Cold Fury (25 page)

“What?” Doug said, turning bright pink.

“You are?” I said innocently.

“No. No . . . I would never . . .”

“Hey, chunky!” Billy shouted. Apparently he’d been waiting behind Bump ‘N’ Grind doing calisthenics or something, warming up for the takedown, and now he came around the corner with his idiot crew in tow. A throng of kids followed, and then it was Billy and his friends on one side and Doug, me, and Max on the other. Billy strutted like a muscle-bound peacock, saying, “Bad-ass versus fat-ass! This is gonna be
awesome
!”

Doug said, “I don’t understand what’s happening, but I won’t fight you.”

Billy shrugged. “You don’t have to. Just stand there and I’ll beat your ass.”

Doug looked around at the crowd, processing it, and then back at Billy. “Aim for the head. It’ll save me from buying rat poison.”

“Huh?” Billy said.

“You’re gonna kill me, kill me. Get it over with,” Doug said calmly. “What are you, scared? I’m not.”

Billy’s smile drooped, he looked around at his guys, who were as confused as he was, and turned back to Doug. “What is this, like, some kind of mind game?”

“Hit me!” Doug roared, making Billy and his guys step back. “You effing loser! You effing freak!”

“Doug,” I hissed, grabbing his arm, “stop talking. Just . . . wait.”

“Wait for what?” he bellowed, and turned on Billy. “Hit me! Kill me! Do it now, you . . . you effing
retard
!”

Billy’s face fell when he heard that word. He made a hard red fist and said, “My pleasure,” through clenched teeth, but was interrupted by the gentle toot of a car horn. The crowd turned to the curb, where a Fiat older and smaller than my mom’s creaked to a halt. It was a tiny Italian car with a tiny Italianate man emerging from it. He was in black from head to toe—black suit, black shoes and shirt—except for his tie, which was white. His black-rimmed glasses magnified his eyes like two dark marbles and were worn beneath an impressive head of white hair. The tune he whistled was carefree and so was he, strolling toward the mosh pit with his tiny hands in his tiny pockets. Watching him approach, I thought, If this is Knuckles’s scariest guy, Doug is dead. He stopped a few feet away, took his time surveying the crowd, then raised his black eyebrows and grinned with a mouthful of white Chiclet teeth.

“Yo, Dougy,” he said with a dip of his head.

The crowd was silent, a train rumbled overhead, and Doug said, “Me?”

“How’s it hanging, buddy boy?”

“Uh . . . fine, I suppose,” Doug said, confused. “Listen, I’m not . . .”

The tiny man moved closer and looked up at Billy, inspecting him like he were in a petri dish. “Who’s this jag?” he said. “President of the Hitler Youth Club?”

“Something like that. Pardon me, but who are . . . ?”

He shook a box, popped a Tic-Tac, and said, “Listen up, everybody, and get the wax outta your ears. Dougy here is my man, my very best chum,
amico mio numero uno
, you get me? Anyone”—he paused, smiling at Billy—“and by anyone I mean you, Adolf Junior, bullies, teases, touches, taunts, screws with, or looks askance at him, you’re gonna have to deal with me.”

An empty plastic bag scratched past like a tumbleweed.

Someone coughed quietly.

Far away a siren moaned.

The tiny man raised his arms like a preacher. “Are we square?”

Billy snuffled stupidly and said, “I don’t know what that means, but I know it’s gonna take a lot more than some old midget to back me off of fatty-pants here. Hell, I’m just getting started!”

“Old midget,” the tiny man said, smiling. “Why are guys like you always so dumb? Can’t you see I’m a harbinger?”

“A what?” Billy said.

“Harbinger . . . of doom,” Doug mumbled as a
shreep
of brakes sounded at the curb. It was an anonymous car, dark and unidentifiable, just like the three guys who slinked out of it. Billy and his well-muscled crew were twice the size of the small, wiry trio, who wore jeans and heavy boots and plain T-shirts, and had biceps like small round rocks under their yellowish skin. They said not a word, just fanned out behind the tiny man. One of them had a tattoo but I can’t remember what it was, and I think another wore a ball cap but I can’t be sure if it was Cubs or Sox. I would be hard-pressed to pick any of them out of a lineup except to say that they were not big and looked sort of bored, but they smelled dangerous. Violence crackled in the air, and the tiny man pointed at Billy and said, “Jigsaw puzzle. Small pieces.”

“Them”—Billy snorted and then gestured at his ’roid-rage crew—“versus us? Are you serious, midget man?”

I hated to agree with Billy but he seemed to have a point. The three guys looked like second-string ballet dancers, not even mean-looking, just standing there.

“So dumb,” the tiny man said, shaking his head. “Boys? You’re on the clock.”

The first guy moved slowly, like a thin, bored cat, but somehow Billy was on the ground holding his face and screaming while the other two were kicking him all over. There was movement, someone huffed, and one of Billy’s friends was in a pile weeping while another held a bloody nose and screamed for help until he got punched in the mouth. It was like a three-man tornado of ass kicking that whipped around Billy and his buddies with no sign of stopping, hypnotizing the crowd with its pure, poetic violence. I sidled up to the tiny man and whispered, “You were only supposed to scare him!”

He nodded politely. “You’re the Rispoli, huh?”

“Knuckles promised!”

“One thing you should know about Knuckles: he’s a liar,” he said, showing me white Chiclet teeth. “We all are. That’s why we’re in this business, right?”

I looked back at the whirlwind of violence I was responsible for—fists, blood, and teeth—and it made me want to puke. The spectators emitted a collective
huh-huh-huh!
howl, like a capacity crowd at a cow-butchering contest. I walked away quickly, hustling toward the Lincoln, and heard my name called as I rounded a corner.

“What did you do?” Doug said in a tone that was pure accusation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and kept walking.

“Who are those guys? You were talking to the little one, I saw you!”

“Go away, Doug,” I said, anxious to be alone, away from the scene. “Go home and don’t kill yourself, okay?”

“Back there, before he showed up, you told me to wait!” Doug said, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. “You knew he was coming!”

I shot a finger in his face as fast as I throw a left and said, “At least you could say thank you!” The car keys were in my hand, and then I was in the car gunning the engine, and Doug threw himself in the passenger seat as I squealed away from the curb.

“It wasn’t your place!” he shouted. “I’m against violence!”

“Oh, shut the hell up, Doug, you big girl!” I screamed, roaring onto Ashland Avenue. “I am too, but it happened! It’s not like they’re going to kill him . . .”

“Kill him?!”

“And now Billy will never bother you again! No one will! You’ll have all the space you need to figure out the mysterious destiny of Doug Stuffins!”

“It wasn’t your place! You have no right!” he said, but his voice faded and my view through the windshield narrowed as my windpipe quit working. I was choking, something biting into the skin at my neck, and I smelled putrid meat before looking into the rearview mirror at the same plastic devil mask from Cinco de Mayo leaning over the backseat. The wire Ski Mask Guy was killing me with was digging into my throat. I couldn’t make a sound while Doug gazed out the window, sighed, and said, “Life is so unfair,” as I cranked the wheel. I smashed into a parked van on the left, sending pedestrians scattering like cockroaches hiding under a refrigerator. Doug screamed, and I did it again, this time crushing the side of a sluggish bus on the right, its passengers pressing their shocked faces against windows. Ski Mask Guy slid from side to side but his grip only tightened. Doug saw him and went mute, squeezing himself into the corner.

“You’re next, chub-bub!” Ski Mask Guy squealed in his schoolmarm voice.

I pressed the gas pedal to the floor, speed and motion my only defense. It was the second time the maniac had tried to choke me to death and this time it was working—this time I had no Harry, only Doug, and he was a gaping frozen meatball. I whipped the car back and forth, sideswiping a Toyota and crushing the mirror of a minivan. Ski Mask Guy’s grip slipped and I gasped, “Doug! Do something!”

“Fatso ain’t gonna do
nothing
!” Ski Mask Guy cackled. “He’s just watching!”

“Watching,” Doug muttered. “Not doing.” And he lifted the laptop and swung it hard against Ski Mask Guy’s head. When the freak sprang back, Doug hit him again, shouting, “Let her go, you son of a bitch!” And he did, slamming a shoulder against the back door and tumbling from the car. Doug’s laptop flew out too, shattering into a million pieces against the pavement. I could breathe, but barely, and looked into the empty backseat, where the devil mask grinned slyly up at me.

I gaped into the rearview mirror as Ski Mask Guy rolled to his belly and his head popped up.

I caught a glimpse of a face that was melted.

It was branded with a reverse
R
, just like the cake pans from Rispoli & Sons.

• • •

And then I told Doug everything.

I told him about the scene at my house, and my family that had now been missing for more than two whole weeks.

I talked about Uncle Buddy, Ski Mask Guy, Detective Smelt, and Club Molasses.

I explained the Outfit, ghiaccio furioso, and especially the notebook.

At the end, I sat back against the driver’s seat and closed my eyes, waiting for the disbelief, the questions about my sanity, maybe a polite query about possible drug use.

Except Doug believed me.

He believed every word I said.

In fact, out of the six and a half billion people who populate the earth, Doug Stuffins was precisely the right person to believe me. He had spent his life memorizing, internalizing, and vicariously living through stories on film that were as unbelievable as mine, and even more so, and they were alive to him just as mine was now. If I had told him Ski Mask Guy was a carjacker, Doug would have scoffed, but explaining that he was an insane masked assassin trying to kill me for an Outfit instruction manual that I found in a steel briefcase hidden inside a buried speakeasy was completely believable.

We were parked at the Superdawg Drive-In, and Doug stared at the demonic mask in his hands, saying quietly, “It all makes sense now.”

“What does?” I croaked, holding ice against my neck.

“Like you said, my destiny . . . what I was born to do and meant to become.”

“Who?”

Doug turned to me with a look of certainty. “The sidekick.”

“The what?”

“The sidekick. Robin to Batman. Doctor Watson to Sherlock Holmes. Tom Hagen to Michael Corleone . . .”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, sitting up.

“Don’t you see?” Doug said. “I’ve been writing my life all wrong. I cast myself as the hero when I’m actually the loyal and able wingman with a quick mind and the intellectual resources, i.e., a brain brimming with movies, to help solve any problem.”

“Doug, this isn’t a movie . . .”

“I know it’s not. It’s real life, finally.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“I can help you. I
need
to help you,” he said, his words both a promise and a plea.

The idea of help was so foreign to me, so utterly unavailable, that I had forgotten how badly I yearned for it. There was nothing adventurous about the bloody web I was caught in, nothing exciting about the black void my family had disappeared into. I was trapped all alone inside my reality and had ceased hoping that it would ever be any different. But now Doug was offering to pierce that sick bubble and join me. I doubted that he could help—I doubted that anyone could help me besides myself—but I didn’t want to be alone anymore. “You can’t tell Max anything.”

“I won’t, I swear.”

“As long as I’m confessing, I . . . I think I might love him. Maybe.”

“Yeah,” Doug sighed. “Me too.”

There was a pause between us, and I glanced at Doug inspecting the devil mask. “Doug . . . are you gay?”

“I don’t know yet. I might be,” he said. “Age sixteen totally sucks when it comes to absolutes.”

“But you just said you love Max. That sounded pretty absolute.”

“No I didn’t. I said ‘me too,’ in agreement with your ‘maybe.’ What I meant is that I have a somewhat murky and as yet undefined feeling for him.”

“But you also like him as a friend, right?”

“Of course! You and Max are my . . . ,” and he stopped before saying “only friends,” and stared at the floor. When he looked up, there was certainty in his eyes, and he said, “If I were the sidekick, do you know what my advice would be?”

“What?”

“That it’s time to confront your enemies. You’ve been chased enough,” he said. “Remember when we watched
Shane
? How Alan Ladd finally straps on his six-shooter and faces down the bad guys who have been giving the innocent farm family shit for two hours? Remember
The Pope of Greenwich Village
with Mickey Rourke?”

“And Eric Roberts,” I said, seeing what he was leading to.

“At the end, Mickey Rourke walks into the mob boss’s private club and tells him to go bite himself because there’s nothing else he can do. But at least it’s something.”

I thought of Uncle Buddy at my house and Detective Smelt at Twin Anchors.

They didn’t know where I was but I knew where they were.

Just like that, Doug had given me an idea.

Maybe Batman was onto something with the whole sidekick thing.

20

THE MORNING OFFICIALLY BEGAN
with sunlight tiptoeing through the caged windows of the warehouse, throwing crisscross shadows on the cement floor, but by then I’d been up for hours. Waking early is what I do and who I’ve become out of fear and necessity. My brain, which clicks off at night like a low battery and pops back on when it’s recharged, is especially active at the very start of a day. Conscious while the rest of the world sleeps, I make decisions, filter facts, and steel my gut for what lies ahead.