“I don’t understand,” I whispered to Uncle Buddy.
“After you left the house, I picked up your trail and followed you,” he said grimly, staring at Poor Kevin. “I wanted that damn notebook so badly. It’s all I wanted. And then I saw him.”
“Buddy-Buddy, two-by-four, can’t fit through the bakery door!” Poor Kevin sang in his schoolmarm falsetto.
“My brother would never forgive me if I let him hurt you,” Uncle Buddy said. “And I could use some forgiveness.”
“Buddy-Buddy, two-by-four, I’ll use your ass to mop the floor!”
“Yeah, you mopped the floor, all right, you mutant!” Uncle Buddy barked. “And if it wasn’t done the way I wanted it done, I made you mop it again!”
Poor Kevin stopped dancing. In fact, it was first time that I ever saw him stand completely still. “Oh yeah, well. . you’re fat,” he said.
“What’s he doing?” Lou said. “He’s only making him madder.”
“Uncle Buddy,” I hissed, but he ignored me, moving carefully toward the door of the gondola.
“You rolled dough for shit, too, you know that?” Uncle Buddy said. “You screwed it up every time, and every time I had to go back and make it right.”
“Not. . every time,” Poor Kevin said.
“Absolutely the worst baker I ever met. . even worse than your old man! All the paisani on the block knew it, and they all laughed at you behind your back.”
“Not. . everyone,” Poor Kevin said, and he was moving again, his big body twitching under the plaid suit like it was crammed full of small, angry animals.
“Hey, kids, you know the only thing this freak ever baked that was worth a damn?” Uncle Buddy pointed at him and guffawed. “His face!”
Poor Kevin stood bristling, the ski mask moving on his neck like a bobble-head, and he shrieked like a pig in heat and charged. My uncle went into a crouch, and then at the last minute dropped to the floor and snagged Poor Kevin’s ankle. The freak stumbled to the door of the gondola and it popped open. He was half in, half out, making circles with his arms and squealing, and I couldn’t help myself-it was instinct-I grabbed him by the greasy suit coat and pulled him back inside.
“Sara Jane, no,” Uncle Buddy said slowly. “You shouldn’t have. .” But he didn’t finish his sentence because Poor Kevin kicked him in the mouth. Uncle Buddy rolled, spitting blood as the maniac tried to stomp his head, but Lou leaped from the wall, pushing him off balance. Poor Kevin backhanded my little brother, and he spun like a bleeding top into my arms. I set him gently on the bench and turned to my uncle, who was displaying his primary talent as a boxer, taking blow after blow from Poor Kevin that would have dropped a lesser man.
“Hey!” I screamed. Poor Kevin twisted his neck, and I broke the cardinal rule of boxing, sucker-punching him with everything I had.
The maniac’s neck twisted back and Uncle Buddy pounded him with a right.
When Poor Kevin’s head came back into view, I threw my left hook so hard that it knocked the ski mask from his head. In that long moment, I gasped at the flaming red R pressed into the gooey meat-lump that was his face. He made a slow pirouette-revealing scars like old bacon across his throat, skin holes where there should have been ears, and two lidless eyes as black as burned tar-just before he went down. I saw the terrible disfigurement that had driven him insane, and for a split second, I felt more than a twinge of sympathy for Poor Kevin.
My uncle stood back as if it were all over, but I’d been in similar situations with the masked freak before. Our gondola was almost at the top of the arc, and I was warning him to be careful when Poor Kevin jumped to his feet, grabbed Uncle Buddy in a headlock, kicked open the door, and flipped him out. Uncle Buddy grabbed the edge of the gondola and held on with both hands, his feet bicycling air. Poor Kevin leaned on his knees looking down at him and shrieked, “Spring’s almost over and summer’s too damn hot. . but at least you’ll have a nice fall!”
“Sara. . Jane. .,” Uncle Buddy gasped.
“And don’t forget to look back! These two will be right behind you!”
“Sara Jane,” Uncle Buddy said, “now!”
I was about to break my promise to Willy.
There would be a stain on my soul, and I suddenly did not care in the least.
I got a running start and pushed Poor Kevin out the door.
There was the whoosh of his body as it was sucked into the sky, it was silent, and then the gondola creaked and tipped precariously. Someone screamed somewhere far below. We’d reached the very top of the Ferris wheel’s arc as I looked out at Poor Kevin holding on to Uncle Buddy’s ankles, both of them swaying like an enormous pendulum. I scrambled for my uncle, screaming, “Hold on! I’ll pull you up!”
“Oh yes, please do, hero girl!” Poor Kevin shrieked. “Because when he comes up, I come up! Pull me in, kick me out again, and I’ll just keep coming back! I’ll never stop and. . I. . mean. . never!”
Uncle Buddy looked at me with a decision already made, his eyes crystal clear as he said, “Tell your dad for me. . your mom. . tell them. .”
“Uncle Buddy! No!”
He didn’t make a sound as he let go.
Poor Kevin screamed like a girl all the way to the concrete.
It wasn’t a Mack truck, but it would do.
I pulled Lou to me, holding him tightly, feeling the Ferris wheel beginning its descent. He moved away slowly and looked over the edge, and I did too, at the crowd of ant people forming around the two twisted, leaking bodies. I saw Lou’s head move and I followed his gaze past the scene to the curb. Even from a hundred feet in the air I could hear the haunting jingle of the little black ice cream truck. Without looking at me, he said, “We have a friend inside, Sara Jane. One friend. She brought me here, and now she has to take me back.”
“No,” I said, feeling my chest cloud with tears. “Please.”
“Do you want me to tell Mom and Dad anything?” he said.
The relief that my family was alive was smothered by a deathly feeling of isolation-that I was not yet among them and no one was safe. “Tell them. . tell them that they shouldn’t have done this to us, goddamn it,” I said, with water springing from my eyes. “It’s their fault, all of it, because they didn’t tell us anything. . they didn’t warn us, or tell us who we really are. And please, Lou. . please. . tell them that I love them.” My brother nodded, and maybe it was what had been done to him with the wires, or maybe because he was only twelve years old and it was all too much for him, but besides a bleeding nose, his face remained as pale and impassive as it had been since we met. Sirens cut the air and I saw how near to the ground we were. “Don’t give up on me,” I said. “Whatever happens, I’m going to save you. Remember. . I have the notebook.”
The Ferris wheel was twenty feet from the ground, then five feet, and then Lou blinked as if seeing me for the first time. The corner of his mouth rose in a small smile and he extended a pinkie. “All or nothing,” he said quietly. “Right?”
I hooked mine with his and said, “All or nothing,” and felt him slip something into my hand. It was cold and hard, and I stared down at my mom’s gold signet ring with the Rispoli R winking up from sharp little diamonds. When I looked up, Lou was gone. The door swung lazily and I leaped free of the gondola, cutting quickly through the crowd before any badges or uniforms reached me. When I was far enough away, I stopped and looked for my brother, but it was as if he never existed.
Except that he did.
My mom, my dad-they all existed in this time, somewhere in this town full of secrets and lies.
To be alive is sometimes to kill and I knew now that I was capable of it, and so much more.
25
I am convinced that there are other types of Capone Doors all over the world-secret black holes where people exit one life and enter another and, when the time’s right, reappear somewhere else. Some of these doors possess an actual physical form, like the ones I travel throughout Chicago, while others may be legal loopholes, or cracks in the system, or unenforced laws. For example, the notebook outlines several simple methods for obtaining false ID documents-birth certificates, social security cards, driver’s licenses, passports, even library cards-and in effect, these are Capone Doors too, since they allow a person to travel through the world undercover.