No noise came from within, but Nolan could feel them in there; body heat, tension in the air, something. He didn’t know how, but Nolan knew. Frank was in there. So was Diane, and her daughter.
He pushed the door open.
It was a large room, the full floor of the building, a storage room or attic of sorts, empty now, except for three people down at the far end, by the boarded-up windows, where reddish glow pulsed in from the neons of the bars on the street below. Dust floated like smoke. Frank DiPreta, white shirt cut by the dark band of a shoulder holster, his coat wadded up and tossed on the floor, loomed over the other two people in the room, who had been wadded up and tossed there in much the same way, Nolan supposed. Diane was still in the white terry robe she’d been wearing when Nolan last saw her a few hours before, but the robe wasn’t really white any more, having been dirtied from her lying here on the filthy floor, hands tied behind her, legs tied at the ankles, white slash of tape across her lips. At first glance Nolan thought she was dead, but she was only unconscious, he guessed, doped or knocked out but not dead. The little girl, a small pathetic afterthought to this unfortunate tableau, huddled around her mother’s waist, not tied up, not even gagged, but frightened into silent submission, clinging to her mother’s robe in wide-eyed, uncomprehending fear, whimpering, face dirty, perhaps bruised. Nolan had never seen the child before and felt an uncustomary emotional surge. She was a delicate little reflection of her mother, the same white-blonde hair the whole family seemed to have, a pretty China doll of a child who deserved much better than the traumatic experience she was presently caught in the middle of. Nolan forced the emotional response out of himself, remembered, or tried to, anyway, that Frank DiPreta was a man driven to this point, that Frank was not an entirely rational person right now.
“Frank,” Nolan said. “Let them go. They aren’t part of this, a couple of innocent girls. Let them go.”
“What are you doing here?” Frank said, for the moment more puzzled than angry at seeing Nolan. Not that the silenced .45 in his hand wasn’t leveled at Nolan with all due intensity. A .45 is a big gun anyway, but this one, with its oversize silencer, looked so big it seemed unreal, like a ray gun in one of Jon’s comic books.
“You were right this morning, Frank,” Nolan said. “The Family did send me. To check the lay of the land. To... to negotiate a peace.”
“I’m going to blow you away, Nolan. He’s here with you, isn’t he? Where? Outside the door? Downstairs waiting for your signal? You’re in this with him. You were there with the soldier boy when Vince got it, weren’t you? You set Vince up, you son of a bitch. You won’t do the same to me. I’m going to blow the goddamn guts out of you, Nolan, and then I’m going to do the same to the soldier boy, just like he did Joey, only it’s going to take me longer to get around to it. First he’s going to have to suffer awhile, like I been suffering.”
“It’s too late, Frank. McCracken’s gone. He left the city half an hour ago. He doesn’t even know you’ve got his sister and her daughter.”
“Don’t feed me that bullshit. It hasn’t been half an hour ago I talked to him.”
“I answered the phone. I was there at his place. I’d just sent him away, put him in his car and sent him away.”
“This is bullshit. I don’t believe any of it.”
“It’s true.”
“No!”
“Let them go, Frank. It’s over.”
Frank leaned down and grabbed the little girl, Joni, by her thin white arm, heaved her up off the floor. She hung rag-doll limp, not making a sound, having found out earlier, evidently, that this man would hurt her if she did. There was as much confusion as terror in the child’s face; she simply did not understand what was going on. She looked at the huge gun-thing the strange man was shoving at her and did not understand.
“Frank...”
“I’m going to kill this kid, Nolan. He’s downstairs, isn’t he? Go get him, or so help me I kill this kid right now.”
“A little girl, Frank. Five, six years old? You’d kill her?”
“She’s one of his people, isn’t she? He’s murdered my whole goddamn family out from under me. There’s none of us left. I’m the only goddamn DiPreta left, and I’m going to do the fuckin’ same to his people. I don’t give a goddamn who they are or how old they are or what they got between their legs. He’s got to suffer like I suffer.”
But Frank wasn’t the only DiPreta left, and Nolan knew it. It was time to play the trump card.
“Jon!” Nolan called. “Come on up!”
“What’s going on?” Frank demanded. “So help me, Nolan...”
And suddenly, Francine DiPreta was standing in the doorway. Her look of confusion mirrored that of the small child across the length of the room, who was presently dangling from Frank DiPreta’s grasp like a damaged puppet. When Francine recognized this man as her father, the confusion did not lift but if anything increased. She said, “Daddy?”
Frank DiPreta tilted his head sideways, trying to figure out himself what was happening. His face turned rubbery. He lowered the child to the floor, gently; looked at the gun in his hand and held it behind him, trying to hide it, perhaps as much from himself as from his daughter, who approached him now.
“Daddy... what’s going on here?”
“Baby,” he said.
“Daddy, is that a gun?”
“Honey,” he said.
“What are you doing with that gun? What’s this little girl doing here? And is this... her mother? Tied up? What are you doing to these people, Daddy?”
He said nothing. He lowered his head. The gun clunked to the floor behind him.
“Is it true, then?” she said. “What they say about you? About us? The DiPretas? Are we... the Mafia, Daddy? Is that who you are? Is that who I am?”
Nolan and Jon watched all of this from the other end of the room. DiPreta’s daughter and Diane and the child, with their blonde hair and pretty features, could have been sisters.
“Daddy,” she said, “you’re going to let these people go now, aren’t you?”
He put his hands on his knees. His mouth was open. He lowered himself to the floor and sat there.
“I’m going to let these people go, Daddy, and then we’re going home.”
Francine DiPreta untied Diane, who had been coming around for several minutes now, and carefully removed the strip of tape from the woman’s mouth. She asked Diane, “Are you all right?”
Diane, groggy, could only nod and then, realizing she was free, clutched her daughter to her, got to her feet shakily and somehow joined Nolan and Jon at the other end of the room.
Nolan said to Jon, “Help me get them down to the car.”
Jon, who still had no idea what the hell was going on but knew better than to ask, did as he was told.
At the other end of the room, Francine DiPreta was on her knees, holding her father in her arms, comforting him, rocking him.
16
Nolan sat on the couch and waited while Diane put her daughter to bed. He could hear the little girl asking questions, which her mother dodged with soothing nonanswers. That went on for ten minutes, and then Diane came out into the living room, still wearing the dirty once-white robe; she looked haggard as hell, her hair awry, her face a pale mask, but somehow she remained attractive through it all. She sat next to Nolan.
“Is she asleep?” he asked.
“Yes, thank God. Don’t ask me how. I guess her exhaustion overcame everything else. But she did have a lot of questions.”