Greenmantle (35 page)

By the time he’d halved the distance, there was a fourth shot. Then he was close enough to hear them talking and he moved in, ready for anything. When he spoke, they all turned to him. He kept the UZI ready for action.

“Christ, Tony!” a familiar voice said. “Is that you? What do you say you call off your little Amazons and give an old man a break?”

Valenti tucked his cane under his arm and took out the flashlight. The beam stabbed the night. He moved it to the man’s face, then let the UZI hang from its strap as he moved forward.

“What the hell are you doing here, Mario?”

“Helping out. Look, Tony. We got no time for talk. Tom got hit bad and I think maybe the woman did, too.”

Valenti thought his heart would stop. He’d forgotten the scream he’d heard earlier. Christ, it couldn’t be Frankie.

At the same time as he turned, Ali bolted for her mother. Frankie was sitting up and the beam of Valenti’s flashlight caught her face. He quickly pointed it away.

“Mom! Are you okay?”

Frankie nodded slowly. “I can’t take much more of this,” she said, a low rasp in her voice. Ali knelt down beside her, and rather than speaking, she put her arms around her, holding her close. Valenti started for them, but Mario caught his arm. “We got other problems right now,” he said. He plucked the flashlight from Valenti’s nerveless fingers and played its beam over Howie’s face. “Do you know this monkey?”

Valenti started to shake his head, then looked closer. “He might have been with Shaw last night. It’s hard to tell, though.”

“Okay. Fuck him. We got to look after Tom. You want to get something on that wound of his while I get my van?”

“Sure.”

Valenti went down carefully beside Bannon and pulled the blond man’s jacket away from his chest. Jacket and shirt were soaked with blood. Mario handed him the flashlight.

“Hang tight,” he said. “I’ll be right back. I got a kit in the van—but then I got to take him to get patched up.”

“Do it,” Valenti said.

He noted that Mally had pulled another of her vanishing acts, then turned his attention to the immediate problem. He looked up when he sensed motion close at hand. Frankie and Ali had approached him and were standing by.

“Oh, jeez,” Ali muttered and looked away.

Frankie swallowed painfully, then knelt down beside Valenti. “Can I…can I help?”

“Yeah. Could you hold the light?”

It was easier to work with both hands free. He peeled Bannon’s shirt back, sopping the blood carefully with his own jacket. The wound was a mess, but he figured the bullet had gone right through. Bannon was going to need a lot of blood. He was going to need a helluva lot better attention than what they could give him, or he wasn’t going to make it.

“Any idea who that guy was?” he asked as he worked, nodding toward Howie’s body.

Frankie cleared her throat. “Tom said he worked with Earl. That he was with Earl when he tried to grab Ali last night.”

Valenti nodded. “Yeah, I thought it was the same guy.”

Ali was looking at the dead man, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. Then she realized that Mally was gone. Down at the end of the road Mario’s van started up. The engine’s revving was followed by the sound of wheels spinning. A few moments later the van’s headlights appeared and caught them in its glare. Mario pulled over to the side of the road, then backed up so that they wouldn’t have far to carry Bannon.

“We’ll put him on the bed,” he said as he opened the back door.

With Frankie and Valenti’s help, he got the wounded man inside. Grabbing a first-aid kit, he crouched beside the bed and started to work on the wound.

“He’s gonna need blood,” he said.

“Is he…is he going to be all right?” Ali asked.

“Christ, I hope so. Tony, I got to go. I can’t help him here.”

Valenti nodded. “You want me to handle that?” he asked, indicating Howie’s body.

“No. Haul him up here. Then you got to go, Tony. I don’t know when Louie’s coming back and I don’t know how many
soldati
he’s bringing,
capito?
You can’t stay.”

“I’ve got to stay.”

Mario studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. But then we got to play this at both ends, you know what I’m saying? If we get rid of Louie and his boys, they’re just gonna send more.”

“What’re you saying, Mario?”

“I’m going to New York after I take care of Tom. Can you hire any local talent?”

“Fercrissakes, Mario. I don’t want you involved anymore.”

“Too late. Broadway Joe gave me his word and he broke it. He owes me now. So are you gonna be all right? I’ll try to send someone, but my connections aren’t what they could be this side of the Atlantic. I had a hell of a time just outfitting this van.”

Valenti glanced inside. There was a small arsenal in there. It was outfitted for camping, but besides the weaponry there was a great deal of what looked like sound equipment. Valenti recognized a sonar device and a couple of listening hookups for taps or long-range microphones.

“You’d better get going,” he told Mario. “We’ll work things out here.”

Mario glanced out the back door to where Frankie and her daughter were standing off to one side. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.
Coraggio,
Tony.”

Valenti shook his head. “So that
was
you on the phone, wasn’t it? What were you playing at?”

“I didn’t know who was listening—if anybody was, you know what I’m saying? Louie thinks it’s just you with maybe some muscle, he’s not gonna play it the same as he would if he knew it was you and the Fox.”

“There’s that.”

“Okay. I’m going. You sure you don’t—”

“You handle New York,” Valenti said, “but no big show, okay?”

“I’ve got some ideas—nice and simple ones. You take it easy.” Mario tipped his finger against his forehead. “Nice to meet you, ladies,” he added to Frankie and Ali. “I wish it could’ve been under more pleasant circumstances.”

He got into the captain’s chair on the driver’s side. Valenti stowed Howie’s body in the back, then slammed the door shut. Mario drove up toward the house where he turned the van around. As he passed them heading back he blinked his headlights. They stood, watching until his taillights disappeared, then slowly regarded each other.

“How’re you holding up?” Valenti asked them finally.

“I think I need a few things explained,” Frankie said.

“We can do that,” Valenti said. He collected the various weapons, including Mario’s crossbow. “Let’s talk about it up at the house—okay?”

Frankie nodded. She looked beat, Valenti thought.

Ali slipped her arm around her mother’s waist, and he followed at a slower pace. Christ, he wished things’d slow down a little. But he had the feeling that they were just going to get worse.

He paused at his front door, letting the other two go on inside while he turned back to look out across his front lawn. They had just appeared there, he remembered. Ali and the wild girl had appeared on his lawn as though they’d tumbled out of thin air.

“Tony?”

He turned to find Ali standing by the door. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “How about you?”

“I’m handling it.”

“I don’t think my mom’s doing too good. Are you coming in?”

He followed her inside to find Frankie curled up on the farthest end of the couch from the door. Ali sat down beside her and took her hand while Valenti settled on the couch opposite them. Frankie held Ali’s hand gratefully and gave them both a wan smile.

“Busy night,” Valenti said.

Frankie nodded. “Will your friend be all right?”

“Yeah. I think so. He seemed like a tough guy.” Valenti regarded her, hearing again the touch of hoarseness in her voice. Then his gaze settled on her bruised throat. Oh, Christ. “Frankie, what happened to you?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I…I was attacked when I got home. There was this man in a pickup…waiting for me….”

Ali’s hand tightened on hers.

“Jesus,” Valenti muttered. “That Howie guy?”

She shook her head.

“You mean it was some guy that had nothing to do with your ex?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Fercrissakes. What’s going on around here?” Valenti shook his head. “It’s like the whole world’s gone crazy all of a sudden. Did this guy tell you what he wanted?”

Frankie swallowed. “Me,” she said in a quiet voice.

There was a long moment of silence, then Ali snuggled closer to her mother and put her arm around her. “It’s going to be okay, Mom.” She looked at Valenti. “Isn’t it, Tony?”

“Well, we’re sure going to give it our best shot.”

Silence fell between them again. Ali just held her mother. Valenti sat watching them, wanting to comfort them both while trying to fight the anger that was rising in him. Frankie’s eyes held a distant, hurt look. When they finally cleared, she looked at Valenti.

“That man with the van,” she asked. “Is he one of your old business associates—from when you were doing the study on the mob?”

Valenti blinked. “Who told you that?”

“Ali did.”

“Oh.” He glanced at Ali, who shook her head slightly from side to side. Right, kid. Maybe we’ll leave it like that for now. But you and me, we’ve got a long talk coming to us. “Yeah,” he said. “Mario taught me everything I knew about the mob. He was sort of my…” He searched for the word.

“Your mentor?”

“Yeah. That’s close enough.”

“Well, he certainly seemed to know what he was doing. And all that equipment.”

“Yeah. Mario’s always been good with toys—gadgets, that kind of thing. Listen.” He looked from Ali to her mother. “Maybe we should think about getting some sleep—what do you say?”

“I’d like that—oh, my bag! I had some things in it….”

“It’s by the door,” Valenti said. “I brought it up. Look, you know the way upstairs. You take my bed, Frankie, and Ali can have the guest room again.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to be fine down here—don’t worry about it. Besides, somebody’s got to keep an eye on things in case, well, you know. I’ll sleep lighter down here.”

He got the Adidas bag. As Frankie started up the stairs he caught Ali’s arm. “We’ve got to talk,” he said.

“I know. Tomorrow—okay? I’ll get up early. Mom’s a pretty heavy sleeper.”

“Okay. You got a date.”

“She’s going to be okay, isn’t she, Tony? I mean, she looks so…I don’t know. Sort of washed out.”

“She’s been through a lot of crap. She’s not young and resilient like you, and she hasn’t been through it all before, like me. But she’s going to pull out of it fine, Ali. Trust me. She’s a tough lady—she just don’t know it.”

Ali nodded. “G’night, Tony.”

“Yeah.
Buena notte
. You call me if you start feeling weird or you hear anything, okay? And tell your momma the same thing.”

“I will.”

He watched her go up the stairs, then headed back to the couch. He sat there for a while, massaging his leg, thinking. Then he got up and took all the weapons into the kitchen. The .38 Howie had used was the only one that had been fired, but when he had finished taking it apart and cleaning it, he started on the others. With his hands busy, it was easier to think.

* * *

Considering how little time they’d spent in their own house, Ali was already beginning to feel as comfortable in Tony’s guest room as she did in her own bedroom. Once she was washed up and had tucked her mother in, she sat on the bed in the nightie that Frankie had brought up for her and stared out the window.

She was young and resilient, was she? She wasn’t so sure about that. She was dealing with it all by pushing it aside and filing it under “Handle This Stuff Later.” She’d had a lot of practice with that kind of thing. Previous problems hadn’t been quite as stunning as what she’d experienced over the past forty-eight hours, but she was finding that she could deal with them in the same way. It hadn’t been easy moving around as much as she had, always having to fit into a new school, a new neighborhood. That was why she’d learned to depend on herself first. She could handle herself. Hadn’t tonight proved it? But when she really thought about it all…

Strangely enough, it wasn’t the mystery, as either stag or Green Man, that came to the fore of her thoughts, but wild-haired Mally. The riddle of just what she was and what she really wanted nagged at Ali. Lewis had been very eloquent in explaining how things should be, even if he wasn’t working with the whole story, while Mally had an offhand manner that made her reasoning a little too pat. But Mally had taken her to that other place. Ali still didn’t really know where or what it was, but it had been something that couldn’t be faked.

So should she do what Mally had said, call the mystery to her with a bonfire and set him free? But what if that was a mistake? She just couldn’t know what to do until the mystery told her what
he
wanted and she supposed the only chance she’d have of finding that out was by calling him to her. The idea both excited and frightened her.