and heard his falsetto echo up the stairs as he cried, “Next time, Sara Jane! Oh, how my heart beats for next ti-i-i-me!” I looked at the gun in my hand, feeling nothing but bitter regret at my inability to use it, and then dropped it and went to Willy, who was suffering on his back. After I guided him to his apartment, I told him as much as I thought he should know about the notebook-that it, and not me, was what everyone was after, and that it was valuable and I was disposable.
When I was done, Willy said, “Get me a cigarette.” I rose, removed one from the battered tin box, put it between his lips, and lit it. He inhaled and exhaled a couple of times, and then said, “That’s all I need. Put it out.”
I crushed it in a coffee cup, saying, “Those things will kill you.”
“At least it would be a slower death than if crazy man did it,” he said. “Or you, with that gun.”
“He hurt my family.”
“You know that for sure?”
“I know for sure he hurt you.”
Willy nodded and cleared his throat. “I never told you how my daughter died.”
“You just said cars and alcohol.”
Willy nodded again, pursing his lips. “What I didn’t mention was that I was driving the car she was in when she died. And that the alcohol was in me.”
“Oh. . Willy. .”
“See, I killed my own daughter, Sara Jane. I was drunk and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car, but she trusted me. She died and I lived, and I will never understand how the universe got it so wrong.” His eyes were wet behind his glasses but his voice was steady. “Yes, it was an accident. But all those drinks I had weren’t. I didn’t intend to kill my daughter but I did, and I loved her more than life, and still. . still the stain won’t ever wash out.”
“Willy,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Listen to me and listen good,” he said. “You don’t want that cancer on your soul. I know your life is upside down and there are some very bad people after you. But the real fight now is your brain versus your heart, doing what you know is right versus what you feel must be done. Killing someone, especially when it’s on purpose. .” His words drifted off. He cleared his throat again and said, “Don’t do that to yourself, girl. Promise me you won’t.”
“Willy, we need to call a doctor. .”
“Promise,” he said, fixing a gaze on me that shone with remorse.
“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
Afterward I got him as comfortable as possible and then called an ambulance. When I saw that he had drifted off, I slipped out of the apartment, shimmied up to the Crow’s Nest, and grabbed the briefcase. I checked its contents-money, credit card, and of course the notebook-and remembered the gun. On my way across the gym, I climbed inside the ring and retrieved it, and then paused only long enough to scribble some words on a few pieces of paper. I opened the apartment door so the EMT people would see Willy, left behind the bloody, shorn shirt I borrowed from them, and hurried back toward the gym exit. I stopped every so often to post one of the pieces of paper, each of which bore an arrow and read Guy with broken arms this way.
I climbed in the Lincoln and started the engine, hearing approaching sirens.
I was leaking tears, wondering if I’d ever see Willy again.
I wondered if I’d be able to look him in the eye if I ever broke my promise.