RANDPA TAPPED HIS PIPE on the railing, dislodging a sooty plug from its barrel. He pulled the pouch from his pocket and tucked the old blackened hickory piece inside. “Looks like you got a choice to make, boy. Either find your car and get it back, or call the cops.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I might be in trouble with the law again.”
Grandpa’s voice raised nearly a whole octave. “Hell’s bells boy. Didn’t ya’ learn your lesson the last time?”
“This was different. I saved some guy’s life. It looked like he was going to blow his brains out. Before it was over, the engineer from the train thought I was robbing the guy at gunpoint.”
“So you ran, I take it?” Mitch nodded. “Can’t blame ya, I guess. That must’ve brought back a flood a’ ugly memories.”
Mitch nodded again.
“Been doin’ a bit of thinkin’ about that myself. Don’t think I been fair to you. I ain’t spoke his name since the funeral. Hurt too much– my only son takin’ his own life.” Grandpa blinked back the tears. “. . . Maybe it’s time for you and me to go see one of them shrinks. I’ve got to get past it so I can tell you ‘bout your father before I’m gone. Besides, we been runnin’ away from it too long.”
“Yeah. . . . That’d be nice,” Mitch said, followed by a long silence.
Finally intruding on the warm night air, Grandpa shrugged. “I’ve got a friend, a highway patrolman that owes me a few favors. I’ll see what he can find. Maybe you can still make it right. Meanwhile, perhaps you ought’a bring that fancy car that belongs to this wise guy you been tellin’ me ‘bout up here and hide it in the garage. Do a little swap with him–kind’a balance the scales a bit.”
“I don’t know, Pa. This guy’s a bad dude.”
“Nothin’ a retired Navy Seal and his pack o’ dogs can’t handle.” “Dogs!” Stephanie said, stepping out onto the porch and glancing around.
“No, the dogs are still locked up, Stef,” Mitch assured her. “. . . Well, I’ll get back to you, Grandpa; it’s getting late and we have an hour’s drive. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Stephanie slipped on her shoes and gave the old man a hug. “I love you,” she crooned. “Thanks for the stew.”
“My pleasure, you beautiful girl. You bring this man of yours back every week and I’ll have a pot waitin’. And take care of my greatgrandchildren.”
“We will.”
He lingered on the porch, watched as the taillights disappeared down the road and up the freeway on-ramp. “I love you too, girl,” he whispered.
The Alley Team huddled near the truck. Forth down and seventyfive yards to go. It didn’t look good.
“Why in the blasted darkness didn’t you tell me you was comin’ to cut the wires?” Cap’n groused, peering across the huddle at Sound.
“No time. I made it by the skin of my teeth as it was.” Sound’s voice rose to an emphatic whine. “Sometimes there isn’t time to wait for orders.”
Nurse grimaced. “Now settle down. A few bumps and bruises, is all.”
“Bruises, my bunions! The bloody ox ‘bout knocked me block off.” In all the excitement, Ritter’s cockney accent sounded even more pronounced than usual.
“Learn to keep your bloomin’ butt outta the road . . .”
“Okay, okay, boys,” scolded the old woman. “That’s about enough squabblin’. Ain’t got time fer fightin’–gotta find Eddie, ‘member?” The thought of Eddie’s feared plight brought everyone back on the same page. “Smitty’s gotta open the door; Sound’s gotta switch the wire and help get the power back on; Cap’n and Sunny’ll search the basement. Now hurry–don’t know when Mister Vinnie’s comin’ for his stuff.”
The group returned to the back of the building and climbed the steps. Smitty leaned over the lock. Greg looked on in awe. “You’ve got to show me how you do that.”
Smitty grinned enthusiastically as the door knob turned and he stepped aside to let the crew in. The four men entered the hall and Smitty again dropped his pick set into the lock to the basement door. Sound fiddled with the wire. A minute later, he snapped the keypad back into place and gave a double thumbs-up. He was finished. The lock clicked and the knob turned. Smitty broke into a wide smile, bowed, and waved his hand in a flourish toward the stairs. Sound started to the back to restore the power and phone lines.
Cap’n led the descent, his light panning the shadowy staircase. Each stair issued its own distinctive squeak under his heavy load. Greg noticed his own heart racing again and his palms growing moister at each passing moment.
All at once a light came on. Both men froze in their tracks.
“Eddie,” the Cap’n whispered. “That you?” No one answered.
Greg’s heart was in his throat, the blood ringing in his ears . . . then remembered and whispered, “It’s just Sound turning on the power.”
Cap’n exhaled. “My stars and tattered stripes, I knew that,” he whispered in return.
The men stopped when they reached the concrete floor. Cautiously they inspected the dimly-lit room. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, a night light of sorts. It cast eery shadows across the jumble of paraphernalia before them: computers, piles of credit-card applications, phone books. File cabinets lined the walls.
Cap’n took to mumbling. “Sabotagin’ infiltrators . . . Lebanon underground spies sneakin’ ‘round . . . covert operations . . . makin’ bombs and blowin’ up Federal buildings, shootin’ planes out of the sky. . . . Can’t tolerate this kind’a illegal activity, soldier. This outfit’s the enemy. We gotta burn this rat hole, take it out a’ operation.”
“Cap’n, I’m waiting for your orders,” Greg pleaded, deferring to his leader. “I need to see if I can open a computer while you look for Eddie.”
Cap’n seemed to return from his daydream. “You know your orders, Private. Now get to work. I’ll find Eddie.”
Greg sat down and switched on the nearest computer. When the setup command opened, his fingers tapped with digital speed. “Come on, you piece of trash.” He rapped the table with his knuckles while he waited for the outdated machine to work through his commands. Nervous, he reached over and flipped on the second computer, rattling his keys absentmindedly.
Cap’n, led by his flashlight beam, bolted back in the room. “He’s not down here. Let’s move upstairs and check out the offices.”
“Hold on. I’m just about in.” The black screen flashed “ready.” Greg Hart, he typed, then hit enter.
Cap’n looked over the computer whiz’s shoulder. “Who’s Greg Hart?”
“Me.”
“Hey, we ain’t here to fix your problems. We gotta find Eddie.” The screen flashed blue. “Not found,” it read.
“Hold on.” Greg shut off the computer he was working on and slipped behind the other. “Give me a few more minutes.”
The pipes in the building sounded a sharp, two-ring clank. “That’s our signal to get outta here. Someone’s comin.”
“One more minute.” Fingertips a-blur, he typed in the back-door DOS commands. The pipes banged again.
“We’s movin’ now, Private.” Cap’n clicked off the switch and picked Greg up off the chair like a rag doll.
“Okay, put me down! I get the point.”
Disregarding the man’s pleas, Cap’n hauled his “Private” to the first step and started him upward. Both men hurried to the landing and peeked out the door, around the corner toward the back door. It opened with a thud. Three men, talking quietly, stood talking on the back porch.
“Go, soldier!” Cap’n shoved Greg out the door into the hall. Greg, a naked mole caught in the light of day, crouched, frozen, staring down the hallway at the men. “Go!” Cap’n whispered again, pointing at the stairway. Greg tiptoed backwards to the second set of stairs, while Cap’n eased the door shut and went the other direction into the gym.
One of the men entered the unlit hall and flipped on the light. A second man barged past the first, cussed, and switched it off. “We didn’t come in the middle of the night to tell the whole world we’re here,” he snarled. It was Vinnie.
“Pops wanders around all the time” Clint answered. “Nobody even pays attention anymore.”
“Well, we ain’t Pops.”
Greg, pausing at the bottom of the stairway, felt the tension rise as Clint walked in his direction. The adrenalin surge of breaking and entering he’d experienced earlier had converted to full-fledged fear– terror, to be exact.
“The Friday drop’s in my office.” Clint stopped at the keypad on the wall. Greg backed up and placed his foot on the bottom stair. The keypad beeped, the stair squeaked. Clint turned his head to listen. Then the keypad started to squeal. Thinking all heck had broken loose, Greg turned and bounded up the steps.
“What’s the matter with it?” Vinnie asked over the din as Clint punched in the code again.
“How should I know? Do I look like an alarm specialist?” He raised his fist and gave the keypad a thump. It fell from the wall, wires everywhere. The small green wire screwed onto the back instantly glowed a bright crimson, smoldered a second, and burned in half, choking off the shrieking alarm.
“I know enough to know someone’s been screwin’ with it,” Vinnie said, pulling a new pistol from its holster. “Probably the old man.”
Mitch and Stephanie turned the corner of their cul-de-sac. The gang bangers were still hanging out on the street, drinking their beers, smoking their Havana weed; the girls danced to the beat of ear-piercing music, prancing in front of their guys. Mitch waved and honked. The smell of pot drifted through the open car window.
Stephanie narrowed her lips, clearly annoyed. “How can you do that?”
“What, be their friend?” They’d had the same discussion before.
“They give me the willies.”
“They’re not that bad, just confused. They probably don’t have much of a family life. . . .” Mitch spied the glowing red ember of Al’s cigarette on the porch next door. An inky silhouette fell against the open door, thrown by the streetlight. The soft glow flooded the inert face of their shirtless neighbor. “Now there’s a man I don’t trust,” scoffed Mitch. “He’s got too much time on his hands. Make sure you use the garage door opener and keep the house locked while I’m gone.”
Stephanie shuddered involuntarily. “He gives me the creeps.”
Mitch closed the garage door and circled the car to help Stephanie out. “You know, this’ll be the first time we’ll be apart,” she said. Her bottom lip drooped in her best ‘sad little girl’ impression.. “So . . .”– she gave Mitch an inviting pinch on the cheek–”we’d better make a few memories to keep your mind where it belongs.”
The three dark figures moved down the creaky set of stairs to the basement. Clint had successfully assured Vinnie there was no need for the gun. “Look, nothing’s out of place. If Pops wanted us in jail he could’a had the cops here months ago.”
Vinnie’s eyes swept back and forth. “I’ll feel better when we’re outta this place and set up in the warehouse. The old man don’t know where it is, does he?”
“No way.”
Soon the driver and passenger from the truck had joined Vinnie, Clint and Frank, the other grunt. Now five strong, they began loading equipment in boxes and wheeling files on dollies up the stairs to the truck. Greg stood in the upper hallway, listening to the muted voices and squeaky wheels toting away every scrap of evidence showing that he’d been bilked–the only life-saving evidence that could possibly resurrect his financial future.
Clint excused himself and started up the stairs to retrieve Friday’s drop. Hearing the falling footsteps, Greg crept into the storage room, pressed the door all but closed and peeked through the crack.
Clint, meanwhile, turned on his office light, scanned the room, then remembered Angelo’s anxious departure the night before. He’d dropped the box on the storage room floor. Flicking the light off, he proceeded down the hall. Greg, in scrambling to find a place to hide, nudged a box from a pile, sending it crashing to the floor. Clint stopped and listened. Pausing only a moment, he pushed open the door and turned on the light. Greg cowered on the floor only five feet away, behind a shelf packed with old punching bags and gloves. He stared through the open shelves at Clint’s leather sandals. Clint took two steps forward through the debris, then stopped short.
Greg, barely out of sight, was sure the man could hear his heaving lungs and the pounding of his heart.
Clint, indeed, was well aware of the other’s presence. He bent over and called out quietly to the huddled figure. “I heard you on the steps. You might as well come out.”
Greg peered at Clint’s massive arms through the shelf slats. A heart attack might help now, he thought. There was no way he’d be able to take on this guy. Greg lifted himself to his knees, trying to form the words of surrender. Perhaps as a vagrant, he’d merely be thrown back out onto the street.
“You ain’t a coward–and Vinnie doesn’t know you’re here,” Clint continued. “We’re moving the operation out of the basement, Pops. Tomorrow it’ll be like it used to be.” With that, Clint turned and left the room, latching the door behind him.
Greg breathed a sigh of relief. He thinks I’m Eddie. Then, feeling the blood drain from his face, he collapsed back onto the floor, gasping for air.
Mitch lay on his pillow, his thoughts, far-off, staring up at the ceiling. Stephanie’s labored breathing could be heard at his side. Ever since the little lives had begun to grow inside her, she’d acquired when she slept, a soft resonant snore. Her hand twitched on his chest as she dozed peacefully.
He couldn’t ask Grandpa for money; the old man didn’t have much to give. Nor could he go to the police just yet; it would kill Stephanie if he were busted again. And his promise to pay the rent had come and gone. The shutoff notices were piling up.
He eased out from under Stephanie’s arm, slipped from bed and retreated to the kitchen. Maybe he could get approved for a new card and transfer a balance before he left the following evening. Plopping down onto a chair by the phone, he tore open the application with his thumb. Pre-approved, $5,000 credit, 2.9% on transferred balances for six months, call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He dialed the number.
When the operator came on the line, he read off the printed confirmation number. After a smattering of questions, he was transferred to an “account representative.” Minutes later, she came back on the line. “Mr. Wilson,” she politely said, “I’m going to have to send this application through the credit department before we can approve it. We’ll be contacting you by mail.”
Mitch grimaced. “I thought I was pre-approved.”
“Well, sir, it appears that several things have changed on your credit report. Maybe you should contact the reporting agencies and make sure everything is in order?”
Mitch thought about the phone, power and gas bills–barely over 30 days, not possibly reported as late yet. “What kind of things are showing up?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not allowed to discuss it over the phone. I’ll be happy to give you the numbers for the reporting agencies . . .”
“Please.” Mitch jotted down the toll-free numbers to the three major agencies and immediately called. All three were closed until Monday. He went back to bed, feeling like a noose was slowly being cinched down around his neck. There was no option left but one: Vinnie. It was time to take him on.
Staying clear of the windows, Greg passed the time by quietly exploring every nook and cranny of the storage room. Pry marks on the paint beneath what appeared to be a laundry chute door–together with the bar laying nearby–piqued his curiosity. He lifted the door with his fingers. A wave of foul air rushed out as he peered into its musty depths. The unmistakable marks of hand prints in the dust lined the walls.
Gulping a breath of fresh air, he forced his head into the opening to see where it went. “Hello?” he whispered. He could almost taste the acrid smell of vomit, summoning once more the memory of his own destructive behavior of a few days earlier. No one answered. “Eddie . . . you there?” Having left his own desperate feelings of depression far behind, Greg was now genuinely concerned with the old man’s welfare.
He turned to the window, cautiously eyeing the street below. The wait seemed like hours before the delivery truck finally pulled from the back door, one fancy car in the lead, one taking up the rear. Greg heard the engine crank over on Eddie’s pickup. Again peeking out, he saw the battered old truck give a heave and a puff, then quit, not having moved an inch.
Greg crept out of the storage room. Cap’n’s muted voice echoed up the stairs. “Sunny, you find anything?”
“Bring your flashlight,” Greg answered. “And hurry.” The big man bolted up the stairs and the two of them–Cap’n’s flashlight in hand– squinted down the chute. There, crumpled in a broken heap at the bottom of the shaft, lay Eddie.
“Eddie!” Cap’n yelled, his voice thundering down the shaft. The old man didn’t stir. “Eddie . . . Eddie!” Turning on his heels, he charged from the room, yelling instructions over his shoulder. “Get Nurse and call an ambulance!”
Halfway down the stairs the sound of splintering wood could be heard bouncing off the walls of the old gym. By the time Greg had caught up to Cap’n, the bulldozer of a man had torn the locked metal door from off its jamb and was nearly at the base of the stairs.
Greg flew down the hall and out the back door. Smitty and Sound terminated their argument about whether to follow the moving truck and listened to Greg’s plea for help. “Eddie fell down the chute!” His tone was that of a powerful executive at an important boardroom meeting.
Nurse, hearing the news, gasped in horror. “In the well?”
“No, I think it’s a laundry chute. He’s at the bottom; can’t tell if he’s dead or alive.”
Greg and the rag-tag group tore back down the stairs. The sound of splintering wood and crumbling sheet rock was as ominous as the cloud billowing up from the basement. They reached the bottom stair and felt their way through the dust and debris. Cap’n’s steady grunts brought them to where he worked. Bloody fist marks and gaping holes adorned the far wall. Cap’n, wielding his bare hands, was shredding through decades of remodeling and termite-infested lumber that formed Eddie’s tomb. Layer upon layer, the powerful man tore recklessly at the rotting wood and decayed plaster until at last he broke through.
The foul stench of vomit, urine and blood permeated the air, riding the dust. Cap’n knelt near a dried puddle of blood running from the rough boards of the outcropping chute.
Amid the confusion, Nurse frantically paced the floor, stumbling in the dim basement light, her eyes distant and unfocused. She coughed and sputtered, circling the room, babbling incoherently. Every so often she’d hunker down and cry out, “No, no . . . not again . . . not again,” her fists clenched at her side. “Should’a buried that well last year when it dried up,” she repeated, over and over. “Told ya we should’a! . . .” Occasionally she would look over at Cap’n, who was still pulling sections of horizontal lath from the wall.
Finally Cap’n stopped digging. Greg knelt nearby, holding the flashlight. Its beam pierced the thick air to reveal a ghastly sight. Eddie’s dust-covered face, arms and hands were swollen beyond recognition. From his waist down he was covered in a crusty coat of blood. His mangled legs were bent at a grotesque angle.
Nurse looked on in horror. An unnatural scream surged from her throat. Then, before collapsing to the floor, she wailed, “Is she dead? Can you save her? . . . Oh, please, dear God, don’t let my baby die!”
Greg pressed a finger to the side of the old man’s neck. Cocking his ear as if listening for a heartbeat, he shook his head slowly. Then he hesitated. “Wait! I’ve got a pulse.”
Cap’n yanked a few remaining fragments from the wall. “That’s it, you tough old codger. A rat hole ain’t no place for a boxin’ champ to die. You fight, you old cuss. Fight!” Sirens advertised the arrival of the ambulance. Nurse rocked slowly back and forth, still slumped on the concrete floor, her tear-stained face buried in her arms.