Papa glowers back at him. His obstinance is starting to piss me off. He’s not the only person living here.
Plummer levels a finger at Ed. “You want to risk this happening to someone else, Francesco?”
I look Papa in the eye. “Or worse?”
He glares at me for a heartbeat before stomping off into the house, slamming the door behind him.
“What the hell is that?” Plummer asks angrily. “He’s staying?”
I turn my palms up. “Damned if I know.”
“Talk some fucking sense into him.”
“I’ll try after he cools down a bit, Jake.”
“Don’t try,” he snaps. “Get him the hell out of here… and if he’s too pigheaded to go, at least get yourself and Brittany out.”
I inform him that I’ve temporarily moved Brittany in with Pat.
“You should go, too,” Plummer suggests.
After they leave, I head for Papa’s room and rap on the door. “Ed and Jake are gone. You and I need to talk.”
Silence.
I raise my voice. “We need to talk right now, Papa.”
After a long moment, the door opens and Papa stares back at me. Between the stomping off into the house, the slamming of the door, and the reluctance to open his bedroom door, I’m reminded of dealing with a petulant teenager.
I meet his angry gaze with one of my own. “Jake is right. It’s time to go somewhere else for a few days.”
“I no go.”
“Ed’s already been shot. Are you trying to get someone killed?”
“No.”
I brace my hands on either side of the doorframe and lean my face closer to his. “Well, you’re going to, and it’s not going to be me or Brittany, damn it.”
“I no run away from Cosche filth!”
“Enough with the old-country macho bullshit, Papa! Nobody’s going to think you’re less of a man if you use a little common sense in the face of danger.”
“I no go! Ed, he think they can keep me safe here.”
Damned Ed! I slap a hand on the doorframe. “Brittany isn’t coming back until this is over with.”
The agony in his eyes challenges my decision, but I stand firm. “I’m not putting Brittany at risk no matter what you or Ed or anyone else says, Papa. Period.”
Chapter Eight
With Papa’s pigheaded refusal to move out of his house, I’ve formally moved Brittany in with Pat for the time being. Deano will follow when he’s released from the animal hospital tomorrow. Which leaves me. Pissed as I am with Papa for putting others at risk by insisting on staying here because of some macho “I not run away” bullshit, I don’t feel right leaving him on his own, so I’m splitting my time between home and Pat’s place. To Jake Plummer’s disgust, Ed and the fossils seem to have no more sense than Papa—or maybe they share his prehistoric testosterone. In their eyes, Ed’s shooting has made this personal, and they’re determined to see things through. As much as possible, they have one or two guys stationed in the backyard and one on the front porch, with another retired cop in the house with Papa. They’re running short this evening, so I’m sticking around, not that I’ll be much help if anything goes down. There’s one fossil in the backyard, and Ed Stankowski is inside with Papa. Max Maxwell will be here around seven o’clock, as soon as his grandson’s third birthday party wraps up. A fourth fossil will join them shortly.
Pat and I are hanging out on the front porch awaiting the arrival of Ben Larose so we can conclude our interrupted Monday lunch meeting. She glances at her watch. “Where the heck is Ben? I have to pick up Brittany from volleyball at seven thirty.”
“Where was her game?” I ask.
“Some prep school way the hell and gone up in Winnetka. She was griping about having to travel all over Chicago to play.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Pat says with a smile. “Such is the life of the varsity volleyball player.”
“It’s a tough life,” I agree sarcastically.
Pat frowns. “She’s right, though. They do travel all over the place to play.”
“She’s the one who insisted on going to private school.” If anyone deserves sympathy about things school related, it’s me. Brittany is attending Hyde Park College Preparatory High School, which is costing me almost $20,000 in annual tuition—twenty grand that her mother should be paying.
“That’s the price of having her here with you instead of over in Brussels with her mother, Valenti.”
“I know.”
She smiles. “So quit griping about it.”
She’s right. I went through hell when Brittany went to live with her mother last year. Maker’s Mark bourbon and I had grown close in those months… much too close. Brittany had left for a number of reasons, one of which had been a refusal to return to St. Aloysius High School after a brief suspension following an uncharacteristic blowup with a teacher. She’d had a number of run-ins with teachers and students in the wake of Papa’s shooting incident. If the price of having her back in Cedar Heights is astronomical tuition, it’s a cost I’m willing to bear. Still, a guy can bitch a little about his kid’s hit on his pocketbook now and then, right?
We can see into the living room from where we stand. Papa is parked on his venerable La-Z-Boy recliner, and Ed has settled into Mama’s old easy chair while they watch a dated rerun of The Rockford Files television show. Along with Kojak and Columbo, Papa has a thing for old cop and private-eye shows—yet another thing he and Stankowski have bonded over. I don’t know about Ed, but Papa has watched every episode of the damned shows enough times that he can probably recite the dialogue word for word. He claims that he learned English from watching TV. That may be, but I don’t recall any of his favorite TV dicks speaking broken English.
Pat’s brow furrows. “Shouldn’t Ed be at home resting?”
“He’s a tough old bird.”
“Dumb old bird, if you ask me,” she mutters with a wondering shake of her head. “Have the cops figured out
