A Mighty Fortress (18 page)

Kiki’s gun was pointed at me, again, in no time flat.

He didn’t dilly-dally this time, and I could see he wasn’t going to trust me with the driving duties. He quickly opened my door and waved for me to exit. The van was running, and someone in the driver’s seat yelled for Kiki to hurry.

“Is that Jimmy behind the wheel?” I asked.

Kiki waved the gun toward the van. “Get the fuck in there, or I’ll blow your head off right here.”

“Well, Kiki, only problem is, you’re in my way.” I pointed to the narrow gap between my car and the next car. “This is a tight squeeze.”

Kiki took a few steps back.
 

Jimmy yelled, “Watch out!”

And then I saw why.

In a split second, someone had wrapped an arm around Kiki’s neck and isolated his arm holding the gun. Kiki’s arm was hyper-extended now, and judging by the way Kiki grimaced, it didn’t feel so good. Then I saw two strong, feminine arms wrapped around Kiki, adorned in familiar body art.

“I love you, Val,” I said, and went for Kiki’s gun.

Jimmy leapt out of the van and pointed his gun at Val. Meanwhile, Val was still holding Kiki like a constrictor with its prey, only her grip had now moved up to his neck, and he seemed to be struggling for air.

With my gun pointed at Jimmy’s head, I told him: “He’s not worth it, Jimmy. Besides, I’m a better shot than you. You shoot her, you’ll die a slow, painful death.”

Jimmy was shaking, not sure what to do. I gave him an escape route. Nodded towards the van. “Get out of here, now, and we won’t hurt him. We won’t turn him in. You can pick him up here in exactly two hours.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Jimmy asked, his voice cracking.

“I just have a few questions about what happened Sunday night.”

“Maybe . . . maybe we have questions too,” Jimmy managed to say.

“Maybe you do. I’ll give Kiki a chance to ask them.”

Still shaking, Jimmy took the easy out and hopped in the van. It sped away.

I looked at Val and noticed that Kiki had turned purple. “Val?”

She was shaking, consumed with anger.

“Val?”

But she was lost in the moment, and wherever she was, it wasn’t a place I ever wanted to see her go to again. “Val! Let him go.”

She shrieked and threw Kiki to the ground. He hit hard. Didn’t move. She ran to me, crying. “I hate you!”

She hit my chest and then dug her head into it. I raised her chin and kissed her. “I hate you too.” We kissed more, and then I pulled her back and looked her in the eyes. “I meant what I said earlier, though.”

She looked embarrassed. “I know you do.” She managed to flash a smile. “But I still hate you.” Then she looked down at our prisoner. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“We can’t leave him here, Val.”

“Like hell we can’t.”

“I’m sorry. I need to talk to him.”

She glared at me, trying to figure out whether I was serious. Then she seemed to realize that I was.

“Come on, babe. It’ll be fun.”

When Kiki finally woke up in the Volvo’s backseat, his arms were tied behind his back with twine that was wrapped around his feet and tied to the frame under the Volvo’s driver’s seat. He couldn’t move any limb more than about a centimeter or so—I’d left him that much wiggle room as a courtesy. Still, he sat in a rather painful posture. He moaned and shook around, trying to loosen the reins.

I waved at my old friend in the rearview. “Sorry, Kiki, we learn to tie a mean knot in the Navy.”

“Where the hell are we?” he moaned.

“The middle of nowhere,” I answered. Pasco County, to be exact, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
 

He noticed Val in the passenger seat. “Who the hell is she?” he moaned again.

“My girlfriend,” I said, avoiding her name.

“This is his idea of a date,” Val added. “Mr. Romance.”

“So tell me, Kiki, what was on your agenda tonight?”

“I’m not saying nothing.”

“Then say something.”

“No.”

I glanced at him again. “So, Kiki, after I left you and Jimmy snuggled up Sunday night, what the hell happened?”

He snorted. “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I have a few theories. Wanna hear them?”

“I’m all ears.” He was breathing harder now, probably from being stuck in a bent-over position with a gut the size of a dry cement bag.

“Your employer, Chad Scalzo, gave you and Jimmy clear instructions to finish the job with me. So, after the day he’d had, he was none too pleased when you two boobs came back bloodied and having failed to get the job done. Now, I saw Mr. Scalzo’s temper first hand, so I’m sure he tore into you two when he found out you’d screwed the pooch with me. You guys were a little out of sorts and patience after the long day you’d had, and weren’t exactly up for bending over for that hothead. So you did the right thing. You’d had enough of his shit. You finally stood up for yourself, and you did him in. Right there in his kitchen.”

Kiki looked at the floor for a moment. Then he chuckled. “You done?”
 

I shrugged. “For now.”

Any hopes I had that Kiki would be scared of being made a suspect soon crumbled. “First thing, you bearded fucking hick—Chad Scalzo’s not my employer. He was just a spoiled little punk I been watching since he hit puberty. My real employer’s someone you need to be a little more worried about than Chad Scalzo.”

“You mean like Art Scalzo?”
 

“Now we’re getting somewhere. And you think I’d lay a hand on that little punk, you’re even stupider than I thought.” He caught his breath. “Besides, Jimmy and me, we both have a good alibi Sunday night.”

“Is that so?”

“We were getting treated at the Doc’s house.”

“The Doc’s house?”

“That’s right. He cleaned us up, had us good as new. We were there from nine until the wee hours of the morning.”

“So you’re clear with Mr. Scalzo?”

“Oh no, I’m not clear with him. But he’s got no notions I pulled the trigger. Though as far as he’s concerned, I might as well have, because I wasn’t there to protect his baby boy when whoever killed him killed him.”

“Kiki, are you by any chance related to Yogi Berra?”

“Fuck you, Porter. I don’t think you realize how serious this is.”

If I didn’t, I was beginning to. And unfortunately, Val was too. “Sounds like your problem, Kiki, not mine.”

“Then you clearly don’t understand. So here’s the deal: Art Scalzo and his associates arrived today. Art’s going to mourn for his son tomorrow, and he’s going to bury him. And then he’s not leaving Tampa until whoever was responsible—in any shape or form—has a bullet in his head.
 

“Now, as I see it, I’d suggest you start talking about
your
alibi Sunday night. Though that won’t matter much in your case, since Art will just see you as the guy who started this anyways and made sure that Chad was to die somehow regardless of what you did.”

I was silent. Too long. I pulled over on a dirt road flanked by old oaks decorated with stringy strands of Spanish moss.
 

Val obviously didn’t like my silence. “Milo,” she said, opening the car door. “Can we talk?”

I looked to Kiki. “Hang tight for a minute.”

“Fuck you, Porter.”

I met Val in front of the car. I could see her face under the light of the moon and stars. Methane from the nearby cow pasture cast a less-than romantic aroma on our tryst.

“I don’t like this, Milo.”

I took her in my arms and looked in her eyes. They shone like polished onyx in the moonlight. “It’s just cow manure. It’s kind of nice to get out of the city for a change.”

She sighed. “I’m not talking about cow shit, and you know it.”

I pressed her head against my chest and held her tight. “I know you’re not.”

“This is serious. He’s talking about a mobster coming after you for killing his son.”

“I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

She pulled away. “We’ll, I’m glad I did. At least now I know how dangerous your job really is.”

“Val, this isn’t normal. I’m usually just serving papers and staking out some philandering spouse.”

“I don’t know, Milo, but it seems like you really like this one.”

I knew what she was saying, and I could hear Dr. J’s voice in the back of my mind agreeing with Val. “I can see why you’d say that, babe. But somehow, I always pull through. Something always protects me.”

She pushed me away. “Give me a break, you sound like my brother.” Her pitch was nearly a scream now. “Listen to me, Milo. The Lord won’t always protect Rico when he’s dumb enough to go out and borrow money at twenty percent interest to pay off a twelve percent loan. He won’t always protect you when you’re dumb enough to start a war with the Mafioso.”

“I know that, Val,” I said as calmly as I could. I felt anger and frustration bubbling up inside, and I had nowhere to direct them. Then I heard a car door.

Kiki had stumbled out of the car and hit the limestone road with a thud. He’d also managed to untie the twine around his feet from the frame and loosen the knots enough to attempt to walk. I stood over him, knocked him onto his stomach, and put my foot on his back. “Don’t make another move.”
 

He was struggling to breathe. “I’ll kill you, Porter. Get your goddamn foot off me. I’ll kill her, too.”

I slugged him on his cheek, thinking back to the beating he and Scalzo had given me Sunday night. I slugged him again. He was conscious, but the fight was knocked clear out of him. I tied him up again, as tight as I could. Then I rolled him over on his stomach again.

“What are you doing, Milo?” Val was angrier now than she was afraid.

“I’m going to finish this job.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” I rolled him onto his back and then on his stomach again. “What do you think he weighs? Three hundred?”

“What?” she said.

“Never mind. Let’s find out.” I bent down, grabbed his belt with my left hand and his collar with my right hand, and squeezed tight like I was taking the slack out of the bar. Good thing he wore those thick woven shirts like all mobster wannabes wear. “You listen to me, you piece of shit. You know I had nothing to do with Scalzo’s death. You tell his dad otherwise, it’ll be the last thing you do.” I pulled and lifted him quick. Then I struggled to clean him. Before I knew it, he was over my head, and I was running from the momentum and we were both headed for the barbed wire fence in front of us. Val shrieked my name again, but I managed to clear Kiki over the fence. I hit a post and rested there for a minute, staring at Kiki on the other side. He was writhing in pain. Then, I hopped the fencepost and stood next to him.

“Milo!” Val yelled in the distance. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I said I’m going to finish this,” I mumbled, not nearly loud enough for her to hear me; just enough to scare Kiki. Doubting I could clean him again, I grabbed him by the belt again and dragged him. It was like pulling a sled back at UConn, only I was old now and easily winded. It felt like we’d sprinted a hundred yards, and countless piles of dung, before we reached what I was looking for. I’d seen the pond from the car. Now I was glad it wasn’t a moon mirage. It was real water, where the bony cattle surrounding us would rest from the sun. A few of them were standing in it under the moonlight. One of them mooed, and seemed to suggest I was a crazy son of a bitch.

“Sorry to interrupt your evening,” I told them.

I gave Kiki another heave and threw him into the water. It wasn’t deep. But I was sure it was the nastiest water he’d ever been in. “I hope I read about a farmer who finds a mobster in his pond,” I told him. “You tell Art Scalzo he comes after me, it’ll be the last thing
he
ever does, too.”

I could see that Kiki was breathing. When I turned and started walking, he told me I was a dead man.

Val was waiting in the car, and had it running.
 

I peeled out, turning the car around. “You didn’t really think I’d kill him, did you?” I asked.

I was glad she didn’t answer.

The drive back to Tampa was quiet. Val sat in the passenger seat with her heard against the window. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. I turned on some Johnny Cash, figuring it would annoy her into talking. But it didn’t.

When I reached the parking lot to Four Green Fields, it had cleared out; only about a dozen cars remained. I found her Jetta in the last row. Then I remembered what she’d done earlier in the night for me, and what I’d forgotten to say. “Thanks, Val. You really came through for me tonight.”

She finally turned and looked at me. I could see she was fighting back tears. A mixture of emotions came over me. She really cared for me, and it hurt to see her hurting.

“Please, Milo. Just go to the police.”

I wanted to tell her all the reasons that I couldn’t, but that would only give her more reason to be afraid. “I will, Val. I will.”

She looked like she wanted to believe me but couldn’t. “You promise?”

“I’ll go to them tomorrow morning.” I thought of my meeting with McSwain. “I have a quick meeting in the morning, which could take care of a lot of this. Then I’ll go right to the police.”

“And you promise you’ll tell them everything?”

I wasn’t about to lie to her, so I shook my head. “This is a complicated case, Val. I don’t know what everything is.”

She raised her hand and shook her head. “You sound like a lawyer, Milo. Will you at least tell them about the mobsters?”

“I’ll sleep on it.”

“Good night,” she said and slammed the door. She wasted no time getting in her car. I waited to make sure it started for her. Then she darted out of the parking lot and disappeared.
 

I wanted to follow her, take her home and hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right. I wanted to promise her that she had nothing to worry about; that I knew what I was doing, and that this would all be over soon.

But I couldn’t lie to her like that.

Until I viewed the video of him and Angie, I’d imagined McSwain as being more in the respectable businessman mold, at least compared to Vinnie Pilka. After all, he was a real estate mogul who lived on Bayshore Boulevard, and as far as I could tell, owned about a quarter of Tampa’s commercial properties outside of downtown, South Tampa, and Westshore. But while waiting in his office lobby Tuesday, I began to suspect that maybe I’d been wrong about McSwain, or had given him too much benefit of the doubt.