Sacred

  “Gee,” Angie said, “sorry.”

  Manny raised his eyebrows at John. “Sarcastic little strumpet, isn’t she?”

  John turned from the fountain, his nose crisscrossed in white bandages, the flesh around both eyes blue-black and puffy. “Excuse me,” he said, and came out from behind Manny and punched me in the face.

  He threw himself into it so hard his feet left the ground, but I leaned back with it, took it on my temple after it had lost about half of its velocity. All and all, it was a pretty shitty punch. I’ve had bee stings that hurt more.

  “What else your mother teach you besides boxing, John?”

  Manny chuckled and the two big guys snickered.

  “Laugh it up,” John said and stepped in close. “I’m the guy who owns the paper on your entire life now, Kenzie.”

  I pushed him back, looked at Manny. “So this is your computer geek, eh, Manny?”

  “Well, he’s not my muscle, Mr. Kenzie.”

  I never saw Manny’s punch. Something in the center of my brain exploded and my whole face went numb and I was suddenly sitting on my ass on the wet cobblestone.

  Manny’s buddies loved it. They high-fived and hooted and did little jigs as if they were about to piss their pants.

  I swallowed against the vomit surging up through my alimentary canal and felt the numbness leave my face, replaced by pins and needles, a deep flush of blood rushing up behind my ears, and the sensation that my brain had been replaced by a brick. A hot brick, a brick on fire.

  Manny held out his hand and I took it, and he lifted me to my feet.

  “Nothing personal, Kenzie,” he said. “Next time you raise a hand to me, though, I’ll kill you.”

  I stood on wobbly feet, still swallowing against the vomit, and the fountain seemed to shimmer at me from underwater.

  “Good to know,” I managed.

  I heard a loud rumble and turned my head to my left, watched a garbage truck lumber up Unity Street, its body so wide and the street so narrow that its wheels rolled along the sidewalk. I had a horrendous hangover, a probable concussion, and now I had to listen to a garbage truck clang and wheeze its way down Unity Street, banging trash cans against cement and metal the whole way. Oh, rapture.

  Manny put his left arm around me and his right around Angie, guided us to sit beside him around the fountain. John stood over us and glared down at me, and the two steroid cases remained where they were, watching the entrances.

  “I liked that shit you pulled with the cop last night,” Manny said. “That was good. ‘Manny, you sure you’ll take him to the hospital?’” He chuckled. “Christ. You’re very quick on your feet.”

  “Thanks, Manny. Means so much coming from you.”

  He turned to Angie. “And you, going right for those diskettes like you knew where they’d be all along.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because I was trapped in the back office by the laser light show you had in the main office.”

  “Right.” He nodded his huge head. “I initially thought you’d been hired by the competition.”

  “You have competition?” Angie said. “In grief therapy?”

  He smiled at her. “But then John told me you were looking for Desiree Stone, and then I discovered you couldn’t even get past the computer password, so I realized it was just dumb luck.”

  “Dumb luck,” Angie said.

  He patted her knee. “Who has the discs?”

  “I do,” I said.

  He held out his hand.

  I placed them on his palm and he tossed them to John. John placed them in an attaché case and snapped it shut.

  “What about my bank account, credit cards, all that?” I said.

  “Well,” Manny said, “I thought of killing you.”

  “You and these three guys?” Angie laughed.

  He looked at her. “That’s amusing?”

  “Look at your crotch, Manny,” I said.

  He looked down, saw Angie’s gun there, the muzzle a tenth of an inch from Manny’s family jewels.

  “That,” Angie said, “is amusing.”

  He laughed and she laughed too, holding his eyes, the gun never wavering.

  “God,” he said, “I like you, Miss Gennaro.”

  “God,” she said, “the feeling definitely ain’t mutual, Manny.”

  He turned his head, looked toward the bronze plaques and the great stone wall across from him. “So, okay, nobody gets killed today. But, Mr. Kenzie, I’m afraid you bought yourself seven years of bad luck. Your credit is gone. Your money is gone. And it isn’t coming back. Myself and some associates decided you needed to be taught a lesson in power.”

  “Obviously I have, or you wouldn’t have those discs.”

  “Ah, but, while the lesson is over, I need to be sure it sinks in. So, no, Mr. Kenzie, you’re back to square one. You have my promise we’ll leave you alone from this point, but the damage that’s been done will remain that way.”

  On Unity Street, the garbagemen were tossing the metal cans back to the sidewalk from a height of over four feet and a van that had come up behind them was blaring its horn and some old lady was screaming from her window at everyone in Italian. All in all, it wasn’t helping my hangover.

  “So that’s it?” I thought of the ten years of saving, the four credit cards in my wallet I’d never be able to use again, the hundreds upon hundreds of shitty cases—big and small—which I’d labored through. All for nothing. I was poor again.

  “That’s it.” Manny stood up. “Be careful who you fuck with, Kenzie. You know nothing about us, and we know everything about you. That makes us dangerous and you predictable.”

  “Thanks for the lesson,” I said.

  He stood over Angie until she looked up at him. Her gun was still in her hands, but pointing at the ground.

  “Maybe until Mr. Kenzie can afford to take you to dinner again, I can pick up some of his slack. What do you say?”

  “I’d say pick up a copy of Penthouse on your way home, Manny, and say hello to your right hand.”

  “I’m a lefty.” He smiled.

  “I don’t care,” she said and John laughed.

  Manny shrugged, and for a moment looked like he was considering a retort, but instead he spun on his heel without another word and walked toward Unity Street. John and the other two men followed. At the entrance, Manny stopped and turned back to us, his massive physique framed by the blue and gray of the idling garbage truck.

  “See you around, kids.” He waved.

  And we waved back.

  And Bubba, Nelson, and the Twoomey brothers came out from behind the garbage truck, each brandishing a weapon.

  John started to open his mouth, and Nelson hit him dead in the face with a sawed-off hockey stick. Blood spurted from John’s broken nose, and he pitched forward and Nelson caught him and hoisted him over his shoulder. The Twoomey brothers came through the entrance-way with metal trash cans in their hands. They swung the cans in pinwheels over their shoulders and brought them down on the heads of Manny’s steroid cases, pile-drove the men into the cobblestone. I heard a loud crack as one of them shattered his kneecap on the stone, and then both crumpled and curled into the ground like dogs sleeping in the sun.

  Manny had frozen. His arms out by his sides, he watched bewildered as the three men around him were knocked out cold in under four seconds.

  Bubba stood behind him, a metal trash can lid raised like a gladiator’s shield. He tapped Manny on the shoulder and Manny got a sick look on his face.

  When he turned around, Bubba’s free hand found the back of his head, grabbed it tight, and then the metal lid snapped down four times, each hit sounding like the wet splat of a watermelon dropped from the roof of a row house.

  “Manny,” Bubba said as Manny sagged toward the ground. Bubba yanked at his hair and Manny’s body twisted in his grip, loose and elastic. “Manny,” Bubba repeated, “how’s it going, pal?”

/>   They tossed Manny and John in the back of the van, then lifted the other two guys and threw them into the back of the garbage truck with the stewed tomotoes and black bananas and empty frozen-food trays.

  For one scary moment, Nelson put his hand on the hydraulic line lever at the back of the truck and said, “Can I, Bubba? Can I?”

  “Better not,” Bubba said. “Might make too much noise.”

  Nelson nodded, but he looked sad.

  They’d stolen the garbage truck from the BFI yard in Brighton this morning. They left it where it was and walked back to the van. Bubba looked up at the windows fronting the street. Nobody was looking out. But, even if they were, this was the North End, home of the Mafia, and one thing people knew around here from birth was no matter what they saw, they didn’t see it, Officer.

  “Nice getup,” I said to Bubba as he climbed into the van.

  “Yeah,” Angie said, “you look good dressed up as a garbageman.”

  Bubba said, “That’s sanitation engineer to you.”

  Bubba paced around the third floor of the warehouse he owned, sucking from a vodka bottle, smiling and occasionally looking over at John and Manny, who were tied tight to metal chairs, still unconscious.

  The first floor of Bubba’s warehouse was gutted; the third was empty now that he’d liquidated his stock-in-trade. The second was his apartment, and it would have been more comfortable, I suppose, but he’d covered everything in quilts in anticipation of his yearlong departure, and besides, the place was mined with explosives. That’s right. Mined. Don’t ask.

  “The little guy’s coming to,” Iggy Twoomey said. Iggy sat with his brother and Nelson on adjoining piles of old pallets, passing a bottle back and forth. Every now and then, one of them giggled for no apparent reason.

  John opened his eyes as Bubba leaped across the floor and landed in front of him, hands on his knees like a sumo wrestler.

  For a moment, I thought John would faint.

  “Hi,” Bubba said.

  “Hi,” John croaked.

  Bubba leaned in close. “Here’s the deal, John. Is it John?”

  “Yes,” John said.

  “Okay. Well, John, my friends, Patrick and Angie, they’re going to ask you some questions. You understand?”

  “I do. But I don’t know—”

  Bubba put a finger to John’s lips. “Sssh. I’m not finished. If you don’t answer their questions, John, then my other friends? You see them over there?”

  Bubba stepped aside and John got a look at the three head cases sitting back on the pallets in the shadows, swilling booze, waiting for him.

  “If you don’t answer, Patrick and Angie will leave. And me and my other friends will play this game we like involving you, Manny, and a Phillips-head screwdriver.”

  “A rusty one,” one of the Twoomeys giggled.

  John began to convulse, and I don’t even think he was aware of it. He looked up at Bubba as if he were looking at the physical reality of a phantom that had haunted his dreams.

  Bubba straddled John and brushed his hair back off his forehead. “That’s the deal, John. Okay?”

  “Okay,” John said and nodded several times.

  “Okay,” Bubba said with a satisfied nod. He patted John’s cheeks and climbed off him. Then he stepped over to Manny and tossed some vodka in his face.

  Manny woke coughing, bucking at the ropes, spitting at the vodka on his lips.

  The first thing he said was “What?”

  “Hi, Manny.”

  Manny looked up at Bubba and for a moment he tried to look fearless, used to this. But Bubba smiled, and Manny sighed, then looked at the ground.

  “Manny!” Bubba said. “Glad you could join us. Here’s the deal, Manny. John’s going to tell Patrick and Angie what they want to know. If I think he’s lying, or if you interrupt, I’m going to set you on fire.”

  “Me?” Manny said.

  “You.”

  “Why not him? I mean, if he’s the one who’s lying?”

  “Because there’s more of you to burn, Manny.”

  Manny bit his upper lip and tears welled in the pockets of his eyes. “Tell them the truth, John.”

  “Fuck off, Manny.”

  “Tell them!”

  “I’ll tell them!” John screamed. “But not because of you. ‘Why not burn him?’” he mimicked. “Some friend. If we get out of this, I’m telling everyone you wept like an old woman.”

  “I did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “John,” Angie said, “who screwed with Patrick’s bank account and credit cards?”

  He looked at the floor. “I did.”

  “How?” I said.

  “I work for the IRS,” he said.

  “So you’ll fix it?” Angie said.

  “Well,” he said, “actually it’s a lot easier to wreck than it is to fix.”

  “John,” I said. “Look at me.”

  He did.

  “Fix it.”

  “I—”

  “By tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? I can’t do that. It’d take—”

  I stood over him. “John, you can make my credit disappear, and that’s a very scary thing. But I can make you disappear, and that’s a little more scary, wouldn’t you say?”

  He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat for a moment.

  “Tomorrow, John. Morning.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

  “You make other people’s credit disappear?” I asked.

  “I—”

  “Answer him,” Bubba said, looking down at his shoes.

  “Yes.”

  “People who try to leave the Church of Truth and Revelation?” Angie said.

  Manny said, “Hey, wait a minute.”

  Bubba said, “Who’s got a match?”

  “I’ll shut up,” Manny said. “I’ll shut up.”

  “We know all about Grief Release and the Church,” Angie said. “One of the ways you deal with naughty members is to screw with their finances. Correct?”

  “Sometimes,” John said, his lower lip protruding like a kid caught looking up the girls’ dresses in school.

  I said, “You have people working in all the good companies, don’t you, John—the IRS, police department, banks, the media, where else?”

  His shrug was constricted by the ropes. “You name it.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  He snorted. “I don’t see anyone complaining when Catholics work for those same organizations. Or Jews.”

  “Or Seventh-Day Adventists,” Bubba said.

  I looked at him.

  “Oh.” He held up a hand. “Sorry.”

  I bent down by John, placed my elbows on his knees, and looked up into his face.

  “Okay, John. Here’s the important question. And don’t even think about lying to me.”

  “That would be bad,” Bubba said.

  John glanced nervously at Bubba, then back at me.

  “John,” I said, “what happened to Desiree Stone?”

  11

  “Desiree Stone,” Angie repeated. “Come on, John. We know she was treated by Grief Release.”

  John licked his lips, blinked. He hadn’t spoken in over a minute and Bubba was getting restless.

  “John,” I said.

  “I know I had a lighter around here somewhere.” Bubba looked bewildered for a moment. He patted his pants pockets, then suddenly snapped his fingers. “Left it downstairs. That’s what I did with it. Be right back.”

  John and Manny watched him jog toward the stairs at the end of the loft, the hammering clunk of his combat boots echoing off the beams overhead.

  As Bubba disappeared downstairs, I said, “Now you’ve done it.”

  John and Manny looked at each other.

  “He gets like this,” Angie said, “you never know what he’ll do. He tends to get, you know, creative.”

  John’s eyes spun in their sockets like saucers. “Don’t let him hurt
me.”

  “Not much I can do, if you don’t tell us about Desiree.”

  “I don’t know anything about Desiree Stone.”

  “Sure you do,” I said.

  “Not like Manny does. Manny was her primary counselor.”

  Angie and I swiveled our heads slowly, looked at Manny.

  Manny shook his head.

  Angie smiled and walked over to him. “Manny, Manny, Manny,” she said. “The secrets you keep.” She tilted his chin until he was looking in her eyes. “’Fess up, muscle boy.”

  “I have to take this shit from that psychotic, but I ain’t taking it from no fucking girl.” He spit at her and she leaned back from it.

  “My,” she said. “You get the feeling Manny spends way too much time at the gym? You do, don’t you, Manny? Lifting your little weights and pushing smaller guys off the StairMaster and telling all your steroid buddies about the bimbo you used and abused the night before. That’s you, Manny. That’s you all over.”

  “Hey, fuck you.”

  “No, Manny. Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck you and die.”

  And Bubba came bounding back into the room with an acetylene torch screaming, “Suc-cess! Suc-cess!”

  Manny screamed and bucked against his ropes.

  “This is getting good,” one of the Twoomey brothers said.

  “No!” Manny shrieked. “No! No! No! Desiree Stone came to the Therapeutic Center on November nineteenth. She, she, she was depressed because, because, because—”

  “Slow down, Manny,” Angie said. “Slow down.”

  Manny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his face drenched in sweat.

  Bubba sat on the floor and fondled his acetylene torch.

  “Okay, Manny,” Angie said. “From the top.” She placed a tape recorder on the floor in front of him and turned it on.

  “Desiree was depressed because her father had cancer, her mother had just died, and a guy she’d known in college had drowned.”

  “We know that part,” I said.

  “So, she came to us and—”

  “How’d she come to you?” Angie said. “Did she just walk in off the street?”

  “Yes.” Manny blinked.

  Angie looked at Bubba. “He’s lying.”

  Bubba shook his head slowly and turned on the torch.