Becky
After staring at the painting for some time, my fingertips covered in dried paint, I hear Dad stir from the next room. His cell is playing some eighties rock ringtone, a song I don’t recognize, and after about half a minute of drunken groaning and cursing, he answers it. He never answers his cell in the apartment. He always goes into the hallway, or to his bedroom and onto the mini-balcony, where he’ll stand with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other, out of my earshot. But now, he just slumps back down on the chair and begins talking.
Morbid curiosity sends me across the room to the door, where I crouch down and place my ear against the wood, listening carefully.
“The Boss wants me?” he’s saying, voice throaty with alcohol and tobacco. “They have him there, now, and the Boss wants me…I don’t get it. Why me? Maybe you could tell him to handle it himself or—No, no, you don’t need to tell him I said that. No! I said you don’t need to fuckin’ tell him! Yeah, I’ll be there! I’ll be at the compound! I just said that, didn’t I!”
He slams the phone onto the coffee table, where it sounds like it breaks.
My heart is thumping like crazy now. They have him there, now. That could be Chance. They could have Chance at the compound. They could be doing anything to him. And why would they want Dad to go there? Maybe because they want Dad to be the one to…I can’t even think about that. Dad stomps from the apartment. I leave my bedroom, throw on some sneakers, and leave soon after him.
Climbing behind the wheel of my beat-up old car, the once-green paint now chipped grey, I watch as Dad walks down the street, moving slowly. Maybe he’s walking because he doesn’t want to get there, I reflect. Maybe he knows there’s something bad waiting for him at the end of that long walk. Or maybe he knows he’s too drunk to drive. I watch him as he moves toward the bus stop, pats his pockets down, throws his hands up, and then debates whether or not to come back to the apartment. So he doesn’t have any money. In the end—with a few of the people at the bus stop inching away from him since he looks like a crazy homeless guy—he shrugs his shoulders and keeps walking.
Knowing that he’ll take a while to get there, I get an idea. I could be walking into anything at the compound. And even if I know that Dad and Chance would never kill a woman, I don’t know the same of Giovanni or any of the other guys who hang out there. Maybe it’d be better if I had some information backing me up when I went in there. And anyway, what’s my plan at the moment, just storm in there, pregnant, and somehow get Chance out?
I start the car and drive as quickly as I can toward Hell’s Kitchen, toward Nate’s place.
I ignore the looks of the men hanging around outside the door to the apartment building, leaning against it, smoking, and run up the stairs, past the graffiti and the condoms and the filth, to the thick metal door. When I bang on it, my fist hurts. I think back to when Chance banged on it, how it must’ve hurt him but he didn’t even realize. A small thing, and yet one that makes me wish those strong hands were holding mine now. Ignoring the pain, I keep going.
“Yes? Yes?” It’s Nate’s childlike voice. “What is it? Yes? Hello? Who’s there? No cold callers, please, thank you. Thank you!”
“It’s me,” I say. “Becky. We met when—”
“What do you want?” he says, suddenly suspicious. “Are you alone? Who’s out there with you? This is some kind of plan, isn’t it? What’s the angle? Tell me that, huh? What’s this angle you’re going for? What’s going on? I think you’ve got some scheme you’re hatching and you’re out there like the—what’d’ya call it—the honeypot trying to tempt me but I’m not—”
“Nate! Stop, please. Listen.”
“Why should I listen?” he asks. “I’m done and dusted with all this. I don’t want any part in it anymore. Maybe I’ll go to the Maldives. I saw that place in a screensaver once, you know, and I thought it looked pretty cool, pretty magical, somewhere you could just disappear.”
I sigh. My temples are pulsing, my head aching. Rubbing them, I say, “Let me in, Nate. I need to talk to you. It’s about Chance. Chance might be in danger. I’m going to the compound, Giovanni’s compound, but I don’t want to go there with nothing. I need you to talk to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Nate says, raising his voice. “I don’t know anybody by that name, and I certainly don’t know you. I’m afraid you might have the wrong apartment. Maybe the floor below?”
“Nate!” I hiss, banging on the door so hard my knuckles feel like they might pop out of place. I wince, but this is important. “Chance might be dying, right now. Do you understand? He might be tortured or killed and you won’t even talk to me! I’m pregnant with his child, Nate. Chance is the father of my baby and in six months I’m going to give birth and what do you want me to tell our child, huh? What do you expect me to say? You might be scared of the Family, but let me tell you something. If you don’t open this door and talk to me, I’ll give you reason to be scared of me. Don’t underestimate me, Nate. People have been doing that their entire lives and I won’t take it anymore.”
By the end of the speech, I’m talking in a low, threatening tone which sounds nothing like my own. I’m shocked by it, but I don’t stop. I need to get this door open; Nate’s intel might be the difference between life and death.
“I promise you, Nate, that if you don’t open this door and something happens to Chance, I’ll never forget it. Never!”
There’s a pause. I listen closely and hear Nate muttering to himself, but it’s too quiet for me to make out any words.
Then, the beep-beep of the keypad sounds and the door begins to crank open.
“Chance is really in danger?” Nate asks.
“I think so,” I say. “I’m not sure, but—”
Nate interrupts to tell me that Chance went to our motel room. “Maybe they got him there,” Nate says. “Maybe they were playing me, knew I was listening…I’m screwed either way, then, so that’s great!”
“Chance could help you,” I say. “But first you need to tell me everything you know.”
Nate tugs at his yellow striped polo-shirt as he walks into the living room, where there’s a laptop open showing security footage of a nondescript street.
“I never should’ve gotten involved with the Family,” Nate says, dropping onto the couch. “It was a big, big mistake. I thought, I’ll earn some extra cash. But I was earning enough cash hacking bank accounts, so maybe I just thought it would be fun, tasting a little danger! But danger is the opposite of fun, lemme tell you. Danger is—”
“Nate, please. Time is a factor here.”
“I know what’s going on,” Nate says. “I’ve got my finger on the pulse, ma’am, firmly on it and I can feel it beating and I can taste the nastiness in the air and—and I know it all. I’m a know-it-all but not in a negative sense, no way. Okay, so you really want to know what’s going on?”
“Yes!” I feel like I’m talking to a master of riddles whose sole desire is to make it impossible for me to get a straight answer. I stay standing, leaning over him, back aching from where my belly’s getting heavier. But my heart is aching more than my back, so it doesn’t matter. “Please, just tell me everything quickly and clearly.”
“Okay!” Nate waves his hands like I’m a fly buzzing around his head. “Here’s the scoop then—and know I’m only telling you this because Chance is the only one of them I sort of like—here’s what’s going on. I learnt much of this later, when it was too late to change anything. But maybe…I don’t know, maybe I should’ve told Chance. Maybe I was—”
“Nate!” I scream so loud my throat makes a tearing noise. “Seriously, now.”
“Okay, okay. Right, so basically it’s like this: Giovanni is the puppeteer and all of you are his puppets, every single one of you. He’s been playing everyone the entire time like some grand orchestrator. The Big G was the one who suggested to your father that you might be offered to Julian in lieu of payment in the first place, the Big G was the one who told Julian that it’d be a good idea. Believe it or not, Julian didn’t want to marry you at first. He was against the idea. He was in love with some upstate high-class hooker, some sexy lady with sexy eyes and—alright, alright.” He lifts his hands when I feign as though to hit him. “The Big G orchestrated your ‘marriage’ and then went one step forward and suggested to Julian that he arrange for you to be kidnapped by some men that Giovanni hired, all the while knowing that his hired goons would abuse you and then kill you.”
“But why?” I ask. I feel like my head is spinning. “Why do all this?”
“Family reasons,” Nate says. “The Big G wanted an excuse to be done with Julian. They had some beef going back to the eighties and the Big G was certain that Julian was planning to try and take his place. It didn’t matter if Julian was going to. All that mattered was that the Big G thought he was going to. So this is what his original plan was: make it known that Julian was the one who gave you to those men, let the men kill you, and then offer Julian up to Michael as a sort of payment. This way the Big G kills two birds with one stone. He solidifies your father’s loyalty while getting rid of a rival.”
“But what about Chance? Why was Chance there that night?”
“They’re all scared of him,” Nate says simply, looking into my eyes with a strange expression. “I don’t know how much you know about Chance, but—”
“I know he’s dangerous. I’ve seen him work. And he told me about how he worked his way up in the club.”
“Then you know he makes them wary. He doesn’t drink with them, doesn’t hang with them. He just kills. He’s efficient, deadly. The Big G had to get rid of this police officer anyway. Usually, they’d dump him somewhere, hide him, but he decided that it would be better to get Chance investigated for it. Here’s the tricky thing. He didn’t want Chance to go down, or get killed. He only wanted to scare him, to remind him that he needed the Big G if he ever needed help with the law. He only decided to go against him when he saved you. That’s when the whole kidnapping angle came into play; the Big G was the one who informed the police.”
“So he’s been scheming this whole time. The man in charge has been playing his troops off against each other.”
“Yes,” Nate says. “That isn’t very Boss-like, is it?”
“No.” I make to leave, then an idea strikes me. “Nate, have you got a phone?” He nods. “Give me your number. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
I explain my idea to him quickly.
He nods. “Okay, okay. But just in case.”
“Thank you,” I call over my shoulder, as I pace from the apartment. “I have to get to the compound. Before they hurt him…” As I run down the stairs, I whisper under my breath, “Hurt the father of my child.”
A shiver crawls down my spine.