But Nobody Wants To Die Read online

  “I’m so proud of you,” Dad said, his red eyes still wet with tears.

  “I know,” I said. “But I’m so scared.”

  “I’m scared too; I’m scared of losing you. You’ve been through so much already,” Dad said.

  “But what if you can’t stop it,” I said. “What if the worst should happen…”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. If I have to step on every Italian cockroach between here and Las Vegas, I’m not letting anything happen to you. If I can keep you safe by putting Alphonso out of business, maybe it will start to make up for all the years we lost,” Dad said.

  “Thanks Dad, I want that too, more than you know, but it looks like it’s going to take both of us, working together to come up with a plan. And right now, it looks like they have a plan and we don’t,” I said. I thought that maybe if we spent more time together I could work this out, and perhaps I could come to terms with the past.

  “You’re right, but as your fellow boxer and noted intellectual Mike Tyson once said, ‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.’ ”

  I raised an eyebrow at Dad.

  “We’re going to punch them in the face,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  FUN AT HOWARD JOHNSON’S

  J amie was at the door the next morning, “I brought a few best sellers,” she said, in lieu of a greeting. “They were on Amazon’s Top Ten list.” She laid them on the bed where dad was sitting. An offering.

  “That was nice, thanks,” Dad said, immediately picking up a brand new hardback copy of “The Yellow Birds.”

  We both watched intently as Dad began to read. First his eyebrows knitted together; then his face looked like he bit into a lemon. Dad never got past the opening page as the book closed with a quick snap of the binding.

  “What crap,” Dad said.

  Jamie rolled her eyes in disgust.

  “Dad look, now you’ve got Jamie doing it. It must be a Pavlovian response, you open your mouth, and everyone in the room rolls their eyes,” I said

  Dad managed to ignore me. “The older you get the less patience you have for crap, especially pretentious, self-indulgent crap.”

  “Jamie, why didn’t you bring your copy of Naughty Coeds or Wayward Housewives, you know, the kind of stuff that Dad usually reads?” I said.

  Dad picked up the book in self-defense and turned to the offending page. “Alright smart ass,” he said, “listen to this, ‘While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer.” Dad shook his head. “Does war have a thousand ribs? Not any war I was ever in. And even if you wanted to personify war, ask yourself, would it pray? Does war, the pinnacle of man’s greed and hatred, the source of such needless waste of human life, have anything to do with prayer?”

  “Maybe it’s symbolism Dad,” I said, “the war is a huge serpent, a giant snake slithering across the ground.”

  Dad wasn’t about to let it go. “I get that,” he said, “but serpents devour, they engulf, they destroy. They never, ever pray.”

  “Oh wait, let me see, the book’s written by a dogface right?”

  “Moot point,” Dad said. “One of my favorite books, “From Here to Eternity,” was written by a dogface.”

  Dad scanned the front cover. “I knew it, Anthony Swofford says it’s ‘Powerful.’ Always be aware of one word reviews. What he said was, ‘Reading this drivel gave me a POWERFUL urge to puke,’ perhaps they took artistic liberty, shortened it maybe?” Dad reached for the second book and he glanced at Jamie as he picked it up.

  “The Fault in our Stars,” by John Green,” he said.

  “I think it’s about a girl in a cancer survivor’s group,” Jamie said.

  “Oh good, something real. I hate fairy tales,” Dad said.

  Our attempts to come up with a plan had gone nowhere and it was obvious our lack of success was fraying our nerves. Maybe a change of scenery would help. Besides, my stomach was growling.

  “Let’s say we head over to Denny’s and get some breakfast,” I said.

  Jamie, sensing that Dad and I needed some time alone, made an excuse about having to run some errands and we agreed to meet up later. Dad grabbed the keys off the counter and we headed for the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  DENNY’S

  W e found an empty booth and as usual, Dad sat facing the door. The aces and eights syndrome. Those being the cards old Wild Bill was holding when Les McCann shot him in the back in Deadwood, South Dakota. Denny’s wasn’t very crowded. All the tourists from Deadwood and Dubuque were already back home watching the corn grow. Denny’s had the AC cranked up to Max Cool to combat the already one hundred plus degree heat outside and I hunkered down in the booth to conserve some body heat.

  Dad scanned the place and didn’t see any potential threats and decided it was a good time to visit the restroom.

  “Take your time,” I said, “I’ll be fine.”

  Since Dad sat facing the door, that left me sitting with my back to the door, which made me nervous. Maybe Dad should have been a mailman or an auto mechanic instead of a cop, so I would have turned out normal, or at least, not paranoid. Then I heard the door open. Which meant I had to turn around and look over my left shoulder. Damn! Moving too quickly hurt my ribs and I winced with the reminder that slow and easy was the way to go.

  It was a midget hooker. Even in stilettoes with dyed blonde hair piled on her head she was still under five feet tall. She wore skin tight pink leggings with a skinny iridescent pink tube top that didn’t hide much. Bangle earrings, a big pink Coach purse and enough mascara to fill the crankcase of a ‘68 Buick LeSabre completed her ensemble. I thought, Damn girl, you gone freeze to death in here. I tried not to stare as she made her way in and slid into a booth maybe 15 feet away, facing me. I looked away, filing her in Dad’s ‘no threat’ category and buried my face in the menu, deciding I should be more concerned with how many pancakes to order rather than if she would survive winter in Denny’s.

  Putting her in the wrong category turned out to be a big mistake. I was still looking at the menu when she plopped down beside me and jammed something hard into my still very tender ribs.

  “Know what this is?” she said. I gasped in both pain and disgust as the combined stench of unwashed hooker and stale Channel No. 5 filled the booth.

  “Uh, a free toaster for ordering the 100th Grand Slam this month?” was what I managed to say.

  “Don’t get wise, bubble eyes,” she said, giggling. I turned my head to look at her. Her eyes were red, bloodshot, her pupils dilated. She was sniffing like she had a bad cold.

  “What, we’re still in the 5th grade?” I said.

  She must have done a couple lines to work up the courage to pull this off. I was trying to stall for time. I was hoping Dad came out of the restroom and put his foot in this little bitch’s ass.

  “Shut up and listen,” she said, serious now. “We’re getting up and walking out of here calm as can be or I’m putting a hole in you. You got that?” she said, sniffing all the while.

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” I said. I looked down at the gun against my ribs. It was a big metallic Colt .45 Automatic. What woman in her right mind, with small hands, would buy a huge gun she could barely hold? Either she borrowed it or stole it but either way, she didn’t know jack about guns. Maybe the safety was still on but I couldn’t tell from my vantage point. I hoped it was on as twitchy as she was. She shook like she just stuck her finger in an electric socket.

  We got up and walked towards the door, her right arm around my waist like we were best buddies. She was on my left side, the gun jammed in my tender ribs concealed by her big Coach purse. It was the Arizona sunshine that gave me the break I was hoping for. Oh sure, they have sunshine in Las Vegas, not that Melinda D. ever saw much of it. She was usually looking for the keys in the bottom of her purse when it made its appearance. It must have blinded her when we came out the door because she stumbled stepping off
the unseen curb into the parking lot.

  After my little escapade in the desert with some idiot dressed as a red power ranger I knew one thing above all else. I was never getting into a car with anybody unless it was my idea. And I was especially not getting into a car with a midget hooker with a cocaine jones and a gun bigger than she was.

  I felt the pressure of the gun against my side lessen as she stumbled and I brought my cast covered forearm down hard against her wrist. The gun clattered to the asphalt as I brought the cast back up and backhanded her across the face, sending her flying. I bent down and picked up the gun. The safety was on. I released the clip and put it in my pocket. Melinda D. was stretched out on the hot asphalt, probably collecting a few 2nd degree burns on all that exposed skin, not that that bothered me any.

  Dad came out of the restaurant and put his hand on my shoulder. “What in the hell happened?” he said, his eyes wide.

  “A midget with a big gun just tried to kidnap me,” was all I could offer.

  Dad took a long look at her, rubbed his face and said, “Well let’s get her off the ground and put her in the car.”

  “What? We’re not calling the cops?” I said.

  “Let’s talk to her first, see what she knows. Maybe she can tell us something.” Dad took the .45 from me and seeing the clip was gone, checked the chamber to make sure it was empty. He stuck it in his pants and scooped up Melinda D., taking his first whiff of my assailant.

  “Get her purse,” he said, “Man, she needs a bath.”

  “Who are we the Sisters of the Poor? What took you so long anyway?”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have spent so much time admiring myself in the mirror,” he said. “How do I look? Good right?”

  “You look the same, you know, old, feeble, infirm,” I said.

  “Yeah, but good right?” he said.

  He put her in the back seat and handed me the keys. “Can you drive with one hand?”

  “I knocked her out with one hand, so I guess I can drive with only one hand.” I said, patting myself on the back.

  Dad shook his head, he was never much on compliments and wasn’t about to start handing them out now, “She’s not in your weight class by any stretch,” he said. “Hell, I’ve seen jockey’s bigger than she is.”

  “Jockey’s don’t usually carry .45’s around the backstretch,” I said, turning the key, the big Dodge engine coming to life.

  “I’ll sit back here to make sure she doesn’t cause any problems. Let’s get out of here before we draw a crowd,” he said. We left Denny’s in a hurry, my stomach reminding me we were leaving without breakfast.

  “So explain to me why we aren’t calling the cops,” I said.

  “Thanks to Hollywood,” he said, “the Mob has a certain allure, a fascination if you will that affects cops just like the general public. I call it the Kevin Costner syndrome. Cops want to be like Eliot Ness in, The Untouchables.” I nodded into the rear view mirror.

  “We take this to Phoenix P.D. and the Sergeant we talk to will run to the Lieutenant, the Lieutenant will run to the Captain and soon you have everybody and their brother-in-law involved and then the Mob will know and we will have about as much chance of finding Mikey as finding kale on the menu at The National Cattlemen’s Association Awards Banquet.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I was just hoping to make this fight a little less one-sided.”

  “Here’s a Latin phrase for you,” Dad said, “since you seem so fond of Roman history, Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat.”

  Just because I read Roman history didn’t mean I was good at Latin, but I’d managed to pick up a little along the way. And this one just happened to be my favorite.

  “Fortune favors the brave,” I said.

  “That’s us kid, otherwise we don’t have a chance,” Dad said.

  We drove back to the motel in silence, with me thinking I sure hoped it was true, because otherwise the only two chances we had were slim and none.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHATTY CATHY

  D ad managed to carry her upstairs to our room without attracting any undue attention. It was already much too hot for anyone to be outside unnecessarily.

  “Is she gonna be okay?” I said, as he laid her on the bed.

  “Her pulse is good, I think she’s okay. She’d be much prettier without all that makeup. And of course if her face wasn’t swollen twice its size because you smacked her with that cast,” he said.

  “What was I supposed to do, let her abduct me?” I said.

  “Let me see the clip to the .45,” he said.

  I dug it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He examined it and said, “It’s empty. A midget was trying to kidnap you with an empty gun and you beat her to a pulp with plaster of Paris.”

  I gave him a dirty look. “How was I supposed to know it was empty?”

  “I’m just trying to demonstrate how those MFR’s (Misuse of Force Reports) are generated and how easy it is to obtain one,” he said.

  “You managed to compile quite a few didn’t you?”

  “Nah, not many,” Dad said, shaking his head. “I usually felt sorry for them. Although I did have a serial child molester trip and fall once,” he said as he picked up her purse and began to rummage through it. He pulled out her wallet and laid the purse back down on the dresser.

  “Melinda Dormer, Las Vegas, Nevada. Surprise, surprise,” Dad said. “There has to be a connection between her and the Battaglia Family.”

  Melinda moaned and began to stir on the bed. I was relieved I hadn’t killed her.

  “Why don’t you take her in the bathroom and get her cleaned up,” Dad said as he emptied the contents of her purse on the other bed.

  “Why do I always get all the good jobs?” I said.

  “How hard can it be? Just throw her in the shower,” Dad said.

  She did look much better without the make-up. I helped her get in the shower and afterwards gave her my smallest t-shirt and a pair of shorts and we had a just us girls talk in the bathroom.

  “I’m really sorry I hurt you. I’m glad you’re okay,” I said.

  “I’ll live,” she said, “but maybe not for long. I was so stupid.”

  “What do you mean? I said.

  “I thought I could help Mikey. He called me and said he’d really screwed up.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I thought if I could deliver you to the Battaglia’s, you could be my ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card,” Melinda said. “Then all would be forgiven and Mike’s dad, Tony would see that I could be an asset to Mikey and maybe he wouldn’t exactly give us his blessings, but at least he’d let us move to Hawaii.”

  This was hard to swallow. I wanted to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing.

  “You know Mikey right? He’s your boyfriend?” I said.

  “He’s my fiancé,” she corrected. “We want to get married someday but Tony is against it. An understatement. The word on the street is that he is furious, wants to have me killed. This is all through the grapevine, but I know it’s just a smokescreen. I have some issues, obviously. I realize I have a drug problem and Mikey and I didn’t meet under the best of circumstances but people can change, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Anyone can change if they really want to,” I said, my head still spinning.

  “I can change,” Melinda said. “I know I can. If they just gave me a chance. Once I quit using I know I can get straightened out.”

  I nodded my head in agreement, but there was something I was dying to know, “How did you even find me?” I said.

  “All I knew from Mikey was your last name was Johnson and you lived on Willetta. Directory Assistance, right? I saw you leave the house and followed you to the motel and then just waited.

  I drove down from Vegas and been living in my car for the past two days. It’s been crazy.”

  Well that explained why she smelled so bad. Living in your car in the middle of an Arizona summer will do that. Then I
let her ask a few questions of her own.

  “Is that your Dad?” she said.

  “Yes, that’s him,” I said.

  “Is he the one that helped put Tony in prison?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you gonna turn me over to the cops?” she said, her eyes searching mine.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said.

  She seemed relieved to hear it. “He seems nice enough,” she said.

  I tried not to cringe. Nice was never a word I associated with Dad. Dependable maybe. Trustworthy even. Steady, solid; what was the word I was looking for? I finally came up with it.

  “Integrity,” I said. “If I was forced to describe him with one quality that would be the one thing he has above everything else.”

  She seemed satisfied with that. But from the furrows in her forehead it appeared she was trying to make up her mind about something important. “Can I talk to both of you about something?” she said.

  “Sure why not?” I said. “But I’ll need to tell him what you told me. Your relationship with Mikey and why you tried to kidnap me.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding in agreement, as we left the cozy confines of the bathroom and went back to where Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE E-MAIL MYSTERY

  O nce we were out of the bathroom and settled in, I broke the news to Dad. “It turns out,” I said, “that Melinda is Mikey’s fiancée and attempted to abduct me as a ‘peace offering’ to Tony Battaglia. The rumor being floated is that Tony was furious that Melinda wanted to move to Hawaii with his son and supposedly ordered a hit on Melinda. Once she figured out Las Vegas was much too dangerous for her to stay she left and drove here, staked out the house on Willetta and first followed us to Howard Johnson’s, and then Denny’s”