Embers & Ash (3 page)

I COULD HEAR MY HEARTBEAT.

Sitting rigidly, I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying to tamp down hope. “Are you sure, Doug?” I said. “The Troika of Outfit Influence? Please say yes.”

“Maybe. Possibly,” he said, whistling once.

Harry limped from my bedroom, clicking painfully across the room. He touched a nose to my bandaged fingers and whined as I rubbed his smooth head. Harry had once belonged to my brother. There was a time when the little greyhound and I had been enemies, jealous over Lou's affection, but we called a truce after my family's disappearance, bound by the common cause of saving them. He was as much a partner to me as Doug; Harry had proven to be smart and fearless—a four-legged hero, as Doug called him. He'd saved me from Poor Kevin and never left Doug's side as he sweated through Sec-C withdrawal.

“Why is he walking like that?” I said. “Is he hurt? What happened?”

“Don't worry. It's minor, and he's tough,” Doug said, petting Harry's back. “Right, buddy?”

“I don't understand. You said he found it.”

Doug walked behind the control center and stood before the enormous wall map of Chicago taken from Club Molasses, the old speakeasy hidden beneath my family's bakery. “I think so. As long as ‘found' means this giant thing hanging right in front of our dumb-ass faces.” I stared at the yellowed map with its city streets drafted in perfect lines. It showed hundreds of Chicago buildings in great detail, some now demolished, others still standing after more than a century.

When I'd first discovered the map, it was pierced with dozens of colored, lettered stickpins. I moved it to the Bird Cage Club after diagramming how they were placed, and put them back exactly as they'd been. It wasn't until I'd read and memorized the notebook, particularly chapter one—“
Nostro
—Us”—that I realized the pins represented the locations of significant Outfit front businesses. Some were long outdated, like the
F
representing the Fischetti Brothers Mortuary (extremely dead) and a
K
for Katzenbaum's Deli (bomb makers; blown up). But others were of the moment—there was a pin for Knuckles Battuta, VP of Muscle, and his front business, BabyLand. And another for Tyler Strozzini, VP of Money, and his front business, the multinational junk-food producer StroBisCo. Of course, the pin where Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries stood, my family's front business for three generations, was the simplest to identify.

The map seemed unchanged. I looked back at Doug as he stubbed out the cigarette and lifted up
The Weeping Mafioso,
the screenplay written by Uncle Jack, Grandpa Enzo's long-lost brother who'd appeared out of the blue a month earlier with his daughter, Annabelle, and his granddaughter, Heather. The old man, riddled with Alzheimer's disease, came back to Chicago searching for my dead grandfather, hoping for a final reunion before dementia overtook him. Heather's death accelerated the disease, leaving Uncle Jack drifting like a ship without an anchor, but before returning to L.A., he'd left the screenplay and urged me to read it.

Doug flipped to the end. “If I've said it once . . . all of life's answers can be found in the movies.” He pointed at three lines of dialogue spoken by the character Renzo, and read, “‘I know the secret to ultimate power . . .
potenza ultima
 . . . and all I need to get my hands on it is one little brass key. It's in a vault made of brick deep beneath the streets of Chicago. Right under what the old-timers used to call the Troika of Outfit Influence.'”

“So it's a place,” I said. “We've always known the vault is underground—”

“Not just underground,” he said, “under the
streets
of Chicago.” He put aside the screenplay and lifted the notebook. “We've gone through it endlessly looking for the Troika. It's mentioned in the screenplay but not here, not in any of the chapters. Okay, so I decided to concentrate on the other word,
influence.
”

“Yeah . . . so?”

“So,” he said, “your uncle Jack transcribed the passage in the notebook about ultimate power from your great-grandfather Nunzio, right?”

“Right,” I answered.

“And Jack later used that information in his screenplay, along with the term Troika of Outfit Influence, which must've come from Nunzio,” he said.

“Had to. It's so specific.”

“Nunzio was the original counselor-at-large, a genuine old-timer. In his day, there was one guy who controlled not only the Outfit but also the entire city . . . the only person with real, lasting influence. It was so strong that his shadow still looms over Chicago. You've said it yourself—Outfit members consider him their personal god.”

A dull shiver climbed my spine. “Al Capone.”

“Scarface Al. No one was more influential, not then, not now.”

“It's true. I can't make it through a sit-down without someone—an enforcer, a coke dealer—wondering WWAD? What would Al do?” I said.

“Now listen to this, from chapter five, ‘
Sfuggire
—Escape,'” Doug said, flipping pages and reading: “‘Capone Doors were invented in 1921 by Giuseppe “Joe Little” Piccolino, the chief officer of weapons and devices, and were installed in and around Chicago between 1922 and 1950 . . . a boon to Capone Doors came in 1938, when the city began to dig subway tunnels in order to supplement El trains. A far-ranging and wide-reaching system of secret tunnels that already existed beneath the muddy surface of Chicago, to which Joe Little had long ago connected many Capone Doors, was engineered to access the subway system as well.'”

“Joe Little was underneath the streets of Chicago, building stuff,” I said. “You think
he
built the vault?”

“It had to have been him,” Doug said. “Constructing secrets for the Outfit was his job. Which made me think . . . I bet there's a Capone Door leading to the vault.”

“But . . . which one?”

“No clue. Maybe they all do.”

I thought about it, gnawing a thumb, saying, “We still don't know how Nunzio found out about ultimate power. Or how he got the key.”

Doug nodded. “But we know the key was taped to the inside back cover of the notebook for a long time. So I took a closer look,” he said, turning it toward me with a magnifying glass. I stared at the back cover, seeing a faint outline where the key had rested for decades, and inside it, letters in Great-Grandpa Nunzio's handwriting, printed so lightly they were barely visible:

B
U
R
G
L
R.

I said it phonetically. “Burglar?”

“Confusing, since the notebook is a who's who of thieves, pickpockets, and safecrackers. I wouldn't have figured it out if it hadn't been for Harry,” he said, rubbing the little dog's ears. “A pin fell out of the map, the green
G,
and he stepped on it. You should've heard my poor baby howl. After making sure he was okay, I put it back where it belonged. That's when I saw this.” I rose from the couch and went to the map, staring at the spot where Doug pointed. Two other pins stood close to the green
G
—another
R,
this one purple, and a white
U
—indicating businesses on different corners in a neighborhood called Uptown. “So many pins, clustered in so many shapes,” he said, “I never noticed how those three make a perfect little triangle.”

“No . . . a troika,” I murmured, staring at the intersection of a trio of streets.

“Broadway, Racine, and Lawrence Avenue, the heart of Uptown,” he said. “That accounts for the
B,
one of the
R
s and the
L.
After that it was easy. The notebook is full of info about Uptown since it was the epicenter of Capone's North Side operation. Chapter one, ‘
Nostro
—Us,' lists every piece of real estate he owned as a front business. It includes the Green Mill Lounge on Broadway, which he used as headquarters, the Riviera Theatre on Racine, where he ran an after-hours casino, and the Bridgeview Bank, a perfect money laundry, on Lawrence Avenue.”

“
G
is for Green Mill,
R
is for Riviera, but what about the bank? You said it's called Bridgeview,” I said, “but its pin says
U.
It doesn't fit.”

A smile creased his face. “It used to, back in the day. When it was called the Uptown National Bank.”

“Uptown National Bank,” I said, touching the key at my neck. “U.N.B. 001.”

“The vault holding ultimate power is somewhere beneath those streets and buildings. The bank is the likely location but we won't know until we look.”

“So . . . let's look,” I said with muffled excitement.

“Subterranean stroll, first thing tomorrow,” he said. “We're gonna need some stuff . . . boots, maybe helmets . . .”

I lunged, pulling him into a hug. “You're amazing, Doug!” I said. “You found it!”

“
We
found it!” he said, standing back and smiling at Harry. “Actually, he did.”

“All three of us. Our own little troika,” I said. “If I drank, this would definitely be a pop-the-champagne moment.”

“I'll settle for a celebratory cigarette,” he said, drawing one out and lighting it.

“You like that thing, don't you?”

“The cigarette?”

“The lighter. Shiny steel, the
click
it makes.”

“I enjoy the whole experience, from click to puff,” he said. “You have to admit, it makes me look cool.”

“You don't need a cigarette to be cool. Doug Stuffins is awesome.”

“I like where this is going,” he said, “tell me more.”

“Seriously. You're as smart as a little Einstein, resourceful as hell.” I was silent for a moment. “Confession. As much as I need you, and I do, Doug, like crazy, I feel guilty about having dragged you into this mess. You should be living your life—”

“This
is
my life,” he said abruptly. “The search for your family began as a big adventure for me, like playing a sidekick in an action flick. But . . . confession of my own . . . the weirder it got, the more I thought about quitting.”

“Really? I mean, I completely understand. I just didn't know.”

“I considered taking Harry with me and hiding behind a locked door with an endless supply of movies and Munchitos,” he said. “Couldn't do it, though. I owed you.”

“You don't owe me anything.”

“Yeah, I did. You came to rely on me, if I can be so bold . . .”

“Couldn't do it without you,” I said, nodding at the three pins stuck on the map.

“Backing away would have left all you alone. You gave me your trust and confidence. I owed it to you to see this thing through,” he said. “But it's different now.”

He twisted out the cigarette in an ashtray, staring at it, and looking back at me.

“Your family's freedom means everything, Sara Jane, but it's not the only thing. That goddamn Sec-C, this stupid syndrome . . . whatever . . . I need to prove to myself that I'm . . . worthy or capable, or something.” He sighed.

“I think I understand,” I said quietly.

“Sorry. I sound like the star of a twelve-step program for the clinically self-doubting. Hi, I'm Doug, and I have no idea who I am.”

“You're not a sidekick, I can tell you that much,” I said. “You're my partner.”

He nodded once, slowly. “From start to finish.”

Wherever that was, the journey would continue tomorrow, deep underground. Something about the moment demanded a handshake, and as we did, a thunderclap rumbled through the Bird Cage Club, followed by a whiny growl from Harry. He was spooked by the noise, cautioning us that it might happen again.

An electrical boom and a warning.

It was the perfect way to end the day.

SLEEP. YEAH. RIGHT, I THOUGHT, STARING AT THE
ceiling of my office-bedroom.

The joy of discovery was hissing away like a slowly deflating balloon.

Lying on my mattress, cracking my knuckles, I saw the Troika of Outfit Influence for what it really was—the beginning of the end—but what sort of end? What if the thing buried beneath the troika was neither ultimate nor powerful, or worse, didn't even exist? The possibility had occurred to me before but I'd pushed it away, desperate to pin my hope on, well, something.

Something could very well turn out to be a big pile of nothing.

I rolled onto my side, willing myself to sleep, but it was no use.

A pile of books sat next to the mattress and I reached for an Italian dictionary. What seemed like a lifetime ago, my parents had promised me a trip to Italy if I graduated Fep Prep with honors. But studying the language seemed like such a normal thing to do that it felt completely ridiculous, not connected to me at all. Instead, I picked up my journal, which I'm writing in now. As a condition of graduation, Fep Prep students have to record their high school career and then turn it in at the end of senior year. Of course, I had no intention of ever handing mine in; it was nearly as full of secrets as the notebook. I flipped to the entry I'd made months earlier and read:

It hadn't occurred to me until now that the key to ultimate power may actually be a key, and that it could open a vault. Now, all I have to do is find it.

I stared at the words, trying to summon the hope I'd felt when I'd written them. They'd been penned by the Sara Jane who hadn't yet endured the horror of Juan Kone, or taken a human life. Strength grows from confidence, and that's how I wanted to begin the trek underground, but disappointment loomed like Poor Kevin or an ice cream creature. What I needed was assurance that stepping through a Capone Door into darkness would lead to the light of discovery—that ultimate power was real. I lifted my phone, stared at it, thinking of Max, and then, to my surprise, someone else came to mind.

Tyler Strozzini.

He's a handsome and confident eighteen-year-old who inherited his dad's role as Outfit VP of the important Money division. After working together for six months, a level of trust has grown between us—I settle Money disputes quickly and without remorse, which makes his division run more efficiently. In turn, he became, in Outfit parlance, my Whispering Smith. I don't know where the term originated but it refers to a member who passes on vital information to another.

Tyler whispers about who hates me, and why.

When a thug loses a dispute, I use cold fury to impose a penalty—a hefty fine, physical punishment, or worse—and he complies. But that doesn't mean he likes it, or me. No one has sought revenge, not even the families or friends of those I've ordered put to death. But, as Lucky once reminded me, cold fury or not, I was open to attack when my back was turned. Not long ago, when the room had cleared after a sit-down, except for Tyler and me, he said, “Hey . . . Eddie Hernandez, the car booster?”

“Ready Eddie,” I said, remembering the ten-thousand-dollar fine I'd imposed on him a week earlier. “What about him?”

“I heard he said he'd like to stick a knife in your neck,” Tyler said solemnly. He's good-looking in a movie-star way—smooth, coppery skin, jet-black hair never out of place, and broad shoulders that seem padded, which they are, with muscle. His green eyes tempered even the most disturbing news, like the tidbit he'd just delivered.

I shrugged, trying to seem cool. “You've seen me in action. Every order I hand down comes with a warning never to lay a hand on me.”

“Still, you have to know who your enemies are. I just want you to be aware,” he said, shrug-smiling.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“How long does it last, by the way?” he asked. “Ghiaccio furioso.”

“Forever,” I lied. The truth was that I was unsure how long the effects of cold fury endured, a gap in my knowledge that sometimes gave me worrisome pause—except, in my life, pausing to worry could get me killed. On the contrary, anything that helped keep me safer was a gift, and Tyler delivered, whispering a growing list of names and threats; he was right, it was better to know than not. Tyler never asked for anything in return, but when he mentioned that he was having trouble collecting operating tax from a low-level smash-and-grabber—a jewel thief who smashes a display case and grabs as much as he can—I helped him do it. It was a breach of protocol; like everything else, there were rules when it came to debt collection. It didn't matter to me. I wanted to repay his ongoing favor because he was the only friend I had in the Outfit.

Actually, he was a little closer than a friend.

Only a month earlier, depressed and forlorn with Max gone and my family seemingly out of reach forever, I'd agreed to travel to Rome with him for a long weekend on his private jet. But as we flew toward Italy, I stumbled upon a clue to the Troika of Outfit Influence; it shook me free of self-pity and instilled new hope that I could save my family. In a burst of frustration, I used cold fury to make Tyler turn back to Chicago. But as soon as I saw his worst fear, I was sorry I'd done it. It was just for a moment and I couldn't bear to witness the whole, awful scene—Tyler at age seventeen, watching from the ground as his parents' private jet took off, faltered in the air, exploded in a fiery blaze, and crashed. Whatever followed—whatever deep terror burrowed into his heart following the accident—felt like something that was none of my business.

He was shaken but, to my surprise, neither angry nor resentful.

With a weak smile, he told me I didn't have to use cold fury, that he would've turned the jet around for me. I apologized, explaining that I'd remembered some urgent, unfinished counselor-at-large business, but that I should've been more patient.

He asked then, had I seen his worst fear?

Part of it, I replied, hesitating, and told him only about the part up to the plane crash.

Tyler nodded slowly with something like a look of relief, admitting that he'd never discussed how he felt about his parents' untimely end with anyone and, well, could he—with me? We sat then, the two of us alone at the back of the jet as he spoke quietly about grief and loneliness, how deeply he missed his mom's light sense of humor that dismissed all bad things as temporary, and his dad's wisdom and guidance. His eyes were wet and we held hands. He tried to explain the emptiness he felt, wondering when or if it would ever fill in, and if he wanted it to. It hit so close to home that I found myself talking, too. I couldn't tell the truth about my situation, of course, so I channeled feelings of fear and loss into the lie about my dad's dire illness. I'd decided to go to Rome for a respite; instead, the cancelled trip became a mutual therapy session, and it felt good, even a little cleansing. Toward the end, Tyler uttered something so undeniable that it made my eyes wet, too.

“There's nothing as permanent as the death of the people you love most,” he said quietly.

In a single sentence, he'd articulated my own worst fear.

We were at the back of the jet sitting side by side, the engines humming low and steady around us. Tyler glanced out the window and then turned to me, saying how sure he was that the VP of Muscle, Knuckles Battuta, had orchestrated his parents' plane crash.

It sent a chill through me, a family so quickly separated by murder. “Why?” I asked.

“Power. When it comes to the chain of command in the Outfit, only Lucky sits above Money and Muscle,” he said. “The two positions are interdependent. Muscle needs Money to fund its army of enforcers and Money relies on Muscle to collect street tax, operating tax, and all other funds.”

I nodded. “I've settled a lot of disagreements between the two sides, as you know.”

“My dad,” Tyler said, and faltered, taking a breath. “He was younger than Knuckles, and charming—charismatic, I guess you could say. He and Knuckles were like oil and water.” Tyler was convinced that after all of the disputes between the two men over so many years, Knuckles took out his dad, hoping to exert influence over the teenaged Strozzini.

“It didn't work out that way, huh?” I said.

Tyler shook his head and leaned in closer. “I despise Knuckles and everything he stands for as the chief enforcer,” he said in a confessional tone. “But you know what? Even more, I hate that I'm bound to the Outfit. After my parents died, Lucky made it clear that I had to become head of Money, or else. My family had served too long and knew too many secrets for me to be allowed to become a civilian.”

Tyler was chained to the organization, just like me.

Beyond that, we shared the reality of being different from everyone else in the Outfit. For me, it's gender. For him, it's because he's half African American. The organization practiced its own hypocritical version of multiculturalism—members could be Italian, Greek, Jewish, whatever, as long as they were male and white. Our disparity brought us together almost as much as the loss of our families. When we were done talking, emotionally spent, he asked if I wanted to watch one of his favorite movies. Huddling together, we stared at
The Shawshank Redemption,
and I understood why he liked it so much. It's all about escape.

After returning to the city, our romance, if that was what it had been, slowed and cooled—I was diverted by looking for my family, of course, and the street war had begun to rage—but the bond forged on the flight remained. I sat up on the side of the mattress now, wondering if Tyler's feelings for me, combined with his own emotional scars, outweighed his loyalty to the Outfit—could I tell him about my family and ultimate power, and trust him to somehow help me?

The answer was a definite maybe.

But it wasn't an absolute yes, which meant no, and I put down the phone.

It was just past midnight, Saturday surrendering to Sunday.

Doug and I now had twenty-four hours to locate the vault before returning to Fep Prep on Monday morning. Trying to fool myself to sleep, I shut my eyes and began counting in Italian—
uno, due, tre
—but the numbers reminded me of people.

I pictured my mother as she'd been the last time I'd seen her—smooth olive skin, silken black hair, lithe, delicate hands—but couldn't help imagining a red stump where Juan Kone had sliced off her finger. Then I saw my dad, tall and lean with an easy smile, and purple scars on his wrists, track marks from where Juan had extracted gallons of blood—I'd never seen the wounds, but I knew he'd been experimented on, and tortured.

Finally, Lou walked through my mind.

He was as pale and bruised as I'd seen him at the Ferris wheel.

Lou hooked my pinkie and said,
Rispolis stick together even when we aren't together. All or nothing, remember?

I remembered.

Nothing, neither fear nor anxiety, could stop me from looking for ultimate power.

I stood and paced the room, opening drawers, turning over loose papers, seeking—what? A sign maybe, a signal that my subterranean search wouldn't be in vain. I pushed aside the dictionary, the journal, and stared at the old notebook. I'd been through its chapters countless times, scratching out the truth about my family, using its criminal methods to survive. Through trial and error, and sometimes luck, I'd learned that its secrets weren't always so obviously placed, where just anyone could find them. I'd turned every one of its pages searching for information about ultimate power.

Or had I?

Rereading the final entry for the eighth chapter, “
Volta,
” revealed nothing new. I examined the page, hoping it was like the ones that had concealed Uncle Jack's scribblings in Buondiavolese, but no—it was a thin, single sheet. The notebook was bound in leather while the inside back cover was overlaid with a rectangle of yellowed paper glued into place. I looked at the key's outline and Nunzio's faint letters, B
U
R
G
L
R, using a fingernail to dig at the cover's corner. The paper crumbled into pasty bits until a strip peeled away. Slowly, like removing a stamp from an envelope, I pulled the page free and turned it over. It was a note from Great-Grandpa Nunzio to my grandpa Enzo:

Caro Enzo,

Io sono vecchio e i miei occhi blu sono sempre così debole che non posso vedere la pagina. Presto, vostro fratello Giaccomo registrerà tutte le mie parole per me. Ma ho bisogno di scrivere questa lettera io.

Come i miei occhi si dissolve, quindi fa ghiaccio furioso. Il tuo tempo come Consigliere rapidamente si avvicina. Ho insegnato molte lezioni, ma tre richiedono ripetere.

Questa lettera è un ricordo utile ed essenziale . . .

I put it aside, lifted the Italian dictionary, and translated the entire letter until I was able to read it:

Dear Enzo,

I am old and my blue eyes are growing so weak that I can hardly see the page. Soon, your brother Giaccomo will record all of my words for me. But I need to write this letter myself.

As my sight fades, so does cold fury. Your time as counselor quickly approaches. I've taught you many lessons, but three bear repeating.

This letter is a helpful, essential reminder.

First, we serve the Outfit because we must; refusing to do so would endanger our family. Serve it, but never trust it.

Second, without cold fury, we have no value to the Outfit. Remember—it is a beast that eats its own.

Third, if you or the family are ever in danger, from outside the Outfit or within, resort to ultimate power. I cannot say what it is in case this book falls into the wrong hands. Only that it dwells beneath the letters on the other side of this page. I am confident you will find it, but hope that you never need it.

If you do, know this—for our family, ultimate power is freedom.