“Absolutely,” Archibald said.
“You’re telling the truth,” Irene said. She wanted Buddy to hear that.
The pistol, this micro-lepton gun, looked like something she’d find at the Ben Franklin dime store when she was a kid. Irene reached up, palm open. Archibald’s eyes narrowed. Then he placed it in her hand.
The gun was surprisingly heavy. Buddy watched her as she weighed it.
“This is irrevocable,” Archibald said to Buddy. “Do you understand?”
He looked at the weapon wistfully, as if he’d found an old photograph of someone he’d half forgotten. She’d assumed for years that Buddy’s gift had vanished with Mom’s death. After the funeral he never called another Cubs game, never wrote another lottery number. If he’d ever missed his moments at the Wonder Wheel, waiting for the applause of the crowd, he never spoke of it. In twenty years, he’d hardly spoken at all. But the wheel never stopped spinning. He’d carried the knowledge of it, alone, silently.
She pointed the gun at his head, where she imagined his great power came from.
Buddy looked at his watch, then held up a finger. “Wait,” he said.
FRANKIE
His daughters stared down at him as if he were a strange fish washed up on the shore of Lake Michigan. He wondered how bad he looked. His nose was certainly not where it ought to be. Several teeth were jostling for new positions. One eyelid had closed for the season.
“You were brave,” Cassie said.
“And so strong!” Polly said.
Red and blue lights flashed against the side of the house. Mary Alice crouched beside his head.
“Did we get him?” Frankie asked. His voice didn’t sound at all normal.
“Oh, we got him, Dad,” Mary Alice said. “The government guy just put a knee in his back.”
“That’s good,” he said.
They were still broke. Still homeless. But Mary Alice had called him Dad. So that was something. He felt like Odysseus, returned home at last, to find his family waiting for him.
Then he remembered.
“Buddy.” He sat up—and almost fell back again when a rib stabbed his side. “Help me up.”
“What about Buddy?” Matty asked. The kid held a fire extinguisher. He’d been putting out flaming patches of grass and the stray bits of burning auto parts.
“Now. Please.”
Frankie hobbled through the house, Mary Alice and Matty holding him up. In the backyard, his family surrounded the spot where Buddy lay. “Is he okay?” Frankie yelled. “Answer me!”
G. Randall Archibald stepped back, and he could see Irene holding the micro-lepton to Buddy’s temple.
“Reenie!” Frankie said. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Irene ignored him. Buddy looked at him and smiled. “You’re okay,” he said.
“Ready now?” Irene asked Buddy.
He glanced at his watch. “Twelve-oh-six,” he said. “Perfect.”
Frankie said, “Would somebody please—”
Irene squeezed the trigger. The gun discharged with an electrical buzz and pop:
Zap.
OCTOBER
25
FRANKIE
He was surrounded by women. At least two, and possibly all three, were about to be annoyed with him.
“I’m not going to sign,” he said.
“What, the price is too steep?” Irene asked.
“It’s the paperwork,” Frankie said. “It’s all wrong.”
Graciella leaned across the conference room table. “Trust me, it’s all in order. The bank forms, the insurance, everything’s pretty standard. We don’t often have a closing like this, but it’s all in order.”
Loretta said, “Just sign it, Frankie.”
He put down the pen. “Nope. Not going to do it. The name’s wrong.”
Graciella frowned. “Franklin Telemachus and Loretta Telemachus. Your name’s not Franklin?”
“His name’s Franklin,” Irene said.
“I don’t want my name on there at all,” he said. “Just Loretta’s.”
“What are you talking about?” Loretta asked.
“I want it to be yours,” Franklin said to her. “Just yours. Nobody’s going to take that house away from you again.”
“Well technically,” Irene said, “if you’re married, in some cases the court can—”
“Shut up, Irene,” Frankie said. “It’s hers. I don’t want any piece of it.”
Loretta put her hand on his. “You don’t have to, Frankie.”
“My mind’s made up.”
Irene said, “You couldn’t fucking tell me this before I did all this paperwork?”
“That was a mistake, and I’m sorry.” Truth was, the idea only came to him when he saw both their names on the paper.
“Right.” She picked up the stack of documents. “I’ll get a couple of the secretaries to help me. This is going to take a few minutes.”
Graciella said, “Who wants coffee?”
They sipped coffee and talked about raising kids. All of them, it turned out, wanted a puppy. Then Frankie said, “So I guess we’ll see you at Nick Senior’s trial.”
“Eventually. These things take longer than you think.”
“Sorry about Nick Junior,” Loretta said.
“The important thing to remember is that thirty years is not a life sentence,” Frankie said. “They’ve got excellent health care inside.”
Loretta said, “Jesus, Frankie,” but she was laughing.
“What? They do!”
“It wasn’t as bad a sentence as it could have been,” Graciella said. “And at least he didn’t have to testify against his father.”
“That’s considered worse than anything,” he said. Then he realized that his own testimony against Nick Senior might cause him problems. The smart thing, he decided, was to never talk to anyone in the Outfit again, including Mitzi.
After almost twenty minutes, Irene returned with a newly printed stack of documents. “We’re not changing another word,” she said.
It took several minutes for Loretta to sign and initial each page, with Graciella and Irene explaining what she was signing and why.
“Now the last step,” Irene said. “Payment.”
“Don’t look at me,” Frankie said. “It’s all on her now.”
Loretta shook her head and opened her purse.
Irene said, “Usually we accept only certified checks—”
Loretta slid her a crisp dollar bill.
“But in this case, cash is acceptable.”
The girls were waiting for them in the foyer, where the twins were cutting up magazines. “Malice said we could!” Cassie said.
“I asked for old ones,” Mary Alice said.
“Let’s go see our new house,” Frankie said.
“You mean our old house,” Polly said.
“Same thing,” Frankie said. The feds had been this close to seizing the house. Irene had hinted, though, that Graciella had made some kind of offer of cooperation on the other properties the Pusateris had been pushing through the company, and that had eventually cleared the house for purchase. Now they owned it, free and clear. Not even a mortgage.
They piled into Irene’s Festiva, a car that won the award for most ironic distance between name and driving experience. Not that he could say this out loud; Irene was loaning it to them until they found a replacement for Loretta’s Corolla, and he wasn’t about to look a gift car in the grill. Fortunately, the family was in such a good mood that the cramped cabin couldn’t dampen their spirits. That was, until he went left on Roosevelt instead of right, and Loretta gave him a hard look.