I have arrived at the decision that even if Sofia did shoot Carmine, he probably deserved it and I am in no position to judge after all the shenanigans I been neck-deep in for the past while.
Our relationship has shifted because now I realize that it’s me who needs Sofia and not the other way around.
As Simon said: Perhaps you like the fact that she doesn’t know the real you, as your low self-esteem issues would have you believe that the real you isn’t worthy of affection.
Or as Zeb put it: Sometimes the pit bull don’t wanna screw the poodle. He just wants to make sure nobody else does.
Both valid points, I think.
So, I’m kinda calming down a little. Enjoying the club doing so well, trying to sit with Sofia as much as possible but keeping alert for Mike, ’cause you know that potato-eating gangster won’t stay outta my picture forever. That video of his mom will be eating away at him like a ball of acid in his stomach. Not stomach acid obviously, a stronger kind.
Ronnie has called me a couple of times to make sure I’m behaving myself. I think her current attitude toward me is one of bemusement. It’s like she knows I’m going down eventually and every day I spend above ground and outta the joint makes her smile and shake her head.
So I strapped my muzzle back on, good and tight. My hands feel empty without a gun in them but tough shit, hands, you’re gonna have to get by without Sharpie for a while.
But there are a coupla things.
Two loose ends I can’t live with.
So I ask Jason if he can locate someone for me, and it turns out one of our new regulars more or less invented internet search engines. I can’t say which regular because he’s currently involved in over a hundred lawsuits, but it takes this guy about fifteen minutes on his new prototype phone to run down my cyber friend Citizen Pain. The guy who paid a hundred grand to see me tortured to death.
Turns out Citizen Pain is from Connecticut and I was all set to take a bus over there and maybe bring a black dildo with me to administer some poetic justice.
I think it was Benny Hill who said: Revenge is a dish best served cold, but mine was gonna be laid out piping hot, and I could relive it coolly later on.
It was a best-of-both-worlds kinda plan.
I might be wrong about that quote, sounds a bit vicious for Benny Hill. But you never know, a lot of funny men have a dark side.
Anyways, like I say I was all set to take a drive to Citizen Pain’s place of employment and expose him for the asshole he is, until Jason’s guy texts me the rest of the particulars. Turns out Citizen Pain is not a crooked senator or a sex pest with a record as I had imagined in my mental scenarios. Turns out Citizen Pain is a lady in her fifties, and she is the director of the Connecticut office of a major third-world charity. This woman does the TV campaign for Christ’s sake; you know the one where the camera catches her weeping? You’ve seen that one, right?
So, if I go barging in there this whole charity’s going down the toilet and I can’t have that on my conscience. The last thing I need is nightmares featuring Sudanese kids pointing the fingers of blame in my direction. So I turn the evidence over to Ronelle and she agrees to handle it quietly, which is tough for her so I appreciate it.
The second loose end is Evelyn.
I am having a hard time believing that she would just dump me like that. We were real close once upon a time.
Tight.
She taught me about boobs.
My mom and her stood together against the grim might of Paddy Costello.
Could booze have changed her that much?
The straight answer to this is yes. Booze can mess people up. The first thing an addict looses is motor functions and the second to go is morals. I have seen guys renting their kids to strangers for the price of a carton of wine. So Evelyn could have flipped on me for a never-ending supply of penthouse-quality brandy, but she’s had a few days now to acclimatize and perhaps regret selling her nephew out like that.
There is also the possibility that Edit blackmailed her with the threat of my death: sign-the-forms-or-Dan-gets-it kinda thing, she’s certainly devious enough. It’s not much of an incentive, I know, but maybe Ev loves me even more than I thought.
I gotta know. She looks like my mom for Christ’s sake and there are not so many good people in my life that I can afford to summarily write one off.
So for the past few days, I’ve been calling the Costello penthouse and hanging up if Edit answered.
I know. Pretty childish plan but I didn’t know what else to do.
Yesterday I got lucky, and a maid or cleaner picked up who hadn’t been briefed about me.
“Miss Evelyn?” she said. “I give her the phone but she pretty hammered, so make allowances okay?”
I reckon that lady was new. If she gets fired from Edit’s, I’d hire her for Green & Yellow in a heartbeat. She tells it like it is.
I don’t get long on the phone with Evelyn—almost as soon as she slurs hello down the line, I hear Edit’s strident voice in the background.
“Who is it, Evelyn dear? Who is it that is calling on you?”
Who is it that is calling on you? Far too many words in that sentence.
I have maybe ten seconds so I make them count.
“Remember the ice-cream sundae, Ev? I’ll be there Monday at noon. And every Monday until you show up.”
I barely get that much out before the line goes dead.
It’s been a long time since we had those sundaes. I hope Ev’s alcohol-addled brain can locate the memory.
In any case, I’m gonna make the trip over and be waiting, every Monday at noon. Evelyn should be able to drag herself out of bed by then.
ICal Gerber’s Tigon Hotel is down on the waterfront in Atlantic City, and is not what you’d call a classy joint. Okay it’s got a pool but I bet they don’t clean the filters too often and there are slot machines in the lobby and vending machines in the hallways. Nevertheless the location on the boardwalk makes it one of the city’s big earners and the Gerber family are like Atlantic City’s version of the Hiltons. Cal Junior, the son and heir, is regularly saying stupid smug shit to gossip mags and Aeriel, the teenage daughter, is shunning the limelight and studying hotel management in University, but she has talked about her secret tattoo, which has caused no end of speculation in US Weekly.
But back before the hotel got celebrified it was called simply the Royale and its ice-cream parlor had a reputation for making the best sundaes on the strip. And when Mom and I stayed there on our one trip to attempt to negotiate a peace with old Paddy Costello, Ev took me for a sundae every day. It was my favorite part of the trip and I’ve had a weakness for sundaes ever since.
Another reason I picked the Tigon for a rendezvous is that Jason and I once bounced the place during fight week couple of years back when the hotel was paying double overtime for doormen. It is amazing how many rich white kids think they can take a professional ’cause they’ve watched a fight from the front row. One kid actually caught me with a soft right hook and broke a couple of his fingers. J laughed his ass off.
So I know all about the hotel layout right down to the tables in the lobby Starbucks where the ice cream parlor used to be.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams, as Bob Hope once said. The Tigon management hadn’t so much tread on my dreams as stomped them to death with hobnail boots.
I think it was Bob Hope, or maybe he was paraphrasing Benny Hill.
I park a couple of blocks away in case they got cameras reading plates in the Tigon. I gotta admit I’m developing a fondness for the Caddy and every time I think on old Bent Tool I get a little tear in my eye, from holding in the laughter. I have tried hard to feel guilty about how that ended up for Benny T and the Shea-ster but whatever way I spin events in my head I come out of it clean. Those guys wanted to kill me for something they knew I had no part in. That is blatant karma-fucking and the universe dealt with them for it. I cannot wait to see what the universe does to Pabl
o. That prick wears string bracelets for crying out loud. You can’t wipe his slate clean by lighting a coupla joss sticks.
The Tigon lobby is packed even at this time in the morning. Lotta desperate-looking people lugging buckets of Starbucks toward the slot machines. I nod at the doorman in solidarity for the bullshit he will undoubtedly endure before end of shift then find myself a seat facing the doors.
If the parlor was still here, I’d probably order a couple of sundaes and try to push a few nostalgia buttons, but I have to make do with a Frappuccino, which looks kinda summery at least.
I don’t really expect Evelyn to show, not on the first day, and by twelve thirty I’m planning my next move when holy crap if she doesn’t walk in the front door with Pablo holding her elbow and affecting a slight mince like he isn’t a cold-blooded assassin.
I wonder does Evelyn know the kind of man Edit sends to keep an eye on her.
Ev looks good. Yet another hairdo; a pixie bob with autumn highlights (FP) and those oversized gilded shades that make her look like a very rich bug.
Evelyn has been off the street barely a week and already she’s showing a wincing disdain for the three-star Tigon. She waves Pablo into a seat by the elevator, what Zeb would call the hooker chair, then totters toward me, wobbly on high heels and gin by the smell of her when she leans in for a kiss.
“What the hell are we doing here, Danny?” she asks, sitting opposite and taking a belt from the Frappuccino.
“The sundaes? Remember?”
Evelyn’s wince grows more pronounced. “Oh, yeah. Dan the super spy.”
I am getting a frosty vibe right off. This ain’t gonna end in tears and hugs.
Maybe just tears.
“I bet you’re wondering why I brought you here today,” I say, sounding pathetic even to myself.
“Yeah, I kinda am,” says Evelyn. “I had a seaweed wrap booked and I don’t even know what the hell that is.”
Is this the real Evelyn? I remember her being funny and ballsy, but I haven’t seen much of that aunt since the reunion in Cloisters. Maybe Evelyn hasn’t been that person in a long while.
But I came here for a reason.
I blinker my face with a palm and talk behind it in case the ninja/Pablo can lip-read.
“Ev. Are you being blackmailed? Is that it?”
Ev is playing with her fingers.
Antsy.
She wants a drink.
I put my hands on hers and hold them still. “Ev. Tell me now. Are you being forced to stay with Edit and sign her papers? Did they threaten to kill me?”
Edit shudders with the effort of holding herself together, but she doesn’t answer.
I try another tack. “Don’t you remember your sister? My mother? How close we all were?”
Ev takes off her glasses with a shaky hand. “Screw you, Danny. That’s a cheap shot. Of course I remember how we were. Those days in Ireland, the three of us together. Those were the happiest days of my life. I think about those days all the time. In my mind there’s a glow over the whole thing. Like it was magic.”
This is exactly what I wanted to hear, but I don’t feel any better for hearing it.
“So what the hell is going on? I saved you.”
Ev’s eyes are the only part of her face that seem honest. There’s pain in there and a lot of mileage at the corners.
“Saved me? You delivered me to Edit.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Evelyn covers half her face with the oversized glasses.
“Right thing? Danny, right and wrong are for people with choices. I’m beyond that now. I expected to be dead in a year so I can ignore a little overeagerness on Edit’s part if it means I get to sleep in a clean bed and have some chick do my hair.”
This sounds terrible. Awful. Like the last nail in hope’s coffin.
“She tried to kill me, Ev. Those cops were gonna torture me.”
The corner of Ev’s mouth twitches. Is she smug all of a sudden?
“Yeah? And where are those cops now, Danny?”
Suddenly I am cut adrift from the last blood member of my family. Evelyn knows Krieger and Fortz are dead. It was a condition.
That’s cold.
“Aunt Evelyn. Ev. I can look after you. Edit is dangerous.”
Evelyn applies some lipstick. It is almost impossible to see her as the pungent lush I poured into my car last week. This new image is stomping down on the old one.
“Listen, Danny. I left home, went on the road, turned my back on the family. I thought that was it. Daddy would cut me off the same way he did to Margaret. Until a few months ago, I thought I was destitute. You wouldn’t believe what I did for a few bucks. I hurt people. I stole. I got with guys in bathroom stalls, Danny. For a shot of bourbon. So fuck all that, you know. Fuck it. I’m done with that life forever. And if it means that I gotta watch my back, hell I was doing that anyway.” She pats my hand. “You’re alive and I’m alive, and that’s good. So you gotta stop calling me with your Boy Scout plans. I am saved, Danny. I saved myself.” She pauses to set up the next statement. “And I saved you.”
It’s probably true.
“The bad guys are dead and the good guys live to drink another day.”
Not all the bad guys are dead. “I see you brought Pablo along.”
Ev laughs, and even her laugh is Manhattan and private schools now. “Pablo is a nightmare. He makes me do these stretches. I can barely sit down. And the latest thing is I can only drink champagne, which is pretty low in calories apparently.”
“What an asshole.”
“It’s for my own good. I want to get into a bikini this summer. Also, he drives me, I don’t have a license and even if I did I’m pretty much permanently over the legal limit.”
I smile wanly. “Everyone should have a Pablo.”
“Well, okay then,” says Ev, and I realize the meeting is over. “If I can do anything for you, Dan. Anytime. Please don’t hesitate to call.” Her head tilts in concern. “How are things with that local hoodlum, Irish Mike?”
Hoodlum? He’s been called a lot worse by his own mother.
“Mike is fine. I handled it.”
“Great, good, fab,” says Evelyn Costello, rising to her expensively shod feet. “So we see eye to eye, honey? We’re both fine and let’s just get on with things.”
Ev leans over and kisses my cheek, transferring a layer of lipstick.
“Edit and I are going to the Hamptons for a few weeks. We think it’s a good idea to get me integrated with the brunch-lunch crowd.”
“Just smile and be yourself,” I advise, but it’s all just empty words now. Just bullshit and passing time. We probably won’t ever see each other again.
“You are my family, Danny. Never forget that.”
Yeah, family. Right-o.
All I can do is nod.
I feel so depressed, like I just woke up and found my leg amputated.
Evelyn walks out of my life, a little steadier than she reentered it a week ago. You wouldn’t peg her for a drunk unless you were raised by one. She pulls her hands close to her chest the way rich folk do when they’re forced to wade among the plebs and waits for a sullen bellhop to get the door.
A fortnight ago Ev was rolling guys in motels for the contents of their wallets. Would I prefer that life for her? Who am I considering here—Evelyn’s well-being or my bruised pride?
While I am considering this, Pablo comes over, helps himself to a seat and treats me to a suspicious eyeballing. He’s wondering if I made him at Mike’s. Did I figure it out that he was the ninja?
This guy is ice.
He’s looking me over like I’m fish on a plate. I got stared at a lot as a soldier in someone else’s country and also as a doorman on a casino and usually I can give better than I get, but it’s hard to glare convincingly at a guy who can do what this guy can do with a rifle. This goes on for about five minutes until finally I break.
“Fuck it, okay. I saw your
bracelets when you flipped me over.”
Pablo slaps his knee. “I knew it. I knew you recognized me. Shit, McEvoy, five more seconds and you would’ve been off the hook.”
Balls. Five seconds.
“So what happens now? Are you gonna come hunting?”
“Are you kidding? I never had a gig so sweet. Evelyn insists that you remain alive. She even said you had to be healthy so I can’t put you in a wheelchair or nothing.”
This is a major relief and I have to stop myself from saying thank you.
“Good to know. But hey, I can kill you, right?”
Pablo laughs for a full minute, which is a little OTT I think. “I like you, Irish. You have a good imagination but your aura is clouded and the way you walk is affecting your spine. I could help you with that. Total Dimensional Control. That’s my system.” And then holy shit if he doesn’t slide me a business card. “Evelyn said whatever you want, so I could train you and she picks up the tab. Win-win.”
Being alive is win-win enough for me at the moment, but I take the card, and study the details. I don’t want to appear rude.
“Lemme have a look at the Web site and get back to you.”
“Sure, McEvoy. Whatever. No time limit on Evelyn’s money.” He rises smoothly and I see the power in his limbs, restrained but ready.
How did I not see before that this guy is a killer?
“Ciao,” says Pablo, all European, and then he follows Evelyn into the parking lot without a backward glance.
This is about the least threatening sit-down I’ve had for months, and yet when Pablo disappears through the revolving doors, I stride quickly toward the restroom and lock myself in a cubicle until I stop shaking.
I call Zeb from the Caddy because I need to hear a friend’s voice.
“Hey, Paddy McMickster,” he says. “Did you catch up with that Citizen Pain guy?”
“That guy is a gal,” I tell him, then go for an obvious setup. “Ronelle went out there with the Calvary to pick her up.”
Zeb sighs. “Cavalry, man. Cavalry. Calvary is where Jesus was killed.”
“Yeah, well you’d know.”
One–nil.
“Ooh, the Mick is bringing it to the table. You in a party mood, Dan-o?