Over the Middle: A Sports Romance (38 page)

The van pulled into one of the warehouses, and the driver turned off the engine. “Let's go.”

Roberto looked over at me. “You gonna walk, or are Julius and I gonna have to drag you out? Makes no difference to me.”

“Does it matter?” I asked, then shook my head. “Fuck it, I'll walk.”

Roberto nodded and opened the door. Julius, who'd been sitting up front in the shotgun seat, came around, his beagle eyes full of sadness. Roberto, on the other hand, looked happy. I could understand. He was the guy in the Bertoli enforcer group who was closest to my age. With me out of the way, he had the best chance of advancing, of making a bigger impact. Of course, what Roberto didn't realize is that the biggest thing holding him back was that he was pretty much an idiot. Carlo Bertoli was a loyal boss, but he didn't suffer fools lightly. It was why Roberto was kept on the low-level operations and stuff. He just didn't have the brains for more.

Carlo was waiting for me deeper in the warehouse, wearing his work suit and sitting in a hastily positioned office chair with a side table sitting next to it that looked like it had once been a TV tray. He was calm, the sort of calm that I knew meant he was highly pissed on the inside. “Free his hands, then tie them overhead.”

I started to struggle until Julius caught me with a knee to the gut that drove the wind out of me while at the same time made my hurt ribs scream in pain. Not a sound other than the explosion of air left my mouth, though, and I was quickly tied up. “Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, Daniel, and you're going to answer them,” Carlo said when I was fully trussed. “I don't think you want to refuse answering, do you?”

I stared at Carlo, then shook my head. “You stupid, stupid man, Carlo. What does it benefit you to beat me some more?”

“Where is Adriana?” Carlo screamed, jumping up and kicking me in the thigh. The heel of his shoe dug into the big muscle in my quad, turning it to wood, and I groaned, not worrying about saying what needed to be said. Carlo Bertoli and I had needed to talk for a long time.

“I don't know,” I answered when I could talk again. “Why, is she not coming home immediately like you expected?”

Carlo stopped and nodded to Julius, who pulled out an expandable baton. It was one of those nasty ones too, with a body that is mostly a tightly wound spring with a bit of weight at the end. Swing that thing right, and the whole baton flexes, whipping into the body at point of impact. And, the flexed metal leaves a nasty fucking welt. I knew that from personal experience using one, but this was the first time to be on the receiving end. Julius knew just where to hit me too, a full-on shot to my back that mostly hammered into the big muscles of my lats and mid-back. It wouldn't break anything . . . not yet.

“You know, Daniel, I thought you were a smart boy,” Carlo continued as if nothing had happened. “You took your first whipping like a man, and according to what Pietro told me afterward, you left like a man as well. I hoped that you would obey the rules and get out of town. Even when whispers came that you were staying with that stripper from the Starlight Club, I let them go. After all, you needed time to rest up, and I'm not one to hold that against a man.

“But when Adriana ran and has done nothing to answer her phone or her email, drops off the face of the fucking planet, only to find out this morning from her own mother than she had run to you? Of all the people in the world, she ran to her lover who left her for a fucking stripper? Oh no, that's too far. Now, one more time, where is Adriana?”

“I . . . don't . . . know!” I replied, smiling. My smile was cut short when Julius caught me with a hook punch that loosened two of my molars, and I spit them out, my grin coming back bloody. At least he hadn't hit my nose, although that too was throbbing. “You can punch me all you want. The answer's going to be the same. I don't know where Adriana is.”

“You LIE!” Carlo yelled, picking up a .45 from the table and pointing it in my face. “Tell me!”

I gathered up all my energy and spat, splattering Carlo's face in blood and spit. “Fuck you, Carlo! For fuck's sake, all she wanted to do was have her own life! We fell in love, that's it! I asked her to marry me, you stupid, arrogant wop, and you and your pride are the only things stopping her from still being a part of your life! If YOU hadn't butted your nose into things, I'd still be out there protecting her. If you had just let your fucking pride go and seen that Adriana might actually love someone who is just another one of your Mafia thugs like myself, then maybe we wouldn't be having this fucking conversation!”

The look on Carlo's face pierced through my anger, and I saw his gun waver. “Wait . . . where is she?”

I could see the barrel of Carlo's gun tremble some more and the doubt creep into the man's eyes. “We . . . I don't know,” Carlo said, dropping the gun to his side. “One of my men, they figured that your plan would have you circle around to your BMW, but he's had eyes on the thing from inside the nearest building the entire time, and nobody has approached.”

Fear crawled down my spine, and my mouth dropped open, panic starting to grip my insides. “No . . . no, she's supposed to be at Carmen's or heading down the Interstate right now.”

Carlo looked at me, and I saw the family man that I'd come to know for the past few years. He set the pistol down and slumped into his chair. “I sent men to the apartment as well, as soon as Julius and Roberto and the others started chasing you. Other than a very pissed off Latina, they found nothing. They're waiting too, and they haven't heard or reported a thing.”

I thought and put myself into Adriana's shoes. Cutting left, she would have paralleled the athletic grounds for a while, then come up to the . . . “Oh no.”

My tiny whisper got through to Carlo, who looked up. “What?”

“Drake,” I whispered, cursing my damn decisions. “The pictures he took of us. He took them from the trees that ring that end of campus. When she cut left, she could have come close to him without knowing it.”

Carlo considered my words, then nodded. “Cut him loose.”

Julius pulled a knife from his pocket and sawed away at my bonds. When I was free, I still staggered, going to a knee as my leg seized up again. “Let me find her. I know Drake better than anyone else, Carlo. I've been studying him nonstop since I left your house. If anyone can save her, it's me.”

Carlo got out of his chair and came over. When I looked up, he had his hand extended, offering me assistance to my feet, which I gladly took. I swayed on my feet, and Carlo looked me in the eye, for the first time in his life not as Don Bertoli, the Godfather of Seattle and Tacoma, but man to man. “You save my Bella, and everything is forgiven. Maybe, just maybe, we'll discuss your relationship.”

I nodded. “What changed your mind?”

“Nobody, not even Margaret, has cursed at me in years,” he said with a small chuckle. “And nobody has called me a stupid wop since Gianni. You've got balls, kid, and heart. I'm sorry I didn't see that earlier. Find Adriana, Daniel. I need her as much as you do.”

“I will . . . Godfather.”

Twenty minutes later, I was back in the van, this time seated with Julius in the back. Roberto was driving up front, while the other man, the first driver, had stayed behind to help with the cleanup. Julius looked at me, somewhat in awe. “I ain't ever seen that in all my days.”

“What's that, Julius?” I asked, rubbing at my jaw. The adrenalin was wearing off, and the pain of my missing teeth was starting to come through. My jaw was starting to swell too, and I doubted I'd be able to speak much in the next ten minutes or so unless I got some sort of ice on it. Actually, I could use some ice and some pain reliever on a few different areas of my body.

“I ain't never seen anyone stand up to the Godfather and live to see the end of the hour,” Julius said, still in awe. “The funny part was, even when you were cursin' him, you were always in control of yourself.”

“Glad I came off that way,” I mumbled, my jaw getting stiffer by the second. “Gonna need a dentist after this.”

“I wouldn't worry about that. If you don't find Adriana, you're going to need a fucking undertaker,” Roberto shot back from up front. “Keep that in mind, lover boy.”

Julius shot Roberto a dirty look and leaned in close. “You know how it is. Listen, most of us are rootin' for you to find her, and quick-like. You need any help, just ask me.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Two things. One, I need my laptop from my BMW.”

“Easy. I'll make the call now. And second?”

“An ice pack. And some fucking Advil.”

I
came back
to consciousness slowly, with a splitting headache that threatened to turn my brain into scrambled eggs. My throat ached and my nostrils were raw, but at least I was lying down.

“Dan? Babe? I just had the worst dream . . .” I mumbled, trying to get up off the sofa. It wasn't until I was stopped three times that I realized that I wasn't on the sofa at Carmen's, nor was I free to go.

“What the hell?” I whispered, looking down. Across my chest, just under my boobs, and over each of my thighs, right above my knees, were what looked like cargo straps, the kind that you might use to make sure a load in the back of a truck didn't fall off or something. About an inch and half or so wide and nylon, they were bright orange, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't move them. I tried reaching with my hands, but I couldn't find anything to adjust or move. “Help! HELP!”

“Oh my dear, I held the book so tightly. I saw your picture, I heard you call my name . . .” a nightmarish voice said in the dim light of wherever the hell I was, and I paled.

“Vincent?”

“Glad to see you remember me, my love,” Vincent said, stepping into my field of view for the first time. “Like the bed I have prepared for you? I had to work hard to make it. It took all sorts of effort to prepare it for you.”

“Vincent . . . let me go,” I said, trying to be calm. “Let me go, and I won't tell anyone about this. Not even my family.”

Vincent giggled, his suit coat taken off and his tie dangling from around his neck, half removed. “Talk to me, baby. You never talk to me.”

Great. Fucking Genesis. I decided to roll with it in a language he might understand. “I'm here now, Vincent. Talk to me now, Vincent.”

“Why would you listen now, Domino?” Vincent asked, his voice grim and sad. I racked my mind, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about, until it hit me.
Domino, Parts 1 & 2,
was a pair of songs from their 1986 album,
Invisible Touch
. In Part
one, the lyrics are plaintive, as the lead singer seems to sing about an unnamed woman—presumably, in Vincent's madness, Domino—and a one-night stand that changed his heart and his soul forever.

Part two, however, took on a much darker overtone, especially when filtered through Vincent's madness. Lots of lyrics about blood and some pretty apocalyptic stuff, but nothing more than standard Phil Collins's singing about social change.

“Vincent, it's me, Adriana. I'm not
Domino
,” I tried to reply, using my most soothing voice. “You taught me sculpture, remember?”

Vincent giggled, high and manic, and I saw him reach next to him. “Of course I do, baby. That was where you showed me your heart, and where I realized the truth. You were the one meant for me, not that stupid bitch that I called my wife.”

“She was with you for over twenty years, Vincent. How can you say she wasn't for you?”

He backed up and did a twirling, stuttering dance, laughing and singing the song “Cause Jesus He Knows Me.”

I wanted to scream, to let my mind descend into the panic and madness that was nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. I was at the mercy of a madman. Instead, I clamped down with everything I could think of. I thought of a trick Angela had taught me, back when I was having problems focusing on my art. “Find your
itten
,” she had told me, as we sat around the apartment. “Then you'll be fine.”

She told me that it meant ‘one point’, and it's used in a lot of different ways. Her grandmother used it as a way to say to find that one important thing in your life, the hypothetical thing that if you stripped away all the other things around your life, if you cut away all the bullshit, the thing that comes to you then.

Her words from two years ago came to me now, and I knew the answer immediately. “Daniel,” I mouthed, thinking of his strong face with his eyes that took me in with acceptance, humor, and unmatched passion. “Please, I need you.”

I kept up my silent prayer the entire time that Vincent had his back turned to me, closing my mouth and putting on an attentive face when he turned around. I had read the crime scene report from both Angela's and Vincent's wife's murders numerous times. Not only was he a cutter, but he was a rapist as well—no doubt two skills that he had developed in his time doing 'enhanced interrogations' in Central America.

“Oh we're going to have such fun,” he said when he came back. “You want me to show you some of the games I prepared?”

“I'd like to talk more first,” I said, trying to get his mind on his mouth and off my body. “Tell me about your art, Vincent. Please?”

“My art? My art is not something you really want to explore.” Vincent howled, like I'd just told the funniest joke in the world. “You think my art is that stuff that I showed you in class, made of clay and metal and wood? Oh, sweetie, you have no clue at all. But I tell you what, let me show you some of my art.”

He came over to the side of my bed and touched some sort of floor control, and my bed started to tilt until I was in a semi-reclining position. I could see a television on a cheap table, and with my new angle, I could see some more of the room. It looked like I was in a hotel room, but one that hadn't been updated since about the time I was born.

Vincent turned on the television, the screen lighting up and giving me more light to see with. I honestly wished I didn't, as the room looked like a dump other than my bed/table and the television. Vincent picked up a remote control and stepped back to my side. “Some of these pictures are a little old, so forgive the eighties hair and fashion, but I think it adds to the art, in my opinion.”

He had turned on a DVD player, I soon figured out, with a disc full of pictures in the tray. “Here's my first efforts, and while I was happy at the time, as I look back, I realize that I was so sloppy. My use of color and spirit just lacked cohesion.”

The picture came up, and I couldn't help myself—I screamed. The image in front of me showed a man, but I couldn't tell much more than that. His face had been disfigured, and it was horrifying to look at.

“I had the same reaction,” Vincent said conversationally, as if he were critiquing a bad piece of art. “Far too much emphasis on trying to be complex, to not let the art speak for itself. But I got better.”

“It wasn't until my time with the military was done and I had my chance to go to the hospital that I realized what was lacking wasn't my skill,” Vincent said, tapping his chin with the remote. “After all, if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a pile of Play-Doh, he wasn't going to be able to create great works of art with it. What was lacking was in my materials. I'd been bottom feeding, just using the scraps that were given to me to demonstrate or to work from so I could advance someone else's corporate shell game. But in the hospital, I was exposed to the idea that if you start with good quality supplies, you have a much better chance of creating good quality work. So, I invested a little bit of money, got some better tools, and upgraded my work materials. It took longer that way, but the results were worth it.”

I couldn't help it. It was either cry out or pass out from the horror. I screamed, and Vincent smiled. “And the best part is, my sweet, you're going to help me create my masterpiece.”