Souvenir (28 page)

Clay ached for Addy, ached with the loneliness of a man who sees the woman he loves every day, but knows it might be the last. Watching the love drain out of her, replaced by pity. He didn’t want to fail, not at this, not now. To save his marriage, his family, he had to get everything right, figure out all the angles, use all the cunning he had to get out of the rackets. Use it all, then drop it like a bag of garbage on the side of the road and don’t look back. But first, he had some immediate problems to deal with.

No one had come for the pickup. He had everything from Thursday’s run, including the eight thou from Dom, plus today’s numbers take. Over twelve thousand bucks, not including tonight’s receipts at the Tavern. He’d called Mr. Fiorenza, and left a message, asking when he could expect a visit. Half an hour later, some stooge called and told him to sit tight, they were running a little behind.

Bullshit. Running scared was more like it. He wondered if Al were really that much of a threat to them. Were they scared of him, or had they gone to war, and maybe couldn’t spare anyone for a pickup run? Could be. It would be nice if Mr. Fiorenza just took care of that problem, eliminated it for him.

Or would it? That would only mean he was back under Mr. Fiorenza’s control. It didn’t really solve anything for him, far as Addy was concerned. But, it was his most pressing problem, a hair's breadth ahead of Addy, who was threatening in the home stretch. Compared to Al and Addy, Mr. Fiorenza was a long-term problem. Broken legs and a broken home trumped retirement from the numbers.

What Clay needed was a long-term solution to all three. He kept thinking it through, as he delivered two plates of burgers and pickles to a booth and collected the cash. It was the Town road crew chief and his wife, who apologized for the inconvenience, and said they’d be working through the weekend to finish the street by Monday. That’s one small problem solved. Now, back to the other. He had the advantage of surprise. No one would expect him to be anything but a delivery guy, a pickup man, a bartender. Everyone thought they could push him around, a guy past forty who didn’t make his living with a gun. But surprise, surprise, he used to.

He took six bottles of Schlitz to a booth crammed full of guys from the AMF Cuno factory who didn’t want glasses. Yeah, and the .45 was a surprise too. No one knew he had it. Only Addy, and she thought he’d thrown it away years ago. Maybe he’d have to get rid of it once he used it. He didn’t like the idea of throwing it away, like a piece of junk. He could bury it. Grabbing a tray and clearing empties from the tables, he came back with a damp bar rag to clean the spilled beer and crumbs off the lacquered wood. Yeah, maybe wrap it up real nice and bury it someplace, a place he could easily remember, but not connected to him. But that could wait. First things first.

He’d thought about it a lot, and it boiled down to three main questions. Where to do it? How to set it up? And most importantly, could he still do it?

He’d done it often enough. Sometimes at a distance, sometimes close up. Like that old man trying to climb up the gravel slope. Why didn’t he stop when they told him to halt? He still wondered about him. Or the sentry he’d killed, grabbing his jaw from behind and clamping it shut so he wouldn’t scream as he drove his knife in between shoulder blade and spine. The hazel green eyes of the German he’d killed with the .45 floated in front of him, looking past him to the trees and an unknown future.

He worked the register for a few minutes, totaling up tabs. Hitting the dollar and cent buttons, he worked the crank, made change, and watched the faces pass in front of him. Most were acquaintances, a few friends, some strangers. Most were happy, a few were showing their mean streak after a few drinks, and others straight-faced. Which of them could kill a guy face-to-face? Not the mean ones. They paraded their badness openly, wore it like a badge, not leaving any room for it to fester inside and eat away at them. The smilers, maybe in self-defense. But the ones with the tight lips, neither grim nor glad, they were the ones he’d put his money on. He knew about the cost of keeping secrets, how it blanked out your looks, protecting you from giving anything away.

Bringing dishes back to Brick, he gave him a brief roll of the eyes. Can’t believe how busy it is tonight. How much could he actually keep hidden? Sometimes he’d wonder if there was a limit to the secrets a man could keep stored away. Maybe this would be one thing too much, maybe it would show. Or maybe he could pull it off, shake his head when he read the paper, tsk tsk, a shooting, poor guy got killed. Maybe it was better not to say anything. Probably. Why draw attention?

He drew two schooners of Pabst draft and served a couple at the bar. The guy put down a five-spot and Clay didn’t take it. He’d learned there was a better chance of a second order if you didn’t give change. Change was final. So he moved on, too busy right now to make change, no time for nickels and dimes. What would life be like when he was out of the numbers? Less money for sure, but there was time to be gained, he had to admit. Maybe he could make something more out of the tavern. Fix it up, maybe even get a loan and put in a real kitchen…

“Clay! Telephone,” Cheryl said, waving the receiver at the other end of the bar and setting it down. “It’s Addy.”

Clay glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. Why was she calling now? He always worked late on Fridays, and she hardly ever called here even when they’d been on better terms…

“Addy?” He felt the tremble in his voice as thoughts of her suitcases packed flew through his mind.

“Chris is in jail.”

“What?” He couldn’t take in the words, couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.

“You heard me. He’s down at the station. Your friend Bob called, all apologetic. Said he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do.”

“Addy, what’s he in—” Glancing around the bar, Clay cupped his hand over the receiver. “For doing what?”

“Stealing a car. Looks like he’s getting a head start following in his father’s footsteps. You go down there and bring him home, right now!”

Click, and she was gone. Clay listened to the silence on the phone as the buzz of conversation and laughter flowed around him. Cheryl gave him a glance and a slight electric hum came out of the earpiece as he nodded, pretending his wife hadn’t just slammed the receiver down on him. He hung up, leaving his hand on the phone for a few seconds, making sure it wasn’t shaking.

“I gotta go, Cheryl,” he said, walking down the bar.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Cheryl yelled to his back as he shut the door to the storeroom behind him. Plenty, he wanted to yell back at her, plenty.

Clay knew the desk sergeant but it didn’t make any difference. He still had to sign in and be escorted upstairs as if he were a stranger or a suspect. He’d served the guy a hundred beers, saw him at ball games at Ceppa Field every now and then. Tonight, it was
come this way, Mr. Brock
, no acknowledgement of any bond at all. He’d strayed past the boundaries, fallen from grace, the father of a troublemaker, more to be pitied than befriended.

The cop’s heavy shoes click-clacked down the linoleum hallway, his keys and handcuffs clinking in time as they swayed from his belt. Clay’s movements were quiet, his soft shoes made for standing all day silent as he padded alongside the cop. He felt stripped bare, like a POW shorn of his weapons, helmet and gear, more ragamuffin than warrior, being led to the rear by an armed guard. He envied the cop his thick leather belt, snug around his middle, his steel-toed shoes, uniform and badge. It held a man together, let him know who he was. He looked down at his black slacks and white shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and sniffed, smelling stale beer and grease.

“In here, Mr. Brock,” the cop said. He opened door and gestured inside. Clay nodded and forgave him the distance he’d put between them. He knew his place, a barman, deliveryman, lousy father, worse husband.

It was a narrow room, three gray desks in a row against the wall, all strewn with papers, coffee cups and ashtrays. Bob leaned against the middle desk, talking on the phone. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Clay to have a seat. Clay stood, waiting for the conversation to finish, too full of nervous energy to sit. There was one other door at the end of the room, a small hand-lettered sign that read CELLBLOCK A taped on it.

He almost laughed. He’d been breaking the law for years, and this was as close as he’d ever come to a jail cell. The laugh choked in his throat.
The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son
floated through his mind, and he saw the trail of his father’s sins and his own leading right here, to this room and beyond the door to Cell Block A.

His son was in jail. Clay thought of his own father, but pushed the thought back down into the darkness of his mind, burying it deep. He had enough of his own sins to worry about. He was a killer, a blood-soaked fraud, a common thief, and here it was Chris who was behind bars. Chris, whose only faults were those of blood and youth, both inescapable, beyond his control. He wanted to cry out, sit down, hold his head in his hands, weep and pray.

He didn’t. He stared at a calendar from Pete’s Auto Body on South Broad Street. It was still on August, a girl in a yellow polka-dot bikini holding her own against the flow of time. He waited. Bob finally hung up.

“Clay, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me too,” Clay answered, sorry for more than he could bear to be. “What’d he do?”

Bob looked at him and blew out his breath, looking very tired. He moved and sat on one of the office chairs by the desk. Rolling it back against the wall he stuck out his legs, planting his big black cop shoes on the floor to hold himself there.

“Stole a car,” Bob said, lifting his eyes to meet Brock’s.

“What, joyriding? Whose car was it? Can I see him? Get him out of there?” Clay gestured towards the cellblock door, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, wanting only to move, to take Chris out of here, to be home with his wife and son. Safe.

“Sit down, Clay,” Bob said. “Sit down a minute.”

Clay went to the cellblock door. It was locked. “Where is he? Is he hurt?”

“He’s fine. Sit down.”

Clay shuffled his feet toward the chair at the last desk. He sat, the middle desk separating him from Bob, the cellblock door separating him from Chris, secrets separating him from Addy, time and space separating him from everything else that had once held meaning for him. He hadn’t felt this alone in the world since when? Home alive in ’45? The fluorescent light above him flickered, then brightened, sending a flash of light against the window. Clay felt his shoulders tighten and he squeezed his eyes shut for a second as more flashes exploded against his eyelids. Opening them, he felt the faint sensation of concussion reverberate against his right side, an echo rumbling down the decades. He rubbed the scar under his shirt, massaging the feeling back down into that dark place where it lived.

He rolled his chair against the wall, as Bob had done, avoiding looking into his face. The phone rang, but Bob didn’t move to get it. After four rings it went silent.

“It’s serious, isn’t it”? Clay asked.

“Yeah, no getting around it. Grand theft.”

“But what happened? Did Chris and his pals take one of their parent’s cars without asking? I mean, it’s not like he’s a thief or anything, he’s a kid.”

“He’s a kid, and he hasn’t been in trouble before. That will help. But it wasn’t a parent’s car or a joyride. He boosted a ’63 Buick Riviera, for crying out loud!” Clay could hear the frustration in Bob’s voice, and the anger at the responsibility of bearing bad news.

“Chris? You mean he was in the car?”

“No, I mean it looks like he stole it, took some pals for a ride to show it off, and got nabbed. I know it’s a shock, but there it is.”

“Bob, wait a minute. I know Chris has been hard to handle lately, but he’s not a bad kid. He’s not a car thief, that much I know. Let’s talk to him, we’ll straighten this thing out in no time.” Clay tried to sound upbeat, as if this were all a misunderstanding, a big mistake they’d laugh at later.

“We’ve talked to him and his buddies. They claim Chris picked them up in the car, bragged that he’d hotwired it. There weren’t any keys, and Chris was driving when they got pulled over. Chris said it was the other way around, that they told him they took it for a joyride and were going to get it back by ten o’clock.”

“Where—how?” Clay could barely form a sentence. There was something in Bob’s reluctant certainty that scared him. This wasn’t just a little trouble with the law. He would have been ready for a little trouble. At school, maybe a suspension. A speeding ticket, some drinking, any of the stupid things a kid with too much time on his hands could get into. He would have been ready for that, and angry about it. But this scared him. Sins of the father, after all.

“We picked them up on North Colony Road, coming off the Berlin Turnpike,” Bob said, “going about seventy.”

“Whose car?” Clay asked, trying to find a fact he could grab onto, make some sense of. He saw Bob shake his head and smile, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was going to say.

“State Senator Grant Flanagan, while he was enjoying the veal scaloppini at Verdolini’s, as the guest of the Mayor.”

“You mean Chris stole a state senator’s car from Verdolini’s parking lot?”

“Apparently so.” Verdolini’s Restaurant on North Avenue was a favorite of local politicians. The absolute worst place to steal a car. The only thing dumber than stealing a car from that lot was to steal the one belonging to a guest of the Mayor.