William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“How did you find out?”

“Like I said, I have an eye in the back of my head.”

“Have you ever wondered why if you got rid of Calvi you still have trouble? Have you thought maybe that Calvi wasn’t the problem? That maybe it’s that damn eye in the back of your head that is the problem?”

“Be my scout, Victor. Find out who is behind Pietro and I’ll call in the cavalry to take care of the betrayer.”

“And then I’m out. Completely. No one so much as even walks in my door or calls my number.”

An old white van, its side rusted out with holes, slid up on the left of us, passing the Cadillac, before slowing down again. The van fell back behind us as a station wagon slowed in the left lane before cutting sharply in front of our car and then in front of a bus before exiting.

“That’s the deal, yes,” said Raffaello. “But before that can happen you must find out what I need to know. I try to govern with reason, Victor. I’m a peaceable man at heart. But I know for certain when reason battles strength it is strength that will win. You tell me who the traitor is and I will show you strength. Tell me who the traitor is and I will cut out his tongue and mail it to his wife.”

Outside, on our left, the white van again pulled up to our side and this time from one of the rusted holes stuck a black metal tube. There was a puff of smoke and a fierce whine and the window next to Enrico Raffaello’s face suddenly sprouted crystal blooms of glass.

THE CRY OF METALbeing torn apart. A shriek of brakes. A shout. The white van shooting ahead of us and then coming back as if on a string. A twist of the wheel. A force slamming me into the door and then down off the seat. The scream of twisting steel. A shout. A shattering of glass. A splash of cool crystals on my neck. A shout. A hand in my face and a voice telling me to shut up. An explosion beneath us and a wild series of bumps. A jerk forward. The shriek of breaks. The grind of the engine and a force pushing me further into the floor. A shout. A shout.

“Shut up already, Victor,” said Raffaello. “Just please shut up.”

“What? What?”

“Just shut up and calm down. We’re getting off the highway.”

A loud acceleration. A flash of a green hillside and then a jerk upward and to the right.

“Superb, Lenny. Absolutely superb. Did you see anything?”

“The window was blacked,” said Lenny with an utter calm. “Couldn’t see a thing, Mr. Raffaello.”

“That’s fine. We’ll find out soon enough. You were superb.”

“I slammed the hell out of them,” said Lenny, “but I couldn’t see who they was.”

“What? What happened?”

“What do you think happened?” said Raffaello. “The bastards they tried to whack me. You can sit up if you want. They’ve gone past.”

I sat up cautiously. The rear windows were all cracked and pitted with holes. Through the cracks I could see we were speeding off the highway, not bothering to stop at the stop sign before swerving violently to the left and onto a city street. The ride was terribly rough, even for a Philadelphia street, so I figured a tire must have blown. Lenny was searching the rearview mirror as he sped along. The car door on Raffaello’s side was fluffed with spurts of coffee-colored foam.

“We need to let Victor off now, Lenny.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Raffaello. I’ll slow us down under the bridge.”

“I don’t want to get out.”

“It has started, Victor. It doesn’t do either of us any good for you to be with me right now, you understand? When Lenny slows you will jump out of the car.”

“But no. No. I can’t.”

The Cadillac eased slower just a bit and edged to the side as it slipped under a cement bridge.

Raffaello leaned over to open my door. As he leaned I saw him wince. The left side of his suit was wet with blood.

“You’ve been hit. You’re bleeding.”

“Get ready to fall,” he said as he clicked down the lever.

“I can’t do this. They’re probably following us. They’ll run right over me.”

“Then be sure to roll,” he said as the door yawned and I saw a primitive mural of cars in traffic pass and beneath that the rush of black asphalt.

“Wait!”

“We’ll be in touch,” said Enrico Raffaello before he shoved me out of the car.

A sledgehammer bashed into my shoulder, a pile of rocks fell all at once along my side, claws scraped at my face as my head was pummeled. A line of pain edged into my back and then I was up, over the curb, lying splayed on a narrow cement walkway just beyond the cover of the cement bridge. I picked my head up as a set of tires sped inches from my left hand, which lay in the street, pale and still like a dead fish.

I pulled it back and scooted to my knees and tried to figure out where I was. It all looked vaguely familiar. The stone tunnel to my left, the traffic lights, the banners on the poles. A ludicrous bouquet of balloons. Wait a second, balloons and banners? Over there, by that parking lot, gingerbread kiosks and barred entranceways and a great green statue of a lion pride at rest. Suddenly I knew. Lenny had pulled off the expressway at the Girard Street exit and left me just outside the front entrance to the Philadelphia Zoo.

When I figured out where I was I also realized that the murderous white van must also have known the Cadillac’s escape route. It would give chase, along with any other vehicles that were tagging along to finish the job. No doubt they’d come right up this road, looking for whatever they could to kill off and what they’d find, if I stayed there, on my knees, like a scared penitent, would be me.

I stood and did a quick inspection. My jacket was ripped at the shoulder and blood was leaking through the white of my shirt. I wiped thin lines of blood from the scratches on the left side of my face. The right knee of my pants was slashed and through the opening I could see jagged gashes from which bright red oozed. Move, I told myself. Where? Anywhere, you fool, just move.

I cantered past the balloon guy and across a narrow road that encircled the zoo and then, with a stiff side step, I passed the lion statue and headed for the open gate between the kiosks.

“That will be eight-fifty,” said the young woman in the ticket window after she eyed my tattered jacket and the blood that had seeped through the shoulder of my shirt. She had a wide mole on her cheek that creased when she smiled. “But if you want to buy a membership now, you can apply today’s admission charge to the forty-dollar total.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s a tremendous deal. You get free parking anytime you come and free admission all year long. If you just want to fill out this form.”

“Really, no thank you,” I said, handing her a twenty. As she counted out my change I looked behind me. Nothing suspicious, nothing at all, until I spotted the nose of a long black Lincoln sniff its way slowly down the same road Lenny had taken the Cadillac. I rushed through the gate and into the zoological gardens before the woman could give me back my change.

I galloped across the wide stone plaza with the fountain in the grand iron gazebo, past the statue of the elephants, into the rare animal house, a long semicircular corridor flanked by cages. Fruit bats, to my right, scurried across their caged ceiling like a puppy motorcycle gang in black leather. Naked mole rats, pale pink and toothsome, huddled together in a warren of tunnels to my left. I glanced quickly behind me as I walked through the interior. Owl-faced guenons, marmosets, colobus monkeys with fancy black-and-white furs. It was mostly empty of viewers, the rare animal house at that time of the day, a few kids in strollers with their mothers. I stopped for a second to listen. The screech of a monkey, the rustle of the bats. The place smelled of dung and the musk of simian sweat. Two tobacco-colored tree kangaroos humped on a branch high in their cage. I was about to start moving again when I heard a door swing open and the tap of running feet.