Authors: Scott Flander
No wonder the Commissioner had canceled the detail in front of Michelle’s apartment—-she was with him.
When Michelle got to the house, her father was still awake, and she confronted him with what Bravelli had said.
“He denied everything. He said Mickey Bravelli was lying, there wasn’t any deal. How could you expect a mobster to tell the truth?”
“Did you believe him?” I asked.
Michelle shook her head. “No. And he knew I knew. I could see it in the way he looked at me. My father and I have always had a very close relationship. We even joke about how each of us always knows when the other one’s not telling the truth—it’s a thing between us.”
“What’d you do?”
“I told him he had to turn himself in. I said for Steve’s sake, and for his sake. And you know what? He kept denying it.
“I’ll tell you, Eddie, I completely lost it. I just got so angry, I started shouting at him. I said, ‘Because of what you did, your son got killed. Your son, the good cop. How can you live with that?’
“He started yelling back, and that got me even more angry, and then we were just shouting back and forth, and I said, ‘If you won’t get the truth out, I will.’
“My father asked me what I meant. I said, ‘I’m going to find a way to prove this. I’ll tell Eddie, he’ll help me. I’m not going to let you just live your life like this never happened.’ ”
They argued with each other for a long time, neither one giving in.
“I spent the night in my old room,” Michelle said. “And when I got up in the morning, he was gone. I never thought he’d try to kill you, Eddie. I really didn’t.”
“There’s no way you could have known.”
“If anything, I would have expected him to go after Mickey, not you.”
“I don’t think so. It sounds like by the time he learned that Bravelli had your brother killed, he had already found out you were working undercover in Westmount. He couldn’t go after Bravelli until he got you out of there first. But he could still go after me.”
“I’m so sorry, Eddie.”
We didn’t speak much for the rest of the trip. It was about 1 a.m. when we took the Timbercreek exit off 1-81 and passed through the town of Pemberton toward Lake Asayunk. I didn’t tell Michelle that I had been there only once before, to go hunting, and I wasn’t exactly sure which road to take. But I think she figured it out after I kept stopping and making U-turns. By some miracle I found the gravel road with the sign for the lake. There were about a dozen cabins, scattered along the lakefront, and Vic’s was on the far end, apart from the rest.
They called them cabins, but they were nicer than that. Usually in the Poconos, a cabin means bare wood floors with big cracks in them, and old mattresses on bunkbeds. It’s BYOSB—bring your own sleeping bag. Vic’s cabin was more of a house—it was sealed up tight, and had real floors, a modern kitchen. It was small—just one bedroom—but it had a deck that extended out over the lake.
I had no idea where the key was.
“Vic told me once,” I said, as I went to look under the mat, and found that there wasn’t any mat. “But I think I was drunk at the time.”
It was very dark, and I didn’t have a flashlight in the Blazer. I got back in the truck and maneuvered it so that the headlights were pointing at the front door, but it didn’t help us to find the keys.
“I wish I could remember,” I said.
“Maybe we should hypnotize you,” Michelle said with a smile. She was relaxing now, the tension was leaving her face.
We looked for the keys in the woodpile, on the doorsill, under the steps, everywhere. I was just about ready to propose breaking a window, when Michelle came through the door—from the inside.
“How’d you get in?”
“Simple—the key was under the mat.”
“What mat?”
“The mat at the front door. This is the back door.”
I thought about that for a second, and then looked at her and said, “You know what? You’re right.”
We turned on the lights and took a look at the place. Small, but cozy. It was a warm night, and we opened up all the screened windows to air the place out.
Vic had left some beer in the refrigerator, and we each grabbed a bottle and stood in the kitchen, talking quietly. There was a big window over the sink, and Michelle was looking through it. She was so beautiful then. I found myself thinking about our kiss at her old apartment. But so much had happened since then, she had seemed so cold, so unreachable.
“You know,” she said, turning to me, “I never would have married Bravelli. Did you think I would?”
“Well, I did wonder. I mean, you really shut me out.”
“I had to. I felt I was really getting inside his head, getting him to open up. I was afraid you’d get in the way.”
“Was that all it was?”
Michelle looked at me and shook her head. “No, it was more than that. You’re right. You probably won’t understand this, but the more he opened up to me, the more I felt there was an actual human being in there. And I guess I responded to that.”
“Did you fall in love with him?”
“No. But I did start letting my defenses down. I began to wonder whether maybe what he did, you know, the mob thing, maybe wasn’t so bad. You saw how I was getting drawn into it—I told you what happened with me with Jumpin’ Jiminy’s. I really got into that.”
“So what do you think was going on? Were you trying to justify Bravelli being in the mob?”
Michelle shook her head. “It didn’t have anything to do with Bravelli. It had to do with Steve. You know what I think it was? If I could understand how Mickey Bravelli could be a good person and a criminal at the same time, maybe I could understand how Steve could be the same way. And then when I found myself slipping into that life, I wondered, hey, maybe I’m that way, too.”
“Do you really think you are?”
“No, I don’t. I know I’m not that way. Finding out about Steve and my father last night snapped me out of it. I mean, I saw Bravelli for what he was. But I’m sure that even if I never had that conversation with him, I still would have come out of it. I’m not my father. I don’t have it in me to take it that far.”
“You know what? I never thought you did.”
“You’re just saying that, right?”
“I didn’t know what was going on with you. But no, I never thought you were really that kind of person. You were always Michelle.”
“It’s nice of you to say that.”
“It’s true,” I said.
Michelle looked up at me. “Thanks for watching out for me, Eddie.”
“Sure.”
I wanted to kiss her, to put my arms around her, but I just stood there, looking stupid. It didn’t matter—she stepped forward and stood on her toes and kissed me on the lips. And then I took her in my arms, and we kissed for a long time. I was just kind of melting onto the floor. It was so good to have her back.
“You know what?” she said at last. “I’d like to go to sleep, and not wake up for about three years.”
“Go ahead and make it four,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
She laughed. “If you want the bedroom, I’ll take the couch.”
“No,” I said, “you take the bedroom. I want to stay up for a while and finish my beer.”
I got some sheets out of the closet and pulled the fold-out bed from the couch. As I was putting on the sheets, I watched Michelle through the doorway in the bedroom, making up the bed. She saw me looking, and smiled.
W
hen I woke it was just getting light. I lay there for a while, enjoying the cool breeze coming in off the lake. There was a dove cooing right outside the window, and I heard the faint sound of a motorboat, somebody up early fishing. I drifted off, and when I woke again, there was a gentle smell of coffee. I sat up and looked around, but didn’t see Michelle. The bedroom door was open, the bed made.
I got dressed, and as I walked into the kitchen I saw, through the sliding glass door, Michelle sitting on a chair on the deck in the morning sunlight, sipping coffee. She had made it in the white plastic coffee maker on the counter, and I poured myself a cup and stepped outside. It was warm out there, and very bright.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning.”
She had on a white cotton blouse and blue jeans, which I assumed she had brought from her apartment. I brushed some leaves off a green, hard-plastic chair, and sat down. The coffee wasn’t good, but it was hot.
“There’s no food at all in this house,” Michelle said. “We need to get some groceries.”
“Fine.”
“And I want to go swimming, so we need to find a place that sells bathing suits.”
A little later, we got back in the Blazer and rode until we came across a grocery store down the road. Next door was a souvenir shop that sold beach-type stuff. I found a bathing suit that cost eleven dollars, and Michelle got hers for seventeen, a blue one-piece cheapie.
There was a pay phone, I called Lanier. They had brought Bravelli in for questioning, he said, but had to let him go. The two guys from the Honda weren’t talking.
“Stay up there as long as you can,” he said.
Michelle and I went back to the cabin and had some breakfast. Then we put on our suits and splashed around in the sparkling water, floating on our backs, listening to the laughing screams of children from the neighboring cabins.
I think that for a few hours we both tried to forget about all the terrible things that had happened. Not that we could, of course. No matter what we talked about, those things were always just below the surface.
During the afternoon, we sat sunning ourselves on the deck, and joked about how we never wanted to go back to Philadelphia.
“If we do,” I said to Michelle, who was lying on a deck chair with her eyes closed, “all I’m going to do is get shot at. I wouldn’t even know who was doing it—I’d be riding along in my patrol car, and the bullets would start flying, and I’d have to get on my loudspeaker and say, Excuse me, but are you a rioter, a member of the mob, or the police commissioner?”
I quickly glanced at Michelle. “Sorry.”
She opened her eyes. “That’s all right. I don’t blame you. But you know, we do have to get back, Eddie.”
“Why? Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen, whether we’re there or not.”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve got to try again to get my father to turn himself in.”
“He’s not going to do it, Michelle.”
“I’ll make him.”
“What about Bravelli? He’s still going to try to kill you.”
“I’ll just have to be careful. And maybe we can put him in jail. I can testify against him. I can try to get my father to testify against him.”
“In the meantime …”
“In the meantime, I can’t hide up here forever, Eddie.”
“It’d be nice if we could, though, wouldn’t it?”
She looked at me. “Maybe another time, huh?”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Let’s at least wait until tomorrow morning. It’ll be Sunday, things will be a little calmer.”
She thought about it, then nodded OK and even smiled a little. Later, we went inside, drained from the sun and the water, and had some turkey sandwiches and more beer. When we had finished, Michelle rinsed off the dishes, and said she wanted to lie down and take a nap.
I needed one, too. It wasn’t just lack of sleep, it was a deep stress that had been pushed down for weeks, kept at bay. I needed to crash. When Michelle went into the bedroom, I took off my wet trunks and put on my jeans, and lay down on the couch. There was a slight breeze coming in through the screen on the sliding glass door, it felt good on my bare chest. I closed my eyes and almost instantly slipped off to sleep.
I
don’t know how many hours later, I opened my eyes and saw Michelle sitting nearby in a wicker chair, watching me. It was late afternoon, almost early evening; the room was bathed in the soft orange light of the sunset reflecting off the lake.
She was wearing a white linen robe that I assumed was Vic’s wife’s. It was open a little, enough that I could see the curve of her breasts.
“Hi,” I said, lifting my head a little, then setting it back down. “How long you been sitting there?”
“Just a few minutes.”
I put my hands behind my neck. “You hungry? Want to go into town and get some dinner?”
She didn’t answer, she just stood up and walked over and sat on the couch. I moved my legs to give her room, and as she sat her robe opened a little and I started getting dizzy.
“I’m glad to be back in the land of the living,” she said. “Especially since it means I can be with you.”
She leaned down and kissed me, and it was like drinking a wonderful wine. I wanted to say that to her, but I thought it would sound ridiculous. She sat up and smiled and slipped the robe off her shoulders, and just let it drop around her waist. Her breasts were so round, so firm, and I reached out and gently caressed them, and she leaned forward so that our chests were touching, skin to skin, and we kissed and I was getting drunk in the wine.
She stood, and her robe fell to the floor, and she grabbed my hand and led me to the bedroom. She helped me take off my jeans, and we lay down on the bed, and I felt that at that moment, I had never been luckier in my life.
We made love until it got dark, and then went into town and had a seafood dinner, and when we came back, we got into bed and we didn’t even take our clothes off, we just fell asleep in each other’s arms.
W
e got an early start the next morning, taking with us the peacefulness of the woods and the crisp mountain air. But two hours later, as we approached the city, we saw plumes of dark, thick smoke over West Philadelphia. I flipped on the radio. They were saying that a full-scale riot had erupted the night before. Three people were dead, and fires were still burning out of control. According to the radio, the riot started after an unknown police officer clubbed Councilman Barney Stiller at a candlelight prayer march, putting him in the hospital.
I felt a pit in my stomach.
“You think that was Nick?” Michelle asked. I had told her about what happened to the store owners on 52nd Street.
“Who else?” I said. “I should have locked him up when I had the chance.”
“Could you really have done that?”