If Wishing Made It So (20 page)

She never looked around the shadowy garage when she parked her car. She didn’t observe the two vehicles that had traveled right behind her and stopped around the next turn. She didn’t hear the three men exit their vehicles. She didn’t check behind her when she walked at a brisk pace from the parking garage to the bus drop-off area.

She was a victim waiting to be victimized.

When she reached stall six, the St. Vlad’s bus had just pulled in. The casino representative hopped on the bus to distribute coupons good for fifteen dollars’ worth of play at any machine or table. After the uniformed employee jumped off, Father John appeared in the bus door. He waved at Hildy before exiting to stand on the pavement, ready to help the less spry players down the bus steps.

First out after him was Corrine. She spotted Hildy and rushed toward her, grabbing her little sister in a tight embrace.

‘‘Hey! What are you doing? I’m fine.’’ The show of emotion surprised Hildy and embarrassed her. It also further distracted her from noticing the three men positioning themselves about twenty feet away.

Puggy had taken a gun from his waistband and put it at his side. Sal and Joey looked at each other and grinned. This would make up for their screwup the other night. They could grab the girl
and
the other woman. From the family resemblance, the second female had to be the sister who their boss had discovered was Hildy’s only close relative. They had hit the jackpot without gambling a dime.

As Hildy and Corrine started walking back toward the parking garage, Puggy moved quickly, coming in from the right. Joey came in from the left. Sal watched their backs.

‘‘Don’t scream or I’ll shoot you right here.’’ Puggy shoved the hard steel of a gun into Hildy’s side and snarled, his rubbery lips next to Hildy’s ear. Hildy froze and stayed silent. Corrine had started to say, ‘‘Wha—’’ when Joey slipped his hand around the back of her neck and squeezed his fingers just enough to let her know he meant business. She swallowed her cry.

‘‘Just walk along with us quietly and nobody gets hurt,’’ Puggy ordered. His voice was cold and cruel.

Hildy nodded and found herself propelled toward the parking garage. Her heart was racing. She had read that the worst thing a woman could do was get into a vehicle with her abductor. But she couldn’t react. Not only was there a gun pressed into her side, but she saw how Joey held Corrine. She feared the burly attacker would break her sister’s neck with his huge hand.

Hildy found herself trapped and helpless; her eyes went wild with terror. She didn’t know how to save herself or Corrine.

As Tony G. had stated not long ago, one of the basic rules of engagement is to never underestimate your enemy. None of Jimmy the Bug’s crew paid the slightest bit of attention to what they believed were the frail, elderly parishioners of St. Vlad’s getting off the bus and gathering around Father John.

Among those who had hurried, as Corrine had, to be among the first to debark was an eighty-year-old, nattily dressed man named Roger Samuels. He stood impatiently near the bus, urging Irene, his wife of fifty-five years, to ‘‘get a move on it.’’ He blew air through his lips, exasperated that Irene was so damned slow and she knew he had to get to a particular Wheel of Fortune machine before anyone else did.

‘‘Always in a hurry, and where are you going? Nowhere, that’s where,’’ Irene answered, not looking at Roger. Under her breath she kept muttering, ‘‘You can hold your damned horses. I’m not moving from this spot until I’m good and ready.’’ Irene could be just as stubborn as her husband. She decided to irritate him further by taking her time. She needed to dig her player’s card out of her purse and put it on the spiral card chain before they went another step.

Annoyed at the delay, Roger looked around impatiently. He immediately saw something that caught his attention. It brought back memories of China, where he had been stationed with the merchant marines during the Korean War. He had seen men shot, robbed, and abducted off the street in Shanghai more than once. He had no doubt about what he was seeing here.

‘‘Hey!’’
he bellowed.
‘‘Hey! Those guys have Corrine!’’
He pointed with his cane.

Like swarming ants, the parishioners of St. Vlad’s surged forward, the few men among them yelling loudly, and the ladies screaming in the high-pitched tones of the Algerian women in the film
The Battle of Algiers.

Far from being frail or aged in spirit, these were the rawboned, big-bodied sons and daughters of Slav, Czech, Pole, and Russian miners and factory workers. They shared an ethnic memory of suffering and injustice that went back generations. They weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths. They knew how to work. And they knew how to fight.

Sal turned to check out the sudden noise behind him. He found a screaming gray-haired mob closing in on him. He threw up his arms to protect his face as Annie whacked him with her purse. Simultaneously Roger jabbed Sal hard in the kidneys with the tip of his cane. Irene, meanwhile, whose godmother had owned a neighborhood beer garden and thus given Irene plenty of exposure to the art of the bar fight, leaped at Puggy with her house keys in her hand, raking them across his cheek.

Puggy would have gunned her down like a dog, he was so incensed about the scratch on his face. But he didn’t have a chance. Father John, Scranton’s Golden Gloves champ of 1954, rabbit-punched him in the back of the neck, then spun him around to give him a hard right cross that landed with enough force to send Puggy’s nose sliding sideways with a sickening crack, deviating his septum with a vengeance.

Puggy howled and lost hold of his gun, which skittered into the nearby bus parking lane. With his nose already spurting dark red blood, he desperately tried to block the vicious uppercut which then broke his jaw and sent him falling backward.

At the same second that Puggy was meeting FatherJohn’s iron fist, Maria Sosnowski, two hundred and twenty-two pounds of good healthy adipose tissue created over the years from a diet of
haluski
and kielbasa, hauled off and kicked Joey so hard in the butt that he went to his knees.

By this time, about thirty enraged members of St. Vlad’s had set upon the three men, bludgeoning them with purses, shoes, and Ed Rushinsky’s crutch. Sal pulled Joey from the melee, Puggy dragged himself free, losing his blood-drenched shirt in the process, and the three men ran for their lives.

None of the old people were good at running anymore. They let them go, shaking their fists and hurling Slavic curses in their wake.

Annie gently took the arm of a dazed Corrine and asked her if she was hurt. Corrine said she was shook up but fine. She looked around frantically for her sister.

Hildy, drained of all color and white as paper, was safely standing next to Irene Samuels, who was patting her arm in a comforting manner. While Father John was dispatching Puggy, the cane-wielding Roger had grabbed Hildy and dragged her away from the fight.

Hildy had briefly struggled to return to the donnybrook, but Roger held her back. Now that it was all over, Hildy looked around, desperately worried that one of the seniors had gotten hurt because of her. She saw Janey Snoglachek sitting on the tile floor.

‘‘Oh no,’’ she cried and hurried over to the figure who was dressed entirely in black from her babushka to her orthopedic shoes.

‘‘Are you injured?’’ She put her arm around the heavyset woman and helped her stand.

‘‘I’m fine, dear,’’ she assured Hildy. ‘‘I didn’t fall. I gave my walker to my friend Franny so she could bean that fellow who was kidnapping you.’’

‘‘Oh, I’m so sorry. You could have been killed.’’ Hildy wanted to cry, she was so distressed.

‘‘Now, now, dear,’’ Janey said. ‘‘I’m ninety-one years old, but I’m not about to let those hooligans get away with that kind of nonsense. And we kicked their butt, now didn’t we.’’

Hildy didn’t want to talk to the police. She knew very well why the men had attempted to abduct her. The last thing she wanted to do was spend the next several hours lying her head off to the authorities. She certainly didn’t want the incident to get in the newspapers.

While the members of the St. Vlad crowd were comparing stories and waiting for security to show up, as they surely would any minute, Hildy slipped next to Corrine and said, ‘‘Let’s get out of here.’’

‘‘Don’t we need to report this?’’ Corrine asked, clearly puzzled.

‘‘We need to go. I’ll explain later. Really, come on.’’

Holding her sister by the elbow, Hildy moved them at a fast jog to her car, but this time she looked around carefully to make sure the garage was clear of assailants.
Nothing like locking the barn door after the horse is stolen,
she said to herself. But she had learned a lesson she’d never forget.

When they were safely on the open road, and she had convinced herself that nobody was behind them, Hildy turned to her sister. ‘‘Are you okay? I’m so sorry that happened.’’

‘‘What do you mean, you’re sorry? What’s going on, Hildy? You look as guilty as the time you borrowed my green cashmere sweater without asking me and somebody at the football game spilled a Coke all over it.’’

‘‘I’m sorry because I should have expected somethinglike that to happen. I should have been more careful. I know why those men were trying to kidnap us. Two of them attacked me a couple of nights ago. I guess I’m in a lot of trouble.’’ Hildy focused on the road as much as she could. It was easier to talk if she didn’t have to face Corrine, who was shooting suspicious looks at her.

‘‘So
why
did they try to abduct us?’’

‘‘Remember that bottle I found next to the Slingo machine?’’

‘‘Sort of. It was some souvenir thing.’’

‘‘No, it wasn’t a souvenir. It was really valuable and the owner wants it back.’’

‘‘So he’s going to kidnap you to get it? That makes no kind of sense. Why didn’t he just ask you for it? You were going to take it to the Lost and Found anyway if I remember correctly.’’ Suspicion now warred with confusion on her face.

‘‘I couldn’t return it to him because of the genie that was inside the bottle. The guy who wanted it back was a Mafia don, you know, like the Godfather, and he wanted the genie to make him boss of bosses. After that, he could use the genie’s powers to take over organized crime in the entire country.’’

Corrine struggled against the seat belt to turn and get a good look at her little sister. ‘‘Did you hit your head? Do you have a fever? Maybe we better drive to a hospital instead of to your cottage.’’ Corrine reached over and put the back of her hand on Hildy’s forehead.

‘‘Hey! I’m driving. I can’t see. I’m not sick. I’m not crazy. I’m telling you what happened. You have to believe me on this.’’

‘‘Believe you?’’ Corrine’s voice came out in the high soprano range. ‘‘Should I believe you if you said you just visited Santa Claus at the North Pole or helped the Easter Bunny dye eggs? You’re talking crazy. There couldn’t have been a genie in that bottle. Genies are in fairy tales. They’re not real. Seriously, Hildy, what’s going on? What kind of trouble are you really in?’’

‘‘Look, I know it sounds impossible, but this genie—he’s from ancient Rome, by the way—is real. He’s the one who made Michael run into me on the beach, because I wished I’d see him again. Understand? Now he’s trying to help with getting Michael to realize he really loves me, which I don’t know is such a good idea.’’

Corrine was shaking her head. ‘‘I’m really worried. You’re talking crazy, Hildy. It’s scaring me.’’

Hildy let go of the steering wheel for a minute with her right hand and reached over to give Corrine a reassuring squeeze. ‘‘Don’t get upset. Look, you’ll see when you meet Tony. He’s as solid as you and me, except when he changes into smoke and goes back inside his bottle.’’

Corrine put her face in her hands. ‘‘Oh, God help us. My sister has totally lost her mind.’’

Naturally, when Hildy and Corrine reached the cottage and went inside, the genie wasn’t there.

‘‘So where is he?’’ Corrine asked.

‘‘I gave him the day off. I told him to go to the beach, but he wanted to go see Kiki. She thinks his name is Count Arigento and he wants her to do a photo shoot of him and George Clooney in Italy. He should be back soon.’’

Corrine continued to look at Hildy as if she were totally bonkers.

Hildy remembered she needed to check on the cats. ‘‘Just make yourself comfortable. I need to call Mrs. Baier next door.’’

‘‘Why?’’ Corrine asked. They had just walked in the door and her sister had to call the neighbor? It wasn’t like Hildy at all.

‘‘She’s taking care of Shelley and Keats. They’re over at her house playing with Henry so Jimmy the Bug doesn’t steal them when I’m not home.’’

‘‘Oh, that explains it.’’ Corrine started looking around the little house, trying to grasp some clue about what the hell was going on. The kitchen floor shone with wax. The windowpanes sparkled. The sink had regained its original whiteness after years of yellow stains. The place was spotless. That wasn’t like Hildy either. A cold chill dragged its skinny finger up her spine.

Hildy was on her cell phone, telling Mrs. Baier she was back. Then she said, sure, since Henry was having such a good time, the cats could stay for a while longer. Once she ended the call, she turned to Corrine. ‘‘You don’t believe a word I’ve said, do you?’’

‘‘Noooo. How could I?’’

‘‘Take a leap of faith! Just for once, believe in me!’’ Her face started to crumple. She needed her sister to trust her. To Hildy, love should always trump reason.

Corrine plucked a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and handed it to Hildy. ‘‘Come on, don’t get upset. Your mascara will run. I do believe in you, I’m simply having a little trouble understanding what’s going on. Can you give me more information? Maybe it’s a matter of interpretation, you know? Like a Rorschach test.’’

Hildy sniffed. ‘‘Look, Corrine, I’ll give you proof. Do you notice anything different about me?’’