James Bell - Deadlock

“I’ll grant you that, Counsel, but…” She stopped. “I just called you Counsel.”

“I haven’t been called that in quite some time. Been called a few other things.” His smile was warm.

“Nevertheless, there is still much of the case that’s missing,” Millie said.

“That’s because you haven’t reached the killer argument yet.”

“Okay” – she let her voice become spooky – “what’s the killer argument?”

“C. S. Lewis wrote about it in a book called Surprised by Joy,” Holden continued. “One day he felt that an open door was presented to him. Nothing like light or fire from the sky. Just a door. Beyond that door was joy, not the transient kind, but the answer to the deepest longings of his heart. That’s the killer argument.”

“It doesn’t really sound like an argument,” Millie said. “What is the logic?”

“The longing of the heart for something beyond,” Holden said, “is proof that our world cannot satisfy us. The fact that we experience thirst shows that we are creatures for whom drinking water is natural. In the same way, our longing for something beyond us is proof there is something beyond. ‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in God,’ Augustine said.”

“But desires come and go,” Millie said.

“Not this one. This one stays. Lewis recognized that, and one day he found the door was open. He knew then he could walk through or turn away.”

“And he walked through?”

“Yes, though he described himself as the most reluctant convert in all of England.”

“Why?”

“He said he would have been happy to remain an intellectual atheist. But his heart was set free when he heard the call. He had to respond. I heard the same thing one night in the lobby of the Nazareth Hotel. It was like beautiful music, not something we rationalize, just something we hear.”

Holden paused a moment, his eyes looking at a secret place. “I’ve heard it described this way. Once your heart hears the music, it is never really happy unless it is dancing.”

At that declaration Millie felt something open inside her. Since she’d known him, Jack Holden had laid bare his whole life, all of his feelings, openly. She had held back. No more.

“Jack,” she said. “I will admit there have been some moments recently when I’ve thought about these things. But I’m just not there. I don’t know if I ever can be.”

“Deadlock,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re deadlocked, like a 4-4 split on the Court. What you need, it appears, is a swing vote.”

“Oh? And where might I find one of those?”

The minister smiled. “Just listen for the music. Then you can decide what to do about it.”

“Yes, well, it’s all very interesting to kick around, but – ”

She stopped when she noticed Jack looking past her. She turned and saw a young doctor striding toward them. “Ms. Hollander?” he asked.

Holden stood and helped Millie to her feet.

“I’m Dr. Weinstein,” he said.

“My mother?” Millie asked.

“Come with me, won’t you?” He led them through a door to a quiet hallway. “I wanted to give you an update.”

Millie found herself taking Holden’s arm. The way the doctor spoke gripped her with dread.

“Your mother has had a stroke. We’ve stabilized her…”

Millie squeezed Holden’s arm and felt his hand on hers.

“… and of course we are going to do everything we can. We still need to run some more tests. She is comatose, Ms. Hollander. I understand you are her closest family member?”

“That’s right,” Millie said, her voice sounding distant and fragile.

“We are probably going to need some guidance here soon,” he said. “And you’ll need to begin thinking about that.”

“Guidance?”

“Heroic measures,” Dr. Weinstein said.

Washington, D.C., was Anne’s world. But New York City was her kind of town. She spent almost as much time there as she did in the Beltway. Even more of late, because her lover was there.

As she sat across from Ambrosi Gallo at Ruby Foo’s, their favorite place in Times Square, she couldn’t help but wonder at the whole thing. Then again, maybe it was inevitable. She needed edge. Life was a big, fat farce without edge.

She had learned that from her stepfather. He used to whisper in her ear, when he did things to her at night, when Mom was away on her business trips. She learned what life was really like in the places you thought were safe.

She never thought anything was safe again, and had come not just to accept that rock-hard fact of life, but to embrace it. That was how you lived and stayed alive. The edge worked magic. It was, after all, what led her to Ambrosi Gallo.

“You finished with that?” Ambrosi asked, pointing a chopstick at her shrimp.

“Go ahead,” she said, and watched his graceful moves. Ambrosi Gallo gestured like a symphony conductor. Italians spoke with their hands. Ambrosi sang with them.

Soon they would be in bed, and his moves would continue to sing. Anne would make her own music, the kind that drove him wild. She had never met Ambrosi’s wife, and never would. But she was sure Mrs. Gallo would never mean what Anne meant to Ambrosi.

They’d met at a club in the Village. She’d seen this dark stranger circling her from across the dance floor. Just after midnight the move was made. The man slid next to her at the bar and immediately whispered in her ear, “You been scoping me. You serious about it?”

It was no secret who Ambrosi was, a made guy for the Calibresi family, which had moved into the five-borough vacuum created when the feds put Gotti away. The feds knew who he was – Anne knew the people to ask – and they suspected him of eight murders. But they’d never been able to put a case together. Ambrosi Gallo had beaten two raps. Nobody, but nobody, would testify against him.

“You want to go see a show or something?” Ambrosi asked.

“I don’t want to go to a show,” Anne said, feeling heat building in her. “I want to go to our place.”

“You got it, babe,” Ambrosi said.

They had a studio apartment in Gramercy Park, the place Ambrosi crashed when not at home in Queens. He was not often home. His wife, he assured Anne, was like all Mafia wives. She knew, she accepted, and she got nice things. No questions asked.

Outside the restaurant window, Anne could see a portion of the passing parade that was the foot traffic in Times Square. She couldn’t help wondering how easy it would be for Ambrosi to dispose of any one of them. And then she thought, what he did with guns she did with political clout. They weren’t really so different after all.

“What’s it like?” she asked.

“What?”

“You know. Whack.”

Ambrosi’s eyes darted toward the adjoining table. “Hey, keep it down, will you?”

That only made Anne smile. “You like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

“I also like walking around.”

“So tell me.”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Part of my education.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Plus it will make me very excited, if you know what I mean.”

Ambrosi’s straight white teeth gleamed between his lips. “Siete del diavolo.”

She frowned.

“You little devil.”

Anne suddenly felt oddly upset. Something about the word devil as applied to her. She shook it off.

“It’s no big deal, after the first time,” Ambrosi said. “You ever see that movie, the one where DeNiro plays a Mafia guy and that other guy, what’s his name, the little comedian, plays a shrink?”

“ Analyze This.”

“Yeah, that’s it. And the shrink says it’s good to hit a pillow when you’re feeling stressed out, so DeNiro whips out his gun and shoots a pillow. And the shrink says, ‘Feel better?’ and DeNiro says, ‘Yeah, I do.’ I cracked up. But that’s what it’s like.”