I left the Cemetery behind and rolled to a stop along the curb about a block down the hill from where Larry had said I’d find the Gandolfo stronghold. Mine was the only car parked on the street for as far as I could see ahead or behind me. I didn’t like that. Nor did I like being down-hill from the house. If I was forced to approach the place, Gandolfo’s soldiers would have a fair chance of spotting me no matter which direction I came from. Never underestimate the value of taking the high ground. Clearly, the Gandolfos didn’t.
Okay, so now I was here and no bands played Stars and Stripes Forever and the borough president wasn’t waiting to greet me. Back in Sound Hill I thought I might work out a plan by the time I got on location. The fact was, I hadn’t worked anything out and the only thing I could think of were the gargantuan Virgin Marys huddled like a football team in Pauly Palermo’s yard.
I stepped out of my car. The rotten-egg breeze blowing in from Jersey was strong, but not howling strong and the only sound on the street was the creaking of the trees like an old man’s knees in the morning. When the gusts died down, even the trees were silent. I hesitated to put my feet in stride for fear of their signature echoing in the silence and the sulphur of the night.
I waited for the wind to come up again. When it did, I walked further down the hill to the last intersection I’d passed. There were a few curb-parked cars adorning the cross street, but none of them was MacClough’s ’66 Thunderbird. I hadn’t really expected to spot it on the boulevard. He’d probably parked it a neighborhood away and taxied up here. Maybe he made the trek on foot. Maybe he wasn’t here at all. Yeah, and maybe we were all just angels dancing on the head of a pin. Johnny was around. I could feel it. I turned back to my car.
Five steps up the hill I thought I heard a footfall crushing snow behind a high hedgerow which ran parallel to the curb. I stood my ground and held my breath like some teen-age cheerleader in a cheap slasher movie. I waited for another step in the snow somewhere behind the bushes. I could feel the sweat leaking down my back, my heart thumping so hard it hurt. For a few seconds, nothing. Then it came at me, the curved mirrors at the back of its eyes reflecting the streetlight shine. I jumped, not quite to Delaware. Fucking cats! At least hockey masked mutants with razor sharp machetes don’t purr and nuzzle your ankles after springing from the indigenous vegetation. They may well hack your limbs off, but they don’t nuzzle and purr.
When my calico companion had tired of laying scent claim to my lower extremities, she sat, licked a paw or two, and looked up. She was clearly puzzled by my nervous laughter and presence there in the gutter in the midst of her territory. I tried to convey that I was equally confused. The mood changed suddenly. Her head twitched left then right, eyes widened, now glowing with fresh light. She darted. A horn blew. Tires screeched. I jumped to the bushes.
“Fuckin’ asshole!” the unseen driver shouted at me and pulled away.
Too bad he left in such a hurry. I wanted to compliment him on the accuracy of his assessment. I stood, brushing my scraped palms against each other as a toddler might when leaving the sandbox, and took a few shaky paces up the hill. When I reached a gap in the hedgerow, something cold, hard and round pressed into the back of my neck. Mr. Wizard once explained that steel isn’t actually colder than other materials. It’s cold to the touch because it absorbs heat from our flesh. Obviously, Mr. Wizard had never had the barrel of a gun pressed against his neck. Gun metal is very cold. Trust me on that.
Never mind Mr. Wizard. Some awfully ugly thoughts went rattling around my head. Larry had phoned ahead to cover his ass and I was going to be hung out to dry. Maybe not. Maybe one of Gandolfo’s boys had spied me from up on the hill and had come down to check me out. Maybe this was another wiseguy’s house and he didn’t like me playing with his cat. In any case, I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of my life.
“Just take an easy step back and join me. I’m kinda lonely behind here since ya scared the cat away,” casually ordered the voice attached to the man attached to the pistol.
Usually, I have real problems dealing with authority, but I’ve found that placing a gun on my neck is an effective short-term therapy. This time though, the weapon was unnecessary. I followed the casual commands and came face to face with my therapist.
“Hey, MacClough,” I smiled. He didn’t.
“That guy in the car was right,” the ex-detective greeted me, holstering his stubby.38. “You are a fuckin’ asshole. Why couldn’t ya just stay out of my business?”
“Because it isn’t business and it’s not just yours. I was the one who let Azrael walk outta the Scupper that night. I was the one who found her body.” That made the tough cop grimace. “No, Johnny, whatever this is, it isn’t all yours.”
“And what the fuck do you know about anything?”
“Stop it, MacClough,” I admonished in a furious whisper.
“Stop what?” He was good at a lot of things. Acting innocent wasn’t one of them.
“I know, Johnny. Maybe even more than you.”
“Get outta here. I got work to do,” my therapist gave me a symbolic shove on the shoulder and started to turn.
“I know about the baby.”
He stopped turning. “The ba-”
“Yeah, MacClough, the baby. Azrael’s daughter.”
The night went silent again. The wind, regaining its throne, blew swirls of loose snow at the sky and into our human faces. Johnny closed his eyes, and tried to let the wind scrape away two decades worth of questions and pain. We both understood that the wind was doomed to fail.
“How did you find out?” he asked, interrupting the pain.
“Would you believe it came to me in a dream?” I wasn’t lying.
MacClough formed a bitter smile with his closed lips and pushed spurts of moist air thru his nostrils.
“Is she yours, Johnny?”
“Could be his,” MacClough pointed up the hill. “I don’t know. What I do know is that she’s Azrael’s. That was always enough for me.” He didn’t really believe that, but this was neither the time nor place to debate the matter.
“How’d you find out about the baby?”
“About two years after the Gandolfo trial, I was in the federal courthouse in Manhattan to give testimony in a drug case. I’m walking outta the mens room and this FBI type bangs into me. He apologizes and whispers in my ear to look in my coat pocket when I get home.”
“A note?”
“A letter.”
I felt like asking all about it, but I could pretty much figure out its content. Anyway, my feet were getting cold and I had the feeling that my solitary Volkswagen was going to start attracting the wrong kind of attention.
“I don’t suppose I can talk ya outta tryin’ to get in there?” I lapsed into nervous Brooklynese.
“No. There’s some things that’ve been waitin’ over twenty years to get settled. I’m tired of waitin’.”