Cold Fury (15 page)

The officer leaned toward me and smoothed his mustache, about to say something, but I jumped to my feet and hurried to the restroom. I entered the last stall, locked the door, and began biting my thumbnail—there were no windows to climb out of, and I doubted that sprinting for the exit would result in anything other than being tackled by cops. I felt like all four walls were pushing in at me, and that my fate rested just outside the door. I held my head in my hands and stared at linoleum, searching for a solution.

There it was, on the floor between my feet.

I picked up a book of matches, despite my parents’ warning never to play with fire.

Except that I wasn’t playing—I was deadly serious.

I counted to three, then left the stall and began working quickly, yanking paper towels from one dispenser and the other until both sinks were full. I wet half of them and stuffed them into the bottom of a garbage can. Then I packed the dry paper towels tightly on top, praying that the wet ones would extinguish the others if need be.

I struck a match and smelled sulfur.

It flamed and I realized what a stupid and dangerous thing I was doing.

I didn’t care, and dropped it.

Bits of fire attacked the dry paper towels, leaping nimbly from one to another. Just like in Girl Scouts, I blew on the baby flames until they spread and grew, and the trickle of smoke became a black plume filling the restroom. When it was hard to breathe, I counted to three and kicked open the door, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” The room froze until a thick, scary gust of smoke rolled out behind me, and then everything was in motion. People screamed, an alarm was pulled and began to wail, some customers leaped to their feet and ran for the exit while others came toward me. A jittery busboy with a fire extinguisher tripped and dropped it, its contents sliming the floor, a waitress slid and fell, and I jumped over her, headed for the door, when a steely grip attached itself to my arm.

The cop said, “Hang on there! Stop!”

“Let me go!” I said, trying to yank free.

“What’s this about?” he said. “Did you . . . ?”

And then someone bellowed for help, and the restaurant manager was tugging desperately on the cop’s sleeve. He was torn between me and a real emergency. I saw the choice on his face, and he gritted his teeth, released me, and ran toward the restroom. I turned and shoved through the crowd, elbowing my way onto the sidewalk, desperate to get to the Lincoln, and darted into the street.

That’s when I was hit by the fire truck.

I was in such a hurry that I hadn’t seen it flying up Jackson Boulevard.

A blast of its horn and squealing brakes were the last thing I heard before everything faded to black.

When I came to, I was lying on a gurney in the back of an ambulance with my head bandaged. I sat up and the world tilted, and I puked on the floor. The pain on the left side of my skull was so intense that I gasped, and I touched at it gingerly, feeling it pound against my fingertips. My ear was still there, which was good, and my face felt like it was in one piece, but barely. Bits of memory came to me then—glancing up at the last minute, seeing the bright steel mirror of the fire truck and feeling it clang against my face as the rest of the enormous red vehicle roared past. I looked at the scene outside through the windows of the ambulance—firemen hustled around Lou Mitchell’s, leaky hoses snaked through the street, flashing lights rolled on top of the fire truck and police cars—and I was overcome by a wave of guilt. Like waking from a dream, I realized that I’d caused all of this because I’d been gripped by paranoia.

I knew it was a delusional result of fear and anxiety (thanks, health sciences class) that attacked a person with feelings of a perceived threat.

Maybe, I realized, the diner full of cops hadn’t been cops at all.

Maybe they were just normal folks having an early breakfast.

Maybe paranoia had transformed a concerned police officer sipping an innocent cup of coffee—one who could have helped me—into an imaginary enemy in blue.

I moved to the doors—they were locked from the outside—and saw the officer from Lou Mitchell’s headed wearily in my direction. He stopped and spoke to an EMT, pointing at the ambulance, and the EMT nodded. Now that I was seeing him with my delusion goggles off, he looked like a nice, normal guy, probably my dad’s age, probably even a dad himself. He removed his hat and scratched his gray head, still talking, then patted the EMT’s shoulder and continued toward the ambulance. I was so embarrassed to face him that I stood behind the doors practicing an explanation, then an apology, then a combination of the two. And then I heard something ring.

I peeked out and saw him flip open a phone.

He leaned against the ambulance door and answered it.

Tiny hairs on my neck stood up when I heard him lower his voice and say, “Tell Detective Smelt I got the girl.”

Detective Smelt.

The girl.

Me.

Something cold and furious flickered in my gut, moving me around the interior of the ambulance until I found what I needed and lifted it carefully. I lay on the gurney, pulled a sheet under my neck, and closed my eyes as he opened the door. He climbed in and stood over me, still on the phone. I cracked an eyelid and watched him twist the end of his mustache between thumb and forefinger, saying, “That’s right, five grand, in twenties. Don’t try to negotiate with me, moron, I’m the one who caught the prize. You tell Detective Smelt if she wants a discount, try the Dollar Store. If so, I’ll drop this little fishy in the Sanitary Canal where no one will
ever
find her.”

I squinted, watching him rock on his heels.

He was listening, smiling smugly.

He twisted the finger inside his nostril, inspected it, and put it to work in his ear.

“Way to go, pea brain, now you’re talking sense,” he said. “Right. One hour, at the Twin Anchors, Smelt’s home away from home. And dummy? Don’t forget . . . twenties.
Crisp
ones.” He snapped the phone shut, chuckling, and said, “Hey, wake up!” When I didn’t move, he gave my leg a shake. “Wake up, firebug! You and me are going for a ride in the squad car.” I remained still, my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for him to move closer, and he leaned in, saying, “Open your eyes, whatever your name is . . . Mary Jane . . .”

“It’s
Sara
Jane, asshole!” I said, sitting up and swinging an oxygen tank the size of a bowling pin. I caught him hard just above the ear, the tank-on-skull making a
gong
noise. He stared at me with a stupid look on his face, his mustache twitched once, and then he crumpled like a Chinese lantern.

I was off the gurney and on my feet before he hit the floor.

I peeked out the door to make sure no one had seen or heard anything.

Everyone was moving—firemen dragging hose, cops barking into shoulder-talkies, gawkers craning their necks—with the Lincoln parked on the other side of Jackson Boulevard, beyond the cordoned-off area. There was no way I would make it through the crowd looking like I did, from the weird old sweats to the bloody bandaged head. My only chance was an extra EMT shirt hanging in plastic, white and starched, and a cap that read “Chicago Fire Department Emergency.” I put them on, each a size too large, and then bent down and felt the officer’s pulse (thanks, Red Cross Club), which was strong. I’d watched enough crime flicks to know that there’s nothing worse for a cop than being disarmed, and no one deserved that humiliation more than this devoted public servant, so I plucked his gun from its holster and was going for the door when I spotted a pen and clipboard with fresh paper. It took seconds to scribble a message and pin it to his shirt—
I’m a dirty cop who charges five grand to kidnap teenagers. Oh hey, where’s my gun?
—and then I stepped carefully from the ambulance. There’s a movie Doug showed recently from 1970 called
Little Big Man
that takes place in the American West in the 1880s. In a scene toward the end, as soldiers attack a Cheyenne village, an old Indian chief who believes himself to be invisible walks through the chaos, completely unnoticed.

That’s how I felt now.

Action swirled around me as step by careful step I moved toward the Lincoln.

Seemingly unseen, I lifted yellow tape and climbed into the car.

It was after I calmed Harry and slid the key into the ignition that I heard someone yell, “Hey!” and turned to another blue cop, this one younger and much more intense. His uniform was tucked tightly over his wiry body and he removed his reflector sunglasses while leaning forward, Terminator style, inspecting me and the car. I pulled the cap low over my bandaged head and reluctantly rolled down the window. He looked inside the Lincoln, looked all around it, and then his concrete face broke into a grin as he said, “What year is this bad boy? 1964?”

“You mean the car?” I said. “Um . . . ’65.”

“Man, they just don’t make ’em like this anymore. Steel, chrome, and an engine powerful enough to fly a helicopter.” He crossed his arms and made a face. “Nowadays it’s all hybrid-this and electric-that. Sissy stuff. Gimme old-school, American-made every time. You know what I’m saying?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” I said, starting the car.

His face turned stony as he said, “Whoa-whoa-whoa, relax. Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh . . . away?”

He grinned again. “Not unless you demonstrate this old monster’s horsepower.”

“Horsepower?”

“You EMT folks . . . always so damn cautious,” he said, shaking his head. “Come on, honey, peel out! Lay some rubber! Spin this thing!”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, squealing from the curb and shooting up Jackson Boulevard with the gas pedal on the floor. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, he was giving me a double thumbs-up. I blasted the horn in farewell and bumped through a red light, my heart beating with freedom. As I crossed the Chicago River, I rolled down the window and flung the cop’s gun into an eternity of brown water.

Most people consider delusions a bad thing and pop pills until they disappear.

In my case, paranoia saved my butt.

From then on I’d trust it with my life.

13

AN ELBOW APPLIED
carefully to glass is the second best way to enter anywhere.

The best way is a door, unless you’re scared of who might be behind it.

There were two doors into Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries and I wasn’t about to use either one.

I cruised past for the third time, seeing the neon sign hanging unlit and gray, the interior of the place dim in midmorning sunlight. Even though I hadn’t spotted anyone—no cops, no Uncle Buddy—it didn’t mean they weren’t nearby, watching the front door with its jingly bell or the delivery door on the alley. Even worse, they could be lurking inside, waiting for those doors to open.

I pulled to the curb and stared at the place.

It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since I’d discovered my home in shambles and family missing, yet it appeared as if the bakery had been out of business for a decade. I knew it would be closed and locked, but it was worse than that. The only way to say it is that the bakery looked dead.

It made me want to drive away and to keep on driving.

Except, like Willy said, I hadn’t seen any bodies.

I had to assume my family was alive, and I had to go in there.

Harry had begun to whine in a way that suggested a desperate need to pee, so I took a deep breath and climbed out. Just as I opened the back door, a haunting, jingling tune cut through the air, like a slow-moving ice cream truck calling kids with its siren song. Harry lifted his head at it, sniffing the sky, and then, forgetting his injuries, bolted from the car. He was so fast that I had time only to yell, “Harry!” as he hit the bricks, running hard, yowling at the top of his lungs. I ran after him, stopping at the crossroads of the alley, but he was gone. Dark clouds bumped into each other overhead, blotting out the sun, and I felt so alone that I couldn’t hold back tears. I wiped them away, looking up at the coming rain, and something caught my subconscious eye—a telephone pole with metal footholds. It climbed higher than the roof of Cofanetto’s Funeral Home, which sat hard against Lavasecco’s Dry Cleaning, which was next door to Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries. I climbed a Dumpster, grabbed a foothold, and when I was halfway up the telephone pole, stopped and scanned the alleyways, but no Harry. The idea that I had lost another member of my family was too much to accept, so I pushed it away, resolving to track him down later.

Truthfully, I was unsure there would be a later for him or me.

I pushed away that thought too, and stepped onto the roof of the funeral home.

From somewhere deep in the building I heard a pipe organ, low and sonorous.

I walked lightly over the pebbled roof, crouching as I moved to avoid being seen. I was four stories in the air, equal to or lower than the surrounding apartment buildings in a neighborhood where someone’s Italian grandmother was always looking out a window. Anyone on a roof would raise suspicion, but a teenager in a huge EMT shirt with a bloody bandage peeking out from beneath a cap was a 911 jackpot for a local snoop. I hurried across the roof of the dry cleaner, feeling a blast of heat filled with sour starch, and paused, looking over at the bakery’s glass skylight. It sat directly on top of the kitchen, which meant directly over the oven.

It was time.

I stepped onto the roof of the bakery.

Peering through glass, I saw only the square white tile floor below.

Just like in a caper movie, I quickly popped my right elbow off of the window. It splintered, shards tinkling to the floor below. I reached inside, unlocked the skylight window, and stuck my head inside, listening to the silence. There was no sound, no movement, only the hum of the big industrial refrigerator. Carefully, I held on to the window ledge, lowered myself down, and kicked my legs to get my body moving. The top of the refrigerator, my target, was about four feet away. When I was swinging like a trapeze artist, I gritted my teeth and let go, and was in midair when I realized that I wouldn’t make it. It was slow-motion desperation, like a baby bird pushed from a nest with no idea how to fly, my legs and arms flailing at empty space until I hit the hard tile floor.