“Yeah, when they started dicing me up,” he says.
“You know what I mean,” I tell him. “Have a Molson Golden. There’s a six-pack in the ice chest. Have a couple.”
“Now we’ll both have to go to that doctor in L.A. and have our faces changed,” he says.
“Maybe not,” I say.
“You got a plan?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s comforting.”
I hear the slushy sound of ice and the hiss of a can. Bert brings the gold can up to his mouth and sucks it all the way down before punctuating it with a belch.
“On that note,” I say, “I’m signing off. I’ll see you at the house.”
When I get back, the butler meets me at the car with an umbrella and tells me that Helena just got there a few minutes ago. I find her on the couch in the bedroom with her knees drawn up to her chin and staring out at the rain. She’s dressed in jeans and a dark green Jets sweatshirt, barefoot, with her dark silky hair pulled back into a ponytail. She jumps up, startled, and meets me halfway across the room, throwing herself into my arms with a squeal, kissing me, and wrapping her legs around my waist.
“I missed you,” she says, then repeats it three times and starts laughing when I bite her neck.
“Me too,” I say.
“What’s wrong?” She lets go and touches my cheek with the back of her hand.
“Things,” I say. “Helena, we need to talk.”
We sit down on the couch and I tell her about Frank, the man who killed her father. What he did to me. What I’m trying to do to him. I even mention Lexis. I tell her all about Bert’s meeting with Ramo Capozza, the brother of her grandmother, my plan, and how it all came to pass. The point is, I never dreamed I would need her to get involved in this, but we’re in trouble.
When I finish, she looks out into the gloom. Silver drops of rain slide down the long pane of glass. Some run into the others and become one. Some twist apart and go their own ways. I have no idea why.
“I thought about it a million times,” she says, tracing the pattern on the couch with her fingernail. “I told you. I knew who my father’s uncle was. Sometimes, when I was up in Alaska, I’d dream about it. Me going to him, and him sending people after Frank Steffano for what he did. But I was always afraid…”
“Why?”
She looks at me with tear-filled eyes and says, “I don’t know. Part of me thinks the whole thing is my own fault.”
“That’s not true. I told you that.”
“I know,” she says, looking at me. “But it’s how I feel.”
I put my hand on hers and squeeze.
“It’s all right,” I say.
She presses her lips tight, looks away, and sighs.
“I’ll go see my uncle,” she says.
“I don’t want you to do this just for me,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “But I was thinking about how you said it was your job to do this, and I don’t know if that’s right.
“I get up there and I sing, and people-some of them-even cry. And I think they do because it’s like they know that I’m still crying inside. I think people sense that. I don’t want to sing only like that for the rest of my life and I think maybe if I did this, it would help.”
64
THE MORNING SUN gleamed off the surfaces of the puddles from the previous night’s rain, giving the air the steamy hint of garbage. At the dock, a towering blue freighter caked with rust with the name Bella Napoli creaked and swayed. Cranes worked steadily to remove the truck-size containers from her belly while along the dock, long bladed forklifts moved them around like a small colony of ants carrying food ten times their own size.
A long black Mercedes limousine eased through the chain-link gates with their faded red-and-white sign that read Absolutely No Trespassing. On the dock already was another limousine, a Cadillac. Outside it stood a well-built man in a suit. Two others walked on either side of an old man, stooped over and wearing brown wingtip shoes, brown slacks, and a baggy yellow cardigan sweater. His glasses were thick and his thin gray hair was plastered down with some kind of barbershop formula.
The man next to the Cadillac stepped in front of the Mercedes, preventing the car from driving right up to the old man, who was now bent over a crate that two workers had removed from a red container. The two thugs with the old man approached the Mercedes as well, reaching into their jackets with their eyes scanning not just the car, but the whole dock.
Helena got out and made them stare, even though she wore no makeup and nothing fancier than sandals, a pair of faded jeans, and a man’s white V-neck T-shirt.
“Holy shit,” one guard said to the other. “That’s Helena.”
Chuck Lawrence got out right after her, and he and the two big men approached one another like dogs in a vacant lot.
“She needs to talk to Mr. Capozza,” Lawrence said.
They looked at their boss, who stood with a tomato in each hand, blinking at them all. He nodded.
“Okay,” one of them said.
Helena took slow uneven steps and looked down only once to skirt a deep oily puddle. When she reached the old man, she held out her hand. He put the tomatoes into one hand and took hers with the other. Smiling, he held up the bright red fruit. Their stems were a rich green.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “my father used to come here to make sure the tomatoes came from Italy. What they do is, people will take a crate from Mexico and put them in a crate that says Italy. But if you don’t get good tomatoes, then the sauce is no good and the whole meal stinks.”
“Do you know me?” she said with the beginnings of a smile.
“I’ve seen you on TV,” he said. “I have a couple grandkids who’d be happy to trade places with me right now.”
“No,” she said. “Do you really know who I am?”
Tears filled up in Helena’s eyes and she wiped them on the back of her arm. From her back pocket she took out a birth certificate and unfolded it.
Ramo Capozza looked at his men, searching their faces, smiling, but with his eyes narrowed.
“Who sent you?” he asked.
“No one,” she said, offering up the certificate. “I’m Helena. My father was Tony. Tony Romano.”
“Tony?” Capozza says. His hand falls to his side and the tomatoes drop to the wet pavement, bursting and spilling their seeds. “They killed him. My sister tried to find you, but your mother disappeared…”
“I wasn’t with my mother, Uncle Ramo,” she said, her face crumpling. “He took me away. They made me do things-”
Ramo Capozza hugged Helena to him and patted his gnarled hand on her back.
“Shhh,” he said, glaring at his men over her shoulder to make them look away.
Softly, he said, “I killed those men.”
“No,” Helena said, pulling away. “You didn’t. There weren’t any men. It was one man.”
Capozza scowled, his thick eyebrows crunching down on top of his pale green eyes.
“That can’t be,” he said. “Someone is telling you lies. Tony’s partner was there.”
“It is, Uncle Ramo,” she said. “No one is telling me. I saw it. It was his partner who did it. I saw Frank Steffano kill my father. I was only ten, but I could never forget his face or what he did to me-”
Ramo Capozza held his niece tight. She was shaking. He continued to pat her back, until his fists were curled into balls. His teeth were clamped together and the corners of his mouth were pulled tight.
He was shaking too.
And then she told her story.
65
IN THE BOWELS OF A GARAGE on 79th Street, Frank locked up a dark green Ford Excursion with a beep and a blink of its lights. The truck was loaded up with almost everything he needed. Food. Clothes. Weapons. Passports. They’d cross the Canadian border into Montreal. From there they’d fly to Sydney. The other end of the world. The only thing left was the money-he checked his watch-and by now, Mickey should have that.