The first time it happened was on the subway after I escaped from Uncle Buddy.
All that I had seen and learned at the bakery was too much to process.
My brain went numb trying to reconcile it with reality, and failed.
When I blinked around the car, I realized that I’d been riding for hours. The train had risen from the tunnel and was clacking on elevated tracks. My nose itched and then I doubled over with tears, crying so intensely that it felt like I was being kicked in the chest. I was outside myself, wondering who I was crying for, and realized it was me. It ended when I accepted the bitter fact that I couldn’t afford to pity myself any longer than a couple of sweet seconds. I sat up and looked at a dozing drunk and an iPad-hypnotized geek, relieved that no one had witnessed my mini breakdown. It occurred to me then that I could probably use a good therapist after all I’d been through. And then I thought of kids who spend hours on therapists’ couches bemoaning their lives-some of which was legitimate, some that wasn’t, some who actually had ADD and some who didn’t but were prescribed Ritalin anyway-and thought, Screw therapy. What I need is my family.
I hugged the briefcase like it was my little brother.
At midnight, I stepped off the train at the station nearest the bakery.
The sidewalks were deserted as I darted to the Lincoln.
My internal-anger engine was whirring at full tilt now, and the tears had long receded. I lingered while unlocking the car door, overcome with a strange hope that Uncle Buddy would leap from a shadow so I could beat him with the steel suitcase and then spend a few minutes kicking in his teeth. But no, I was alone on the street- that pleasure would have to wait for the next encounter with my “favorite uncle.” I had what he wanted and knew that he would come after me sooner rather than later. After my long day on the train, in which my brain and heart had been turned inside out, I welcomed it.
Despite the knocks I’d taken, despite becoming a serial weeper, fear was slowly calcifying into an undeniable need for revenge.
Flexing and unflexing my fist, I hoped that one of my pursuers would suffer my left hook very damn soon.
The physical anticipation of throwing a punch made me think of Willy and how alarmed he probably was at my prolonged absence. Looking down a dark alley, I also remembered that Harry was gone. My heart ached at his disappearance, but it was now beating to a recalibrated rhythm, one that informed me that there were things I could do and things I could not. To survive, and for the survival of my family, I had to put aside the problems I was unable to affect-like finding Harry. Actions I could take-like opening the briefcase in hopeful anticipation of valuable clues-had to be executed immediately. My lips moved in silent prayer for the little dog as I started the engine, put down the convertible top, and pulled smoothly from the curb. Chicago late at night is both dark and light, with streetlights burning every few feet. My dad told me that when he was a kid, he remembered old Mayor Daley declaring with certainty that the continuous presence of light would make the city a safer place, and proceeded to plant glowing metal poles everywhere. I cruised through empty streets bathed in fluorescence, the cool, lake- smelling wind against my battered face, and it felt like being alive.
By the time I parked in the alley behind Windy City Gym, reality had returned.
Willy had covertly left open a door anticipating my return.
I entered and locked it behind me, and was alone in the dark again.
There was no light under Willy’s apartment door, so I crept quietly across the gym and shimmied with difficulty up to the Crow’s Nest, pausing every few feet to shift the heavy briefcase from one hand to another. Finally I hoisted myself inside, shut the trapdoor, pulled the shades, and turned on a lamp. A combination lock held the briefcase together, and I flipped the numbers instinctively to my birthday. Where those significant digits had no effect on the office keypad, now they fell smoothly into place. It was another sign that my dad had anticipated my survival. But at the moment, all that mattered was that the briefcase opened, and I sat back, staring at its contents.
Hundred-dollar bills were stacked in tight green bricks.
The steel skin of a pistol shimmered ominously.
A razor-thin rectangle of plastic bore my name.
The black AmEx credit card imprinted with SARA JANE RISPOLI proved that my dad expected me not only to survive, but to find the briefcase. I set it aside, along with a Sig Sauer.45 conceal-and-carry and ninety-six thousand dollars in cash. I realized that these things were my dad’s last, best attempt to protect me, especially since I would now be the protector of the old leather notebook stuffed with secrets.
In the middle of the briefcase sat the ratty, ancient thing, just as I’d suspected.
It was held together with masking tape, rubber bands, and metal clips, and its spine was cracked with age. The leather surface was patchy, dry, and wounded, like mummified skin. Carefully, I lifted and unbound it, opening to the flyleaf.
Below it read,
Further down, my dad’s handwriting stated,
The last inscription was the freshest and I touched it lightly, knowing he’d written it in secret, which made me simultaneously sad and mad. If my dad had told me about this-any of this-I could’ve done more than grope blindly from one life-threatening situation to another. I looked down at the time-worn notebook, at his words written with care, and thought, Maybe this is his way of telling me. I turned the page to a sheaf of paper that had been reattached decades ago, the tape gone yellow, and read the carefully handwritten words,
The last chapter was not translated, but even I knew that
Checking quickly, I saw that it was in the chapter titled “
I flipped back and reread two words written at the top of the page.
The section was printed in a neat, blocky script and had a textbook tone to it, with the obvious goal of educating the reader. My skull still ached from the fire truck assault, and my body, shoulders to toes, creaked with the pain of falling into the bakery. I propped up pillows, stretched out on a cot, and read.
“Capone Doors were invented in 1921 by Giuseppe ‘Joe Little’ Piccolino, the chief officer of weapons and devices, and were installed in and around Chicago between 1922 and 1950. Before Joe Little’s untimely disappearance and presumed death in 1951 (see ‘
