There are two types of people in the world: those who enjoy eating barbecued ribs and those who are turned off by gnawing on pig bones covered in goop.
The Twin Anchors Restaurant amp; Tavern has a long, storied history of serving the former. Pork ribs have been its bread and butter for eighty years, including the period during Prohibition when it was a speakeasy, providing patrons with Chicago-made moonshine in soda pop bottles. Decades ago, Frank Sinatra loved the joint, as did every notable Outfit member, and sometimes they found themselves at the same table with him, and sometimes Grandpa Enzo was at that table too. Remembering that it was Detective Smelt’s hangout of choice, plus her possible Outfit connections, led me back to the notebook, where I learned all of this and more. Apparently, Grandpa Enzo even bought a piece of the business from its owner, someone named Roberto, whose last name isn’t supplied. It doesn’t tell what happened next, only that my grandpa eventually sold his piece, and that was that.
The notebook mentions that the Twin Anchors has a Capone Door.
Hopefully I wouldn’t need it.
Hopefully Detective Smelt wouldn’t be the she-devil I suspected she was.
I pushed through the entrance without the gun, armed only with ghiaccio furioso and a determination to use it on her just as I had Uncle Buddy. It was a cozy place with a cheery bar and Sinatra murmuring from the jukebox, and although I’d never met the detective, I spotted her immediately at a round leather booth in the corner. She wasn’t a she-devil, but she was a ghost, or a zombie, and she looked up at me and smiled.
“Sara Jane,” she said in that unmistakable voice, a piercing combination of West Side Chicago and a phlegmatic lion.
“Elzy?” I said to my dead nanny, because, despite the black beehive that had been replaced by a henna buzz cut, and despite the retro-mod wardrobe that had been replaced by no-nonsense detective wear, she still wore the cat’s-eye glasses, and it was still her. I approached slowly, sensing movement bristling around me, her people ready to pounce if I did. “It’s not possible. I went to your funeral.”
“You went to the funeral of an empty casket,” she said. “Have a seat. You want a Coke or something?”
I sat heavily, staring, until I managed to say, “Do my parents know?”
“That I didn’t die? Of course not, that would have ruined it.”
“Ruined what?” I said.
“Me taking over the Outfit. That’s why I need the notebook,” Elzy said, sipping something brown with cherries in it.
I paused, watching her lick her lips with a pointed little tongue. “You know about the notebook?” I asked.
“I know about a lot of things I’m not supposed to know. But for heaven’s sake, be patient, we’ve got some catching up to do,” she said with a wink. “Personally, I’m an expert at being patient. I waited years for the opportunity to take over the Outfit, and then your grandpa Enzo provided it by dying. Or, I should say, your dad provided it, by being himself. Brains, tenacity, DNA-Anthony Rispoli had everything it took to eventually become boss of the whole Outfit. The problem is that he had too much.” She pointed a finger, saying, “He had you and your little brother. Oh, many were the conversations I eavesdropped upon, hearing him tell your mom how he didn’t want you and Lou to ever have anything to do with the Outfit, how he loved you far too much to allow it to poison your pristine little souls. Over time, I realized that when Enzo died someday, your dad would be caught in a moral quandary-do I continue on in the Outfit tradition, or do I take my family and disappear? — and that pause for reflection, that dropping of the guard, so to speak, would be my chance to pounce for the notebook.”
“In other words, you were waiting not only to exploit my dad’s conscience, but also his grief,” I said, hearing the acid in my voice.
Elzy nodded, smiling proudly. “In the old days, Outfit thieves pulled a nifty move called a ‘Rest in Peace.’ They’d scan obituaries for funeral times of the wealthy dead, and while the family wept at the graveside, they’d ransack their homes. So yeah, it’s something like that.” She sipped at her drink and then waved her hand, saying, “You like this place? Snug, isn’t it? Personally, I love it-I grew up here, did you know that?” I shook my head like a mummy, and she said, “My father owned it.”
“Roberto. .?” I said, recalling what I’d read in the notebook.
“His nickname was Bobo. .”
“Zanzara,” I said. “Your last name. Bobo Zanzara. . didn’t he work for my grandpa at the bakery?”
“Very good,” she said. “Yes indeed, in the kitchen, just like an indentured servant. It was quite a comedown from having been the owner of such a glorious front business like this one, but he had no choice. You see, Daddy had a dice problem, as in they refused to roll his way. He ran a successful gambling operation for the Outfit but was a terrible gambler himself, and he lost his piece of Twin Anchors back to the Outfit.”
“His piece,” I said. “My grandpa owned the other piece.”
“That’s where the story gets bitter,” she said with a mirthless smile, crinkling her nose. “Of course you know that your grandfather was counselor-at-large for the Outfit. He had power and he had money. . it would’ve been so easy for him to simply give his piece of Twin Anchors to Daddy. Your grandfather didn’t need it and wouldn’t have missed it, while Daddy needed it desperately.”
“But wouldn’t your father have just gambled it away, too?”
“That’s not the point!” she hissed. “Enzo Rispoli sold his piece to the Outfit and made a tidy profit, and then took my father into the bakery like. . like an employee!”
“Maybe my grandpa was just trying to help him,” I said.
“My father didn’t need help,” she said. “He was a proud son of Buondiavolo, born in the hills of Sicily, just like your people. . well maybe not just like your people. But he deserved power! He deserved respect! And what did he get? An apron and a cookie sheet.”
“It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?” I said. “At least it was an honest living.”
Elzy snorted, emptied her glass, and said, “Let’s cut the bullshit, sweetie. There was nothing honest going on behind closed kitchen doors at Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries. From Nunzio’s molasses business to Enzo holding court at Club Molasses to your dad being crowned counselor-at-large, your family was just one big multigenerational lie. And what do you have to show for it? Ninety years of a Rispoli family tradition of crime and that precious little notebook packed full of black secrets.”
Elzy’s speech was poisonous and targeted, but it didn’t hurt-by then I had already been wounded by the truth of my family. Instead, it gave me an insight, and I said, “It was Bobo, wasn’t it? He found out about the notebook.”
“Indeed he did,” Elzy said, grinning broadly.
“Your dad wasn’t just a lousy gambler. He was a disloyal sneak who spied on my grandpa at the bakery.”
Her eyes flashed, as if she hadn’t expected me to hit back so accurately. “Daddy suspected the notebook was hidden in Club Molasses and was caught trying to climb into the oven one night after hours by Enzo the Baker. And your sweet little grandfather, always the soul of charity, called on the Outfit to dole out punishment. Of course he couldn’t admit that the notebook existed, so he told them that Daddy had stolen a large sum of money from the bakery. The Outfit framed Daddy on a trumped-up charge of something or other, and in the blink of an eye, he was sent to prison for life. Except. .”
“My grandpa wouldn’t do that,” I said, not sure of my assertion in the least.
“His sentence lasted only a few weeks before he was stabbed by an inmate. Typical prison death, they said. Murder for hire, I said. Of course, in order to survive, I had to pretend to believe that the absurd frame-up that sent Daddy away was real, pretend to be ashamed of him, and pretend to know nothing about the notebook. Except that I did.” A fresh drink was delivered. Elzy sipped and said, “Daddy told me he’d overheard your grandpa telling your father when he was just a young man that the notebook contained a secret so powerful, whoever possessed it could control the Outfit.”
“What secret?” I said, remembering what Uncle Buddy had told me about potenza ultima-ultimate power.
Elzy shrugged her birdlike shoulders. “He never found out. Your grandpa seized the notebook, Daddy went to prison and then to heaven, and the notebook has been in Rispoli hands ever since. But no matter, my little brother and I decided that we would get the notebook ourselves and tear it apart until we found the answer to that untold secret. So, feigning ignorance and loyalty, I went to work in your parents’ home and my brother went to work at the bakery. While I monitored your family, he would succeed where Daddy had failed by infiltrating Club Molasses and stealing the notebook.”
“I remember you talking about him,” I said, trying to recall his name.
“He was such a handsome youth, a mere twenty-year-old sprig of a man when he began rolling dough in that stinking kitchen,” she said. “He despised your grandfather of course, and your father, but he saved his purest hatred for your uncle.” She paused and her face changed from frosty self-assurance to twitching rage as she spit, “Buddy Rispoli. . Buddy-goddamn-Rispoli! He just desperately needed to boss someone around, and the fat schlub rode my brother day and night. More flour, less salt, roll the dough lengthwise not vertically, until my brother wanted to twist his neck.”
“Twist his neck,” I repeated, feeling my bruises.
Elzy slammed the drink, a fresh one replaced it immediately, and she told me how her brother was working alone in the kitchen one morning. He’d just removed trays of cakes from the oven and was sampling one when Uncle Buddy showed up. My uncle berated Elzy’s brother for using his bare hands, delivering a blistering speech on kitchen hygiene, and her brother flipped off Uncle Buddy and told him to go to hell. That’s when Uncle Buddy made the mistake of shoving him. Elzy’s brother beat him to his knees but my uncle wouldn’t stay down, and Elzy’s face changed to something that was not self-assurance or rage, but horror.
“Buddy was on the ground, struggling to get up, and my brother charged him,” she said slowly, her words tinged with revulsion. “At the last minute, Buddy grabbed his ankle. My brother tripped, lost his balance, and fell face-first onto a white-hot, overturned cake pan stamped with the Rispoli R. .”
Oh my God, I thought, feeling my spine freeze, that means Ski Mask Guy is. .
“Poor Kevin,” Elzy said mournfully. “Half of his beautiful face, his neck, and his vocal cords. It drove him to the brink of insanity and he had to go. . away. Years later, when he escaped from the. . hospital. . I broke out too, from my existence, and we reunited,” she said, blowing her nose into a cocktail napkin. She put on a smile that would’ve startled a snake and said, “And here we are.”
“Here we are,” I said, seizing control of the rapidly rising ghiaccio furioso just as I’d done with Uncle Buddy, trying with all of my strength to focus it across the table. Elzy blinked rapidly behind the cat’s-eye glasses as I said, “But where’s my family? What have you done with them?”
To my great surprise, she ceased blinking and chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe dead in the ground somewhere. Worm food first and then gone forever.”
As she spoke, I felt a little electrical storm break across my head and shoulders.
The cold fury popped and faded, and I was flooded with exhaustion.
I sat back heavily, struggling even to hold up my head.
“I’ll be damned. So you’re the one who got the gift,” Elzy said, staring at me with curiosity. “Even though you and your brother both have blue eyes, I never would’ve guessed it would be you. Amazing how sexist we’re all trained to be. Even I naturally assumed that a man would get the power.” She sighed and said, “By the way, it doesn’t affect me.”
I shook my head, confused, and she sat forward smiling.
“You have a weakness, you know that?” She sipped, swished, and swallowed, and explained that no, she didn’t possess ghiaccio furioso, nor did anyone in her family. But she reminded me that her father was from Buondiavolo and had shared an ancient secret with her and Poor Kevin that only people from the village knew-how to avoid the immobilizing grip of cold fury. “Don’t ask,” she said. “What kind of nemesis would I be if I told you? But I will tell you that I have no idea where your family is. Yes, Poor Kevin tried to get his hands on them. .”
“I saw it,” I said, finding my voice. “Frank Sinatra’s head.”
“Ah yes, my darling Frank. I gave him to your parents on the pretext that poor me, the trusted nanny who cared so deeply for their precious children, would soon be dead, and that a nanny cam was an absolute necessity in my absence. I even showed them how to use it and placed it in that central location myself. Of course, my real hope was that they’d discuss the notebook and it would be caught on tape. My intention was to sneak into your house and steal it, but someone was always home-you Rispolis just never went out, did you?” She shrugged and said, “After a couple of years, I gave up on ever getting my hands on it. Who knew your mom and dad would continue to use it? Anyway, Poor Kevin would’ve succeeded if he hadn’t been interrupted. He was this close when-don’t laugh-when a whole caravan of black ice cream trucks surrounded your house, tinkling their merry tune. My nimble brother hid in the basement, and your people have been gone ever since.”
“Ice cream trucks?” I said. “That’s ridiculous. You’re lying.”
“Oh yeah? If I had your family, do you think I would’ve gone to all the trouble with my cops and Poor Kevin trying to hunt you down? I would’ve just sent you body parts a piece at a time until you gave me the notebook.” She paused, smiling serenely, and said, “Whoever has your family or wherever they’ve gone, none of that matters now. What matters is that you have the notebook, and you’re here.”
“Who says I have the notebook?” I said.
She looked at me over the top of her cocktail and said, “Well. . do you?”
I said nothing, trying to assume a poker face.
Elzy grinned and said, “Yeah, you have it, just as I suspected. You know something, you might not believe this, but I always liked you. You were a sweet kid and a straight arrow. . just as bad a liar then as you are now. But you were also a tough little kid, and now you’re a tough young woman, and I say let’s let bygones be bygones. I say let’s do this thing together.”
“What thing?” I said calmly, stifling an urge to punch her teeth down her throat.
“Take over Chicago. It’s our time. Have you read the notebook?”
She knew I had it; it was too late to act as if I didn’t. “Parts of it.”
“I’m curious,” she said. “How much of it explains women’s roles in the Outfit? How much of it talks about your great-grandmother, grandmother, or mother? Where does it discuss the wives, sisters, and daughters of all of those Outfit bosses and thugs?”
“Nowhere,” I said.
“Exactly. Organized crime is a boys’ club, with no position of power or responsibility for a female.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re all God’s children, except a woman connected to the Outfit. Then she’s less than a second-class citizen. She can be a faithful wife who won’t testify, or a goomah on the side, or an Italian mama who cooks meatballs for her sonny boy as he shines his pistol, but nothing else. That’s precisely why I faked my own death. With Poor Kevin back at my side, I was done being little miss Elzy-Do-This-Do-That. With my organizational skills, nerves of steel, and almost complete lack of moral conscience, it was time to be the Elzy I was born to be. . the head of the Outfit.” She sipped her drink and said, “Unfortunately, I was born a female. If I’d openly infringed on Outfit business, the boys’ club would’ve crushed me. My head would be fish food in Lake Michigan and the rest of me scattered in the Sanitary Canal. If I was going to take over, I needed to disappear. . to remove the thought of Elzy Zanzara from anyone even remotely connected to the Outfit, so that I could take it by complete and utter surprise. My work would have to be done covertly and unseen, working in the shadows until I made my move. And for that, I needed an edge.”
“You mean the notebook,” I said.
She stared at the ice in her glass and nodded. “With the information contained between those covers, plus my vision and your gift, we can rule this dirty town. It’s high time that someone who thinks with her brain first is in charge.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Never. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. The whole thing has been rotten from the beginning and it will never change.”
“I don’t want to change it, you little fool,” she said. “I want to control it. But okay, fine and dandy, I’ll do it alone. . well, not quite alone. I have Poor Kevin. He’s my ultimate weapon because he loves me and only me, and would happily travel to hell and back at my command. He almost got you the first time, in the basement of your house, if it hadn’t been for that filthy little dog.”
“The basement,” I said, feeling again at my neck. “He almost killed me.”
“He was just trying to squeeze the notebook out of you,” she said, sipping. “I suppose it was a bit painful, but Poor Kevin despises you Rispolis. But then, don’t we all?” And then she lowered her voice and glanced around at her people. “Of course, I never told my officers about Poor Kevin. Better to have them all working independently. That’s good leadership, Outfit style. Never let your employees know exactly what you’re doing, or whom you’re doing it with. Secrecy is the key to success.”
“You mean secrecy plus a masked lunatic, don’t you?”
“Tsk-tsk, sticks and stones,” she said, crinkling her nose. “Poor Kevin is my avenging angel. Nothing short of a Mack truck can stop him.”
“I guess I’ll have to get a Mack truck.”
Elzy finished her drink, patted her lips, and said, “This has been fun, but I want that notebook and I want it now.”
“I’ll never give it to you. Why should I? You don’t have my family.”
“Oh, but I have something,” she said, tossing a pair of books on the table. I glanced at the titles, Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies, volumes one and two, and recognized Doug’s well-worn copies. “Your chunky friend traced Poor Kevin’s devil mask to a novelty store, asked a few questions, and actually tried to catch him,” she said with a small smile. “It didn’t work out too well.”
“Where is he?” I said quietly, using every ounce of restraint not to flip the table and stomp the answer out of her. “I swear to God, if you’ve hurt him. .”
“Don’t swear, and yes, of course we’ve hurt him. All you have to do is trade the notebook for your bloated buddy and Poor Kevin will let him go,” she said, narrowing her eyes behind the cat’s-eye glasses. “Of course, now that you’re here, I could just keep you, couldn’t I? Let Poor Kevin convince you to give up the notebook in his own special way. I have more than enough people here to. .” But she spread her arms at an empty bar. Her officers were all gone, with cigarettes still smoldering and drinks unfinished, as if ripped from their posts by silent, unseen hands.
That’s when one of those hands lit on my shoulder.
Elzy looked behind me and her jaw muscles rippled.
One of Knuckles’s dark and anonymous guys said, “Time to go, girly.”
I rose and saw his two companions, one near the bar, one at the door, and wanted to ask what they had done with Elzy’s people, but it wasn’t a Q amp;A moment. Elzy crossed her arms and said, “I see you’ve learned a couple of things from the notebook.”
“More than a couple.”
“Two hours. Come alone, unarmed, or you’ll have a fat corpse on your hands.”
“Where?”
“Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries.” She smiled coyly.
The bakery, where her brother lost his face.
Club Molasses, where my family buried its secrets.
Where everything began and where, I realized, she intended everything to end.
An hour and fifty-eight minutes is not much time to speed-read part of a chapter, scribble a list, grab cash from a steel briefcase, drive like a maniac to one store and then another store, and then build a bomb.
Actually, the notebook calls it an “incendiary device.”
Chapter six (Metodi-Methods) describes it as ideal for “scare tactics, arson, and safe-cracking.”
It also cautions that it could kill someone, which might be a good thing.
After I aged the brand-new leather notebook I’d purchased by backing over it with the Lincoln and beating it with a hammer, I very carefully wired it with the device. Everything I needed to assemble the little bomb was available at the corner hardware store, which in my former life would’ve been extremely disturbing. My present life was a different story-one that could end prematurely at any time-and I had no moral issue whatsoever about blowing off the rest of that evil sock puppet’s face.
At the hour-fifty-nine mark I pulled up in front of the bakery.
The time for parking down the block had passed.
Leaping roof to roof seemed suddenly ridiculous.
I lifted the notebook, climbed out of the car, and walked through the front door of the bakery, the bell jingling behind me. I’d thought about bringing the.45, but it was bulky and hard to hide, and besides, if my scheme went off as planned I wouldn’t need it. The front of the store was dark and so was the kitchen, but it didn’t matter, I knew where they were, and went straight to the Vulcan. I folded myself inside, whooshed quickly below the earth, and pulled open the heavy steel door of Club Molasses.
It was dark inside except for a single spotlight.
It shone on Doug in the middle of the dance floor.
He was slumped in a chair, chin on his chest, shirt soaked with blood.
I ran to him, set the notebook on the floor, and gently lifted his head. It was impossible not to grimace at his beaten, swollen face. I whispered, “Doug. It’s me, Sara Jane,” and he blinked heavily, trying to focus. Quietly, I said, “Where is he?”
Doug worked his jaws, spit out a tooth, and said, “Right behind you.”
There was no panic, only action, and I spun with my right fist curled at my chin and my left fist in front of my right. Poor Kevin bowed like a huge, rumpled maitre d’, emitting a gust of rotten-meat cologne from his melted head. “Welcome to Club Molasses! Table for two?”
“I have the notebook,” I said, vibrating with ghiaccio furioso, feeling it quiver and fade as it had with Elzy. It was plain me versus maniac him, and I said, “Take it and let us go. That was the deal.”
“Let you go? Oh no-no-no!” he trilled, pumping his arms in time to his words like a crazed sports fan. “Not until I inspect the no-no-notebook!”
“You want it?” I said, kicking it across the parquet dance floor. “Go get it.”
Poor Kevin watched it slide like a hockey puck and then looked at me. The pupils of his eyes through the ski mask holes grew larger and smaller, like two crazy cameras trying to find focus, and then he shrugged and shambled after it. And then everything sped up-me lugging Doug toward the door, Poor Kevin picking up the notebook, me bracing for an explosion and then hearing a soft, gentle pop. I turned to him staring at the blank, smoking pages that did not blow up, and then he lifted his horrific head and said as coldly as a frozen knife, “You think I’m stupid?”
“It’s a misunderstanding,” I said, backing toward the door with Doug attached to me like a three-hundred-pound anchor.
“It’s a death sentence!” he squealed, galloping across the floor. I dropped Doug, ducked and moved, and Poor Kevin’s massive fist missed my head by inches. When he turned, I was waiting with a hard left-right combo that stopped him. He shook his head and then went into a fighter’s crouch too, and we squared off on the dance floor. “Hey, this is gonna be fun!” he said as we circled. “Just like the old days when I used to beat the dirt out of that schlub uncle of yours! You Rispolis are all the same, blah-blah-blah, all talk and no. .” and then he had to stop talking because my fist was in his mouth-once, twice, three times-and he skidded backward. Then he charged forward, and I dropped a shoulder and threw my Willy Williams left hook.
The sound of fist on jawbone cracked across Club Molasses.
Poor Kevin stumbled and reeled to the floor like a train off its tracks.
He slid face-first and hit the bandstand, and I ran for Doug.
“Come on!” I grunted, sitting him up like an enormous toddler, and he was almost to his feet when we both went down. Doug rolled but I was trapped under Poor Kevin, his knee on my back and his big leathery hands finding my neck again, for what I knew would be the last time. His thumbs went to my windpipe and the edges of the world were trimmed in black. Doug lifted up on a shoulder and fell, then tried again, but he was like a newborn turtle with his bruised, closed eyelids.
Dying was not okay, I told myself. There was no resolution or freedom in it. I struggled against it with every muscle and tendon in my body, and when I felt my brain emptying itself of oxygen, I thought of Lou.
No, wait-not Lou-I meant Lou’s dog, Harry.
He blasted out of the darkness like a tiny Italian ball of cold fury and chomped his needle-sharp jaws onto Poor Kevin’s butt cheek, with the freak shrieking and flailing his arms. I had no idea how the crafty little canine got inside Club Molasses-I thought the only way in and out was through the oven elevator or the Capone Door in the office-but realized then that there had to be other doors, yet to be discovered. I rolled onto my back, sucking air, and watched Poor Kevin rip Harry free and throw him softball-style into the backseat of the convertible Ferrari.
Ferrari, I thought, hacking spittle and grabbing Doug by the ankles.
I knew the keys were in the ignition.
I prayed to God there was gasoline in the tank.
I dragged Doug across the parquet floor, my feet stuttering a mile a minute as Poor Kevin sprinted toward us, and then it was all over, done, we were dead, except that a gray hairy sausage dropped from the ceiling. The rat landed on Poor Kevin’s shoulder, snarling and ripping, and he grabbed it and squeezed its guts out. As I shoved Doug into the passenger seat, the masked psycho spun the bloody rat pelt by its worm tail and screeched, “That’s it? That’s all you got? One little mouse!” right before a dozen pissed-off rodents fell on his head. Nunzio’s rats, bred to protect all things Rispoli, were fulfilling their DNA with gusto. Poor Kevin made a noise that was half six-year-old girl, half fingernails on a blackboard. I cranked the engine, and the incredible machine roared to life. Since there was nowhere to go, no way to escape the subterranean space, my simple intention had been to back over the homicidal creep until he stopped moving. But then the headlights popped on and I looked at the wall in front of the Ferrari.
A pattern of bricks formed a large but subtle C.
I suddenly realized how someone got the car down here in the first place.
There were Capone Doors, I thought. Why not Capone Garage Doors?
I leaped from the Ferrari and touched the wall-nothing-and then leaned against it-nothing-then threw a desperate shoulder and heard a creak and a rumble, and the wall lifted slowly, revealing a wide, dark tunnel. I was back in the car with inert Doug and shivering Harry, and I paused only for a glance back. Poor Kevin squeezed rats, bit rats, swatted and stomped rats, and then a dozen more of Antonio and Cleopatra’s offspring dove from the ceiling, hissing and clawing at his masked head, his raw fingers, and then another dark mass, and another, until the freak looked like a rat Christmas tree, all of it squirming and ripping, and I couldn’t tell his squealing from theirs.
I had tried to blow him up and then used his head like a speed bag, he had been attacked by a dog, and he was now being nibbled and sliced by a hundred rats, and still he fought on ferociously. I remembered Elzy’s description of her brother-nothing short of a Mack truck would stop him-and leaned heavily on the gas, fishtailing into the tunnel. It twisted and climbed with the cold smell of earth all around me until I heard wheels on concrete, and then the blast of a truck horn as I screeched onto Lower Wacker Drive. My dad’s Lincoln is a fast car but the Ferrari is a fast something else, somewhere between automobile and airplane, and I flew above the pavement. I spun onto Congress and then onto the Eisenhower, and I was gone, going nowhere in particular, just as far away from Poor Kevin as possible. I wept violently on that dark, empty stretch of expressway, expelling leftover fear and fury. I stopped and began again, and then it passed away.
That’s when my disposable phone with the unlisted number rang.
I answered, and a voice said, “Hey, it’s Tyler. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Where. . how did you get this number?” I said.
“I’m me, remember. . the guy who gets in touch with untouchables? Listen, what are you doing for dinner later? Have you ever been to Rome?”
“Is that a restaurant?”
“It’s a city in Italy. I’m leaving on the company jet in an hour for business and I want you to come along.”
“Italy,” I murmured, that golden place where I’d dreamed of going, so far away from all of this, except that all of this was my life. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I can’t. Tonight just. . doesn’t work. But. .”
“But what?” he said hopefully.
“But. . have a good trip.”
“I always do.”
“Tyler?” I said. “Rome. . is it beautiful? I mean, this might sound weird, but. . is it golden?”
He chuckled and said, “The food’s good,” and hung up.
I felt my heart twist into a knot, looked at the dark phone, and threw it out the window. Until I’d heard his voice, I’d been speeding on a path to no place in particular, with no plan, and no options.
Then I remembered the key he’d given me to the Bird Cage Club.
I’d almost lost my life deep below the earth.
Tonight I would sleep in the clouds, high above Chicago.
23
WATCHING THE MORNING SUN illuminate the Loop is to see miles of shadows change from gray to red to bright shining boxes, rectangles, and obelisks. Pulled puffs of cottony clouds meander past, change shape, and dissipate, and far beyond it all, Lake Michigan stretches to the horizon, first pale green, then blue black.
I stood at the window of the Bird Cage Club thirty-three stories in the air, watching the world come alive again, feeling dead inside.
I’d confronted Uncle Buddy, Detective Smelt, and even Poor Kevin, and all I had to show for it was a beaten, kicked-in friend and a small dog sleeping beside him.
I’d parked the Ferrari in the underground garage and decided to inspect it closely before hefting Doug up to the Bird Cage Club. To my surprise, someone (my dad?) had packed it with getaway provisions, as if the need to speed from middle earth at the drop of a hat was a definite possibility. There was bottled water, a first-aid kit, canned Italian delicacies, even a couple of thick Ferrari traveling blankets. I’d patched up Doug as well as I could the night before, and tried to make him comfortable. Harry walked in a small circle and then lay at his side, the first real sign of affection he’d shown anyone besides Lou. Doug rubbed the dog’s back and said, “You saved my life.”
“Barely.”
“I’m sorry, Sara Jane. I was trying to help.”
“You can’t do things like that, Doug,” I told him. “You could’ve gotten killed.”
“As beatings go, it was worse than I imagined,” he said. “But not half as bad as what I probably deserved.”
“What movie is that from?” I said.
“The movie of my life. By the way, the sidekick approves,” he said, gesturing around the room.
“Of what?”
“Our hideout,” he said, yawning hugely. “It’s perfect.”
Afterward he rolled over painfully, Harry snuggled closer, and the two of them were still asleep when I woke at dawn. I walked the perimeter of the Bird Cage Club, looking out every window, and discovered that a sturdy stone terrace surrounded the dome. One of the windows was a door. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stepped outside, and then I was inhaling the chill morning air. Thirty-three stories is a long way down, and I was stricken by a sense of despair that made existence seem pointless and hollow. All of the running, all of the fighting and surviving, and I still didn’t know where my family was-it occurred to me again that I might never know. Slowly, I peered over the edge of the terrace, feeling the terrifying-exciting pull to jump, to abandon earth and its disappointments, when I heard Doug mumbling, “I think Harry is sick.”
I turned to his hefty, ass-kicked form in the doorway.
He was bruised and puffy, looking very much like an enormous crushed grape.
“He’s trying to throw up but seems stuck.”
We walked inside and Doug was right, Harry was hacking and retching, his jaws working and his ribs drawn tightly to his chest. “Harry,” I said, stroking his back, and he coughed once, twice, and puked out a tiny, clear plastic tube.
“What the hell is that?” Doug said, embracing poor, panting Harry.
I picked up the slimy thing-it was the length and size of a cigarette butt-and looked at it closely. “There’s something inside,” I said, twisting it until a tiny top popped off and a tightly rolled length of paper fell into my hand. I opened it carefully and read a quickly scrawled paragraph.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Beneath it, in the same handwriting, read-
Once around at noon, only on Sundays.
A wave of dizziness washed over me, my hands went numb, and the paper fluttered to the floor. I walked outside to inhale fresh air, my mind spinning but also clicking at warp speed. Doug appeared beside me, read the note, and said, “I don’t get it.”
“I think I do,” I answered, staring across the vista at Navy Pier jutting into the lake, its convention buildings, tourist boats, and Ferris wheel like a collection of children’s toys. “Is today Sunday?” I said. Doug nodded, and I thought of what Uncle Buddy said, how Harry had been hanging around my house. When I didn’t show up, the cagey little animal must’ve made his way back to the bakery, and Club Molasses, to wait for me-but how, and for how long? “I hope it’s the right Sunday,” I said.
“For what?” Doug asked anxiously.
I looked at the concern etched on his face and knew that he would do anything I asked. But just by proximity I’d drawn him nearly to the point of death, and I would not allow it to happen again. “I have to do something, and I have to do it alone. You can’t follow me or try to help me,” I said.
“Please,” he said, “I owe you.”
“I told you about the notebook. .”
“Yeah, but I want to be part of this, whatever it is.”
“Doug,” I said, summoning the ghiaccio furioso, locking eyes until his chin began to quiver. “You will not be a part of this. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes,” he said in a voice that was small and alone, and I saw his fear-a snippet of a movie in which Poor Kevin finished what he started with Doug in a bloody and violent way.
“The notebook,” I said, “is here, in the steel briefcase. If I don’t come back, I want you to burn it. Burn it, Doug. . every damn page, handwritten note, old photo, and unlisted phone number. It’s mine, it’s my life, and you will do as I ask.”
“Yes,” he whispered, and I looked away. Doug sighed with relief, and when he found his voice he said, “Of course I’ll do whatever you say. You’re the hero.”
“I’m no hero,” I said. “How can a victim like me be a hero?”
“According to some of the greatest movies ever made, by not becoming like the assholes who victimized you,” Doug said. “Hitting that masked creep with my computer was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, because he was trying to kill you. On the other hand, I still don’t know if what happened to Billy was justified. All I know for sure is that being smarter than an enemy is better than resorting to violence. The great hero is always more patient and much more observant. And then he. . she. . wins.” He wiped at his nose and handed me the note, saying, “Did you notice the upper-right-hand corner?” I hadn’t, and I now looked at part of a business letterhead, which read MISTER KREAMY KO- with the rest torn away. “It has to be Mister Kreamy Kone. You know, the chocolate-dipped frozen concoctions sold from the black ice cream trucks.”
“I guess I never noticed them. . I don’t eat that stuff,” I murmured, remembering what Elzy said about black ice cream trucks surrounding my house before my family disappeared.
“It’s so awesome. The truck stops, you insert money into the side like an ATM, and out pops the deliciousness. You never even see a driver. All the windows are tinted black too. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”
“Weird,” I said, thinking how the CEO of StroBisCo might have useful information about another Chicago junk-food company. Or, if it was unionized, Knuckles would have to know something-deploying strikebreakers fell under his job description. And then, of course, there was my own personal Talmud-Bible-Koran, the notebook. If Mister Kreamy Kone had even the slightest thread of a connection to the Outfit, it would be in there. Right now, however, was not the time to study; now was the time to get my mind and gut ready for what I had to do at noon.
“Is there anything else?” Doug asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “If I don’t come back, take care of Harry.”
“You have to come back,” Doug said. “We have final exams next week.”
I realized then that I hadn’t studied Italian in almost three long weeks.
I grabbed my Italian-English dictionary and looked up three words.
destino-fate
resa dei conti-reckoning
vendetta-revenge