The Glass Factory (32 page)

“Traces? What the hell does ‘traces’ mean?” He describes it to me. Turns out to be some flecks, like maybe .002 mg and a seed.
“Whaaaat?
That can’t be significant.”

The cop asks me what I mean.

“I mean a few flecks and a seed are not enough to convict someone of possession. An amount that small could have come from anywhere.”

“You know something about the other drivers of the vehicle?”

Forget it. I limp out of bed, fire shooting through my feet, and wake Colomba. She gets dressed and goes off to the police station. What a night. Even the chickens are clucking. I watch her go and then put the kettle on and sit down at the kitchen table to think. I’m all the way up to “What kind of tea should I have?” when I hear a clank outside, like a raccoon at the garbage can. I get up—ouch!—and get the broom. And I hobble over towards the back door just in time to see it kicked open with a loud splintering of jambs, and two guys with Smith & Wessons come in. Hinge pins clatter on the floor behind me.

“Well, well,” says the one on the right. “Look who keeps late hours.”

I’ve never seen either one of them.

I warn them: “Careful, guys. Remember, the kitchen is the most dangerous room in the house.”

They look at each other and smirk. Back to me.

“Wrong. It’s the bathroom,” says the one on the right.

“Relax, babe, we’re just here to scare you,” says the idiot on the left.

“All right. I’m scared. Now beat it.”

“Why you fucking bitch!” He starts towards me.

“Easy, Joey,” says the one on the right. Obviously the brains of the outfit. “We’re just here to make sure Miss Buscarsela gets the message to stay out of other people’s business.”

“Fine. Message received. Now beat it.”

The smirks again.

“No, we really gotta do this,” says Joey, advancing.

Then the brains makes a mistake: “The kid’s in the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.” And I guess I go mad. Cursing a mother’s curse as I lunge forward, I jab the idiot in the stomach with the broom then swing around and deliver a Bronx Bomber uppercut that deflects the brain’s weapon up as it smacks him on the chin. A silenced bullet rips through the ceiling.

Joey’s down and I follow through with a whack to his head that nearly knocks him out. The brain throws his weight against me—that’s his second mistake—ripping open my stitches, and the pain sears through me, screaming intense nerve signals that I channel to anger and fear that leave my body through the swift ruthlessness of a fighting animal. I go for maximum damage, throwing him off me into the dishrack full of knives and glasses. It makes a lovely sound.

There is a moment of dreamlike clumsiness as pots are thrown, faces bashed and fingers mashed in cabinet doors and silverware drawers, and all the while guns are going off, one silenced, one loud.

I go for the quiet one first, clubbing the brain as hard as I can. The broom cracks in two on his head and a last-second instinct stops me from delivering a deadly stroke to a vital organ—as he goes down my aim shifts slightly and I impale him in the side with it. I hear screaming. I knock the gun out of the brain’s hand and sweep it away into the hallway. Then I go after Joey, who’s trying to stand up. I grab his gun hand and swing around and put a hold on him from behind, locking my fists around his gun. He stomps on my foot.
“Yow! Shit!
That’s supposed to be a woman’s move, asshole!” I bring both fists up to his throat and dig my knee into his kidney, bringing him down hard, deliberately smacking his skull on the linoleum-covered cement.

But he’s a tough sucker and he’s still wriggling. He points the gun at me but I’m not there anymore, because somehow in my furiosity, I’m biting down hard on his gun hand and pulling him to his feet by his hair and dragging him over to the stove where the flame has been making the kettle steam away like mad for I don’t know how long. Joey’s hand jerks involuntarily and harmlessly empties his gun into the clock over the stove. I give my teeth a rest.

Now the brain is still moving so I kick the kettle at him. He curses me as the scalding water seeps through his clothes, but he stays down. The idiot figures it’s his chance and he elbows me in the abdomen. Fortunately I’ve got some heavy bandages on there to keep me from exerting myself but it still hurts like a bandsaw cutting through me and I singe the guy’s hair on the gas jet and warn him: “Don’t do that again,
do you hear me?”

He complains. I grab a can of soup from the counter and throw it on the burner two inches in front of his face. The label catches fire. The brain’s starting to get up again but who cares?

“Not a good idea,” I say. “One more inch and your partner takes home a flame-broiled face.”

The brain says, “Jesus.”

They must think they’ve taken on a she-devil. And tonight, they have. I’m holding the guy’s face up to the can heating on the stove. It’s starting to glow.

He manages to speak: “We’ll both die.”

I say, “No,
you’ll
die. I’m already going to die. Haven’t you idiots figured that out yet? Now: You ever even
hint
of doing
anything
to my little girl and I will
cut off your balls and feed them to you,
then I will
slit open your stomach and strangle you with your own intestines.
You got that? YOU GOT THAT?!!”

“Yeah! Yeah! Let go of me!”

“Good!” I throw on an insulated glove and knock the red-hot can off the stove. Then I let go of the idiot but I yank the heating iron from the stove because he swings the gun at my head and I have to brand his face with it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

“Come
on,”
says the brain, ducking out. “She’s too crazy to hold.”

“You got that right!” I curse them, brandishing the red-hot iron in front of me like a charm against vampires.

But I did it. I actually have put the fear of motherhood into these extremely seasoned tough guys.

Click!

I curse and turn. Antonia has just pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. I grab the gun from her. “Goddamn you don’t you
ever
do that!” I slap her. Hard. And I immediately regret it, fall to my knees and hug Antonia tight like I’m never going to let go ever.

But of course I have to someday.

Contaminating my kid. It was bound to happen. How many times has she heard me say that I’d like to kill Morse? I’ve got to stop teaching her that crap.

There’s blood on the floor. I’d better mop it up.

It’s just that when I think of Morse, and what I’d like to do to him, I become a deranged animal. But as the waves of rage recede I remember my teaching, that violence is to be avoided at all costs, as a final resort when all other options have been exhausted. And I know the law on “self defense”—you have to have exhausted all other options. I know I haven’t. I can still flee. No dishonor there. It’s the law.

And yet …

I tell Antonia, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I love you I love you I love you I love you—” Words are not enough.

And I bargain with God. Oh, how I bargain. And when it’s over, Antonia says to me, “You’re not mad.”

And I tell her, “No, I’m not mad.”

I’m just pissed off.

My feet are bleeding and it feels like I’m walking on knives. I limp to the phone and pick it up. It’s Colomba. She’s gotten Billy out on bail, but he has to go back if the drug test turns out positive, which he says he’ll pass with no problem. I murmur understanding. I don’t tell her what happened to her kitchen. Somehow, I can’t come up with the words. Maybe later.

Anyone who says the bathroom is the most dangerous room in the house doesn’t know my house.

I sit there for a moment, then I call Gina. The sun’s up, right?

Gina’s voice: “Another damn phone call
for what?”

“Did I wake you?”

I hear her fumbling for the clock. “No, I’m always awake at 5:00
A.M.”

“Good. I’m in trouble.”

“You sure are.”

“Can you arrange a meeting with Morse?”

I need stitches re-sewed, fresh bandages, the works.

I call the hospital. “Stan, I’ve
got
to go out.”

“Not without a wheelchair.”

“Then
get
me a wheelchair.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A man with about as much mental agility as a lump of lead or a block of wood, a man whose utter stupidity is paralleled only by his immorality, can have lots of good, intelligent people at his beck and call, just because he happens to possess a large pile of gold coins.
—Thomas More,
Utopia

I COMMIT SEVERAL FELONIES TODAY.
First I break and enter Reggie Einhorn’s place for something of his manufactured by the Colt Corporation of Hartford, Connecticut. “Only eight pieces,” he told me. “Easy to break down …”

The EPA is all over Kim Tungsten Steel and Glass, and when the workers find out about the dangers they’ve been facing, they vote to go on strike for safer working conditions, shutting down production and forever killing Morse’s takeover bid. Gina comes by in a company-issued van with wheel-chair accommodations and U.S. government plates.

“Got an ejector seat?” I ask.

“Just about,” says Gina, helping me fold up the wheelchair and throw it in the back.

“What are we going through all this for? I bet Morse’s place isn’t wheelchair accessible.”

“Good. That’s one more summons I can throw on him.”

We climb in and she starts the van.

“You’re really looking forward to this, aren’t you?” I ask.

“I just want a level playing field for the final shoot-out.”

We drive past the massive deployment of toxic avengers all over the Kim site. Gina’s investigation team now believes that a propane leak caused the fire, which then spread to the toxic storage area. I wonder out loud if Gina really thinks they can clean up that mess.

“Well, flushing out twenty years of underground leaching isn’t like mopping up spilled milk off your kitchen floor. It can be pretty hard to get the public to understand that. They always seem to think ‘modern science’ can fix everything in about a week. Sometimes I wish we could boil it all down to a nice, slick Madison Avenue sound bite, like: ‘The EPA: Tough on dirt, gentle on your lawn.’“

“That’s fine for the suburban market, but what about the inner cities?”

“Oh, I’ve got one for that, too: ‘EPA: As nasty as the crap we clean up.’“

“Yeah, and maybe a radio jingle, like: ‘What you gonna do/When your baby turns blue?’“

Gina laughs.

“They don’t want science, they want magic,” I say. “But you can’t uncook an egg.”

We’re on the highway now, and a driver speeding along at about 90 mph comes up behind us and has to brake. Upset by this, he tailgates us for the next two miles, clearly expecting us to get out of his way. The middle lane is clear, but he flashes his lights as if to say: “You’re in my way.”