The Violet Hour (16 page)

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Authors: Richard Montanari

BOOK: The Violet Hour
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It was Frank Corso, sitting on his front steps.
Fuck
.
Frank looked even bigger than Nicky remembered. He had cut his hair into a spiky crew, and in the afternoon light, even from a block away, Nicky could see the ridges and valleys of a half dozen scars on his face. He also could see that Frank Corso now had a gym bag with him, sitting at his feet like a small, napping pit bull. What the hell was in there? Nicky wondered. Did he bring instruments of torture?
Nicky slowed down, looked up the street. There was a black Firebird parked across from his driveway. Nicky suspected that it was Frank Corso’s ride.
Four grand
, Nicky thought. Four grand or my testicles.
He pulled into a driveway about a half dozen or so houses north of his own, backed out, and headed back toward Chagrin Boulevard, checking his rearview mirror, suddenly wide-awake. He saw Frank lighting a cigarette, oblivious. He hadn’t been spotted.
Nicky drove to Avalon Road, turned left. He parked, got out, locked the car, and made his way through the backyards. He stopped when he reached his yard. Frank Corso’s Pontiac was still parked on the street.
He selected the right key and dashed across his backyard in a dozen silent steps, leapfrogging a Big Wheel bicycle belonging to his downstairs neighbor’s son Aaron in the process. His leather soles on the wet grass left a lot to be desired as prime track and field equipment, but he managed to hold his balance and slip-slide to the door.
He quietly turned the key in the lock, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him in one liquid move. He removed his shoes and padded up the steps, put his ear to the door of his apartment, heard nothing, let himself in, did a quick perusal of his two rooms. Intact. He took one of his folding chairs and tiptoed back to his door. He checked the lock, the dead bolt, then wedged the chair under the knob.
That’s it, he thought. That’s the best I can do. Fort Knox is sealed. If you want me that bad, you fat fuck, come and get me. Give it your best shot.
Bed.
He removed his socks and crashed on the mattress, just asking for bad dreams. He was asleep within minutes.
The bad dreams obliged.
When the phone rang two hours later, a lipless, blood-drenched Benjamin Crane was chasing him through an opium den, right into the arms of Frank Corso, who was suddenly naked, Chinese, and holding a pair of sparking cattle prods.
And in the center of the room – while
Cavalleria Rusticana
played on – lay a cold Louie Stella, bright yellow daffodils growing from his eyes.
25
 
‘I should kick your ass,’ Amelia said.
They were sitting in the Bagel Shoppe across the street from the library. She had yelled at her brother for scaring the shit out of her – both the scaring and the subsequent tantrum a Randolph family tradition. But it had started to rain heavily, so the dressing down of Garth Randolph was relatively brief.
When Amelia was done with her harangue, she hugged her brother, then they slid into a booth, dried themselves with napkins, ordered coffee. She sat and stared at him as he looked at the menu, cataloging her brother’s features, marveling once more at how everyone she knew seemed to get older except Garth. It had been almost two years, and he had picked up a few lines near his eyes, but he looked to be in very good physical shape. Garth had been a wrestler in junior high and high school, an all-around athlete until the car accident after college that injured his back, and sent him to the hospital in Pennsylvania to have part of his face rebuilt. Incredibly, Garth had come out better-looking than when he went in.
The last time she had seen him he had a long beard and was living on a dairy farm in Orwell, recovering from nervous exhaustion and the collapse of the advertising agency that had once made him rich. He had called her once or twice during that Return to the Earth phase, swearing he was okay and would reenter the world of cigarettes, newspapers, booze, exhaust fumes, and dental hygiene soon. That was two years ago. Now he was clean-shaven. And wearing a very nice suit.
‘So . . .’ Garth began, ‘how’s your sexy friend Paige?’
‘She’s fine,’ Amelia answered. ‘She’s not seeing anyone, you know.’
‘Still the matchmaker, huh?’
Amelia laughed. ‘She has her own business now. She opened a bookstore on Marble Lane. You should stop in and see her.’
‘A bookstore?’
‘Yep. Nice little place, too.’
‘Cappuccino and latte alongside the John Grisham and T.S. Eliot?’
‘Not yet,’ Amelia replied, the name jumping out at her. Had she looked up her mystery poem under T.S. Eliot? She didn’t think she had. She made a mental note to do so. ‘But one of these days she wants to do the espresso-and-biscotti thing. On the other hand, Paige would have to hire someone to handle the culinary end. I’ve seen her in the kitchen. I know whereof I speak.’
‘And how’s my little redhead?’
‘Maddie’s good. She misses you.’ She retrieved a photograph that Paige had taken of Maddie at the
Annie
auditions and handed it to her brother. ‘But I’ll be honest, she brings your name up less and less. I’m afraid that she’s going to forget you.’
Garth handed the photo back. ‘Did she get the part?’
Amelia laughed, then felt a little guilty. ‘Let me put it this way. She gets her singing talents from me.’
Her brother made a face, obviously recalling the years of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper deconstruction that had taken place at the Randolph home on Edgefield Road.
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Yep,’ Amelia said.
Garth smiled, finished his coffee. ‘And how are you and Roger getting along?’
Amelia hesitated for a split second, but that was plenty for Garth. Her brother could read volumes about her in that amount of time. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘You know. Good.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ God she hated it when he did this.
‘Meelie.’
She hated that nickname even more. ‘We’re fine, okay? Just marriage shit. That’s all. Just the soot that settles every day from people rumbling around the same space. If you’d ever get off your high fucking horse and fall in love again, you might get to experience these profound and wonderful joys.’ Garth, who had never married, was famous for the one-year relationship. She hadn’t seen him in love since his college days.
‘You only swear when you’re hiding something,’ Garth said. ‘You gonna tell me?’
‘Roger had an affair.’ Somehow it just tumbled out.
‘I see . . .’ Garth said. ‘Anyone you know?’
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Amelia replied. ‘Unfortunately, I am cursed with a highly detailed image of the two of them rutting in the slop like barnyard animals.’
Garth tapped the back of his sister’s hand. ‘I told you not to marry him.’
This was said in jest, Amelia knew, but it still rang true. Garth had not seemed thrilled when Amelia said she was going to marry Roger St John. ‘It’s a very strange feeling, brother o’ mine,’ Amelia said, calming herself. ‘I love him, and I want to push him out a window. Does that make sense to you?’
‘Yes, Meelie. It does.’ They fell silent for a few moments. Then Garth asked, ‘Do you want me to talk to him?’
Amelia smiled. ‘Gonna slap him around for me, big brother?’
‘I’ll t’row him a few if I have ta,’ Garth replied, doing his pug thing.
‘He’s out of town, Garth. He’ll be back in the next few days. You can punch him then.’
‘Oh well.’ He grabbed the check. ‘I’ll try and call you later anyway,’ he added, although Amelia knew it was just Garth-talk. Yet he did appear to be on the fast track again. Maybe he would stay in touch. He kissed her on the top of the head, started toward the door.
Amelia called after him. ‘I have my writer’s class tonight, but I should be home by nine-thirty.’
Garth waved acknowledgment, paid the bill, said something to the counter girl that made her laugh. Amelia watched the young woman and realized how much she missed her brother. He could be charming as hell.
She caught him halfway through the door.
‘Hey,’ Amelia said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Welcome back, big brother.’
Garth smiled, turned up his collar, and stepped into the rain.
She had taken a half dozen weighty poetry anthologies out of the library and stacked the books on the dining room table. She checked the messages. Nothing. Not even a ‘miss you’ call from her husband.
Ten minutes later, while Maddie played a video game, Amelia found herself staring at her closet, wondering what she was going to wear to her writer’s class. And she knew why. She hadn’t exactly fantasized about the man with the dark curls – she’d insist on learning his name tonight – but she had thought about him since her last class, thought about the way he had come to her aid, thought about the cut of his jeans. Yet if it was just harmless flirtation on her mind, why did she feel so guilty?
She decided she was being childish. She selected a denim skirt (knowing full well it climbed halfway up her thigh when she sat down) and a black pullover. She laid them out on the bed and went downstairs, poked her head into the computer room. ‘Pizza okay?’
‘Yep,’ Maddie said as she changed the color of the curtains in Dolly’s Dream Chalet computer bedroom.
Amelia called Domino’s, found her purse, put the money and a two-dollar tip next to the front door, and checked her watch. What the hell, she thought. She’d do it. There was enough time. She walked over to the linen closet and took down the two boxes of rinses, and found the jar of facial mask. She put them on the counter in the bathroom and changed into her combat sweats, the ripped and stained fleece she wore for heavy cleaning, the clothes she wouldn’t wear into the backyard even under the cover of darkness.
A rinse and a facial.
Right, Meelie.
Just what a gal who had no intention of flirting would do.
Twenty minutes later she looked into the bathroom mirror. It was official. With the light green cast of her facial mask and the shocking hot orange of the combination Golden Sienna and Red Copper hair rinses, she looked like a kabuki zombie mutant from the planet Vanity.
Then, of course, the doorbell rang.
Domino’s.
Amelia turned off the ceiling fan and the faucet. ‘Sweetie?’ she called out.
‘What?’ Maddie answered.
‘Would you get the pizza? The money’s by the front door. On the table.’
‘’Kay . . .’
Amelia heard her daughter’s chair roll back on the hardwood floor, heard her cross the foyer, heard the front door open. She turned the ceiling fan back on, ran the water. Then . . . heard something else. A voice? Was it Maddie? Was Maddie calling her? She shut off the fan, stepped back into the hallway, listened.
Silence.
‘Maddie? Did you call me?’
‘Mom?’ Maddie said, soberly, from the foot of the steps. Her voice sounded tiny, uncertain. It was the voice she used when she was suddenly asked to conduct adult business.
‘Yes, honey . . . what is it?’
‘Um . . . somebody’s here to see you.’
Amelia stole a glance in the mirror. One of the extras in
Dawn of the Dead
stared back. Jesus
Christ
. Company. ‘Who is it, Maddie?’ she asked, barely managing to move her lips, now that the mask had hardened fully.
Maddie paused. ‘It’s somebody named Shelley Roth.’
26
 
Father John Angelino’s sister, Carmen Ricci, was a widow with five children, and Father John, it appeared, had been devoted to her, spending two or three days a month at her house on Tillman Avenue, tending to its constant need for repairs. When Carmen had heard of her brother’s death she had fainted dead away. She was still in Mt. Sinai, under heavy sedation.
The phone call that had awakened Nicky from his nightmare was from his cousin Joseph, who said that as long as he didn’t take anything, he could look through the two boxes of goods shipped to the Ricci house.
As Nicky approached the house, he had a feeling that the inside was not going to be as surgically clean as the house in Erie. A half dozen riding toys littered the front yard, along with a full orchestra of plastic buckets, shovels, rakes, bats, balls, and trucks.
‘More coffee?’ the woman asked. Her name was Beth-Something and she worked for Catholic Family Services. She was fifty, plain and scrubbed, sandy-haired, there to take care of the Ricci brood until Carmen was well enough to return home. There were
Good Housekeeping
and
Christian Family
magazines on this coffee table, Nicky noticed. A huge contrast to Elizabeth Crane and her
Architectural Digest
aesthetic. The furniture was all old, not quite antique. Everywhere he looked was a crystal candy dish of some sort, brimming with Brach’s pinwheels.

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