CHAPTER 8
Bethany
“Whew, busy dinner crowd, huh,” Manny said, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “But I guess that's a good thing, right? Mo' profit comin' in, so at least we's gots the money ta' fix up the damage them damn thugs done.”
I nodded and sighed. It had been a very long, very bad day. I really, really needed a glass of wine and some relaxing music right now. Actually, what I needed more than anything was to be able to simply turn my brain off for a while. All I could think about was the troubles that had been plaguing me since the day had started, and all this worrying wasn't doing any good. Still, I couldn't really help it, could I? The rug had really been pulled out from under my feet in a huge way.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “It's been a busy evening, and at least we made a little money. I don't know how far it's gonna go though.”
We had made some profit alright, but it wasn't enough to pay off the CM guys in the morning, not unless I took out the petty cash from the register and started the day with nothing in the cash register – which I wasn't about to do.
I had dug out my mom's old holster for the nine-millimeter pistol earlier though, and I now kept it strapped to my waist, hidden under a baggy sweater. At least now if those guys came back, I had something to defend myself with, although I didn't really know how effectively I would be able to use it if it came down to it.
“Well we'll do what we can with what we have,” said Manny, looking determined. “We'll fix this place up, and we'll get it running good again, Miss Verde. We'll do it!”
I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd been so desperate that I had tried to convince a mobster to buy the diner earlier in the day.
“Yeah, we will,” I murmured. “We'll fix it up, we'll sort it out.”
I hoped I sounded at least vaguely convincing, because I certainly didn't believe the words I had just said myself.
Manny, however, seemed to believe me. He was certainly more hopeful than I was – I guess that's because he didn't know that the Sciotti family were involved too, and it wasn't simply a case of the CM guys demanding protection money.
“Alright then Miss Verde,” he said as he hung up his apron. “I'll see you in the morning. Have yourself a lovely evenin'.”
“Bye Manny, I'll see you tomorrow. And be careful in the morning, alright? Keep your eyes open, and don't let those thugs jump you again like they did this morning.”
“Don't you worry Miss Verde, I'll make sure I walk around with eyes in the back a' my head.”
I let him out the back door and then locked it up securely, using the deadbolt for the first time in a long while to make sure it was extra secure.
After that, I turned the lights off and went upstairs to my apartment there, which had been feeling pretty empty ever since Sal had passed away.
I couldn't say that I missed him – especially now, after the true extent of his selfishness and evil had been revealed – but I did miss simply having another person around. It was quiet in here, almost eerily so.
I knew right away that I needed a glass of wine to at least help me unwind a little from the day’s events, so I uncorked a fresh bottle and poured myself some. Even though I had been running around all day, and had been through a lot of stress, I didn't really feel hungry. I took the food that I had taken up from the diner kitchen – my usual dinner was extra food from the diner, made more sense than simply tossing the extra food out at the end of the day – and put it in the fridge while I went out onto the balcony, which overlooked the street the diner was on, to relax with my glass of wine.
In a way, I had been almost relieved when Ben had refused my offer to sell the diner to him at a giveaway price. I didn't know what I would do without this place. And I imagined that if Ben had bought it, he probably would have given it the total revamp it so badly needed, and maybe would have turned it into, I don't know, and Italian restaurant or something, and would likely have fired Manny to get his own staff in. And I think the guilt from all of that would have been crippling, on top of the difficulties I would have faced being out on my own, with no degree and only a couple of thousand dollars in my pocket, with my only work experience being that of having run a mostly-unsuccessful diner. Not that the mostly unsuccessful part was my fault – Sal was to blame for that, as he was to blame for the entirety of the predicament I was in – but since Sal was now dead and buried, there was nothing I could do but “woman up” and accept the fact that things were like this, and that I had to make the best of these difficult circumstances somehow.
It was weird, too – I should have hated Ben Sciotti, I should have loathed every bone in his body, but I couldn't really bring myself to do that. As I'd said before, I had always had a good sense of character judgment, and that little sixth sense of mine was still telling me that underneath his mafioso persona, Ben was a good, decent human being.
Still, he hadn't said anything about helping me out with the CM thugs, and now those guys were only a few hours away from returning here to demand that I give them their protection money. Money that I simply didn't have. What the hell was I gonna do in the morning?
All I could do right now was sip on my wine and try to distract my mind from all of these crippling worries.
I stared out at the little street below, watching as a few people strolled by, and a few cars drove along it at a slow pace.
That was when I saw a suspicious-looking car parked just up the street from my diner. It was a black SUV, with windows that were tinted black so that you couldn't see into it from the outside. Did it belong to Ben's guys, or was it a CM vehicle?
Either way, I didn't like the look of it. I could just make out the outline of someone sitting in the driver's seat, and they appeared to be staring directly at me.
With my heart suddenly pounding, I stepped away from the edge of the balcony and retreated to the shadows, where they wouldn't be able to see me. Who the hell was it? Who was out there? Why were they watching me?
I wondered what I should do. Should I call the police and tell them that there was a suspicious vehicle outside my house? No, I couldn't . . . Firstly, I highly doubted the downtown Detroit police had enough time to check out suspicious vehicles when there were plenty of far more urgent and actual crimes going on, and secondly, if I did call the police and they did actually check it out, they'd start asking questions, and I knew that neither the CM guys or the Sciotti family would be very happy about me getting the cops involved in this thing.
I then briefly thought about calling Scott. I mean, he was a private investigator, he could find some way of checking out the vehicle, surely? But then he would be asking questions too, and I would be forced to reveal things that I was not yet ready to reveal.
Well one thing was for sure, and that was that I did not feel safe alone, and I knew that that vehicle was out there watching me and the diner. For what purpose, I did not yet know, but I suspected that their intentions were far from charitable.
I wished that there was someone I could call to come over. Working at the diner six days a week over the past couple of years from seven in the morning until eight in the evening meant that I had little time to meet people or cultivate friendships. Hell, the last time I'd been able to do that had been when I was in high school. I'd dreamed of all the wonderful friends I would make in college, but then well Sal came along, and then later when my mother had passed away, all of those plans and hopes had crumbled to dust.
Gosh, how I loathed Sal! I was a big proponent of accepting responsibility for the things that happened to you in life, and not laying the blame on other people or external circumstances, but in this case, it really was someone else's fault that I was in this predicament. Well, predicament was way too mild of a way to put it, to be honest. No, this was no predicament – this was a gigantic disaster, a true catastrophe. Sal had robbed me of so much, and not only in terms of the money he had stolen. He had taken away so many hopes and dreams, and my future too.
Most of my high school friends had left Detroit, first for college and then to work in other cities or states. I did still have one friend here who I would see sporadically. Like me she was very busy in terms of her work life, and she was married and had a child, so that took up a lot of time as well.
Still, I figured now would be as good a time as any to call her up and see if she wanted to hang out for a while. I really needed some company, and I would feel a lot safer with another person here while this suspicious car was parked outside. She did only live around ten minutes away from me, so it wasn't as if it was difficult in terms of time to see each other.
I got out my phone and dialed her up. She answered almost immediately.
“Hey Beth! How are you? It's been a while since we last spoke, huh? Almost a month, right? Since Sal uh . . . since he passed.”
“Hi May,” I said, trying to sound cheerful despite the darkness of my current circumstances. “That's right, it has been almost a month. And yeah, I'm alright,” I continued, blatantly lying, “and you?”
“Oh, I can't complain. I'm real busy with little Tyler, as usual, but every ounce of effort is so worth it.”
“He's a lovely kid, he really is.”
“So, what's up with you?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Real busy at work. Today was actually, a, uh, it was a pretty rough day. I'm just having a glass of wine on my balcony, and was wondering if you wanted to maybe come over and have a glass with me and catch up?”
“Sure! Tyler's just gone to sleep, and his dad's busy working in the study, he'll probably be up until past midnight, so I have some free time. I'll come right over.”
A wave of relief rushed through me. Thank goodness. I wouldn't have to be completely alone here, at least not for the next hour or two.
“Great May! I'll watch for your car out front and then will let you in the back entrance.”
“I'll leave in five minutes. See you soon Beth!”
She showed up fifteen minutes later, and I hurried down to the back door to let her in. I felt a flutter of nerves rushing through me as I opened the lock; I couldn't help thinking that there might be someone waiting in the dark alley to ambush me. I hoped that my nervousness wasn't too obvious.
I opened the door and saw May standing there with a smile on her face, and I immediately felt better. She was one of those people who were just permanently bubbly and cheerful. She was short and kind of chubby, and had the cutest cheeks I'd ever seen. It was hard not to feel better in her presence, no matter what was wrong.
“Hey there old friend!” she said with a huge smile, and we hugged.
I let her in and then quickly closed the door behind her and locked it.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, picking up right away that I was feeling nervous.
Of course, I didn't want to get into the whole thing, not right now, so, scrambling for an excuse for my nervousness, I made up a quick story.
“Oh, yeah, well it's just that there's been a bit of a crime wave recently. Lots of muggings and robberies in this area after dark.”
“Oh no,” she exclaimed. “That's awful. I hope you haven't been the victim of anything like that, have you?”
I shook my head.
“No, no, thankfully not,” I lied, having just been roughed up by gangsters earlier in the day. “And that's why I'm being extra cautious, so that I don't become a victim. Come on, let's go upstairs though, and stop thinking about stuff like that. We've got plenty of catching up to do.”
“That we do,” she said.
We went upstairs and I poured her a generous glass of wine.
“Oh, almost full up, huh?” she said with a chuckle as I handed her the glass. “Remember, I do have to drive home later!”
“We're not getting smashed here,” I said with a smile. “This ain't no keg party! Just stick with that one glass and you'll be fine.”
“Yeah, you're right,” she said. I'll just take it slow.”
We went out onto the balcony and each took a seat. We each had good views over the street. The mysterious black SUV was still parked out in the street, facing my balcony, but now that I at least had another person here with me, I didn't quite feel so threatened. I was still unsettled though, and it was hard to stop myself from continually shooting glances over at the car.
“So, how's the diner going?” asked May as she sipped on her wine. “Business picking up yet?”
“Well today was pretty busy, and yeah, business is very slowly getting better, after . . . Well you know, after all the damage Sal did.”
She shook her head and sighed.
“It's a testament to your hard work and dedication that this place is still going,” she remarked. “Without you it would have been run into the ground long ago.”
“Yeah . . . Well I'm doing my best to undo all of that damage,” I said, “as difficult as that is.”
“Chin up Beth, chin up,” she said. “I think that not only are you gonna pick this place up out of the rut it got stuck in, you're gonna make it shine. You're gonna get it right back up to just how great a place it was all those years ago when we were kids. Remember those days?”
We started chatting about high school days, and as we did, remembering all sorts of people and teachers and funny situations, I started to feel better. Maybe it was the wine, maybe the company, maybe the nostalgic recollections of times gone by, but I started to feel better – which was just what I needed after the train wreck that today had been. In fact, I even started to forget about the strange black SUV – until I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, someone getting out of it.
A tree obstructed my view of the person, so I couldn't quite make out who they were. Then, suddenly, there was a loud bang from up the street, and all the street lamps went out, shrouding the street in darkness.
“What was that?” asked May.
“I don't know, but whatever it was has killed all the street lamps.”
Suddenly we heard raised voices coming from the direction of where the SUV was parked.
“Sounds like someone's about to get into a fight,” remarked May, sounding worried. “Gee, I see what you mean about crime in this area going up!”
The voices were too far away to make out exactly what was being said, especially with the dull roar of traffic from a busy main road nearby muting them somewhat, but it was clear enough to me that the people arguing down there were CM guys and Ben's guys. Now I knew for sure that this was about the diner, and my heart started to pound.
“Wow, it sounds like something really bad is gonna happen any second now!” remarked May. “I think we should call the police or something!”
While I had been reluctant to get the cops involved before, on this occasion I thought it would be okay. We could just make an anonymous call reporting a street fight. The gangsters down there were making a lot of noise, and the call to the cops could theoretically have come from anyone around here reporting a fight, so they wouldn't know that it was me.
“You're right,” I said, and I got out my phone and dialed 911.
“911, what's your emergency?” asked the operator.
I told the operator my address and explained that there was a street brawl happening outside in the street, adding that I didn't know who the fighters were and wanted to remain anonymous. They said that a police cruiser in the area would be notified immediately.
“The cops are on their way,” I said to May.
“Good. It sounds like this thing is about to—”
And then the sounds of a scuffle erupted.
“Oh my, they are fighting now!”
Our view was obscured by the tree, but angry shouts were followed by the thumps of punches and kicks landing. Then, suddenly, there was the flash and the loud echoing bang of gunshots being fired.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed May, and my own heart was pounding with shock and fright as well.
But then the flashing red and blue lights of a police car showed up at the far end of the street, and the fight stopped abruptly. The sound of a modified car roared up the block, and then, as the cop car rolled up the street, someone got back into the black SUV and sped off as well.
My heart was thumping with anxiety, but I felt relieved now that the cops had come and had at least for now chased whoever it had been off. Things could have gotten a lot more serious.
“That was crazy, huh!” remarked May.
“It sure was,” I replied.
We both drank down large gulps of our wine to calm down after all of that excitement. We continued chatting for another hour or so, and in that time, the black SUV did not return. Eventually May and I said our farewells and I let her out and locked the place up.
I went straight back up to the balcony and checked once more that the car had not returned.
It hadn't, thankfully.
I went and started getting ready for bed, but after what had happened tonight I knew that I needed protection – the kind of protection that Benito Sciotti could provide. As much as I hated the idea, I knew that somehow, I would have to make an arrangement with him. An arrangement that I might not like . . . but one that would nonetheless have to be made. If I didn't, a lot more than just my diner could be at stake. A lot more . . .