William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“What happened here never happened,” said Raffaello.

“It’s a bit messy for that, isn’t it?” I said, gesturing to the street of corpses.

“It will be taken care of. You are to leave now. Our agreement is satisfied. Simply finish what you must finish and then you and Earl will meet to settle what needs to be settled and then you are free of us. Word of this may get out, Victor, but let’s hope not from you, or Earl will no longer be disappointed.”

He turned weakly toward the car. I noticed now that Lenny was holding onto his arm, as if even simply standing for Raffaello was a struggle. Anton Schmidt, with the black leather bag, and Dante and the weightlifter walked around the car. The doors opened and they entered the Cadillac while Raffaello was still maneuvering toward his door. I hadn’t realized before how serious his injury had been from the firefight on the Schuylkill. It wouldn’t be long before the trophy passed to Dante. Well, he could have it.

Just as Raffaello was about to step into the car he stopped, and turned again toward me. “Your friend, this Morris,” said Raffaello. “He seemed an interesting man. It is a precious thing to have somebody who you trust so completely. Maybe someday I will meet this friend. I suspect we have much in common. Do you know if he paints?”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Ask him for me,” said Raffaello before dropping into his seat in the car. Lenny closed the door behind him, entered the car himself, and started the engine. The Cadillac turned toward me, wheeled past, and slowly left Pier Four.

I followed it out with my eyes and then, for the first time since we began our walk down Pier Four, I thought about Caroline in the car with that Cuban. I started running.

Off the pier I turned left and sprinted to the dry dock where I turned right and ran along its edge to where we had left the car and then bit by bit I slowed myself down until I stopped and spun in frustration.

I spit out an obscenity.

The four garbage trucks that I had seen parked on the side of the road with their cabs empty now passed me by and turned left at the wharf on their way to Pier Four, their cabs no longer empty, men in overalls hanging onto the backs. The cleanup was about to begin, but that wasn’t what had set me to cursing.

What had set me to cursing was that the black Lincoln that should have been parked right there where I stood was gone.

“PSSSST.”

I twisted around.

“Psssst. Victor. Over here.”

It came from down the way a bit, from behind one of the green and yellow cranes that tended to the dry dock. I walked cautiously toward the sound.

“Victor. You can’t know how relieved I am to see your tuchis, Victor.” Morris Kapustin stepped out from behind the crane. “Such shooting I haven’t heard since the war. I was so worried about you. What was it that was happening there?”

“Where’s Caroline, Morris?”

“I left her with the car, of course. With Beth. How was I to know what it was that was happening, who was shooting who or what?”

When I came up to him I didn’t stop to say anything more, I just reached down and gave him a huge hug.

“Couldn’t you maybe just thank me instead of this hugging business,” said Morris, still tight in my grip. “Me, I’m not the new man they are all talking about.”

“You saved my life.”

“I did, yes. But such is my job and really, really, it wasn’t much. Just a phone call and following such a car as that through the gate, it really wasn’t much. It was your friend, Miss Beth, who did most of it. I gave her the job of watching your apartment. It was getting late and I was tired and I needed some pudding. Rosalie, mine wife Rosalie, she made for me last night some tapioca. So Beth is the one you should be hugging. Now let go already, Victor, before I get a hernia.”

I released him and looked down to the wharf, where the garbage trucks had disappeared on their way to the pier. “This is a dangerous place to stay.”

“This way,” he said, leading me across a street and through an alleyway between warehouses. “I hid the car as best I could.”

“What about the man who was with Caroline?” I asked.

“What was I to do? I didn’t know what I was to do so what I did is I put him in the trunk. I figured later we’ll figure out what is to be done with him.”

“But he had an automatic assault rifle.”

“Yes, well, a rifle in the hand it is powerful, but not as powerful as a gun at the head, no? So the rifle, now, it is in the river and the man he is in the trunk.”

“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.

The Lincoln sat in a small parking area behind a deserted factory building, the engine still running. Morris’s battered gray Honda rested beside it. Caroline and Beth were leaning together on the side of the Lincoln. When Beth saw me she ran up to me and hugged me and I hugged back.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

“What happened?”

“I survived is what happened. And we’re going to need to find ourselves a new clientele.”

I looked over to Caroline, still leaning on the car, looking at me, her arms wrapped so tight against her chest it was a wonder she could breathe.

“How is she?” I asked softly.

“Shaken,” said Beth. “Tired. Mute.”

I let go of Beth and walked hesitantly up to Caroline.

She looked at me for a long moment and then took two steps forward and put her arms around my neck and kissed me.

“Is it over?” she asked in a voice as soft as a whisper.

“That part at least.”

“What now?”

“I have something more to show you, back at the apartment.”

“I’m still shaking.”

“Just this one thing more.”

“I haven’t slept.”

“It’s back at my apartment.”

“Let’s just pretend it’s over, everything is over. Please?”

She looked at me with pleading eyes but I just shook my head. I didn’t tell her just then what was most pressing on my mind, not there, in the middle of the Naval Shipyard, with the bodies being thrown into the garbage trucks from a pier just a few hundred yards away. I didn’t tell her what Calvi had said about her father, how he was Calvi’s patron, the one who had paid for Jacqueline’s death and for Edward’s death and for the retrieval of the box and for her protection. I didn’t tell her that, not there, not yet, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. I just told her we needed to see something at my apartment and that she should get into the car.

Morris had hot-wired the Lincoln’s engine, which was why it was still running. He and Beth had followed us to the Naval Shipyard in Morris’s Honda but it was Caroline and I who followed Morris and Beth out, alongside the dry docks, back across the lift bridge that forded the mouth of the reserve basin, under I-95 and through the gate to Penrose Avenue. Morris took a right onto Penrose and then another right onto Pattison and we followed that to the Spectrum, where the Flyers win and the Sixers lose. Morris stopped the Honda right in front and I stopped behind him. The sign said “TOW AWAY ZONE,” which was fine by me. Let the car sit in a police lot while they tried to figure out what had happened to its owner. I pulled apart the wires to kill the engine, wiped down the steering wheel and door handles to obliterate my prints, and flipped up the inside lock of the trunk. The Cuban leaped out and, without saying a word, ran, arms pumping like an Olympic sprinter. Raffaello might have had different plans for him, but I didn’t work for Raffaello anymore.

As soon as Caroline and I entered my apartment I opened all the windows to air the place out. The metal box still sat on the table. As I was putting the cushions back on the sofa, Calvi’s black cat, Sam, leaped from underneath a lamp. I had forgotten it was still there. It no longer had a master, it no longer had a home. It stood between Caroline and me and inspected us, haughty, still, in its impoverishment.