Round Robin (32 page)

“In yourself?”

He nodded.

“At first. I knew I was strong, stronger than most. But I was not stupid. I knew my physical strength was nothing compared to the bars and walls and guns that confined me. And my sentence was indeterminate; that was part of my punishment. The state could have held me until I died and then kept my bones until they turned to dust. So, faith strictly in myself would have been nothing more than egomania. But I knew I was not mad, either. That meant that, without realizing it at first, I had to believe in some force far greater than any man or woman. Something that transcends the might of nations.”

“You found God in a Communist prison?”

“Brother Damian told me you find God when you need Him most. Wherever you are. I concluded that atheism was just another lie that I’d been fed. Because I knew I would be free, I knew I would see my daughter again ... and in due time my faith was rewarded.”

“There’s no bringing my baby back,” Robin said. “No matter how much faith I have.”

“No, not here. But if you can believe in punishment after death, why not redemption? Why not reunion?”

The first shading of pre-dawn gray crept in through the ground-level window.

Manfred continued, “If you think God cannot forgive you, why not ask Him? Maybe you are the only one who cannot forgive you.”

Robin stared at Manfred a moment and then got up.

“I think I’d like to spend a little time alone now. I’m going up to my park.”

Robin sat on a park bench, among her beloved plantings, in the one place that she’d found solace over the years. But now there was no comfort, only fear. Fear that she would be a fool to think that even God could forgive her for what she had done. Fear that she might be struck down for just having the effrontery to ask for forgiveness. But her greatest fear of all was that if she didn’t ask, she would be forfeiting the last opportunity she’d ever have to know peace.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to ask for outright forgiveness. Instead, she asked only for a sign that someday she might be shown mercy.

An hour later, because there was nothing else to do, Robin decided to go to work. Because he had the strudel to deliver, Manfred drove her. Because there was nobody else to watch her, Bianca came along, too.

Chapter 31

Tone Morello got the goods on Robin early that same morning.

He received a report from Aubrey Tannis that was sent by Special Messenger, a courier service that specialized in making its deliveries regardless of circumstances. In Tone’s case, the damn guy had managed to slip past his building’s doorman and bang on Tone’s door at 5:55 a.m. This was the earliest Tone had to drag himself out of bed since he’d been an altar boy. Half asleep, holding the handgun he kept in his nightstand, he stumbled to the door fantasizing about the coverage he’d get for killing a crazed home-invader.

It never occurred to him that home-invaders rarely knock, and he might have found himself up on a manslaughter charge if the courier hadn’t casually disarmed him, smacked him across the kisser, and told him to sign on line fourteen. Tone scratched out his signature. With that accomplished, he was given his gumshoe’s report and had his handgun returned, minus its ammunition.

Now, Tone was awake enough to think about filing criminal charges against — and suing — the SOB who’d clipped him. But as soon as he sat down with the report he forgot about all that and focused on what lay before him.

Tannis had left him a note.

The gumshoe had written: This concludes our business, now and forever.

Amen, Tone thought. As if he cared. Just so long as the dirt was there. He opened the report and quickly read the low-down on his nemesis, Round Robin Phinney.

It was essentially the same story that Robin had told Manfred, albeit from Jeri Whitman’s point of view, which omitted her own penchant for theft and made Robin look like she’d tried to steal her best friend’s boyfriend, for which she had paid a lamentably high price.

So now Tone knew why Robin hated men.

She’d been screwed by one, both literally and figuratively.

It was too bad about the kid and all, but who could she blame but herself? A good Catholic, Tone didn’t hold with abortion. That’s why he was very demanding that all his ladies always show him their birth control pills or pop in their bush-beanies before any action got underway. Of course, the Pope forbade the use of contraceptives, too, but, hey, you could take that church stuff only so far.

The way Tone saw it, if Robin wanted to beat herself up for what she did, fine. If she wanted to take out her gripe on the world at large, that was also okay. But when she came after him, who’d never touched her and never would, well, then she had to expect payback.

And Tone was sure he had enough here to do just that.

The report concluded with a name and a phone number.

That little creep Tannis knew how to follow through, Tone thought, at least you could say that for him.

Tone made the call.

“Yeah,” he said, “is this Phil Leeds?”

Tone listened a minute.

“Hey, I’m awake, you could be awake — if you want to make a quick hundred bucks.”

Tone smiled.

“That’s better. Now, listen. My name’s Tone Morello ... Yeah, the sports guy. What do I want? I want you to have breakfast with me.”

In an hour, he told Leeds.

At Screaming Mimi’s.

Iggy Gross was running on adrenaline so pure that if he could have bottled it nobody would ever bother with cocaine or speed. It had kept him up all night rehearsing in front of a mirror. He knew that nothing less than the future of his career was on the line. He had to get this Phinney broad or he was finished.

The buzz had gone coast to coast. Word was — in every market where his show was syndicated — that he was wussing out, backing down and hiding from some fat chick who sliced cold cuts for a living. The pressure on him to hit back, do it fast, and generally nuke this broad had been excruciating.

So he’d quickly gathered an all-star team of the baddest, nastiest, funniest comedy writers on earth and had them write material for him. Razor sharp put-downs. Crushing slams. Acid-in-your-eyes insults. Then ... then he had them insult him. And when one did, he’d turn to another for a comeback. All this material was recorded and transcribed and Iggy sat down and feverishly committed all the permutations of vituperation to memory.

He practiced, practiced, practiced.

Rehearsed until he would have dropped, had it not been for the million volts of electricity crackling inside him.

Now, he was ready.

And he was going in alone.

He would not make that dumbass Tone Morello’s mistake.

Nobody important would be there watching him or recording him if he bombed.

But Iggy felt good.

He felt mean.

He had a stainless steel hard-on.

He slammed out of his penthouse apartment and he had so much juice in him he ran down 30 flights of stairs to the parking garage.

And just in case everything went right ... Iggy had a micro-recorder hidden on him.

David Solomonovich’s mentor-session at the university was canceled that morning. The grad student he was tutoring in particle physics couldn’t make it; the guy had blown out his knee while cross-country skiing in Grant Park. David would have reamed his twenty-three-year-old protégé if he’d hurt himself doing something dumb like alpine skiing. But cross-country had a benefit-to-risk ratio that even David had to concede was compelling, assuming you didn’t catch your ski in a bicycle tire some cretin had abandoned under the snow.

Not one to be at loose ends, he decided to go into his father’s lab, where he’d either continue his work on achieving superconductivity at room temperature — or continue to illustrate what was rapidly becoming a manuscript-length series of erotic drawings inspired by Bianca’s tales of bordello bacchanalia.

David realized, of course, that it was perfectly normal for a male his age, caught in that first tsunami of testosterone, to fantasize grandly about women and all their mysteries, and he was doing his usual thorough, cohesive and compelling job of it. He had no doubt that with a little further organization and the addition of a narrative thread he could market his drawings as a book.

He was also sure that he would not. They would never see the light of day. Not while his parents were still alive. Well, maybe when he was older and he found just the right girlfriend he would show them to her. The thought of acting out the scenes he’d drawn made his heart race.

Which was just the problem.

He was letting his adolescent hormones distract him from serious work.

He knew just the person, though, to give him a cold, bracing dose of reality.

Even though he’d have to put up with the hurly-burly of the breakfast crowd, David headed off to Mimi’s to see Robin.

Chapter 32

“Sweetheart,” Mimi asked, “should you even be here?”

Robin had just told Mimi about her father. The deli had yet to open.

“It’s where I want to be.”

Mimi nodded and squeezed Robin’s hands.

“You let me know just as soon as it’s okay to visit your father. Stanley and I will be right over to see him. Meanwhile, I’ll keep an eye on things today. Make sure it’s nice and quiet around here for you. As much as possible, anyway.”

Mimi looked over to Manfred sitting at a table with Bianca.

“I want you to keep an eye on Robin.”

“I will,” he said.

Bianca looked up from the piece of her father’s strudel she was working on.

“Me, too.”

“You, you munchkin,” Mimi said, “sitting there eating all the strudel your daddy made for me, I ought to put you to work.”

Bianca had already been told that because of Herr Phinney’s illness she would not be working with Nancy today.

So she told Mimi, “I could use a new job.”

Everybody laughed.

“I am serious,” Bianca said, putting on a very serious face.

Mimi looked at Manfred and raised an eyebrow.

“I could use some help with her today. I have classes later.”

Robin said, “Let her work behind the counter. She’ll be safe back there with me.”

“Would you like that, Bianca?” Mimi asked.

Bianca nodded decisively.

Then she confided to Robin, “I like to watch the way you
herunterputzen
everyone.”

“Yeah, I’m good at that,” Robin said, knowing just what she meant. “How about you serve the strudel?”

Bianca nodded and smiled.

“But no filching anymore.”

The smile faded abruptly.

“Very well. But then I shall want more pay.”

Robin looked from Manfred to Mimi.

“I think she’s going to fit right in around here.”

With a gunfighter’s gleam in his eye, Iggy Gross strode through the front door of Screaming Mimi’s Deli not ten seconds after it opened for business.

There were no other customers present, but Manfred was enjoying a leisurely second cup of coffee before departing for school. He had no idea who Iggy was, but he didn’t like the look on his face or the way he marched directly toward Robin. He knew what went on at Mimi’s but this was not the time, to his mind, for anyone to be giving Robin grief. He started to rise from his chair. He didn’t even get upright before Robin curtly gestured for him to sit back down.

He did, but he didn’t like it. He glowered.

Mimi had seen Iggy enter, too, but she’d also seen the by-play between Robin and Manfred, and she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to interfere either.

Manny Tavares and Judy Kuykendahl locked on to what they were sure would be an epic encounter. A busboy who spotted Iggy — and knew just who he was — hissed to the dishwashers in back. They quickly appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, grinning like carrion, sure that one way or another they were about to feast.

Iggy stopped at the counter directly in front of Robin. Man, he was ready. He was jazzed. He was ... not even going to let it bother him that this broad was bigger than him. And what was a kid doing there? Sitting on a stool, just behind and off to one side of the fat broad, sucking a lollipop for God’s sake. A lot of Iggy’s material was X-rated. If it got around he used that kind of stuff in front of a little kid — a girl no less — it might backfire on him. He started talking about pussy and such, it might get him busted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor or some such crap.

He sure as hell couldn’t record what he had to say with a kid present.

He had to think — fast.

The fat broad was staring at him.

Hard.

Had a knife in her hand like she might cut his liver out any minute.

Bianca looked at the man with the darting eyes on the other side of the counter and tried to decide if he more closely resembled a weasel or a rat. It was a tough choice, but she really didn’t think that either of those animals could break a sweat on their upper lips as this creature just had. In any case, she didn’t like him, and she knew this was one place where she could freely display her disapproval.

Bianca removed the grape Tootsie Roll Pop from her mouth and stuck a purple tongue out at Iggy.

His writers had not prepared Iggy for this, and it showed in his disconcerted look.

Nor was he ready when Robin burst out laughing at him.

She slapped the countertop with her hand, threw back her head and roared. Iggy was finished before he’d gotten his first word out. A surge of volcanic anger turned his face the color of glowing magma.

Suddenly, he forgot all his material, all his preparation, and even the last twenty-six years of his life. He was back in the schoolyard. He was once again the little bug-eyed geek the girls had always laughed at. They hadn’t even tried to conceal their ridicule for him; they’d pointed right at him and laughed out loud. Iggy’d never said a word in his own defense back then, but he would now.

“Bitch!” he screamed at Robin.

His feeble invective was blown away by Robin’s gale of laughter.

“Whore!” he screamed.

Robin’s laughter grew louder, more manic. It had made Bianca nervous at first but now she was swept up in the contagion of it, and she laughed at Iggy, too. And pointed at him.

“Cunt!” Iggy shrieked.

Robin fell silent as suddenly as if she’d been guillotined. Her eyes grew wide, and Bianca’s titters trailed off in the wake of a deepening hush. Robin’s mouth opened and her jaw began to tremble.

Iggy Gross smiled. This was really rich, he thought. He’d paid big money to some of the top names in the business to give him their best stuff and all he’d needed was a four-letter word that every street monkey in the country knew. Well, he’d didn’t care. He’d found this fat broad’s weakness and now he’d use it.

He hadn’t noticed that all along Robin was looking over his shoulder.

A hand fell heavily on Iggy and spun him around hard enough to give him whiplash.

The hand didn’t belong to Manfred, though.

Phil Leeds had just arrived.

“I don’t think a lady ought to be talked to like that,” Phil told Iggy. “Especially one of my old girlfriends.”

Trying to ignore the shooting pain in his neck, Iggy looked at the creep who’d grabbed him. He wasn’t any taller than Iggy and he was just as skinny. He had thinning greasy black hair, crooked gray teeth, bloodshot blue eyes and the muscle tone of an overripe banana, all of it stuffed inside of a Salvation Army markdown suit. Iggy could take this guy.

Mimi saw what was coming.

“Hey, hey!” she said. “No fighting allowed, not in here!”

The first knot of the breakfast crowd arrived at that moment, including David, and was riveted by this high and unusual drama — but Mimi’s usual centurion from among Chicago’s Finest had yet to put in his appearance. She looked to Manfred for help.

But before he could reach his feet, Tone Morello stepped out of the growing cluster of customers and extended his hand to Phil.

“Phil Leeds?” he said, shaking the man’s hand with a smile. “You’re Phil Leeds, right?”

The sudden appearance of a fellow media-creature, someone who could cause him major public embarrassment, knocked Iggy for a loop. He started to slink away, but Tone let go of Leed’s hand and grabbed the shock-jock’s arm.

“Where ya goin’, Iggy? Stick around. The fun’s just starting.”

Everybody was watching. The crowd at the door was getting thicker by the second. No way Iggy could slip away now. He’d have to bust through that mob, and that’d look just like what it was, an abject retreat.

Not good at all for his image.

“Yeah, sure, Tone. I’ll stick around,” Iggy said, now trying to sound nonchalant. “So why don’t you tell everyone just what’s going on here, anyway?”

“Yeah,” added Phil, “I’d like to know myself, and, by the way, where’s my money?”

Tone handed him a hundred dollar bill, and that calmed Phil.

Then Tone looked straight at Robin.

“I just felt like playing Cupid, that’s all.” Tone turned to the growing crowd. “Phil here is Robin’s old sweetheart. They were real close once upon a time.”

Robin’s soul froze. Ant-knee
knew.

He was standing here with Phil in the place where she worked and he was going to tell the world what she had done. It had taken her twenty years to confide her secret to anyone outside of her family, and now, just hours later, Ant-knee was going to tell the world.

With a gleeful grin on his idiotic face.

And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Except put her knife down.

Because if she didn’t she was going to climb right over the counter and slit Ant-knee’s throat. Maybe Phil’s, too, while she was at it. But she didn’t want to do that. Because there were some people here who cared for her, and she wanted to have a life when all this was over.

Robin lay her knife down atop the shelf of the in–your–face space, the blade pointed away from Ant-knee and toward her.

The symbolism of defeat was not lost on Tone.

He gloried in it.

Others were not so ready to yield.

Manfred stayed put, as he’d been directed, but he drew himself up. He narrowed his eyes, squared his jaw and clenched his fists. He caught Robin’s eye.

“You are strong,” he told her. “Remember how strong you are.”

Robin began to cry.

“Don’t give in,” David pleaded. “Don’t let him do this to you. Don’t let him win.”

Robin began to wail.

“Robin, sweetheart,” Mimi called. She held the Heavyweight Champ robe up, urging Robin to win one last fight.

Robin began to shake.

“What, what?” Tone asked with his grin widening. He stepped to the customer side of the in–your–face space. “All I want to do is tell everyone a story of young love ... between Phil here ...” Tone spun the knife to point at Phil, who realized he’d sold out for far too little and was trying to disappear inside his shabby suit. “ ... and our own dear Round Robin Phinney.”

Tone picked up the knife and pointed the blade at Robin.

“Listen to me,” Tone said, “while I tell all of you just how Robin got to be who she is today.”

But Tone never got the chance.

A howl — the high, keening shriek of a wildcat — snapped everyone’s head around. All eyes locked on the source of that animal outcry. Bianca. The child’s face was a feral mask. Her eyes were flat and her teeth were bared.

Now, Manfred rose to his feet.

“Bianca!” he said.

But the child didn’t hear her father. She was focused solely on Tone.

“Hey, kid,” he said, warily, “take it easy.”

Without conscious thought, Tone’s hand tightened around the knife handle.

Robin saw this, felt something horrible was about to happen and knew she had to stop it. She couldn’t let her damn history be the cause of any more trouble. Her trembling stopped, her legs steadied. She turned toward Bianca.

Who didn’t even see her.

The wild–child focused like a death-ray on Tone. She cursed him in German, spittle flying from her mouth. She formed her fingers into claws and gathered her legs under her.

“Bianca,
nein!”
Manfred yelled, bulling people aside.

But he was too late. Bianca leaped at Tone.

Never seeing the knife that would impale her before she reached him.

Never seeing Robin jump in front of her at the last possible second.