Forced Out (25 page)

"I don't know what I'd do to the next one. I really don't. And I got people who'd help me do whatever I decided to do, too. You know? Not just Paulie. There's others. You know that, don't you?"

She nodded.

This was what he was trying to tell her. The real reason he'd roused her from a sound sleep. "The only things I would ever blame you for are screwing around on me behind my back and leaving me. I'd never forgive you for those things, Karen. If I came home one day and you weren't here, or I found out you were screwing somebody, I'd go crazy. You know?"

She nodded again.

His fingertips tightened on her delicate chin. "I mean it," he said, his tone turning tough.

"Do you understand me? Do you
fucking
understand me?"

"Yes," she said quietly, not trying to escape his fingers despite how tightly he was clasping her.

"I hope so because my boys would help me track you down. We'd never stop until we found you." He shrugged, like once the process had started it would be irreversible. Like there'd be no room for explanations or second chances when they found her. Like Marconi shrugged when he gave out a warning. Quiet but chilling. "And it wouldn't go well for you when we found you." It was something he'd heard Marconi say, and he loved how scary it sounded.

"No." Her voice was barely audible. "I'm sure it wouldn't."

"You can't blame me, can you? After all, I'm a man," he added lamely, "an
Italian
man. If you ever left me, I'd find you and I'd kill you. It's that simple."

"I know."

"I've taken care of you," he kept going, "I've given you a good life." He gestured around the dimly lit room. "I mean, look at this place. Look at all the nice things you have. And you were on welfare when I met you."

"I know. You saved me, you rescued me. You gave me a chance, a fresh start. I'll never be able to repay you. But I'll always be true to you."

Treviso hesitated. He liked how submissive she was being. It was turning him on. "You sure you understand me, Karen?"

"Yes."

"
Very
sure?"

"Very sure."

"Everything I've said?"

"Everything."

He let go of her chin and caressed her cheek gently. "All right, then." He lay down and pulled her close, wrapping one arm around her shoulder. "I'm glad we talked. Now we can go to sleep. Now
I
can go to sleep."

A few moments later Karen rose again so she was over him, so their lips were close.

"Did you really do that, Tony? Did you really kill that man who came on to me in the car?" Her voice had turned husky. "I mean, I heard you did, but I never really knew for sure. And I didn't feel like I could ask you," she said, sliding her soft inner thigh over his leg. "Because you always told me not to ask you about exactly what you do. So, did you?" she asked again when he didn't answer, running her fingernails down his stomach ever so slowly. Moving her thigh even farther over his. "Tell me." Treviso stared into her burning eyes, feeling himself becoming incredibly aroused.

"Yeah, I did."

Then she was over him and he was inside her and they were going at it like two crazy teenagers in the back of a station wagon.

27

R
OSARIO USUALLY WOKE at seven in the morning like a rooster on steroids. Singing and shrieking her soft-as-a-rose-petal bottom off. Then she drank an entire bottle of formula, ate a mush mix of prunes and apples or something else equally as unappetizing-looking, pooped like a human five times her size, ate more mush mix, teeter-tottered around the house in her drunken-sailor-hands-at-her-ears-just-learning-towalk walk, and pooped again. By eight o'clock she was back in her makeshift bed in Cheryl's room taking her first nap of the day. It all happened before Cheryl left for work

--which made Jack very happy. He was coming to love the little girl very much. He just wasn't much for the nuts-and-bolts stuff involved with taking care of infants--feeding, changing, entertaining. For God's sake, he hadn't been like that with his own flesh and blood. How could Cheryl expect him to be like that with Rosario?

Generally, he took the last fifteen minutes of the first morning shift, albeit grudgingly. Managing to crawl out of bed and trudge to the kitchen by quarter to eight so Cheryl could at least have a few minutes to herself before leaving the house. It wasn't a bad stretch of duty because it mostly entailed simply sitting at the kitchen table in his boxers, faded scotch-plaid bathrobe, and white socks and sipping a hot cup of coffee while he watched the baby teeter-totter around. All he had to do was make sure Rosario didn't pull anything breakable off tables or walls and smash it. Which would have been pretty much impossible at this point because they'd moved anything that wasn't nailed down off the tables and taken down everything hanging on the walls from three feet up all the way down to the floor so she couldn't get to them.

Jack liked to say they'd raised their standard of living since Rosario had arrived, because everything that had been anywhere within her reach was now higher up. Cheryl didn't seem to find that amusing. Probably, Jack figured, because she did the lion's share of caring for Rosario and therefore the lion's share of protecting their breakables. She was even coming home at lunchtime to make sure the baby was all right--and to get her fix. Taking a long time away from the office in the middle of the day, which worried Jack. They needed Cheryl's income now more than ever, and he could only assume that her boss wasn't happy about the two-hour-plus lunch breaks.

He'd finally told Cheryl what had happened, that he'd lost his job at Publix. It had been pretty obvious after a week. But probably because they had Rosario, Cheryl hadn't seemed as upset as he'd anticipated. Probably because she knew that if he was still working during the day, they wouldn't have been able to keep her. Money was going to be a real problem soon, but neither one of them had brought it up yet. The state trooper who'd begged Jack to take Rosario "for a few days" at the accident had never called. Though, to be fair, they'd never called him, either. Once in a while Cheryl got frustrated with the constant responsibility of motherhood--the way any new mom would--but Jack could tell she'd also become permanently attached to the little girl. That it would kill her not to have Rosario in her life. So he'd never made the SOS call. He did check the local newspaper's metro section every day for any stories about a little girl being missing. It had occurred to him that they could be arrested for kidnapping at this point--a minor detail that could land them in the state pen for ten to twenty. But nothing had ever appeared in the press. The guy in the Mustang must have ultimately bought the story about the little girl dying in the crash along with his wife. Just like he'd wanted. The bastard.

Biff hadn't called with a live situation yet, either. Hadn't called with an opportunity to steal some poor old person blind when he or she was most vulnerable. Which was good

--and bad. Jack owed MJ six hundred bucks. And he'd owe him another four hundred on top of that in a few days. Cheryl's thin cash reserves were quickly draining away, and his earnings as an usher were meager. Bottom line: they were staring at an imminent cash crisis. He needed money terribly, but he didn't want to do a terrible thing to get it. What Biff wanted him to do was worse than terrible, it was evil. But he couldn't take a day job

--which would have solved their money problem--because of Rosario. Someone had to be home with her. And they didn't want anyone else taking care of her, didn't want to have to deal with prying questions about who she was and where she'd come from. As it was, Jack felt uncomfortable with Bobby knowing the little girl was with them. Sooner or later he'd start asking why Rosario was still around.

As he'd been lying in bed late last night watching minutes pass like hours on the digital clock sitting on his nightstand next to pictures of Cheryl and David, waiting impatiently for morning and his chance to call the Elias Sports Bureau, Jack had convinced himself he was still a good man. Convinced himself that his momentary self-doubt at the stadium last night in front of Lester had been unfounded, and that he really was trying to unlock the mystery of Mikey Clemant for pure reasons. That he was trying to understand what was going on with the Kid because he wanted to see a young man with so much talent have a chance at the big time. And for the big time to have a chance at a young man with so much talent. That he was doing it for the love of the game. Not for money, not even for retribution. That he wasn't doing anything just because he felt poorer now than he ever had in his life. That he wasn't being driven by the gut-wrenching fear of suddenly being destitute.

He rubbed his face as he shuffled down the hallway toward the kitchen. Wiping sleep from the corners of his eyes as he moved slowly ahead. Thinking hard about what he'd do if Biff called, how he'd feel about himself if he yielded to the temptation. Well, then he'd have no choice but to accept the fact that he was a bad man. A
very
bad man.

"Hi, honey," he said gruffly, moving toward a fresh pot of wonderful-smelling Vermont roast--his favorite. She was so good to him. She always made certain he was taken care of, even with Rosario in their lives now. "How are you this morning?"

"Fine."

Cheryl was feeding Rosario her second helping of morning mush, and her back was to him. "You okay?" Her voice sounded funny, and she usually trotted over before he started pouring his coffee and gave him a big good morning hug and a kiss on his cheek. Maybe she and Bobby had a fight last night. How great would that be? Maybe his luck was suddenly changing? It seemed like it had been nothing but rotten for four years. Maybe the law of averages was finally catching up. "Princess?"

"I'm fine, Daddy."

Jack poured a cup of coffee, putting his head slowly back and taking a deep breath as the warm, pleasing aroma rose to his nostrils. "What time did you get home?" he asked, taking a cautious sip of the steaming liquid. Almost instantly he felt his hands beginning to shake and a buzz permeating his entire body. But it wasn't just the coffee bringing on the sensation. It was anticipation, too. The hope that the call he'd make to New York in a few minutes would unlock the Mikey Clemant mystery.

He assumed the Elias offices would be open by nine, so he had only a little more than an hour to go. Only a little more than an hour before he might be able to get his hands on the 1968 May and June Yankee box scores to see if his memory had served him right. He'd already made his deal with the devil on this one. If whoever he spoke to at Elias confirmed that the company had the data but that it was going to cost him to get it, he'd pay. Then do Biff's bidding--and make restitution later. "Princess?"

"I got home around four, Daddy," Cheryl answered, picking up Rosario's plastic dishes and taking them to the sink. "Keep an eye on her for me, will you?"

"Sure." He began to unbuckle the baby from her high chair as Cheryl walked away.

"Wait a minute," he murmured, the possibility hitting him hard. "Be right back, kiddo," he called over his shoulder to the baby, hobbling down the hallway after Cheryl.

"Daddy!" Cheryl grabbed a towel off a rack and quickly wrapped it around herself when Jack appeared at the doorway to her tiny bathroom. She'd been naked from the waist up, washing her face. "What are you doing coming in here like this?"

"Let me see your face," he demanded. She was turned away from him, positioned so he couldn't see her image in the medicine cabinet mirror, either. "Come on, Princess."

"No."

He grabbed her arm and tried to turn her. "Cheryl!"

"Get out of here, Daddy!
Get out!
"

"Look at me, Princess."

"No. Let me run my own life, Daddy. Stop running it for me. Stop keeping me all to yourself."

Jack could hear the baby beginning to wail from the kitchen. The little girl took her cues now from the woman who had become her mother. "Princess, I just want to--"

"Get out!" Cheryl shrieked, finally turning to face him.
"Get out or I'll leave right now
and I won't ever come back!"

Jack staggered back several steps. Red blotches covered her neck. Fingerprints. Bobby's fingerprints. His hands had been wrapped tightly around her slender throat last night.

"I'll kill him," he said, gasping. "And I don't care what the cops do after that."

"You won't go anywhere near him."

"I can't let him do this--"

"It's just sex, Daddy."

Jack turned his head and winced, like he was watching Rosario's mother burn on that dashboard again. The image of Cheryl being abused by Bobby was almost as bad.

"Princess, please don't--"

"He's a little rough sometimes. But it's nothing I can't handle."

"It'll get rougher and rougher," Jack warned. He'd been a witness to this same scenario a long time ago. Had a front-row seat to this same horror show when he was a teenager. This was exactly how it had started with his father and mother. And it had only gotten worse and worse until finally his mother had "slipped" one night in the bathroom when he was fourteen--and never opened her eyes again. A terrible accident, the police called it. Which couldn't have been further from the truth. But what was he supposed to do?

Turn in his father? "One night you won't be able to handle it, Princess. One night it'll get too rough. You gotta believe me."

"I love Bobby." Cheryl's voice was shaking, and there were tears perched perilously close to the edge of her lower lids. "I love him so much, Daddy. I'm going to give him everything he wants, everything he needs."

"He doesn't
need
to take advantage of you. He doesn't
need
to hurt you."

"He's not hurting me!" she yelled, grabbing her hair with both hands and pulling hard, like the conflict raging inside was driving her insane. The towel fell to the floor. "He loves me."

"Just let me talk to him, Princess," Jack begged. He wanted to tell Cheryl what had happened to her grandmother, how she hadn't really slipped on that bathroom floor so many years ago. The real reason he hadn't gone to her grandfather's funeral. "Just talk. That's all I'll do." He bent down, picked up the towel, and held it out for her. "Please." Cheryl grabbed it and wrapped it around herself again, then pointed a shaking finger at him. "If I find out you talked to Bobby, even
tried
to talk to him, I'll leave you forever. I'll take Rosario and leave, and you'll never find us."