Mick Abruzzo Read online

  While he had his moment of indecision, Nora said, “My editor is changing my job. He’s asking me to interview celebrities and write about them.”

  “We don’t have many celebrities around here.”

  “I know. Even before I start, I feel like I’m eliminating my job.”

  Mick snagged her as she passed by the second time. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Any other woman would have asked a dozen questions if she heard a female voice on his phone, escalating it into a big deal. By now, Liz would have been throwing anything she could get her hands on. Not Nora. She kept the turmoil inside. Even the crappy stuff from her job.

  He nuzzled her neck, put his face in her hair and absorbed her warmth, glad to have her forgiveness even before she knew what was really going on. He felt her body lose its tension and mold to his. He got the funny feeling in his chest that happened sometimes when he was with her. Not a sex thing, but just as potent.

  When he could talk, he said, “Whatever you do, it will be great.”

  Nora squeezed his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. She smiled, her eyes softening. “Tell that to my editor. I think he’s looking for an excuse to fire me.”

  “He can’t fire you. For one thing, you’re the cheapest help he’s got on that newspaper.”

  “Don’t remind me.” She laughed, but her gaze held his. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  In another tone, she said, “You’ll tell me what’s going on? Eventually?”

  He couldn’t move for a second. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “But, yeah. Eventually.”

  She touched his face with her palm and smiled again. “What do you say we walk up to the hilltop?”

  “You kidding? It’s cold outside. Let’s go upstairs instead.” Suddenly he was glad to be home, couldn’t wait to get his mind off Ricci and Camden and everything else. Her body felt limber, and she smelled of peanut butter and the soft perfume that always seemed to hover in the air around her. He wanted to have his hands on her bare skin, her long legs wrapped around him, the sooner the better. “I’ll make you forget about your job for a while.”

  “Later. First, we’ll go for a walk. I could use the exercise.” She was already out of his embrace and zipping up a parka that must have hung on the peg by the back door since Ben Franklin visited the farm. She wound a scarf around her neck and smiled at him, her eyes deep as lake water. Which meant she was thinking about upstairs, too, but not yet. She said, “Grab your telescope. It’s on the dining room table. Let’s go.”

  He slung the telescope over his shoulder, and she held his hand in the dark. They went down the porch steps and across the shadowed lawn. Ralphie, their pet pig, ambled over his pen’s trampled fence and followed them across the pony pasture and up the hillside behind Blackbird Farm. Mick had grown up in a suburb and still didn’t feel confident about hiking around in the woods after dark, but Nora knew the route from back in her childhood. She practically skipped on the rugged path. The three of them climbed the slope in the darkness, not talking, but Ralphie making hopeful noises like he hoped they brought along a treat for him.

  As they reached the summit of the hill, the stars seemed to brighten.

  Nora stretched up her hand as if to touch the sky. “See? A perfect night for stargazing.”

  Mick set up the telescope. He’d built it himself from a kit and a book, and nobody was more surprised than he when the damn thing actually worked. The tripod held it steady as he adjusted the settings. When he took a look, the Milky Way unfurled itself into the great expanse of space. He stood back to let Nora bend over the eyepiece. Mick watched her, her breath coming in soft clouds, a living, breathing miracle.

  When she straightened up again, she was smiling—but teary. “Infinity makes me feel funny. Small and unimportant. Knowing all that nothing goes on forever—it makes me dizzy.”

  “You make me dizzy,” he said, and she laughed.

  A couple years ago, he’d have been the one laughing if anybody said a woman could be the center of his universe, but it was true now. For him, all those stars moving in their slow ballet seemed to spin around Nora. Corny, but true. She kept him from flying off into nothingness. He didn’t like seeing her so emotional over nothing. She curled her arm around his to share warmth while they looked at the sky, quiet and together. The tears weren’t much, but they worried him. Maybe the stars made her think about the baby they’d lost. Or the children they couldn’t seem to conceive together.

  She should have married another doctor—her dead husband had gotten himself hooked on coke and died—or a lawyer or some upstanding trust fund type who could afford to fix up her wreck of a house and buy her the things she was used to having. Somebody who had the right karma or chemistry to give her the children she wanted, too. But she had decided to trust a junkyard dog instead. Maybe that was the real miracle.

  Liz, on the other hand, had no reason to trust anybody. Mick was feeling bad he hadn’t had the—what?—maturity?—a better sense of right and wrong?--to make things work back when they were together. Liz had deserved better than rough sex and a cold good-bye. Maybe if he hadn’t been such a shit with her, she wouldn’t have ended up with somebody even worse.

  There on the hilltop, he again had the urge to tell Nora about Liz. He had a feeling she’d want him to do the right thing now. Except telling her meant scaring her, too. The dealer in Camden was something Nora shouldn’t know about.

  The rest of the weekend got complicated. On Saturday afternoon, Nora came home shaken up from an incident at one of her parties. She did her best to brush off the event despite being upset about some things that had happened. They talked about it, but Mick should have stayed home and taken care of her that evening. He could see that she was poised to rush to somebody’s rescue again—which sometimes backfired for her. Nicky Severino called, though. Mick took his phone out to the porch to talk to him.

  “I saw Little Frankie today,” Nicky said. “You seen him lately, Mick?”

  “Not today. What’s up? He bring you a car?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. I ran into Frankie at the Wawa. He was buying Popsicles for a fat lip. Somebody gave it to him good. I made a joke—I didn’t mean nothing by it. But he got steamed and—Look, you know I mind my own business, son, but you said to give you a call if I heard anything hinky. I think maybe he’s in more trouble with his bookie than I first thought.”

  Mick was silent, thinking over the possibilities. Controlling the spurt of anger than shot up from inside. Little Frankie getting himself into more shit. That’s all he needed right now.

  “Mick? You there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, I know you two don’t always get along, but he’s your brother, right?”

  “Yeah,” Mick said. “He’s my brother.”

  “You don’t want him slapped around by some smalltime player.”

  “I appreciate the call,” Mick said. “Nicky, I’ve been thinking about that Escalade in your garage.”

  “You want to take it for a few days? Get a feel for it?” Nicky sounded pleased. “I’ll get it gassed up for you.”

  When they terminated the call, Mick stood on the porch for a minute, gauging the weather, thinking. Little Frankie’s trouble was only going to escalate. And Liz’s situation might change at any moment. The window had come at a bad time where Nora was concerned, but he didn’t have a choice.

  He called Little Frankie.

  “Where are you?” Mick asked when his brother answered.

  “Hey, bro! Good to hear from you! Have you thought about--”

  “Tell me where you are, and I’ll pick you up.”

  “Now?” Frankie’s voice rose with excitement. “We’re going to do it?”

  “Tell me where the hell you are,” Mick snapped.

  “Okay, okay.” Frankie obeyed, and the call was over a second later.

  Within an hour, they were riding in an ordinary gray Toyota
with a plate a cousin had lifted off a car parked in the long-term lot at the airport. Frankie didn’t mention his lip, although it looked as if he’d been walloped by a pro. The weather cooled, and there was a sprinkle in the air--enough for the intermittent wipers to kick in. The breeze would keep people indoors. In other words? It was a good evening for boosting cars.

  “How do we do this?” Frankie asked.

  “First we wait for the stars to align,” Mick said.

  “What the hell do stars got to do with this?”

  There was no use explaining the necessity of diversions. And telling Frankie too much was only going to further screw things if the evening went bad, so Mick didn’t respond. He drove into Philadelphia and cruised close enough to see down to the intersection of Walnut and Broad where a fender bender had just happened. Several city cruisers and a bunch of cops on bicycles had everybody stopped cold, including a couple of buses, so the traffic snarl was building fast in all directions. In the middle of it, Nicky Severino’s tow truck was slowly angling into position to move the car that blocked the intersection. Eventually, the cops would figure out the car was stolen and the driver had walked away, but for now the situation was an unfolding transit cluster fuck.

  With Frankie nattering in the passenger seat about pocketing the underwear of his latest conquest, Mick continued on his planned route—across an alley, hanging a right and heading down into South Philly. Tuning out Frankie, he watched the clock on the dashboard. At precisely six thirty, Bruno would place a 911 call, claiming a nut with a gun was roaming around an apartment building. Chances were, a SWAT team would be called to take over the building for a few hours. Those guys loved any excuse to break out the big equipment, and they’d disrupt things very nicely.

  Mick rolled down his window to listen for distant sirens. When the shrill sound started, he rolled up the window and turned north.

  At last he pulled into the spot in an alley behind a dumpster, just two blocks from Liz’s place. He unbuckled his seat belt and Frankie finally stopped talking.

  “Okay, listen up,” Mick said to his brother. “The cops are out of the way for a little while. You have to stay with this car for the time being. I’ll be back in ten or twelve minutes with your Jag. I’ll pull up behind this one, and we’ll trade, got it?”

  “Holy shit. Right now?”

  “Shut up and listen.” Mick tried to squeeze down his impatience. “You’re going to drive the Jag across town to Nicky Severino’s garage. Leave the car there. Give Nicky ten grand out of my share.”

  Little Frankie’s face was slack with shock. “Ten--!”

  “Meanwhile, I need a hundred bucks. You have it on you?”

  “Yeah, sure, but--”

  “Hand it over.”

  Frankie got busy checking his wallet and counting out twenties. “You want me to wait here while you do the thing?”

  Mick resisted the urge to smack some sense into him. “That’s the plan. You stay here until I get back, understand? Don’t go driving anywhere. Don’t go for a walk. There are security cameras all over the place, up and down this street. You don’t want to get caught on camera. A camera means a conviction, capisce?”

  Frankie’s shining face was lit up like Christmas. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

  “If you fuck up the plan and bring the cops,” Mick said as clearly as he knew how, “you keep me out of it. I’m walking away. I don’t want you calling the house or showing up on the doorstep—not ever. This job is a one time thing, and it was your idea.”

  “Bring it on.” Once given credit, Frankie played tough. “I can take it.”

  Mick grabbed a ball cap and his tools, loaded his pockets. A bar towel went into his hip pocket. The cash in his shirt. He let himself out of the Toyota into the cool evening air. He walked around the dumpster and paused in a shadow. Waited to get a sense of what was happening on the street. Streetlights were just coming on. A cool rain spattered the air. Curtains were closed, doors shut snug. A light wind was moving tree branches around, making camera visibility less than perfect.

  In the safety of the shadow, Mick waited for his pulse to slow down, but it wouldn’t. His breath was too shallow, too. The almost forgotten zing of adrenaline was suddenly familiar again—warm in his chest and tingling in his extremities. It should have felt like fear. Or worry. But it felt good. Electric.

  A lean kid in a hoodie came be-bopping up the sidewalk, a backpack slung over one shoulder, ear buds in his ears. He almost went on by.

  From the shadow, Mick said, “Anthony.”

  The Broder kid ducked into the alley with the speed of a graffiti artist accustomed to tagging fast and getting away. His backpack clanked with the sound of aluminum cans of spray paint jumbled together. Under the hoodie, he had a dimpled smile. “Hey, man.”

  Mick bumped fists with the kid and handed over the hundred in twenties. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

  “Sure. No problem, Mick. I painted over all the lenses I could find. I hope I got all the cameras.”

  “Whatever you hit, it’ll help.”

  “Great. Think of me again sometime.”

  Mick gave the kid a curt nod to send him on his way. He probably wouldn’t use him again, in fact. Encouraging him was only going to get the kid into deeper trouble someday, and his family had already lost one son to the street. Anyway, the boy had the air of a sportsman, not a criminal. With luck, he’d soon find something more wholesome to do with his time. Something that lit him up the way spray paint did now.

  While the Broder kid melted away, Mick took out a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on.

  The Kia was gone. Homeboy had been scooped by the police, and no replacement had made it to his spot yet. For the moment, nobody was keeping an eye on Liz.

  It took a minute longer than Mick expected, but soon enough Sanchez drove by in the Jag. He must have gotten hung up in the traffic jam. But here he was, playing the radio so loud he’d never hear anything coming unless it was a fire truck.

  Sanchez parked in the space where Homeboy normally kept watch. Sanchez got out of his car and glanced up one side of the cobblestoned street and down the other. He was chewing gum. Lots of cars were parked on both sides, none of them especially notable. Sanchez locked the Jag and jogged up the block to Liz’s townhouse.

  Mick couldn’t see Liz’s door from his vantage point, but he looked up to a second floor window across the street and a couple doors down from her place. The window was dark, but a shadow moved—Bruno, in place in a vacant condo with a For Sale sign out front and a flimsy realtor’s lockbox on the front door handle. Bruno flashed a pen light twice. All clear.

  Mick settled the ball cap on his head, turned up his collar, shoved his latex hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. Head down against the light rain, he set off walking toward the Jag. Not the suspicious stroll of a thief looking for something to steal, not an agitated stride of a miscreant already running from the cops, but the walk of a man who belonged on the street. A banker headed out for a beer, maybe. On his way to pick up a date. As he walked, he listened, watched, scanning both sides of the street from under the brim of the ball cap and counting on Bruno to alert him of any threats coming from behind. Every nerve was stretched, but there was something else going on inside, too. Something that felt … happy.

  The Jaguar was parked directly under a street light—a little bad luck. It just meant the job had to be smooth. Mick had the shiv out of his pocket and in his palm before he reached the car.

  It was a parlor trick, really. Made even simpler by repetition. He’d practiced on a car in his own garage for an hour yesterday. Clearly, he saw the inner workings of the door with a diagram in his head, knew just where the lever sat and how to reach it. How much action was needed to dislodge the mechanism without making a sound. Slick. Easy. The door popped open as if he’d used a key.

  He was behind the wheel just as smoothly. He closed the door and sat for a second in the silence.

  The igni
tion was next. He hated to break the cowling on the steering column—it was an expensive part, hard to get on such an old model, plus smashing it made noise—so he’d settled on a tried-and-true method that had meant carrying a drill. An electric power drill from the garage was too bulky, but nowadays there were these little cordless babies for people who did hobby stuff—craft projects, the hardware salesman had said. Mick wrapped the bar towel around the drill to muffle the coming noise and planted the bit against the ignition set-up. He leaned on it hard, threw his weight against it. The tool whined, shuddered, but ground deep, destroying the lock pins. The Jaguar had a surprisingly delicate set of ignition pins—very British.

  He drove the drill into the assembly three times to be sure the pins and springs were ruined. He smelled the drill’s burning motor, but that was no great loss. Done, he tossed the drill in the towel onto the passenger seat and pulled out a short-handled, insulated screwdriver. It went in like a key, and when he turned it, the engine kicked to life.

  Maybe fifteen seconds had elapsed.

  He was in the zone. It was like a perfect lay-up in basketball—driving to the net, quick leap, sending the ball into the air with a smooth roll off the fingertips---and then swish. Perfect score.

  He drove the Jag around the block and came up behind Little Frankie like clockwork.

  Frankie bounded out of the Toyota like a puppy, all excited. “You did it! Great! Did you check the trunk? Is the money there?”

  “Check when you get to Nicky’s place.” Mick gathered his tools into the bar towel and stowed them in the Toyota’s trunk. He peeled off the gloves. “Until you get to Nicky’s, you drive the speed limit, obey all the rules. Don’t call any attention to yourself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  As Frankie turned away toward the Jag, Mick grabbed his brother by the arm. “Frankie? If you drive this thing over to Atlantic City and get yourself a hooker for the night, I’m going to break your legs. The only way this boost works is if we let Sanchez take the blame for his own stupidity. If his boss finds out about us, we’re fucked. You understand that, right?”