Embers & Ash (20 page)

“As a last resort,” he said, rolling down Division Street. “Stick to the plan. Get your mom and Lou, walk to the curb . . .”

“And get the hell out of there,” I said, looking at street signs. “Make a left.”

Doug turned onto Hoyne Avenue, slowed to a halt, and cut the engine. Czar Bar was a block away; we could see its red neon sign. He cleared his throat and said, “One thing we haven't discussed. If you don't come out—”

“We haven't talked about it because I
am
coming out,” I said. “I can't bear to think any other way.”

He glanced at his watch. “It's 11:24.”

I paused in the open door. “Wish me luck.”

“Better than a wish. Take it,” he said, handing me the lighter.

I moved from streetlight to streetlight toward Czar Bar, now half a block away. When I glanced back, Doug's gaze was pinned on me. I turned and continued, thinking that even a lucky person needed courage, and a courageous person needed luck.

I rubbed a thumb over the lighter's steel skin, trying to summon both.

WICKER PARK IS AN OLD NEIGHBORHOOD MADE
from centenarian stone buildings, tarnished copper downspouts, and mossy brick avenues. Beneath my feet, the gnarled roots of aged trees ruptured the sidewalk; overhead, the moon was a pale wafer, bathing the avenue in milky whiteness.

A beater pickup filled with cast-off metal squeaked past, and disappeared.

I stared across the street at Czar Bar.

Two large windows flanked the entrance with their shades drawn. The only illumination came from the buzzing sign identifying the place, creaking in a slow breeze over the door. I touched the lighter once, took a deep breath, looked both ways, and then coughed it out, seeing a dark ComEd van parked at the curb. It was followed by an empty garbage truck and a school bus. Turning my head, I spotted a squadron of delivery scooters.
Great,
I thought.
No weapons or friends versus half the Russian mob.
I stared at Czar Bar listening to my ragged breath, and then crossed the street.

Thinking of all that my family had suffered, I blinked once, deliberately.

The blue flame flickered and burned in my gut, dancing with each step I took.

It skimmed my veins and tweaked my heart as I paused to crack ten knuckles, and then pushed through the door.

What I saw and heard: dim light unable to penetrate dark corners; the shift and creak of many bodies turning in my direction; a faint, scratchy recording of a woman warbling sadly in Russian. To my left, a row of tables filled with men receded into shadows. The commingled scent of body odor, cheap cologne, and viciousness pervaded the room. To my right sat an old-fashioned booth with panels so high that I was unable to see inside. The only sign that it was occupied came from a ribbon of cigarette smoke curling toward the tin ceiling. Before me, leaning on the corner of a bar that ran the length of the room, Vlad leered with sharp teeth. “Hello, baby,” he said, touching the heavy gold chain around his neck, and then self-consciously moving his hand to the bandage covering the damage done by Harry.

“Hey Vlad. What's new?” I said coolly. “Besides the hole in your face.”

“I lost a nose.” He shrugged. “You lost friend and doggy.” The wicked smile remained in place but his eyes taunted me. “The sit-down is scheduled as planned, yes?”

I nodded. Trying to keep the nerves out of my voice, I said, “Where are my mother and brother?”

“Ask the boss,” he said, pointing at the booth. I hesitated, and then took a cautious step as three tattooed men wearing goggles filled in behind me, blocking the exit. First I saw the table covered by a white cloth, then a glass ashtray, then a pale finger with a bright red nail lazily tracing its circular contour, and then the bleached-blond harpy once married to my now dead uncle Buddy.

“Greta,” I said slowly, suspicion confirmed, anger increasing exponentially.

She smiled with candy apple–colored lips as smoke leaked from her nostrils. With an exaggerated pout, she said, “
Aunt
Greta.” Stubbing out the cigarette, she adjusted a tight black leather jacket over a formidable bust. Narrowing her eyes behind crimson lenses, she said, “Surprised?”

“No. Yes,” I answered. “I always knew you were up to something, but I never would have guessed it was this.” Unable to keep the anger from my voice, I said, “You were part of our family.”

“Never a part, only an observer,” she said.

“You treated my uncle like a fool.”

“
Everyone
did, starting with your father,” she said, primping her peroxided locks. “Take a load off. We've got a few minutes.”

“Until what?”

“The tearful reunion, of course,” she said with a mean little grin.

I sat across from her, staring blankly, and then looked around at the men and the firepower. Despite myself, I blurted, “All of this . . . how—?”

She shrugged and lit a new cigarette. “My Russian parents were dead and I was poor. But Buddy wasn't,” she said. “He owned part of a bakery. It wasn't a fortune but it was more than I had, so I married him.”

“Seduced him. Lied to him.”

“He wuvved his Gweta,” she said in the nauseating baby talk she'd used with him, “but was
very
unhappy with your grandfather and father. His confessions to me were like a slow leak . . . first about your family's role in the Outfit, and then about ghiaccio furioso, how unfair it was that he'd been excluded just because he didn't possess it. I stoked those feelings until they were white-hot, urging him to learn more. And he did.”

“The notebook,” I said.

“He knew there was something in it that was very powerful—ultimate power, as your dad calls it,” she said, blowing smoke rings into the air. “How much do you hate me? Can you even describe it?”

I couldn't, and said nothing.

“I don't hate you or your family. Calling Buddy fat and stupid is an insult to fat, stupid people, but I didn't hate him, either. The fact is that I'm ambitious,” she said. “As I learned about the Outfit from Buddy, I realized that I could do what it does, and better, with my own organization. So I reached out to a childhood friend with experience in all things criminal to help me. Isn't that right, Vladdy?”

“Right, boss.” He grinned, moving closer.

“Things came together after that,” she said. “I had men watching your home and the bakery. What a surprise one night, six months ago. So many visitors to the Rispoli household! First Elzy and her brother, and then those little ice cream trucks. Elzy made a hasty retreat. Juan Kone's freaks took your family, my men followed the trucks, and the rest is history.” Greta glanced around at the scarred, tattooed mobsters. “In Russia, convicts band together to survive, kill to enforce the rules of survival, and then kill for fun because what the hell else is there to do? They enter prison as men and leave as animals. Chicago is a playground to them.”

“How you say . . . easy pickings.” Vlad chuckled.

“Elzy kept you on the run while I melted into Juan's organization. Black latex, white makeup, strap-down bra, and saline drops to redden my eyes. My biggest coup was stealing a pair of these from Juan,” she said, pointing at her crimson contact lenses. “From then on, the Rispolis had no power over me. Meanwhile, reports of your tenacity got back to Juan's lab. That's when I decided to let you do the rest.”

“I got Juan out the way,” I said grimly, “so you could take my family.”

“I have them, and this. A mess but legible.” In a swift movement, she threw the notebook onto the table, its formerly waterlogged pages dried to a fine, yellowed crisp.

“Now?” Vlad said.

Greta nodded, and he lifted a metal bucket onto the table. Slowly, enjoying himself, he tore off the notebook's cover, ripped out its pages, dropped it all into the bucket and used a small can of lighter fluid to coat the debris. Greta slid him a pack of matches. Vlad lit one with a flourish and dropped it into the bucket, too. The fire worked quickly, chewing up the old paper, emitting a swirling cloud of gassy vapor and ash.

“There go your family secrets, up in smoke,” Greta said. “Whatever help they provided is now gone. Frankly, they're useless to me, frivolities at best. What matters is that I have you.”

I watched the notebook burn, the sense of security it had provided me burning away with it, and then looked at Greta. “We have a deal.”

“Correction. I hold every card and you have nothing, not even that scary electricity. One crackle, and you'll catch a hundred bullets to the heart before you take a step.” With an amused smile, she said, “Wake up, child. There's no deal.”

“But we agreed,” I said, with a chill of unease, like being scratched by a cat's frozen claws. “I'm going to name you boss of the Outfit.”

“Yeah, of course. But I still want ultimate power.”

“I told you—”

“Please. Buddy was the fool, not me,” she said calmly, drawing a pinkie over her lips, fixing a smear. “Personally, I'm completely without nuance when it comes to the life I've chosen. I want what I want because I want it, just like every man in this room.” She leaned forward, gazed over her shoulder, and back at me. “Do you think they would follow me if I didn't pay them well?”

“Loyalty,” I said, the word sounding idiotic on my tongue.

“Nonsense.” Greta snorted, sitting back and crossing her arms. “I don't know specifically what ultimate power is, but I know one thing—it's most certainly money in some form, because there's nothing in the world as powerful. It's the singular driving force behind the Outfit, my organization,
every
organization, criminal or civilian. This is real life. Whoever has the most money rules the world, whatever world she occupies.”

It was so quiet that the creaking sign outside the door provided the only noise.

“Do you deny it?” she asked politely.

I'd been in too many crisis situations not to understand the dire consequences of telling anything but the truth. “No,” I said, “ultimate power is—”

Greta lifted a hand, silencing me. “When we're alone. If I'm satisfied, we'll attend the sit-down where you'll name me boss, and then you'll hand it over. Afterward, you can have your parents. They're useless to me now.”

“Parents,” I said. “What about Lou?”

“Lou stays with me,” she smiled. “Juan had quite a collection of drugs in his lab. The psychotropics were the most useful. At the right dosage, they alter a person's behavior and conception of reality. The drugs had to be combined with torture, of course . . . Vlad's specialty.”

He winked at me with a pointed smile.

“But what a difference they burned into Lou's brain. Your brother despises you, his failed
savior,
” she said.

That word, scrawled in blood by Lou, cut me like a razor.

“He's devoted to his aunt Greta. He's become quite a soldier, although that's not why he's staying,” she said. “Lou is my permanent hostage. He'll die in front of your eyes unless you serve me as counselor. After I merge the Outfit and the Russian mob, it'll be comprised of violent men who've been at war, who hate each other to death. Your first job will be to command the Outfit to fall into line behind me.”

Suspicion rising sickly, I said, “What about my dad?”

She raised a plucked and penciled eyebrow. “What about him?”

“Why not use him to get the Outfit to fall into line?”

“Good question,” she said, nodding at Vlad.

He called out a command in Russian and a shuffle sounded from the back of the room. Vlad met the noise halfway, dismissed a pair of men, and dragged a bent form onto a barstool. I rose in slow motion from my seat in the booth, seeing first a torso in a stained white shirt and then an unmistakable Roman profile, even though he was slumped toward the bar. As if in a slow nightmare, heart in my throat, I whispered, “Dad?”

“Sara Jane . . . ,” he said in a faraway voice, here but somewhere else, as he lifted his head and turned it searchingly. I saw that his right eye was gone.

“Oh god . . .
Daddy
!” I cried, going to him, gripping his shoulders. He came forward, head lolling on his neck, a thick scar sunk inward and empty over a socket that once held cold blue power flecked with gold.

“I knew you'd find us,” he said, smiling weakly. “My smart girl.”

THE MAN IN MY ARMS WAS MY DAD, BUT HE
wasn't.

Years and years had been piled onto him. Confinement, vile experimentation, and torture had aged my poor father long before his time.

His other eye, clouded, searching, found me. He tried to speak again, mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish, breath fetid, cheeks covered with ashen whiskers, and I kissed him, kissed his cracked lips and rough chin, kissed his scarred brow that used to be smooth, kissed his head that once was covered in hair that was black, lustrous, and wavy, but was now thin, brittle, and white, kissed his sallow skin and pulled him close until ever so slowly his hand spread over my back, feeling me there, that I was real.

I stared at the scar running from his forehead to his cheekbone as the cold blue flame danced in my gut. Turning to Greta, I said, “Why? For
what
reason?”

She shook her head. “It wasn't me. Juan Kone was a genius and a fool in one disgusting package,” she said. “When he was unable to extract enough enzyme GF from your father's blood, he cut out his eye, hoping to mine the last precious ounces required to build his army. He failed, and came after you.” She sighed ruefully. “That lost eye . . . cold fury is weak to point of uselessness without both of them. That's why I needed you as badly as the notebook.”

I looked down at my dad again, how crushed he was, and said, “You have me. I'll serve. But only if you give me my mom and brother, too, right now.”

“Your mommy.” Vlad chuckled. “We broke her like glass.”

“Juan did a number on her, but I have to say, it was fun washing the rest of the curiosity from her brain,” Greta said, stubbing out the cigarette. “She's a lot less . . . inquisitive these days.”

I was vibrating now, the dam between cold fury and the deadly voltage beginning to weaken. “My mom, dad, and Lou,” I said, biting back the rage, “now.”

“Or what?” she snorted.

When I moved my gaze to hers, the flame was jumping so high and furiously that a cobalt glow washed across her face. “Or I'd rather die,” I said, feeling the charged electrons soldiering up my spine, along my shoulders, into my fingertips. “If my family can't be together, intact, you can't have me, or cold fury.” I was crackling like a live wire, and stood away from my dad.

“Sara Jane,” he whispered, “be careful . . .”

“She's bluffing.” Vlad chortled. “Go to hell, bitch.”

“You first,” I said, lunging at the gold chain around his neck as a ferocious bolt of electricity shot through my body, more powerful than I'd ever experienced. It infiltrated my bones, my veins, racing into my hands, and then a blue wave of energy exploded outward from me, through Czar Bar, blowing mobsters off their feet, out of their chairs, overturning tables—followed by a deafening sonic
boom!
, as if lightning had struck the building. I was on the floor, my dad crumpled next to me. Voltage surged though my body, burning me from the inside out, biting at my intestines. I spit bile and rose with a painful effort, as if I were a hundred years old.

My fingers tingled with heat and I looked into my hand at Vlad's gold chain, burned black and stuck with strips of his flesh.

Vlad's head was on the floor staring past me into eternity.

The rest of him, burned away from the neck down, was still smoldering.

I dropped the chain and weakly tried to lift my dad, stumbling to my knees, my hands red and painful, hearing the metallic
click
of a hundred guns. Greta had been thrown from the booth and across the room, but was on her feet. Dazed and enraged, she pointed a red fingernail and croaked, “Take her alive! But kill
him
!”

And then a high-pitched whine was followed by the roar of eight angry cylinders.

The chrome face of the Cadillac exploded through the front window in a cacophony of shattering glass, twisting steel, and erupting brick.

There was a moment of collective shock, a short one, in which I mustered every ounce of strength to drag my dad to the passenger door, shove him inside, and leap in afterward. A hail of bullets rained down on the old car as Doug grinded into reverse, and we roared onto the street. The tires bit asphalt as we sped down Hoyne Avenue in a cloud of gassy smoke.

“Plan B!” Doug screamed. “I saw the blue flash and—what's plan C?!”

I pushed my dad in back, onto the floor, and leaped on the backseat watching a wave of men scrambling into vehicles. “Just go!” I shrieked. “As fast as you can!”

“This old thing's got power!” he said, glancing into the rearview mirror, “but
Jesus
! They have an entire army!”

“The guns,” my dad said.

“This one?” Doug said, pointing at the radio.

“No,” he said, clawing his way beside me, pushing at a decorative button sewn into the upholstery, “these.” A section of backseat slid away revealing two tommy guns. Facing me, throat clogged, he said, “Sara Jane, don't give up until the gun is empty.” His words were smothered by bullets battering the Cadillac, punching into metal, and shattering the back window. I grabbed a gun and peeked out at a dozen scooters bearing down, each manned by a goggle-wearing assassin. Close behind, the careening garbage truck led a ComEd van followed by a packed school bus. Another barrage of ammo hit the car as the scooters split, six buzzing along each side of the Cadillac.

“It's too many guys!” I shouted. “They'll rip this old car to pieces!”

“Maybe not,” my dad said, grasping a tommy gun. “It's armor-plated.” He closed his eye, took a deep breath, and when he opened it, said, “You take one side. I'll take the other. All you have to do is aim and squeeze.” He leaned out the side window. “Ready?”

I was always in a state of readiness, but not for this—seeing my dad as I'd never seen him before. He knew how to handle the gun, that was a surprise, but what shocked me even more was his calmness, as if he'd done this a thousand times. Maybe he had.

“Sara Jane!” he said. “Now!”

I came back to myself, squinting down the barrel, and letting off a round of bullets, understanding immediately how the guns got their nickname—Chicago typewriters—as I was deafened by a resounding
tack-a-tack-a-tack-a-tack-a-tack!
First one scooter collapsed, and then another and another, some with slumped bodies still attached, others flinging riders into the air.

“Hang on!” Doug said, squealing onto North Avenue. The garbage truck barreled through the intersection behind us, hurtling toward the Cadillac's bumper.

“It's going to—!” I said, as the huge vehicle rammed the back of the car so hard that it threw me to the floor. Doug swerved maniacally, trying to shake the relentless truck. When it hit us a second time, I felt the Cadillac lose its bearings like a dizzy ice skater. “One more shot like that and we'll tip!” I cried.

My dad was huddled next to me. “You have to take out the driver . . . my eye . . . I can't aim well enough.”

“What!”

“Kill him, sweetheart,” he said.

I pulled myself onto the backseat and peered out at the truck gathering speed, coming closer, so near that I could see the nose ring of the thug in the passenger seat holding an AK-47. I glanced from him to the rigid face of the driver. In one motion, I stuck the barrel out the window, ducked down, and squeezed. The report of bullets was followed by splintering glass and an emphatic groan, like a giant that had stumbled over its own feet. I looked out at the steel beast sliding on its side, skidding and sparking, the bloody driver hanging lifelessly from his seat belt, the passenger screaming, seeing his fate coming as they plowed into a building with crushing force.

The ComEd van hurtled past the wreckage and I leaned out to shoot, hearing a dull
click
from the empty ammo magazine.

“Dad!” I yelled, and he used both hands to throw his tommy gun at me. I snagged it and heard a short
crack!
from the van, felt a sharp, cutting sting, and rolled inside with pain and moisture soaking my shoulder. “I think . . . I'm shot,” I said stupidly.

My dad pushed his thumb into the wound, making me scream. Then I saw something I thought I'd never see again—my dad smiling, though only briefly, there and gone—and he said, “It's a graze. No bullet,” and lifted the tommy gun. “Kid, whatever your name is,” he said to Doug. “Slow down, and when I tell you, swerve into them.”

“Yessir, Mister Rispoli!”

“Wait . . . wait . . .
now
!”

Doug cranked the wheel, slammed into the van, and it bounced away. In that instant, my dad seemed to gather every last shred of power left in his body. He kicked open the passenger door, held on to the inside of the car with one hand, stepped onto the running board, and said, “You shot my daughter,” as he sprayed the van with ammunition. There was ripping metal and splintering glass, a screech of brakes, and then everyone inside was killed for a second time when the school bus hit the van, spun it, left it for dead, and bore down on us.

There was a guy in every seat gripping an automatic weapon that put the tommy gun to shame; armor-plated or not, there was no way the Cadillac, or we, would survive.

My dad flopped inside, sucking air, and threw the rifle on the ground. “Empty,” was all he could manage to say. Doug's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror as everything went eerily quiet, the only sound a rolling
clink
of bootleg whiskey bottles.

“Whiskey . . . whiskey!” I said, groping for the wooden crate.

“What the hell? A farewell drink?” Doug yelped.

“Not for us. For them,” I said, pulling out bottles, pushing them aside, and opening the box containing the cop uniforms. I yanked at a sleeve, the old wool peeling away in strips. “They're Russian. Maybe they'd like a Molotov cocktail.”

Doug's eyes widened. “Chapter six . . . ‘Methods'! ‘How to Build an Incendiary Device'!” he said. “Please tell me you've still got the lighter?”

“I'd never leave home without it,” I said.

When my dad saw what I was doing, he began quickly shredding the uniform. We worked at hyperspeed, splashing whiskey over pieces of cloth and jamming the soaked strips into bottles, leaving an inch hanging out as a fuse. It took thirty seconds to make three sloshing alcohol bombs and another thirty seconds for the nose of the bus to reach our bumper; the onslaught of bullets would begin at any second. I flicked the lighter but wind rushing in the open window snuffed it, did it again, same thing. I said, “Quick, anything that will take a spark . . . anything that burns. I need a flame.”

My dad fell to the floor, ripped open the Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries box, and pulled out a sheaf of blood-spattered cash. “I never knew why I kept this,” he said, “but now I do. Light it.” I flicked the lighter, a spark bit the crispy greenbacks, and then my dad was holding a ten-thousand-dollar torch to the Molotov cocktail. The fuse smoked and caught, filling the car with the stench of burning molasses. “Give it a second . . . wait . . . now, throw it!” he yelled.

I side-armed the bottle and it skittered over the bus's hood, rolled, and exploded in a burst of flame. The bus swerved crazily but no real damage was done, and it sped after us without pause.

My dad said, “Kid, you ever see
The Godfather
?”

“Are you kidding?” Doug called out. “I've seen
everything! Twice!
”

“When the Turk is taking Michael Corleone to the sit-down in Brooklyn and he thinks they're being followed? Remember what he does? Can you do it?”

“I—I don't know. Maybe!” Doug said.

“Good enough. Sara Jane, switch sides with me, and get ready,” my dad said as I rolled to his side of the car and grabbed a Molotov cocktail. “Both of them,” he said. “This is our last chance,” and I picked up the other one, too. He lit the first, got it smoking. “Now, kid!” my dad said, as Doug cranked the wheel, and spun the Cadillac into a stuttering U-turn.

“Like that?” Doug said.

“Perfect. Okay, sweetheart, one after another!” my dad said, as we sped straight for the bus, engaged in a deadly game of chicken. We roared up to the big yellow vehicle, Doug swerved, and I threw a cocktail, watching it shatter against the bus's windshield before it could detonate. I heaved the other a split second later—a bull's-eye that sailed through an open window. A pair of guys leaped from the rear door, but Doug couldn't hit the brakes fast enough, nailing one of them as we passed by, crushing him beneath the Cadillac with a body-shattering
thump!
We skidded to a halt and looked back. The bus had stopped, too—maybe the rest of the Russians inside were scrambling to get rid of the bomb? And then the cocktail made a muted, burping nose, blowing up the bus like a firebomb from hell. It rocked on its wheels, consumed in white flames.

“Drive, kid,” my dad said weakly, slumping onto the seat.

“Huh? Oh,” Doug said, peeling his eyes off the conflagration from which no one emerged, and speeding away. We were turning onto Ashland Avenue when I heard a
scrape-thunk
and turned to see the other Russian who'd made it off the bus. He stood on the running board leering with a mouth full of gray teeth, pulled a handgun, and shot wildly into the backseat. I drove my fist into the Orthodox cross tattooed on his face, but he held on, swinging the gun, clipping me in the mouth. I tumbled backward as he yanked open the door and pushed inside. The car skidded to a stop.

Calmly, Doug said, “Don't touch my friend—”

The guy turned to the radio pistol, muttered in Russian, and Doug shot him in the arm, saying, “Ever,” blasting him once more, this time in the kneecap. The guy screamed, slumped, and I kicked him in the face, into the street, as we screeched away, barreling toward the Currency Exchange Building.