Payback Page 8

  I catch a sad shake of the head from Lenny. Gus doesn’t have a future.

  Sometimes he’s not strong enough to talk, but he calls me in anyway, just to stare at me.

  “Can you believe it, Counselor?” he mumbles to the dog. “It’s like I’m looking in the mirror forty-five years ago.”

  I have to tell him the truth. He’s given me the perfect opening. Yeah, Gus, it should be like looking in the mirror, because I’m not your son; I’m you.

  He should know. He deserves to know. And I deserve to get Torque off my back. The guy can’t very well blackmail me over a secret that’s not a secret anymore.

  I can’t do it. There’s no way to tell if Gus is even alert enough to process that kind of crazy information. Or worse, he might think I’m lying to him, betraying him. And yeah, I’m a little bit scared. People who betray Gus tend to end up at the bottom of Lake Michigan. But mostly, I don’t want to spoil the good feeling he gets out of thinking he has a son. The doctors say he hasn’t got much time left.

  “You didn’t tell him?” Amber’s eyes bulge. “Malik, what were you thinking?”

  “Shhh!” I hiss. “The last time you shot your mouth off you brought Torque down on my neck!”

  She lowers her sound level but her nagging level is still full power. “How could you miss an opportunity like that? You may never get another one! What are you waiting for? Until he’s so weak that he can’t even talk? Then how much information are we going to get out of him?”

  “We can’t even be sure he knows anything at all,” I mumble.

  “We’ll never find out unless we ask! That was the whole point of coming to Chicago in the first place! Not so you could take the gangster lifestyle out for a test-drive!”

  “You take that back!” I spit at her. “The gangster lifestyle stinks, but at least I’m not slinging beans at people who don’t know what soap is!”

  Her anger is so great that her nostrils flare, but her voice is deathly quiet. “Those people are my friends. I don’t know how they ended up in a soup kitchen. Chances are, some of them messed up; the rest were just unlucky. A few of them talk to themselves and see things that aren’t there. But you know what? They need me, and I’ve been able to add something to their lives besides a free meal. They like me, and I like them.” She adds, “Better than I like you.”

  I stare at her. She’s mad at me, and I’m mad at her. It should be a fair fight, but it isn’t. Because I’m never going to get as riled up as Laska.

  The place is a hole-in-the-wall stationery and card shop that also carries small gifts and dumb souvenirs of Chicago attractions. At this point, I don’t even notice what the stores do anymore. I don’t care if they’re repairing shoes or flipping burgers or selling cocker spaniels. It’s all the same to me.

  The girl at the counter is not much older than I am, and really cute. It might be nice to talk to her, except I know that as soon as she finds out what I’m here for, she’s going to clam up and shrink away like I’ve got Ebola. So I just mutter, “I need to talk to the owner.”

  She gets him out of the back—middle-aged, balding, kind of on the short side, another boring nice guy whose day I’m about to ruin.

  “What can I do for you, son?”

  I say the three words that I dread almost as much as he will. “Torque sent me.”

  He goes white to the ears, but it’s clear he’s been expecting Torque or someone like him. With a key, he unlocks a drawer and pulls out an envelope. I’m just noticing that it looks kind of thin, when he offers, in a trembling voice, “It’s a little light this week.”

  “Torque’s not going to like that,” I reply automatically.

  He’s starting to sweat. “Business has been slow. All those free e-cards on the internet. And my wife needs her gallbladder taken out. Insurance barely covers half . . .” His voice trails off.

  I know exactly what I’m supposed to say. Torque gave me the whole script. I’m supposed to look at the most expensive thing in the store—in this dump, it’s probably the plate-glass window in front. And my line is: Nice window you got here, pal. It would be a real shame if somebody put a brick through it. And he’d get the message that, as bad as things may be, they could get a whole lot worse if he doesn’t pay.

  I open my mouth to say it, and what comes out surprises even me. “Please, mister. Just pay. If you don’t, he’ll mess up your store and maybe you too. And he won’t let you out of one cent of what you owe!”

  The guy’s almost in tears. “I haven’t got it. My wife’s doctor bills—I’d pay if I could, but you can’t get blood out of a stone.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out a wad of bills. “Look, this is all I got. You can have it. Fifty—seventy— seventy-three bucks. Is that enough?”

  He stares at me like I’ve gone insane. I probably have. On some level, I understand that I can’t protect an entire city from Torque, but I just can’t let this poor guy fry.

  There’s a screech of tires outside and a long black limo— Gus’s limo—pulls up to the curb. Out jumps Torque, and for a moment I actually believe that he knows about this conversation and has come to beat me up for trying to show a little mercy.

  “The envelope—” I begin.

  “Forget the envelope!” he cuts me off. “Get in the car!” He hustles me out the door and into the limo. “Go!” he growls at the driver.

  “What about my car?” I protest. “I’ve got Danny’s ride parked around the corner.”

  “Leave it. We need to get back. Gus took a bad turn. The doctor says he’s not going to make it. He wants to see his ‘son,’ big joke.”

  The news hits me hard. Sure, I like Gus, but he was always just a means to an end—a guy who might have information we need. That doesn’t explain away the feeling I have—like I’ve swallowed a bowling ball and it’s lodged in the pit of my stomach.

  I haven’t experienced anything like this since the night we escaped Serenity, when I thought Hector was dead. And even that wasn’t quite the same. Hector was my best friend at the time, but we weren’t related. Okay, Gus isn’t my dad and he isn’t me. But whatever you call our connection, we’re family. To a clone, what could be more rare and precious than that?

  At the same time, I can’t let being sad get in the way of being smart. Laska and I are mixed up with some pretty dangerous people in the Alabaster organization. The only thing that keeps us safe is the fact that the boss thinks I’m his son. Once he’s out of the picture, then what? Chances are, Lenny will take over. Lenny’s a reasonable guy, and he’s always been good to me, but that might be just because Gus wants it. Can I count on that special treatment to continue without Gus around? What about the other guys like Danny and Cyrus and Torque? And how will they react if Torque spills the beans about me lying to them all this time?

  My mind spins, turning over all the possibilities and what-ifs. And the conclusion I keep coming to again and again is this: Laska and I have to get away from the Alabaster organization and out of Chicago the instant Gus is gone. I feel guilty about planning and figuring the angles while the man who gave me my DNA lies dying. But nothing is more important than survival.

  The problem is Laska is at the soup kitchen, offsetting my life of crime by slinging beans at the dregs of society. It’s no good. We need to stick together so we can take off the minute things start to go sour.

  I turn to Torque. “First we have to swing by the New Hope Soup Kitchen and pick up Amber.”

  “No can do,” is his bland reply.

  “But she’ll want to say good-bye to him too.”

  “My orders are to bring you,” he tells me. “Nobody mentioned anything about your little girlfriend.”

  I see the freeway ramp coming up on the right. Once we’re on that, we’re practically home.

  Supposedly, I should be able to access all of Gus’s famous grit and willpower and backbone. Yet when I search for the toughness to stand up to Torque, it comes not from any gangster, but from Laska herself. Wha
t would Amber do? Something wild and reckless—something nobody else would be crazy enough to do.

  I throw open the door of the moving limo. “I’m not going without Amber!”

  “Shut that door!” he barks.

  I undo my seat belt and lean out of the car as mailboxes, streetlights, and garbage cans whiz by. Shocked pedestrians point and stare.

  “Go ahead, genius,” Torque sneers. “Break every bone in your body. See if I care.”

  “It’s not if you care!” I shout, the wind roaring in my ears. “It’s if Gus cares! He’s not going to be too happy if you show up without me!”

  The driver is glancing nervously over his shoulder at Torque, unsure of what to do.

  “Keep going!” Torque orders. “This wimp hasn’t got the guts!”

  He’s called my bluff—except I’m not bluffing. I’m prepared to go full Laska and jump out of the limo. As I get ready to leap out, all I can think of is how much that pavement is going to hurt when I hit it after exiting a car doing thirty miles an hour.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and spring out the door.

  An iron grip closes on my collar and hauls me back into the limo. I collapse on the seat, gasping.

  “Crazy idiot!” Torque chokes.

  All I can manage to wheeze is a raspy, “Amber!”

  “Fine! We’ll get your girlfriend!”

  I’m way too traumatized for any feeling of triumph.

  11

  AMBER LASKA

  I used to be Serenity’s biggest fan.

  I’m not proud of that, but there it is. I bought into that honesty, harmony, and contentment phony baloney more than anybody else. If any other kid dared to say anything bad about the place, I was the first to jump all over them. Malik called me the Happy Valley cheerleader. You know what? He was right. One of the hardest parts of learning the truth about Project Osiris was this: I lost that feeling of belonging to something wonderful.

  Until now.

  The New Hope Soup Kitchen isn’t an ideal way of life like Serenity pretended to be. It never tries to be more than it is—a safe place that doesn’t judge and never threatens, where people in need can get nourishing meals while they struggle to put their lives back together. After all, you can’t look for work if you’re starving. We don’t expect to solve every problem for everybody. But we can at least ensure that hunger isn’t making things worse.

  I love the people who come to New Hope. Malik puts them down. He calls them bums and hobos and people who talk to telephone poles. This from a kid who hangs out with gangsters and fits in perfectly.

  Our customers at the soup kitchen are mostly just like you and me, only they’ve had some bad luck. Like Dietrich, who never bounced back after he was injured in an industrial accident. Or Selma, whose husband took all their money and disappeared. Or Nathaniel, who used to be an accountant until a small stroke left him unable to do simple arithmetic. There are a few who can’t find jobs after being released from prison. Okay, I only started volunteering there to balance out Malik’s budding gangster career. But my manager, Ernest, says a lot of the regulars have come to life since then. I can’t describe the warm glow that gives me. It means they like me as much as I like them.

  The lunch rush is just ending when a new arrival attracts the usual turned heads. But the buzz that greets this newcomer is more charged and nervous than usual. It’s a police officer. I’m not thrilled to see him myself. I feel so at home at New Hope that I sometimes forget I’m a fugitive from Project Osiris and the Purple People Eaters. The presence of a uniform jolts my memory in a hurry.

  Ernest rushes over to greet the cop. “What can I do for you, officer? I’m the manager.”

  “Good for you.” The policeman is all business. “I’m told this is the place to find Milo Jenkovich. Anybody seen him?”

  The clinking of cutlery is suddenly deafening. Heads bow. All attention returns to lunch. I can see Milo at the end of a long table, trying to blend into the crowd. He looks scared.

  The cop spots him too. “Long time no see, Milo. I hear you’re selling fake Rolexes again.”

  He starts forward but Ernest steps in his way. “Look, officer. We always cooperate with the police. But this is a safe place, and our clients have to know that they can enjoy a meal without fear. You’re welcome to wait for Milo outside. While he’s in here, he’s under our protection.”

  The cop is unimpressed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I really don’t see what he’s so annoyed about. Nobody’s saying he can’t talk to Milo; he just can’t talk to him in here. That’s New Hope policy.

  Ernest stands his ground. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  So the policeman shoves Ernest aside and makes for Milo.

  And I see red. The big tray of mashed potatoes is in my hands before I even realize what I’m doing. I heave it over the plastic sneeze guard, raining the entire load down on the advancing cop.

  He wheels on me, dripping slop and furious, Milo forgotten. “You’re going to regret this, kid!”

  He lunges for the counter, and that’s all it takes. Everybody in the place—including Milo—jumps up and gets a hand on the cop, holding him back.

  I’ve got a whole speech ready to deliver about respecting the sanctity of New Hope as a safe environment, when Ernest hollers a piece of advice that suddenly makes a lot more sense to someone in my situation: “Run!”

  I vault the counter, and blast out the door. As I pound down the block, I’m 100 percent convinced that I did the right thing. I have nothing to apologize for. On the other hand, that cop looked really mad. And for all I know, I’m on the wanted list somewhere. If I get us arrested, Malik will kill me—especially after all the grief I gave him about getting us in trouble with the law.

  I speed up, running hard, grateful that I’ve kept in shape. I risk a glance over my shoulder. No sign of pursuit from the cop. But—I frown—a black stretch limo is driving alongside me on the road, keeping pace.

  The smoked glass window rolls down, and a familiar voice bawls, “Amber!”

  Malik.

  He throws open the door, grabs my arm, and hauls me inside, whether I want to go or not. In this case, I want to go. Then I see Torque in the car. I still want to be there, but less.

  “Where were you running?” Malik demands.

  “That’s not important,” I reply stiffly. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  Torque peers out the back window. “There’s a cop outside that sewer you work at. Don’t suppose he’s looking for you?”

  “I kind of attacked him,” I admit.

  “With what?” Malik demands.

  “Mashed potatoes.”

  Malik stares at me, and I know he’s thinking about Mickey Seven.

  “It’s potatoes, not dynamite.” I defend my actions.

  “Take us home,” Torque orders the driver. He’s laughing his head off.

  “The doctor says Gus is dying,” Malik explains as we accelerate through the traffic. “We’re going to see him.” He adds meaningfully, “Together.”

  I nod. We’ve talked about this. When Gus is gone, we have to be gone too. He’s the only reason we’re protected in the midst of all these criminals.

  “About that,” Torque butts in. “Bryan—when you’re in there with Gus—”

  “I know,” Malik says, shamefaced. “I’ll tell him the truth.”

  “No, you won’t!” he orders in a commanding voice. “You’re the boss’s son. When he croaks, you inherit everything!”

  “You just want Bryan to inherit Gus’s money so you can blackmail him out of it!” I accuse.

  Torque casts me an approving smile. “You catch on quick.”

  “A human being is dying, and you don’t even care! He’s your boss! Where’s your respect?”

  The smile disappears. “I respect Gus because he’s mean as a cornered pit bull, and he’d whack me as soon as look at me if he felt like it. But pretty soon he’s going to be o
ut of the picture. And what we’ve got here”—he indicates Malik—“is a career advancement plan.”

  The limo wheels onto Ramsey Road, and pulls up in front of the palatial Alabaster home. The long circular drive is parked solid with expensive sports cars. The troops are all here to see the general into the next world.

  Suddenly, the shiny gold decor seems like nothing more than the out-of-date trappings of a dying empire. Gus’s suite is packed with crooks, standing around with solemn faces. At the place of honor, next to the bed, is Lenny.

  Gus looks terrible. His face is paler than the white of his sheets, and the simple effort of keeping his eyes open seems to take all the strength he has. The tubes and monitors have all been removed. Nobody needs to be told the state of this man’s health. Even the doctor is hovering in the background, a spectator. There’s nothing more that he can do.

  Spying Malik, Lenny waves us over. Big, tough Malik looks about five years old as he shuffles his way to the bed.

  Gus’s ravaged face lights up when he spies Malik. He whispers something to Lenny, and Lenny clears the room and follows everyone else outside. I try to exit with the others, but Malik grabs my arm and keeps me with him. No way he’s facing this alone. The last thing we see before Lenny closes the door is a warning look from Torque.

  When Gus finally speaks, his voice is like crackling paper. “I didn’t get to be a father for very long.”

  Even I feel bad for him, and I know for a fact that he’s one of the worst criminal masterminds ever. I can tell Malik is working hard not to cry.

  “But I’m glad we got . . . these last few days, Bryan.” The gangster has to pause and catch his breath just to manage a full sentence. “It makes this dying business a little easier . . . knowing I have a son.”

  I give Malik a quick kidney punch. “Tell him!” I whisper.

  Gus may be on the way out, but there’s nothing wrong with the old guy’s ears. “Tell me what?”

  Malik wants to strangle me, but he knows I’m right. “Gus—” A tremor in his voice. “There’s no easy way to say this. I’m not your kid.” Involuntarily, he takes a half step back. Maybe he expects Gus to call in his boys to spray the room with machine-gun fire.