Driven to Ink

“Do you think he’ll be able to tattoo?” I asked.

Colin was quiet a second. “I’m not sure. That’ll be up to the physical therapist to see what sort of motion he’ll have at first.”

“Is he awake now?”

“No, he’s still in recovery. The anesthesia should wear off in a little while.”

“I’ll be bringing his mother over there,” I said, glancing back up, but Sylvia was now nowhere in sight.

“I thought you were going home,” he said. “You should be, you know. You got banged up pretty bad. You need to heal.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, was what I wanted to say, but it would have been way too sarcastic, and he wouldn’t have understood, since he had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t think this was the time to enlighten him.

Flanigan was shouting something through the bullhorn, but I couldn’t make it out. It was facing the wrong direction, so the sound was distorted.

“What’s that?” Bixby asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “TV.”

“Awfully loud.”

He was buying it.

Flanigan was saying something else now.

“Listen, Bixby, I’ve got to go,” I said. “Will you be around later, when I bring Sylvia over to see Jeff?”

“I’m heading home, but I’ll call you in the morning. See how you’re doing.”

“Mmm,” I said, not really paying attention. “See you, then,” I said, flipping the phone shut, my attention on what was going on beyond the windshield.

Flanigan held the bullhorn at his side. The building stayed as quiet as it was when we first got here. I began to wonder whether anyone was inside at all. I hadn’t heard any gunshots.

I leaned back in my seat, closing my eyes. I still held the cell phone; it was smooth like the rocks I used to skim across the river at home in Jersey. I felt myself dozing off, despite more shouting from outside my little cocoon. I didn’t have the energy to open my eyes to see what was going on.

I felt the cold air sweep across my body as my door opened, but because I was half-asleep I thought it was just part of the dream I was having.

But when I was yanked out of the car, an arm wrapped itself around my neck; my eyes snapped open, and I struggled to breathe.

I felt the cold metal against the side of my head.

“Come with me quietly. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Chapter 61

I couldn’t move to see who it was. The voice was low, deep, not one I recognized.

He dragged me backward a few feet, then shifted his arm a little. It gave me a chance to ask, “What do you want from me?”

“Just a little insurance for now.”

I was able to twist my head a little, not without a lot of pain, and I saw him. Will Parker.

I must have looked surprised, because he chuckled and said, “You’re a nosy bitch. I knew you knew it was me all along.”

He loosened his grip slightly, and I shifted. I could see the torn tuxedo. So it had been Parker out there shooting at us.

“You did steal Joel’s clip cord, didn’t you?” I asked with a lot more bravado than I felt. But as I thought about how Ray Lucci was killed, it dawned on me that Rosalie had already told me Lou had done it. Two people couldn’t have killed one man.

And then I realized what it had been about her story that didn’t jibe.

She said she’d gone over to the wedding chapel when Bernie and Sylvia were getting married, to see the wedding. Lou had gotten angry, hit her, and Ray Lucci cut him up. It was then that Lou killed Ray, Rosalie said.

But he couldn’t have. Ray wasn’t killed until later, because he’d stolen my car. His fingerprints were all over it.

Rosalie had lied. Lou Marino hadn’t killed Ray Lucci. Will Parker had. Later in the day, and then he’d returned my car to the parking garage as if it had never been gone.

“Rosalie’s protecting you,” I said. “She told me Lou killed Lucci. But it was you all along. It doesn’t matter now if she says Lou killed him because Lou’s dead.”

“No thanks to Lucci,” he said bitterly.

I started putting it all together. That ten thousand dollars in Lucci’s locker. The ten thousand dollars Bernie took from Sylvia. And something that Rosalie said: how Lucci had told Lou that cutting him wasn’t how he’d planned it.

Maybe that part of Rosalie’s story was true. Everything except Lou killing Lucci.

“Bernie paid Lucci to kill Lou, didn’t he?” I asked. “So what happened? How did you end up killing Lucci instead? Why?”

His grip got tighter, and he lifted me up a little, until I was almost off my feet. “He cut him up, but he didn’t kill him. He had all that money, and he hadn’t done it yet. Lou kept hitting her, and Lucci was dragging his feet.” The anguish in his voice was palpable. It was clear how he felt about Rosalie.

“So you took matters into your own hands? Anyway, why didn’t Bernie pay you instead to kill Lou? You were the one in love with her.”

“That’s exactly why I couldn’t do it,” Parker said, taking the bait, his voice a low growl. The gun had moved from my temple down to my neck now. “Lucci was the ex-con. If he got caught, no biggie.”

No biggie to him and Bernie, perhaps, but it was a biggie to Sylvia.

“Why do you think I know all this already?” I asked.

“You can’t keep your nose out of anything. When I surprised you at the chapel, I knew you’d been looking in the lockers. I knew you’d found it.”

“Found what?”

He sighed. “I’m so tired of you playing stupid. Pretending to buy the crap about how a girl got rough with me but telling me the whole time about how your brother, the cop, was there. I didn’t get why you hadn’t told him yet, except you were on a power trip. I knew it was only a matter of time, though.”

This guy was living in his own little fantasy world. I didn’t want to let on that I’d just figured everything out. I’d have loved to know what it was I’d supposedly found in his locker. I hadn’t even gotten to his locker. I’d seen Dan Franklin’s university ID, and that was it.

“That’s enough talking. We’ve got to go for a ride.”

Parker spun me around and shoved me in front of him, his arm still wrapped tight around my chest, so my arms were pinned to my sides. The gun hovered somewhere near my ear. I wanted to scream, but he’d already shot Jeff, so he probably wouldn’t have any scruples about shooting me, too.

He weaved me through a couple of cars. The Love Shack was across the street, and we were headed in that direction, away from the police and the lights in front of That’s Amore.

“How did you get out?” I asked. “Out of the chapel back there?”

He chuckled, the rumbling vibrating against my ear. “I was gone before the cops got there. Those couples were convinced, though, that I was still in there and told the cops that.”

Great. No one would be looking here, across the parking lot and then across the street. He’d taken his arm away from my chest but held on to my upper arm, the gun stuck in the center of my back, where my Celtic cross tattoo was. He was walking so close to me that no one would be able to see the gun or that I was being forced to go.

“How’s your friend?” he asked.