Chapter 24

If people on the street were turning on their lights Carol didn't see it. That would have meant turning her head, diverting her focus from home... home and her razor.

She kept blowing the whistle.

Something was nagging at the back of Margo's consciousness... something she was hearing... something that meant... her eyes widened.

"Nicki, stay here, something's wrong."

She grabbed her purse with its mini-arsenal courtesy of Eddy and dashed out the door.

As she made it down the steps and to the street, she saw Carol running towards her, blowing the bobby whistle. The small woman barreled past her and up the steps, barely getting the door open before she was through it.

"Nicki... we were... attacked... call 911... cops and ambulance... the park... 45^th & Garwood... the swings..."

Margo had followed her in and heard her message. Carol ran for the bedroom. Nicki sprinted for the stairs, heading to her room and her cell phone.

Carol came out, straight razor in hand and flew out the door. Margo was getting into her car.

"C'mon, this'll be faster. And I've got an emergency kit in the back."

Together they drove off towards the park.

Somewhere in the high-speed drive to the park, a drive that felt endless, even compared to the run back to the house that Carol had despaired of ever completing, she felt Margo leave.

One minute, her lover, Harry's wife was there, and then she wasn't.

The person who replaced her was someone Carol had never seen before.

"Carol, get me the kit from the back floorboards. Yes, that's the one. Just hold that on your lap until we get there."

They were approaching the park and Carol saw this new person swerve, aiming not for a parking place, but for the heart of the park itself.

"Hold on, this could get a little rough."

With a thud that jarred her and tried to bounce her into the ceiling, a scraping sound that reverberated throughout the interior of the Volvo like a scream of pain and another, lesser, thud, the car was over the curb and into the park itself.

"Carol, where are the swings?"

"Uh, to the left... there, past that water fountain, see them?"

"Thank you. Go into my purse; get out the stun gun or the pepper spray, whichever you feel comfortable with."

Whoever this new person was, she was smart enough to know that one of Carol's hands would be busy with her razor. She pulled out the stun gun, putting the strap around her left wrist.

The car's lights were flipped to high beams as they approached and the brakes were gently applied. In the illumination provided, there was only one figure, slumped in a heap on the ground beneath the swing. The car came to a sudden stop and as this new and unknown person leapt out with the kit she grabbed from Carol's lap she said "Cover me."

Carol took a look at the figure on the ground. There was far too much blood. There seemed to be gallons of it. He was soaked in it, and as she felt the panic start to rise in her chest, she forced it back down and looked in every direction but at him, looking for any threat. Finally she looked briefly over at her Master and Mistress, bathed in the harsh light from the car, both now covered in red.

"Carol," the stranger said, "it looks like whoever did this is gone. Nicki and Kelly will be here shortly. Keep them away from here. They don't need to see this and we don't want the crime scene contaminated any further."

"Ma'am... is he..."

"He's alive... I'm hoping I can keep him that way."

The next several hours passed in a blur. Nicki and Kelly got to the park and she was forced to hold both of them back. The police arrived, the EMT's pulled up and everyone was in a blur of motion except for them. They stood there, dazed and helpless at the periphery and watched the maelstrom. There was nothing for them to do. They were bystanders.

The ride to the hospital was an absent memory, a hole in time. Carol remembered being in the park, and then she was in the waiting room, holding on to Nicki and Kelly.

Carol knew she talked to people... made phone calls, spoke to the police, gave a statement... but she couldn't remember anything concerning details.

The stranger who had replaced Margo had disappeared, along with her beloved Harry, and Carol found herself left in the position of dealing with everyone and their questions and she didn't have any answers other than the obvious.

No one had shown up to tell her that Harry was dead. Therefore he was alive.

She held on to that as a life-preserver in a storm-tossed sea.

Nicki appeared... lost... as if she'd been deprived of something vital that somehow defined her place in the universe. Kelly slumped beside her, despair and pain crashing off of her in waves. It was as if Kelly was already grieving for him, as if he were already dead.

Karen and Patricia arrived. Karen looked as if she were some ancient Goddess of War, preparing to unleash her fury upon the world. Patricia appeared to have been crying, and as soon as she had spoken with everyone there, she went to the hospital chapel.

Despite the voice mails she'd left on Eddy's phone, there was no sign of him and Tamara.

All anyone would tell her was that Harry was still in surgery.

The news crews and newspaper reporters showed up at some point in the early morning hours and Karen ran interference, making a brief statement, with Carol's approval, that Harry was still in surgery and that none of them had the slightest idea what had prompted the brutal attack in the park. She refused to let anyone speak to Carol, for which Carol vowed to love her forever. Several of the media vultures thought about trying to get past Karen but one glare from her seemed to convince them that it wasn't worth it to try. Karen had actually smiled when relaying that part of the story.

And still there was no word from or sign of Eddy.

By around 4:30 in the morning Karen had had enough.

"Kelly," she said, to no response from the nearly catatonic girl. "Kelly," she said again, a little more forcefully, bringing Kelly's face up to hers. Kelly looked back at her with eyes red and swollen. "You've been to Eddy's new place, right?"

"Yeah, took Tamara there to pick up their clothes."

"Can you find it again?"

"Yeah, I'm a delivery driver... it's what I do."

"Come on, I'm driving, we're gonna go find him. This is goddamn ridiculous."

"Karen?" Carol said.

"Yes sweetie, what is it?"

"Please don't let him do anything stupid."

Karen nodded grimly and then Carol watched her and Kelly leave as if from a great distance. She was simply glad someone else had made a decision about something.

At some point the media must have made another stab at talking to her because she heard Patricia say "I told them I didn't care if their bosses wanted a statement from the other person involved, they weren't going to get anywhere near you."

Carol looked around the waiting room. They were far from the only inhabitants. It was like all of them were floating in a small bubble of suffering, dread and frustration. Hospital security might be keeping them safe from outside interference or bother, but the only way it could be done was by locking them inside a private hell.

Good news rarely happened in the waiting room itself. Good news happened with family and friends gathered round the patient. Good news happened where recovered patients were wheeled out to their rides.

Here there was little but the agonizing 'not knowing'.

As she watched, an elderly Indian or Pakistani couple stood up as they were approached by a doctor, who then spoke with them in low tones, a look of commiseration plain upon his face. Carol saw a couple's lives forever altered... maybe destroyed. The woman just collapsed in upon herself, like a building that had been gutted by fire and was finally falling down. The man fared a little better. He recoiled as if struck some great blow in the face, staggered back a bit and then found his footing again, still standing even if on legs no longer anywhere near as steady as they'd been before. As the woman began to wail, softly, as if afraid to disturb anyone with her grief, he bent and helped her back up into her seat, where he wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly Carol was afraid one or the other of them would break.

That was what happened in waiting rooms.

Carol felt overwhelmed by a growing certitude that soon she too would be one of those two archetypes of suffering, the person felled by tragedy or the one left to hold things together no matter how much they wanted to die.

All she had to hold onto was that no one had come to tell her he was dead.

"Yes, buzz Mr. Janak's apartment. I know it's late, it's an emergency. Tell him Karen Pinard needs to speak with him and it's urgent."

Faced with a determined Karen, the rent-a-cop in the tiny guard shack made the call, more out of fear than any sense of duty.

Within minutes the gate was rolling back for her and Kelly.

As they parked and got out they saw Eddy and Tamara standing in their apartment door in their bathrobes.

"What? What's happened?" Eddy asked sleepily.

"Why haven't you answered your phone or returned any of our calls?" Karen replied, heading for him angrily.

"The phone ain't rung."

"You turned it off"

"Bullshit, I never turn it off. I can't because of work."

"Well find it and find out what the fuck's wrong with it, we've been calling you all night. Harry and Carol got jumped tonight. Harry's in the hospital, still in surgery when we left there. Carol wasn't hurt because he made her run for help."

A tremor of pain washed down Eddy 's features. Tamara clutched his arm, afraid of where this news would lead him.

"I'll go check the bowl on the table, that's where he always puts everything from his pockets."

A moment later from the kitchen, "Not here."

The next five minutes were a mad search for Eddy's phone until finally he stalked in from the parking lot with it in his hand.

"It must've slipped out of my pocket on the way home. I didn't notice. Damn thing was sittin' on the seat of the truck." He stomped back into the bedroom and came out dressed a few moments later. He dialed a number on his phone and put it to his ear.

"Carlos? Yeah I know what gawddamn time it is... I don't give a goody gawddamn. I need the residential address of a Dr. Benjamin Sapperstein. No, I need it right now, I'll wait."

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Karen asked.

Eddy looked at her, incredulous. "What the hell do you think I'm doing? I'm gonna go kill the little rat turd right gawddamn now."

Tamara and Kelly said "NO" simultaneously as Karen shook her head. "I can't let you do that, Eddy."

"Give me one gawddamn good reason why not? Yeah, I'm still here waitin', Carlos, come on, I ain't got all fuckin' night."

"I'll give you three. One, we're not sure it was him. I agree," she said, forestalling the cry of 'Bullshit' she could see rising in his throat, "that it's probably him, but we're not absolutely sure and if you go killing him without a plan tonight, you'll probably get caught and it'd fucking suck to watch you get that final injection. Two, if it was him, he probably already knows what went down tonight and he might be expecting something to happen. Anybody who watches this group for long, or does their research, wouldn't have a hard time predicting certain responses, like you charging off like a berserk Viking. Three, Carol asked me to not let you do anything stupid and rushing off to kill him tonight, no matter what else it may be, certainly qualifies as 'stupid'."

"Sorry Dyke, checked my 'give-a-shit' meter. Didn't even fuckin' twitch. Cocksucker is goin' to meet God tonight."

"You're gonna have to go through me to do it," Karen said, taking a stance and preparing to try and stop the big man.

"And you're going to have to go through me to get to her," Kelly said, tears rolling down her face, moving into position in front of Karen.

"And through me to get to Kelly," Tamara said, her small form slipping in-between Eddy and Kelly. "Please sir, don't do this. I can only begin to understand how you feel right now, but storming off and doing something rash won't wash your guilt away. It won't change what's already happened tonight."

"Eddy, think," Kelly said, "I'm not saying you don't owe Harry your loyalty and that you don't have the right to end the bastard, if he's the one responsible, but you can't be dumb about it. You've got Tamara now, someone has to take care of her, and you can't afford any kamikaze acts of vengeance."

"You're sure that's the address, Carlos? Okay, I got it." Eddy shut off his phone. He wiped his hand across his face. "Then what the fuck do you expect me to do?" The tears began to run down his cheeks. "What the fuck am I supposed to do?" The big man fell to his knees and brought his hands down on the floor of the apartment so hard that it could be felt through the concrete slab and they all heard the bones in his hands grinding together. "Don't you understand? Somebody's got to do somethin'! I've got to do somethin'!"

Karen came around, squatted down and took him by the hand. "You do just what the rest of us are doing. You come to the hospital and pray like a motherfucker. And if it turns out that something needs doing, you and I will go do it together, carefully, with a plan, doing our best to make sure our loved ones don't lose us."

As Karen drove back to the hospital, Eddy listened to his voice mail, to the messages his best friend had left him, shame eating his soul with every word. A thousand times he'd picked up the phone for nothing more important than casual conversation. Now, when lives were on the line... he listened to voice mail.

Tamara sat beside him, feeling the tension in his body ratchet up as he listened to Harry's messages. She'd never seen her man in so much pain before, not even in the throes of his nightmares.

In the distance, a million miles away, she heard Eddy's voice.

"Carol, I'm so sorry, the cell phone got left in the car... he left me a message... said he was bein' followed..."

Then Tamara was there, holding her, and Karen was there telling her that she'd take care of everything for awhile, that Carol should just try to rest and that Tammy was going to take care of her. She watched Karen take a sobbing, broken Eddy over to one of the unoccupied couches and hold him, trying to comfort the friend and guardian that had, through no fault of his own, not been there when he was needed. Carol knew it wasn't Eddy's fault.

She knew it was hers. If she'd had her phone, if she'd had her razor... the fault was hers.

It was 6:12 AM when the stranger who wore Margo's skin came into the waiting room, her face a picture of fatigue, moving as if sheathed in lead. She had taken barely five steps when Karen was up and helping her to a chair.

Carol found herself sitting beside her without remembering moving.

"Unless any other surprises pop up, he should live-"

A chorus of sighs exhaled around her.

"But he's not out of the woods yet. I'll leave out the medical jargon," she said, something that might once have thought about being a smile crossing her face.

"We debated removing his lacerated... fuck, it was shredded... kidney. We think it'll heal, we hope it'll heal... if it doesn't, we'll have to go back in and take it. Multiple stab wounds, they tried to slash his throat, missed the carotid and the jugular, thank God, sloppy of them really, must've been in a hurry. Nothing else terribly serious hit besides the kidney and his lung, the lung should be okay now. It's just that he was stabbed so brutally, big knife."

"We spent a long time just finding all the places he was leaking inside. Lots of blood loss, lots of blood pumped back in. He kept trying to die on us... four resuscitations in one surgery is four too many... it's just that he was bleeding from so many places internally. It's a goddamn miracle he stayed alive till we got to him in the park... only a slightly lesser one that he lived till the EMT's got there."

"C'mon Margo," Eddy said, his voice broken and teary, "you oughta know by now, Harry's like me, he's a cockroach... he's fuckin' near impossible to kill."

"Thank God he is, Eddy.

"Broken collarbone, broken arm in two places, cracked and broken ribs, broken leg in three places, a right knee that's just all fucked up... that's waiting for an orthopedic surgeon. I'm afraid he's going to be here awhile, even if everything goes well from here on out.

"We know he bit one of his attackers because when I got to him he still had a chunk of tissue in his mouth... police have hopes that the DNA will match someone in their data base.

"He's still in ICU, but provided his body behaves and doesn't try anything nasty, they'll be moving him to a room later today.

"Eddy, I've already insured that the people handling his care are all people I trust implicitly. I don't think any of the hospital staff could be suborned into making a 'mistake' but I'd rather not run that risk. I'd like you to make sure there's someone watching him all the time, unless one of us is there with him, and then I want them outside his door."

"So you're thinkin' what I'm thinkin'... that this is your douche-bag husband's doing?" Eddy said, his face clouding with rage.

"Well, the motive wasn't robbery, and you don't ever see that kind of violence in our neighborhood just for the hell of it, so yeah, I'm thinking it could be."

"Well, you ain't heard all the gawddamn news. Harry spotted somebody followin' him, bringin' Short Stuff here" he ruffled Nicki's hair, "home from the airport. He tried to get in touch with me" the big man visibly swallowed back tears, "but I'd accidentally left my cell in the truck. So if you add in someone followin' him, I'm almost dead certain it was him."

Eddy leaned in close to Margo his voice a whisper.

"Lemme get hold of Perry and Bevy, get them on their way over here, and I'm'a gonna go kill the sumbitch."

Margo moved her head close to Eddy's.

"Eddy, you're going to do no such thing," Margo replied, her voice low, icy and hard.

He looked at her, his own barely repressed fury animating his features.

"Without talking to the men who attacked Harry, we can't be sure. You're not going to go kill someone if we're not sure. And I wouldn't want you doing it, even then. If something happened and you ended up in jail, or God forbid, on death row... I couldn't live with that, and Harry couldn't either."

"I've heard that argument once already tonight and besides, you didn't get that picky when we was roughin' up Rick!"

"Because 'roughing up' isn't killing him and even if it was, there's a hell of a lot of difference in the amount of attention paid to the murder of a dirtbag drug dealer versus a well-known cardiologist! Face it, Eddy! The cops take an interest when rich white men die! Especially if his mother, Nelda, starts banging the war drums over the demise of her precious and perfect little Benjie!

"Trust me, please... I have a plan, alright? Please, Eddy, just trust me. You sit tight."

The two of them sat, nose to nose, glaring at each other. Their fierce conversation had been barely audible to anyone other than those immediately surrounding them.

Eddy leaned back. "Alright, I'll be patient. But I won't be patient forever."

"I'm not asking for forever, Eddy... just a couple of days."

And then the stranger, calm and cool, that had replaced the woman they all knew departed and all that was left was an exhausted woman who'd almost lost her beloved. The shaking started in her hands and soon encompassed her whole frame.

As she allowed herself to be held by family and friends she kept murmuring through tears "there was so much blood".

As the newspaper and local morning news programs ran with the story of the successful local businessman brutally beaten and stabbed in a neighborhood park late the previous evening, people started arriving.

Tatiana was the first, showing up straight from a night in her workshop, singed and bedraggled and carrying a large wicker basket.

"I didn't know how many of us there would be, but I brought coffee from Constantine's. It's a little Greek bakery near my place... coffee to kill close relatives for," she said as she opened the wicker basket and started distributing cups and pulling out thermoses. "And if we run out, I'll send someone for more."

Anna Pessino and her entire family arrived with food and hugs and tears and support and prayers of thanks when they heard that Harry should pull through.

Margo took a suite of rooms at a nearby hotel that did a lot of business with families who wished to stay close to relatives in the hospital. She left word with the hospital receptionists that anyone and any calls for them were to be directed to their suite and the whole party made their way over to the hotel. The team that was handling Harry's care had her utmost confidence and she knew the last thing she needed to do was be standing behind them, second-guessing them every step of the way. It was hard, but after the surgery she had opted out of treating him. They had her cell number and the best way to make sure she stayed out of their hair was to stay away from the hospital, at least until he was out of ICU and into a private room.

Leaving Eddy and Tamara, who'd had more sleep than the rest of the family, in the sitting room to handle things, Margo, Carol, Kelly and Nicki crashed on the bed and were out within minutes. Shortly after a rollaway bed was brought up by housekeeping, Karen and Patricia joined them in slumber. Tatiana, assuring them that if she could sleep through Peter's petulant slamming about the house she could sleep through anything crashed out on the couch in the sitting room and shortly thereafter proceeded to entertain everyone still conscious with a virtuoso snoring performance.

The Pessino family, after being reassured for the umpteenth time that should anything change, or should the family need anything, they'd call them, left, leaving behind enough food to feed a regiment.

"Sir, are you going to stop blaming yourself for this any time soon, or should I go wake up Margo and have her hurt you severely?" Tamara asked Eddy as they sat, absent-mindedly munching on some pork empanadas.

The man who gazed back into her eyes did so through a countenance of broken glass.

"I fucked up, Theresa... I fucked up and Harry fuckin' near died."

"Yes, Edward, you fucked up. I fucked up. So did Carol... she blames herself for this, not you, I know, she told me so. I'm sure Margo and Kelly are finding ways to blame themselves for it as well. And we both know Harry will be blaming himself for it when he regains consciousness. It was none of our faults, in truth, but rather the fault of the men who did this, but we both know we're all going to take our turns beating ourselves up over it.

"But Edward, trust me... your turn is over. Now you need to think how best to make sure nobody finishes the job that was started on Harry. You've got Perry and Bevy watching him in shifts, Margo's got only people she trusts seeing to his medical care, as she strongly suspects her husband is behind it. But who's watching Margo, who's watching Carol? Who's watching Karen and Patricia, you and I?"

"Yeah... yeah, you're right..." he said thoughtfully, "it's kinda fuckin' obvious Margo wasn't the direct target... Carol and Harry were. Makes sense in a twisted-fuck kinda thinkin'. Best way to hurt her is to take them away from her. Whether or not we're in danger, or Karen and Patricia are, or whether he'll now get pissy and turn his sights on Margo, depends on just how squirrelly he is... is he going to continue to push this? Lash out at anyone close to them that he can get to? Or is he a little cooler and calmer than that, gonna lay low and let things chill for awhile?"

"That's good Edward, you should be thinking about that instead of hurting yourself because you failed. You and I both know, even if it was your fault, and your fault alone, Harry would forgive you. Now, what can we do to keep everybody safe?"

The two of them sat with their heads together, talking for a long time.

The employees of Grimes & Pinard started showing up, some with flowers, some with donuts or croissants, some just with best wishes and moral support. They assured Eddy and Tamara that whatever Margo and Carol needed, they had only to call. Over the course of the afternoon every single employee of the firm showed up, with the exception of Rhonda, the receptionist, who sent her best wishes and a fruit basket and said she'd be by as soon as she could but that she figured there ought to be somebody constantly at the office, no matter what.

Through it all, Tatiana snored away on the couch, and the rest of the family slept in the bedroom. Where dreams might normally have visited them, the stress of the night before had so exhausted them all as to render their sleep peaceful, deep and undisturbed.

By 6 PM everyone was awake and feeling somewhat better. Margo had called the hospital and found out that Harry was still in ICU. Evidently he'd started bleeding internally again so they'd opened him back up and found three places that needed repairing. He was still unconscious.

As they all sat around, nibbling on the bounty that had been left by well-wishers, there was a knock on the suite door. When Eddy answered it, a large man in a suit moved through the door like he owned the room, scanned the room and its occupants and then stuck his head out the door.

"Looks to be clear inside, sir."

Then he moved out of the door and Nick Philouma came in.

"Margo, I heard about Harry. If there's anything I can do, please don't hesitate to let me know," Nick said as he hugged her before turning to hug Carol.

"Actually Niccolo, there is something you can do," she said in a voice so cold it cut straight to his bones. "When you're through greeting Carol, the two of you come to the bedroom."

A few moments later they joined her, Carol closing the door behind them.

"Are you a fair and just man, Niccolo?"

"I'd like to think I am. I know that there are situations in which I'd have more problems than I would in others, maintaining a fair and just outlook, but overall, I'd say I am."

"Then what you can do for me is grant me justice. Find the men who hurt my husband. Find out why they did it. And give me justice."

He went over and sat down next to her, taking her hands in his.

"Margo, this whole ordeal has been a nightmare for you that I can't begin to imagine. You're not thinking clearly and in my opinion you've watched 'The Godfather' one too many times. The police have taken Carol's statement; they've got another witness who gave them a description of the van. Soon they'll be able to talk to Harry, get his statement. They'll get these guys, the legal system will do its job... hell, I'll bet you, what, five grand, here and now, that Harry'll be up and about in the short time it'll take them to find these shits and he'll be testifying at their trial. They'll go away for a long stretch."

"No, Niccolo, the police won't find them. You know, probably better than anyone in this room, what percentage of crimes goes unsolved. And the longer they go unsolved the lower their priority becomes. The police aren't going to catch them and even if they did, I can almost certainly guarantee you that they'd be represented by a very good attorney who just happened to take an interest in their case for reasons unknown. On the flip side, it doesn't look like this will be a murder case so the prosecution would probably be handled by a junior District Attorney whose lack of enthusiasm would only be matched by his lack of experience. The system would not work.

"Give me justice. You asked me to let you know if there was anything you could do... give me justice."

"Alright, since you're determined to replay this movie scene, you don't want justice, you want revenge."

"No, Niccolo, that's where you're wrong. I want justice.

"You have the resources to find them. Without the law shackling your every move, you have the ability to get at the truth. No forced confessions, no leading questions... the truth.

"Then you follow the truth where it leads you. I suspect it will lead you to my estranged husband, Benjamin Sapperstein. But I don't know that for a certainty. If the truth doesn't lead you to him, I'll be surprised, but not upset. I don't want to believe anyone I know would be capable of arranging this.

"But at every turn, I want you to follow the truth and let it guide you. Then let your sense of fairness and justice steer your actions once all is revealed. You dispense justice as you see fit.

"Then you come tell me everything... every little detail. I'm placing this in your hands, but I'm not washing my hands of the responsibility. You will tell me, and only me."