T. Goeglein - Cold Fury

“Will you do me a favor?” I said. “Will you do nothing? For twenty-four hours, don’t do a thing.”

“What difference will a day make?” Doug said without a trace of hope.

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s just one more day. Promise me? As a friend?”

He was looking at the ground, pursing his lips, and when his head began to nod, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. He didn’t cry, just put his head on my shoulder, and I felt his magnetic, overdue need to be embraced.

I was wrong about a hug.

It’s not commonplace or benign.

It sounds like a silly bumper sticker, but a hug can keep a person alive.

The phone call was awkward, phlegmy, and weird, but at least it was short.

After school I headed south on Lake Shore Drive, past the museums, past Soldier Field, doubling back in case I was being followed, and I left sunshine behind as I slid down the ramp to Lower Wacker Drive. It’s a subterranean boulevard following the same route as Upper Wacker Drive-in effect, a double-decker street designed decades ago to help regulate traffic. There’s a third level that goes even deeper underground (my dad refers to it as “ Lowest Wacker Drive”) but today I stayed on the second level. Lower Wacker is punctuated with nooks and crannies, abandoned loading docks and forgotten turnarounds, while the Chicago River meanders past only a dozen feet away. A car can pull into one of those shadowy spots and disappear not only from traffic but daylight itself. I found a dark little corner, eased the Lincoln to a stop, and got out. The river inched by on the other side of a low chain-link fence-the perfect place to make a call without a chance of being seen or overheard-and I dialed the number from the notebook. It started with someone hacking on the other end, really working something out from the back of his throat, and then a voice like wet gravel said, “BabyLand.”

I rechecked the number-it was correct-and then read the password. “Uh. . Saint Valentine is a friend of mine?”

There was a pause and the voice said, “Be at the Green Mill in an hour.”

“Where’s the Green Mill?”

The answer was a wet cough with a slurp at the end, then he barked, “What, you ain’t got a map?” and hung up. I stared at the phone, which felt infected in my hand, silently thanked Al for dozens more, and whipped it into the river.

An hour later, after consulting an actual phone book, I stood in front an old-time cocktail lounge where green neon announced THE GREEN MILL. I pushed through the door and the bright afternoon was swallowed up in barroom gloom. The bar stretched from the front door all the way back and then made a sharp left and kept going. Tiny booths lined the wall, ancient sconces oozed pink light, and a bandstand stood empty at the back of the room. The bartender, bent over a newspaper, looked up at me disinterestedly and went back to the page. There were only two other people, a large broken-nose-looking guy on a stool staring hard into a glass of something brown and an old man parked at the bar in one of those golf cart-wheelchair things called a Scamp. My bet was on the broken nose, so I approached and said quietly, “Are you him?”

“No,” he said, picking up his glass. “I’m drunk.”

“Hey, Einstein,” the wet gravelly voice said. It was the old man in the Scamp, and he dipped his head at me. I walked down the bar and he said, “Take a load off.”

I climbed a barstool and looked around. “Can I be in here?”

He took a greasy fedora from his head, removed a previously lit, disgustingly chewed cigar from its band, and said, “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

He snapped a match and lit the turd, blowing smoke through ancient yellow teeth. “Jesus. You’re younger than the other one.”

“Which other one?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, breaking into a coughing fit that shook his bulky frame like he was enjoying his own personal earthquake. I noticed then that he was even older than I thought, and a lot bigger. The hands he used to cover his mouth were as large as catcher’s mitts, the knuckles like red, broken walnuts. His face was mapped with a scar that began above his left eyebrow, traveled across the bridge of his nose, and ended just past his bottom lip. All in all, from the sickly pale skin to the pinkie ring the size of a meatball to the Sansabelt slacks and Velcro sneakers, he was pretty creepy to look at, much less talk to. When he’d cleared his lungs, he took another deep drag and said, “So who the hell are you and how’d you get that number?”

“It doesn’t matter where I got it,” I said, knowing I’d arrived at a make-or-break moment. Contacting the Outfit via the notebook had been a risk; if the criminal organization had suspected my dad was a rat, they might have been the cause of my family’s disappearance. I was aware that as soon I revealed my identity, I’d know what the Outfit knew, and I should be prepared to run for my life. Inhaling a deep breath, exhaling through my nose, I said, “My name is Sara Jane Rispoli and. .”

“Whoa-whoa,” he said, lifting a massive palm and squinting angrily. “Rispoli? Anthony’s kid?”

I ran my tongue over my braces, working up the nerve, and swallowed once. “I. . yeah, I am. Is. . is there a problem?”

“I’ll say there’s a problem !” he barked. “Where the hell’s your old man? I been calling and calling, and nothing! He’s supposed to broker a thing between me and Strozzini and what, he takes off on a goddamn pleasure cruise or something? Who the hell does he think he is, Mussolini ? And lemme tell you something else about your dad. .”

He was leaning forward in the cart with his eyes bulging and the scar a deep red. I guess I should’ve been intimidated, but instead I was relieved-the Outfit was obviously unaware that my family was gone, which meant that it wasn’t responsible for their disappearance. On the other hand, it also meant I couldn’t ask Knuckles if he knew anything about Ski Mask Guy-there was no credible way to bring up a mysterious freak assassin without raising suspicion. And then I was hit by a speck of Knuckles’s stinking hissy-fit cigar-spit, and a cool, clear anger rose up inside. It had been three years since I’d experienced the cold blue flame, but when it began dancing in my gut, it felt as if it had been burning there my whole life. It rose and rose, and I seemed to inhale it into my eyes as I locked onto his and said quietly, “Stop yelling at me, old man.”

Something changed in his face; it went pale and slack as he and I shared a stark, vivid scene of the fear that was attacking him.

I saw a metal casket without flowers in a small, cold room.

I saw his funeral with no one in attendance but his own empty corpse.

He sat back slowly and whispered, “Yeah,” with an involuntary shudder, “you’re a Rispoli.” He coughed into his fist, displaying a big, creepy hand again, and said, “Dominic Battuta. Call me Knuckles.”

The blue flame huffed out and died as fast as it had appeared, and I had no idea what made it jump or where it had gone. All I knew was that it had gotten the old man in line, and that he was looking at me now like a rabbit in the carrot patch, staring at the farmer. “I know who you are. I know you’re the VP of Muscle for the Outfit, just like your dad and grandfather before you,” I said, repeating my lesson from the notebook.

“Some things are best left in the family. You should appreciate that,” he said. “What do you need?”

I was conflicted about what I was about to do, but certain that Doug would hurt himself, or be hurt further by Billy, if I didn’t. “Intimidation,” I said quietly.