B009XDDVN8 EBOK (34 page)

The breath left my lungs so fast the force of it sent me to my knees. A kick into my back finished the job of sending me sprawling.

“Got you,” said the second brute, before he clamped his hands over both of my ears and pulled my head straight up. My neck screamed as my body followed. The brute leaned me against my car and slammed me once more in the stomach, holding me up with his other hand so I wouldn’t collapse again. I tried to say something, anything, and failed. I tried to swing at him, but my hand was swatted away like it was a moth.

“You’re not going to try to give us no trouble, are you? Not like you did to Holmes.”

I shook my head.

“Good. Call it in, Ferdie.”

The first man slipped away from between the cars and reached for his phone.

“Now we’re going to ask you some questions, just like we asked your friend in Vegas some questions. Nice simple questions, like how much you got left, where it is, and where you can get more. And if you survive the asking better than your friend did, then it will be worth your while to give us some answers.
Capisce?
”

“What?”

“Understand?”

“How much…is left…of what?”

“Don’t be a clown, I’m not in no mood.” He took a handful of my shirt collar, gave it a yank. “Let’s go.”

My eyes spun as he dragged me across the asphalt, toward the white van in the corner of the lot, sitting alone in the darkness. I didn’t have a bat in my hands to smash his jaw to bits. I wasn’t in my car to slam-bam into him. I didn’t have my gun to put a bullet into his murderous brain in vengeance for Augie. I had nothing, no options, no strength left in my battered body, no way out. They had me, the bastards, and they had the rest of the money, too, though they didn’t know it yet. They didn’t have my family, which was one bright spot, but who knew what I wouldn’t give them under torture. Let’s be honest, I was a suburban dad; no matter how tough I acted, threaten my cable and I’d spill my darkest secrets.

There was a gurgle. I thought it came from me for a moment, but no. A gurgle and then a crack.

“Ferdie?” said the man, whipping around as he whipped out a gun. “Ferd-man?”

A bird came hurtling through the air toward us, just bits of its silver wings catching the artificial light of the parking lot. A bird, or a bat, flying straight and hard, like it was flying out of hell. And then it wasn’t a bird. And then it smacked into the bruiser’s forehead with a thud.

The thug let go of me and his gun at the same time, grappling at his forehead, which was suddenly stained with dark streaks. The gun clattered onto the asphalt next to the wrench that had slammed into his head. I didn’t try to figure out what had happened, I jumped away as soon as I was free, falling and then rising, and then tearing the hell out of there toward my car. Still running, I turned back and that’s when I saw it.

A man, standing with legs spread and arms outstretched, standing like a superhero from one of the overheated comic books of my childhood, holding in his hands the bloodied bruiser of my persecution, raising him high before throwing him like a sack of recycling to the ground. No, not a man, a legend.

El Rubio Salvaje.

“You forgot your gun,” Tony Grubbins said to me when it was over and the second collection agent was collapsed into an unconscious heap. Tony tossed the gun and holster at me, leaned over, and picked up the wrench. “I guess the guy never played dodgeball.”

“I was done for.”

“Don’t forget who you’re messing with,” said Tony. “Finding Derek might be near impossible, but that’s still the easy part.”

“I know,” I said. Awkward pause. “I guess, you know, thanks for, kind of, saving me.”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah.”

“Now go away.”

“Okay. Look, if I actually do find him, do you want me to let you know?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Wait. I don’t know. Just the thought of seeing him again turns me into a scared little boy.”

“Then maybe you ought to leave him be.”

“No, you’re wrong. If you do find him, let me know. You ever read
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
?”

“Please.”

“It’s all about facing your demons. Maybe it’s time for me to do just that.”

“You’ve become strangely spiritual over the years, Tony. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Things change, Moretti.”

“Not me,” I said. “It was Richie that brought these two thugs here. I think he followed me out of the Stoneway and then made the call. He’s over there on the ground. He’s going to need an ambulance. I shattered his jaw with a baseball bat.”

“Nice shot for the worst baseball player on Henrietta Road.”

“I never told anyone else before about the money. No one. I never told my mother, I never told my wife.”

“That’s a hell of a chain to have wrapped around your neck.”

“Yeah.”

“And I bet it keeps growing tighter.”

“It does.”

“Then maybe it’s time to let it go,” he said, “before it chokes you to death.”

W
HEN
I
ROUSED
myself from sleep the next morning in another motel on another trademark-laden strip, I was stiff and aching, lonely and hungover, unsure of who the hell I was anymore or why I was doing any of what I was doing. But then I bought a bag of toiletries at Rite Aid. I bought underwear, a fresh pair of Dockers, and a new white shirt at Kohl’s. I had a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s. I picked up a double espresso macchiato at Starbucks. Whatever the commerce of America had devolved into over my lifetime, it was exactly what I needed to prepare myself. For I was stepping up that day, rising out of the mire, and I intended to look and feel every inch the country squire as I drove into the lush landscape of my early youth.

Impossible mansions with their mansard roofs, developments with lots large enough that each could have swallowed whole blocks of Pitchford, great estates with swaths of priceless pasture where horses leaned down to pick at the pristine grass with teeth so perfect they would make a Britisher weep. It had been decades since I had been back, and I had seen my share of glorious vistas in the intervening years, but still nothing pulled at my heart like the wealthy enclaves of Philadelphia’s Main Line. Milton could have written an epic poem about it all. In fact, he did.

And then I found myself before a grand stone-columned entrance, standing like Lucifer before the very gates from which
he had been cast down eons ago. The sun burned more brightly upon its vast lawn, its grass smelled cleaner, its air held the crisp scent of new dollar bills. The valet took my keys, the sign said
NO TIPS
.

Is this heaven?

No, Jon, it’s the Philadelphia Country Club.

I didn’t recognize the building before which I stood. The fashionably shoddy clubhouse entrance that had been there in my day had been replaced with this gaudy front, not too different from the entrance to the golf clubhouse at Patriots Landing or any other upscale course. But still, when I handed off my keys and stepped inside I had a knot in my stomach that would have foiled Alexander. I fully expected someone to grab me by the scruff of my neck and toss me out feetfirst, but no one stopped me, no one asked who I was. An older woman standing by the door smiled at me, like the old women of the club used to smile at me because I was a Willing, and, grateful, I smiled back.

I took advantage of the opportunity and roamed among the halls of my youthful privilege, from the great banquet room to the bar to the grill to the Polo Room with its terrace overlooking the verdant fields of golf. I was afraid of being recognized and desperate to be recognized. I didn’t belong and yet the place was in my bones. I was a lapsed Catholic strolling along the intricately decorated nave of St. Peter’s, ready to be called out and embraced at the same time. It was beautiful, and gaudy, and thrillingly sumptuous, it was everything I had ever wanted, everything I had ever felt deprived of in my life, the place where all my lurching opportunism had led me, and yet…

And yet…

“May I help you?” said a woman who approached me on the Polo Room terrace, as polished as the brass, with a freshly ironed suit that belonged behind the front desk of a grand hotel.

“I’m just poking around,” I said.

“Only members are allowed to poke, sir.”

“I used to be a member.”

“Then you used to be able to poke.”

“I might have been a little young in those days.”

The woman’s smile suddenly widened into officiousness. “How, then, may I help you?”

“I’m looking for Mr. Willing. I called his house and was told he would be here.”

“I believe Mr. Willing is in the Grill Room. Is he expecting you?”

“I would think so,” I said. “He must have figured I’d show up at some point.”

“If you wait on the terrace, I’ll see if he is available. Who can I say is here to see him?”

“Tell him it’s Jon, Jon Moretti, with two
t
s.”

“Very good. Would you like a complimentary drink while you’re waiting?”

“That sounds about right,” I said with a wide smile.

I sat on the terrace with my gin and tonic, watching the foursomes make their way across the eighteenth fairway and the holes beyond. As a boy, I had seen in these fields a thrilling landscape of heroic deeds and dark adult secrets; now I knew it to be just another golf course. I had sliced my ball out of bounds on better. And the clubhouse wasn’t the fabulous Shangri-la of steak, french fries, and Coca-Cola of my youth. After what was apparently a recent renovation, the place looked like nothing more than your usual four-star resort, with its plush furniture, its arranged flowers, its utter lack of mystique. I remembered old chaises where the aristocracy of Philadelphia had lounged, the stodgy locker room with its ancient metal lockers where the richest barons in the world had changed out of their knickers and golfing shoes. I remembered Olympus, not something where all that was required to get past the front door was a credit card.

I took a sip of the drink, quite good, tangy and bracing. The glass was beaded with moisture even as I remained cool in
the breeze, which seemed right. In this place the drinks did the sweating instead of the members. I took a longer sip, felt the cold of the tonic wash through me. This could have been my life, sitting here, drinking this, the ice so clean, the limes so fresh. If my father hadn’t deserted us, that would have been me leading the caddie along the pristine fairway. That would have been me taking my wedge and neatly splashing the ball out of that deep trap. That would have been me making the six-footer for par. Fat and flushed and pale all at once, in plaid pants with a white belt, that would have been me. Satisfied with all he had been given, married to a Biddle or a Wister or a Chew, with no secret darker than a fudged score on the tricky par five or an awkward tryst with the polished assistant club manager.

Never before had I realized how much I hated the game of golf.

“Mr. Moretti?”

I looked up at the woman in the pressed suit, her hands clasped in front of her, her smile forced.

“If you’ll follow me, please.”

“Absitooviley,” I said, before polishing off my cocktail.

She led me back through the halls of the club, down a set of stairs, past still other rooms into which I hadn’t poked, until she led me into an elegant boardroom with a long inlaid mahogany table and a number of overstuffed leather chairs.

“This is the Founders’ Room, Mr. Moretti.”

“Of course it is.”

“Can I get you another cocktail while you wait for Mr. Willing?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I have enough to drink in as it is.”

The Founders’ Room was decorated with old photographs of the club, pictures of golfers in their plus-fours posing poststrike, of fat men in overcoats and hats smiling next to a horse-drawn carriage, of the crowds on the course for the epic 1939 US Open. Here it was, the grand legacy of the club’s history, laid out as if an object lesson placed upon these walls just for me.

The photographs vividly demonstrated the club’s primacy in the history of America’s aristocracy. And even from its immodest start in 1890, there had always been a Willing at its core. As I gazed at the photographs, one after another, I had no doubt that the pictures were populated with my ancestors, well fed and prosperous, blithely self-satisfied, at ease in their entitlement: William Willing and Montgomery Willing and Peter Willing and Montgomery Willing II, and my great-grandfather Edward R. Willing, and my grandfather Montgomery Willing III. But there would be no celebratory pictures of me. I might be Jon Willing in Patriots Landing, but here, at the Philadelphia Country Club, I was Moretti to the core.

“Yes? Hello? You asked for me?”

A man stood in the doorway, old and lean and ferocious, his gray cardigan buttoned, the pleats of his pants crisp. White hair well trimmed, eyes blue and clear, nose straight, lips thin and turned down in perpetual disapproval. I stared at him and felt my emotions rising. It was as if the knot that had been in my stomach the moment I walked into the club tightened, squeezing out the moisture in my eyes.