“Old midget,” the tiny man said, smiling. “Why are guys like you always so dumb? Can’t you see I’m a harbinger?”
“A what?” Billy said.
“Harbinger. . of doom,” Doug mumbled as a shreep of brakes sounded at the curb. It was an anonymous car, dark and unidentifiable, just like the three guys who slinked out of it. Billy and his well-muscled crew were twice the size of the small, wiry trio, who wore jeans and heavy boots and plain T-shirts, and had biceps like small round rocks under their yellowish skin. They said not a word, just fanned out behind the tiny man. One of them had a tattoo but I can’t remember what it was, and I think another wore a ball cap but I can’t be sure if it was Cubs or Sox. I would be hard-pressed to pick any of them out of a lineup except to say that they were not big and looked sort of bored, but they smelled dangerous. Violence crackled in the air, and the tiny man pointed at Billy and said, “Jigsaw puzzle. Small pieces.”
“Them”-Billy snorted and then gestured at his ’roid-rage crew-“versus us? Are you serious, midget man?”
I hated to agree with Billy but he seemed to have a point. The three guys looked like second-string ballet dancers, not even mean-looking, just standing there.
“So dumb,” the tiny man said, shaking his head. “Boys? You’re on the clock.”
The first guy moved slowly, like a thin, bored cat, but somehow Billy was on the ground holding his face and screaming while the other two were kicking him all over. There was movement, someone huffed, and one of Billy’s friends was in a pile weeping while another held a bloody nose and screamed for help until he got punched in the mouth. It was like a three-man tornado of ass kicking that whipped around Billy and his buddies with no sign of stopping, hypnotizing the crowd with its pure, poetic violence. I sidled up to the tiny man and whispered, “You were only supposed to scare him!”
He nodded politely. “You’re the Rispoli, huh?”
“Knuckles promised!”
“One thing you should know about Knuckles: he’s a liar,” he said, showing me white Chiclet teeth. “We all are. That’s why we’re in this business, right?”
I looked back at the whirlwind of violence I was responsible for-fists, blood, and teeth-and it made me want to puke. The spectators emitted a collective huh-huh-huh! howl, like a capacity crowd at a cow-butchering contest. I walked away quickly, hustling toward the Lincoln, and heard my name called as I rounded a corner.
“What did you do?” Doug said in a tone that was pure accusation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and kept walking.
“Who are those guys? You were talking to the little one, I saw you!”
“Go away, Doug,” I said, anxious to be alone, away from the scene. “Go home and don’t kill yourself, okay?”
“Back there, before he showed up, you told me to wait!” Doug said, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. “You knew he was coming!”
I shot a finger in his face as fast as I throw a left and said, “At least you could say thank you!” The car keys were in my hand, and then I was in the car gunning the engine, and Doug threw himself in the passenger seat as I squealed away from the curb.
“It wasn’t your place!” he shouted. “I’m against violence!”
“Oh, shut the hell up, Doug, you big girl!” I screamed, roaring onto Ashland Avenue. “I am too, but it happened! It’s not like they’re going to kill him. .”
“Kill him?!”
“And now Billy will never bother you again! No one will! You’ll have all the space you need to figure out the mysterious destiny of Doug Stuffins!”
“It wasn’t your place! You have no right!” he said, but his voice faded and my view through the windshield narrowed as my windpipe quit working. I was choking, something biting into the skin at my neck, and I smelled putrid meat before looking into the rearview mirror at the same plastic devil mask from Cinco de Mayo leaning over the backseat. The wire Ski Mask Guy was killing me with was digging into my throat. I couldn’t make a sound while Doug gazed out the window, sighed, and said, “Life is so unfair,” as I cranked the wheel. I smashed into a parked van on the left, sending pedestrians scattering like cockroaches hiding under a refrigerator. Doug screamed, and I did it again, this time crushing the side of a sluggish bus on the right, its passengers pressing their shocked faces against windows. Ski Mask Guy slid from side to side but his grip only tightened. Doug saw him and went mute, squeezing himself into the corner.
“You’re next, chub-bub!” Ski Mask Guy squealed in his schoolmarm voice.
I pressed the gas pedal to the floor, speed and motion my only defense. It was the second time the maniac had tried to choke me to death and this time it was working-this time I had no Harry, only Doug, and he was a gaping frozen meatball. I whipped the car back and forth, sideswiping a Toyota and crushing the mirror of a minivan. Ski Mask Guy’s grip slipped and I gasped, “Doug! Do something!”
“Fatso ain’t gonna do nothing!” Ski Mask Guy cackled. “He’s just watching!”
“Watching,” Doug muttered. “Not doing.” And he lifted the laptop and swung it hard against Ski Mask Guy’s head. When the freak sprang back, Doug hit him again, shouting, “Let her go, you son of a bitch!” And he did, slamming a shoulder against the back door and tumbling from the car. Doug’s laptop flew out too, shattering into a million pieces against the pavement. I could breathe, but barely, and looked into the empty backseat, where the devil mask grinned slyly up at me.
I gaped into the rearview mirror as Ski Mask Guy rolled to his belly and his head popped up.
I caught a glimpse of a face that was melted.
It was branded with a reverse R, just like the cake pans from Rispoli amp; Sons.
And then I told Doug everything.
I told him about the scene at my house, and my family that had now been missing for more than two whole weeks.
I talked about Uncle Buddy, Ski Mask Guy, Detective Smelt, and Club Molasses.
I explained the Outfit, ghiaccio furioso, and especially the notebook.
At the end, I sat back against the driver’s seat and closed my eyes, waiting for the disbelief, the questions about my sanity, maybe a polite query about possible drug use.
Except Doug believed me.
He believed every word I said.
In fact, out of the six and a half billion people who populate the earth, Doug Stuffins was precisely the right person to believe me. He had spent his life memorizing, internalizing, and vicariously living through stories on film that were as unbelievable as mine, and even more so, and they were alive to him just as mine was now. If I had told him Ski Mask Guy was a carjacker, Doug would have scoffed, but explaining that he was an insane masked assassin trying to kill me for an Outfit instruction manual that I found in a steel briefcase hidden inside a buried speakeasy was completely believable.
We were parked at the Superdawg Drive-In, and Doug stared at the demonic mask in his hands, saying quietly, “It all makes sense now.”
“What does?” I croaked, holding ice against my neck.
“Like you said, my destiny. . what I was born to do and meant to become.”
“Who?”
Doug turned to me with a look of certainty. “The sidekick.”
“The what?”
“The sidekick. Robin to Batman. Doctor Watson to Sherlock Holmes. Tom Hagen to Michael Corleone. .”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, sitting up.
“Don’t you see?” Doug said. “I’ve been writing my life all wrong. I cast myself as the hero when I’m actually the loyal and able wingman with a quick mind and the intellectual resources, i.e., a brain brimming with movies, to help solve any problem.”
“Doug, this isn’t a movie. .”
“I know it’s not. It’s real life, finally.”