Clouds In My Coffee (14 page)

My eyes open slowly, but still they feel as if sand has been poured into them. I’m in the passenger seat of my VW. My head rolls to the side and I see Marshall is driving. His eyes are huge, as if he’s seen a ghost; he’s wide-eyed as he drives my bug along the curving, hilly roads.

“Where are we?” I choke out, still groggy from the downers.

He doesn’t even look at me, he’s that focused on whatever his eyes are seeing through the purple haze of acid he’s been eating. “We’re almost to Snake Ridge,” he replies, “Can’t you feel your ears popping? Fucking far out, isn’t it? It’s like we’re on top of the world. Too bad it’s all a fucking lie. Every bit of it.”

“Wha…What?”

“It doesn’t matter, Cece. Your world is about to end. Everyone knows how dangerous it is around Snake Ridge, and hey, it’s even on the way to Kemmerer, just a short-cut you decided to take to get to the Shady Lady quicker. Not a good idea at night on slippery roads, though. See there? We just passed where my truck ran out of gas. Dad had it towed. And pretty soon, Keith will be by to pick me up just like I asked him to earlier today.”

“You….you’re insane,” I manage to hiss.

“Or fucking brilliant,” he replies, “You know there’s a very fine line between the two, don’t you?”

For a moment, I think about opening the car door and hurling myself out. It might offer more of a chance to live than what I’ll get from this psycho. But, my hands feel numb and I realize it’s because he’s got them tied together. My ankles too.

“Don’t worry,” he says, somehow knowing that I’ve figured this out. “This won’t take long. It took less than five minutes with Angie. You see, I have this magic injection that I will put behind your knee—no fear, it will only sting for a minute and then you’ll be numb and soon . . . paralyzed. I promise. I don’t get off on inflicting unnecessary pain, trust me. And, the beauty of it is that even if they do a tox screen, the fuckers won’t know to look for this! Ha! It’s a horse tranquilizer. My mom has plenty of it in her clinic. She won’t miss this little bit. She won’t even think to notice with the number of vials she has of the shit.”

I struggle to comprehend this. “No,” is all I can say. “Please, no.”

“Don’t beg. It’s pathetic. You’re history, bitch. Just like Angie.”

He pulls the VW off the road and onto a dirt trail that leads to the edge of a tall, steep cliff. Over the edge is a gorge, the water rushing and ice cold in the winter. During the summer, this is a place to go to get high in seclusion. Or make love. Or meet up with someone that’s a secret to your parents.

Right now?

This is the place where I’m gonna die.

He puts the car in neutral, pulls up the hand brake and gets out. In moments, he’s wrenched open the passenger side door, lifting me out and taking me around to the driver’s side and placing me in the seat he just exited. I can still feel the warmth of his body on the seat.

He reaches into a leather bag he had stashed in the back seat, unzipping it and pulling out a syringe and small glass vial. I watch in horror as he expertly plunges the need into the rubber seal of the vial and extracts a syringe full of whatever fluid is inside.

He puts the empty vial back into the leather bag and the tips of his fingers flip against the glass cylinder of the syringe. His thumb pushes the plunger upward, making sure a small stream of the medication squirts out of the tip of the needle.

He squats down on his haunches, pushing my tethered ankles over so that he can access the back side of my left leg. Tears are rolling down my cheeks as I feel the prick of the needle and feel the pressure of the medicine going into the back of my knee, near the crease where it bends.

“There now,” he says, pulling the syringe away and standing up. He puts it into the leather bag, zipping it up. He drops it to his feet and then bends over again, untying my ankles and my wrists and tossing the binds onto the ground beside my car.

I feel him take my hands and place them on the steering wheel, but I can’t move them away. Whether it’s the medicine or pure fear, I can’t tell. All I know is that it’s over for me. Just like it was over for Angie. I study my hand and see that the ring Erik gave me is no longer on my finger. He’s taken it and I didn’t even feel him do it.

I take a deep breath. It just may be my last, because whatever the fuck he shot me up with is doing what it’s supposed to do. I’m numb and it starts at my extremities and moves up my center. I can think, I can be terrified, but my hands, my feet, my lips and my neck are frozen.

“Now,” he says, putting the gear shift in neutral. “Don’t guess you can move the clutch or the gas,” he chuckles. “Doesn’t matter. Won’t be much left of you or the car if and when they fish it out. Oh, don’t worry—it won’t take long. They’ll be searching for you at first light, I’m sure. So, enjoy the trip. You’ll be dead before you land.”

And he’s right. I’m fighting for my breath right now. I’m paralyzed to the point where my lungs can’t draw a breath. My eyes flutter shut as my oxygen is cut off.

“Happy landing,” he says, releasing the hand brake before he shuts the door and walks along the side of my car, pushing it from the side, rocking it back and forth. The car rolls toward the edge. A couple of more feet and it’s over. I feel Marshall rocking it harder, and with one heavy push, he shoves it over the cliff.

I’m airborne. Everything goes dark. Everything in my world ceases to exist.

Cece is gone. It’s just me now. Alone and crumpled up on the frozen, snow-covered ground feeling the warm tears trickling down my face. I’m exhausted and not just from the possession, but because the reality of what she had gone through in the final hours of her short life is both heart breaking and gut-wrenching.

I wipe the tears with a gloved hand and somehow pull myself up, brushing the snow from my pants.

The drive home seems like it takes forever. I’m numb with exhaustion and sadness as I seriously question my own sanity for having agreed to do this. I never expected the effect it would have on me, physically and emotionally.

This is so different than what it was like when it was Ma taking me back. I ponder that and figure it’s because with Ma, there was kind of a happily ever after and I had a stake in that; it led me to find my father.

But
this?

This is
so
different. How can I possibly help Cece find resolution? What does she possibly think can happen in order to right this wrong?

She expects me to take a federal judge down?

Seriously?

Once home, I go to my room and crawl into my bed, pulling the covers up and over my head.

I stay there for two days.

“Parrish,” my father’s voice comes from the other side of my bedroom door. “May I come in, please? We’re worried sick about you.”

I pull the covers back and sit up, my fingers rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “Come in,” I call out.

The look of concern on his face is totally paternal. What a great Dad I have. Immediately, a wave of anger splinters through me at Walter; the asshole who stole my mother away from me and cheated us all out of knowing one another for more than twenty-seven years.

“Do you think maybe you should see a doctor?” he asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed, watching me. “Sheila thinks you may have a virus. You haven’t eaten much or gotten out of bed for a couple of days. We’re worried,” he states.

I know that he is. I realize that I need to come clean with him so he knows the reason that I’ve taken to my bed isn’t a virus at all, it’s pure anger and maybe a little bit of fear of what I’ve witnessed through Cece.

“Dad,” I whisper, “I need to tell you what happened with Cece. I think I’m gonna need some help with this.”

He nods.

I tell him everything.

Afterwards, he reaches for my hand. “Are you absolutely sure you want to dig this up, Parrish? Are you up for it?”

I nod. “I will deal with it as long as I know that you’ll help me sort it all out. I’m not sure where to start.”

He kisses the back of my hand gently; his eyes are warm and caring. “I have an old friend,” he says softly. “He owes me...well, let’s just say, he owes me in a major way,” he finishes. I’ll give him a call. He’ll know what to do.”

“Uh, Dad?” I say, not wanting to seem ungrateful or, worse yet, sound insulting, “I mean, this friend, uh...he’s not in the mob or anything, right?”

“No, Bambolina. You should know better than that. You might recall him. Marco Trevani?”

Ahh...yes.

“The FBI Agent that went undercover in the Mafia, you mean he’s still alive?” I ask, incredulously.

“La Cosa Nostra and, yes, he’s quite healthy as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?”

I shrug. “I guess I figured that someone within the...mob or, uh, La Cosa Nostra had him eliminated or something,” I reply hesitantly.

My father smiles wryly. “That’s something the family never does,” he replies. “They don’t put hits out on law enforcement officials, whether it be the police or FBI, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why?” I ask, clearly puzzled.

“Because, Bambolina, if they did such things, it would bring down more attention and focus from local and federal authorities, which would interfere with their activities. It’s one thing they won’t condone or tolerate.”

“Oh,” I reply, “Interesting. So, is Marco still with the FBI?”

“No,” he says, standing up, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “He retired a few years back, but his son, Marco Trevani, Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps. I think he’s at the Denver Office, at least he was the last time Marco and I spoke. Let me give him a call and see how he might help.”

He heads to the door, but my voice stops him. “How are you going to explain this to him? He’ll think we’re both nuts.”

Dad turns back to me, smiling and shaking his head. “Just like your mother. No faith in me, have you?”

“It’s not that,” I reply hurriedly, “It’s just most people would think this is an insane story.”

“Ah, but Marco is not most people, I assure you.”

Two days later, I’m back in Evanston. I’d just left the mobile home park where both Cece and Erik had lived. As I drove through the winding lanes, I knew exactly where each of their homes had sat, but neither one was the same. I even knocked on the door of both of them and was told they had no recollection of either family. They suggested I check with the office manager.

I took their advice, but to no avail. Records that far back were in storage somewhere off-site and the office manager wasn’t compelled to have them located without a better reason than what I gave her. I simply said I was working on a family tree.

Lame. I know.

She suggested I spend the thirty bucks and join Ancestry.com.

Smart-ass.

On the way out, I decide to take a short detour up Route 189 to see if Erik’s plan to refurbish that old diner had ever come to fruition. Even if it had, that was still forty years ago and chances are it’s gone by now.

I slow Sheila’s car down as I approach the bend in the road just before I get to where it was located in Cece’s recollections that had become locked now in my memory base. The gravel parking lot has not been paved and…there it sits. What’s left of the summer’s weeds and ivy now dead and brown in the winter still blow in the wind surrounding it.

Shrubs and evergreens that were planted as an inviting landscape now grow tall, dwarfing the structure. I pull the car in and shut it off. A surreal feeling takes over; a mixture of a faded memory and déjà vu but, in reality, I’ve never been here before…physically, that is. I get out of the car, wanting to get close enough to see what Erik had done with it.

Oh my God.

The metal diner had, indeed, been refurbished, I can tell. But, the forty years since then have not been kind to it. It looks to have had a beautifully hand-painted scene on the front of it; turquoise blue skies with puffy, white clouds placed within, looking three dimensional. Some of the paint has chipped away, giving way to rust, but the initial beauty still lingers.

I push back some of the evergreen branches that have grown tall, obscuring the writing underneath the painted scene:
Clouds In My
Coffee.