“I ask her who the hell she is, telling me that. She says the Sanderses wanted her to tell me because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. So I finally just fucking leave. Mom may still be there for all I know.”
“She’s not,” I said.
Lucy got up and stabbed a log with the poker. Sparks swarmed as if in protest.
“She’s gone too far. This time she’s done it,” my niece said.
“Let’s don’t talk about her. I want to talk about you. Tell me what happened in Miami:”
She sat on the rug, leaning against the couch, staring into the fire. I got up and went to the bar and poured her a Booker’s bourbon.
“Aunt Kay, I’ve got to see her.”
I handed Lucy the drink and sat back down. I massaged her shoulders and she began to loosen up, her voice getting drowsy.
“She’s in there and doesn’t know I’m waiting for her. Maybe she thinks I can’t be bothered.”
“Why in the world would she think that, Lucy?”
She didn’t answer me, but seemed drawn into smoke and flames. She sipped her drink.
“When we were driving there in my hot little V -twelveBenz,” she said in a distant voice, “Jo had this bad feeling
and she told me she did. I said it was normal to have a bad feeling when you’re about to do a takedown. I even kidded her about it.”
She paused, just staring at flames as if she were seeing something else.
“We get to the door of the apartment that these OneSixty-Fiver assholes are using as their clubhouse;’ she resumed, “and Jo goes first. There’re six of them in there instead of three. Right away we know we’re had and I know what they’re going to do. One of them grabs Jo and sticks a gun to her head to make her tell them where the Fisher Island place is we’d set up for the hit.”
She took a deep breath and was silent, as if she couldn’t go on. She sipped the bourbon.
“God, what is this stuff? The vapors alone are knocking me out.”
“A hundred and twenty proof. Usually I’m not a pusher, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for you to be knocked out right now. Stay here with me for a while;” I said.
“ATF and DEA did everything right,” she told me.
“These things happen, Lucy.”
“I had to think so fast. The only thing I knew to do was act like I didn’t care if they blew her brains out or not. Here they are holding a gun to her head and I start acting pissed off at her, which wasn’t at all what they were expecting.”
She took another swallow of bourbon. It was hitting her hard.
“I walked up to this Moroccan asshole with the gun and get right in his face and tell him to go ahead and waste her, that she’s a stupid bitch and I’m sick of her always getting in my way. But if he does her now, all he’s going to do is fuck himself and everybody else.”
She stared into the fire, eyes wide and unblinking, as if watching it again in her mind.
“I say, You think I didn’t expect you would use us and then do this? You think I’m stupid? Well, guess what? I forgot to tell you Mr. Tortora is expecting our company-and I look at my watch-in exactly one hour and sixteen minutes. I thought it would be nice to entertain him before you motherfuckers showed up and blew his guts out and took all his guns and money and fucking cocaine. What happens if we don’t show up? You think he won’t get nervous?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Lucy. Images flew at me from all directions. I imagined her playing out this dangerous act, and I saw her in battle dress when she was at fire scenes and flying a helicopter and programming computers. I envisioned her as the irritating, irrepressible child I had virtually raised.. Marino was right. Lucy thought she had so much to prove. Her first impulse had always been to fight.