Jack be nimble, or be dead

Mob Rule: Part 24

They’d been playing me, but why they bothered I didn’t understand. If they knew I was working both sides why all this subterfuge, pretending they wanted me in their conspiracy. President? The only thing I was going to have in common with Lincoln and Washington was being dead.

By John Armstrong

Vanessa must have been waiting right outside the door. She came in and sat down, looking a little bit wary, or maybe cautious is the better word, like someone investigating noises in the basement. If she expected some kind of eruption from me she’d have to wait. I was still trying to find a way to grab hold of reality and climb back on as it went whirling past me.

I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach without warning. I couldn’t breathe and my sense of time went screwy, everything gone into a sort of dreamy, slow motion but at the same time my brain was racing, a hundred miles an hour. It was the exact same feeling I remembered from the only serious car accident I was ever in, that dislocated sensation of watching it happen from somewhere outside the real world.

Bobby said, “Now don’t jump to any conclusions, Jack. This isn’t what you’re probably thinking.”

“You have no possible idea what I’m thinking,” I replied. I was very careful to keep my tone even. I was afraid of what I’d do if I didn’t. Confusion and shock were quickly fading and now I had a ball of rage in my stomach like burning gasoline. Rage and embarrassment – followed by something I can only call complete despair. Like an idiot I’d told her everything and if she was with them, then they knew it all.

They’d been playing me, but why they bothered I didn’t understand. If they knew I was working both sides why all this subterfuge, pretending they wanted me in their conspiracy. President? The only thing I was going to have in common with Lincoln and Washington was being dead.

I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her. I didn’t think I’d be able to stay in my chair if I did.

“I want to know what’s going on. What’s she got to do with this?” I wasn’t able to keep the anger out of my voice this time.

Joe raised his hand. “Settle down, settle down. Vanessa is the daughter of an old, trusted friend of mine. I met her father when I was ambassador to Britain, before this whole mess started. We wanted to feel you out, see how you thought, and frankly, get an idea of what kind of man you were.” He stopped for a moment. “After all, we haven’t been very close these past years, have we?”

“That wasn’t my doing,” I said, feeling very cold.

“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “It was mine, and I regret it.” He looked every minute of his 80-some years then, and I didn’t feel sorry for him at all. He’d earned every bit of whatever sorrow he felt. I waited to see if he had anything else to add but he didn’t and that about sums the old bastard up – his idea of an apology is one where he tells you how bad what he did made him feel.

Bobby said, “Vanessa was already here at NYU and it was the best way for us to sound you out. Her father suggested it, in fact.”

Vanessa said softly, “I was supposed to make your acquaintance and see if I could get to know you, at least well enough to get some idea of where you stood and if you could be brought in on the plan. Then everything else happened …” She looked at me with the beginning of tears in her eyes, which made me laugh and felt like battery acid in my throat.

…I waited to see if he had anything else to add but he didn’t and that about sums the old bastard up – his idea of an apology is one where he tells you how bad what he did made him feel.

I was at full boil now. “This gets better and better – she bats her eyes at me, lifts her skirt and then tells you, oh yeah, he’ll turn on the people who took him in. Nice work – we’ve got a name for women like you.” That got her crying properly, and the sight made me happy and feel even worse at the same time.

“Shut up, Jack.” Bobby was angry now, too. “Shut up and listen before you make a bigger ass of yourself. So that you know, she told us to forget recruiting you, that you were too loyal to Costello. It wasn’t until this last week when things changed – bear in mind who called who looking for a place to land.”

“I thought it would be a lark,” she said, sniffling. “How exciting, meeting a real gangster boss. But you’re a good man, Jack. That’s why I fell in love with you, and then I was worried to death about what would happen with you on the other side of this.” Vanessa was balling a tissue in her hands, scrunching it up and picking at it until it was shreds in her lap. I remembered my mother doing that at the kitchen table, crying, when I’d done something to break her heart as all boys do.

I wanted to shake my head and see if it helped any. My mind was going in a dozen directions at once, a blur of what-ifs, and I was still waiting for any mention of why I was really here. I was braced for it like a man on the scaffold.

Could they possibly not know? That would mean only one thing: She hadn’t told them. It didn’t seem likely but any chance is better than none and in the interests of long-term health and for lack of anything else close to a good idea, I decided to brazen it out and stick to my story.

“Okay, okay. Why did you call her in here, then?”

“She wanted to get everything out in the open,” Bobby said. “The girl loves you and she didn’t want to keep secrets any more.”

I ground my cigarette out and lit another. I needed to talk to her and find out what she was up to – the problem was, could I take anything she said at face value? Was she conning me, them, or the bunch of us? I had no way of figuring that out right now. What I wanted to do was get out of this room and talk to her alone.

“Look, this is a hell of a lot to throw at a man in one sitting. I don’t know what I think about any of this. How about giving me some time to get my head sorted out?”

“Take all the time you want, before these men leave tonight,” Joe said. “Things are already in motion and we don’t have time to waste.”

Bobby said, “Ten o’clock?” and Joe nodded. They all looked at me.

“All right – ten o’clock, then. I’ll meet you back here.”

I got up to leave and Joe said, “I think you’d better stay on the grounds until then. Just so you don’t lose track of time.”

I stood up and nodded to the rest of them and headed for the door, then stopped at Vanessa’s chair where she was still torturing that piece of tissue. I held out my hand and she started bawling again, but she took it. In the hallway she flung her arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. Whatever she was trying to say came out in fractured hiccups between the boo-hoo-hoo’s. That’s really what it sounded like, too. Boo-Hoo-Hoo until she had nothing left in her lungs, then a big gasp for air so she could start again.

“All right, come on, come on. It’s okay,” I said, moving her down the hall away from the door. By the time we got to the stairs she was burbling softly and still having little hitches and heaves but mostly recovered.

“I thu-hot-hot you’d hu-hay-hate me.” I got my hanky out and gave it to her and she blew her nose loudly. Her makeup was smeared and dripping, she had stuff running down her nose and her eyes were swollen. She looked beautiful, and I really wondered about my sanity.

I got my hanky out and gave it to her and she blew her nose loudly. Her makeup was smeared and dripping, she had stuff running down her nose and her eyes were swollen. She looked beautiful, and I really wondered about my sanity.

“Well, I don’t but I really want to know what’s going on. You didn’t tell them?”

“I cu-huh-huh- hudn’t!,” she said. “They’d have ki-ki-kil …” That got her going again, like a sick locomotive. I put my arm around her and kept her moving with ‘there, there’s” and all the other things you say to someone when you have no idea what to say. If she was faking she was damn good at it but then again, women are much better at that kind of thing than men. Regardless, I believed her. Call me a fool but I couldn’t see it any other way. If she’d saved my skin for some still unknown purpose I couldn’t begin to guess what it was. It was simpler to just take her at face value and the truth was, if I was wrong about her I was probably already dead and if I was right, my chances weren’t a whole lot better. I got her down to my room and put a drink in her hand.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

It was my day for surprises and for some reason this one hit me more than the others. I could handle being asked to join an underground conspiracy, I could shrug it off when they asked me to help lead the coup and then serve as president, I could even find out my girlfriend was a secret agent of a foreign power, but when she asked for a smoke I had to sit down.

“Huh?” I said, my all-purpose conversational fallback, it seemed.

“Oh, I quit the damn things but I really need one. This damned country – everybody smokes everywhere. It’s impossible. In Britain there’re so few places you can legally have one almost no one does anymore.” She said this while accepting one from my pack, then leaned forward and drew on it with the fluid skill of experience when I held my lighter out.

She sat back and took a deep drag, letting the smoke meander out of her mouth with contentment.

“Better?”

“Lots, thanks.” She took another, then “Oh, shit Jack. What are we going to do?”

“About what?” I asked her. She choked and began coughing. When she got it stopped she said, “About what? About all of …. this!” and she swept her hand to include the whole of the house, the compound, the Eastern seaboard and for all I knew, Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga.

“For starters, I’m going to keep on with my job and see where this leads. These guys are playing a very dangerous game. If it was just about money, we could work with them, negotiate something. But I think they really believe it’s a holy crusade and that scares me to death. But what about you? What are you going to do?

She took another drag and then crushed it out in a candy dish.

“I’m going to stick here with you. They trust me and we can use that.”

…Throughout history, when people talk about how much they love their country and why they’re only doing something for the good of the people, that’s the signal to load your gun and put your watch in a front pocket.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “Your father sent you here because Britain is somehow in on this with Joe and Bobby. I’m going to shut them down if I can. What are you going to do about that? Tell him you changed your mind and threw in with the Mob? Or are you just trying to save my neck but still overthrow the Bosses?”

She reached for the pack and lit another with my lighter. “I’m going to figure that out later. I don’t much like your system of – it’s not a government, really. I don’t know what to call it – a benevolent dictatorship? But I think I like your grandfather far less.”

“It’s hard to think of anything that Joe would be an improvement on,” I agreed. “And I really think there’s more here than we know. Throughout history, when people talk about how much they love their country and why they’re only doing something for the good of the people, that’s the signal to load your gun and put your watch in a front pocket.”

She tapped some more ash into the dish. “That’s what my father says – don’t trust anyone who wraps himself in the flag.”

“He sounds like a smart man.” I was picturing him as a little grey-suited fellow, a policy guy in one of their ministries, or maybe even a minister himself.

“He’d better be,” she said. “He’s the Prime Minister.”

Mob Rule is a work of fiction, serialized exclusively in The Ex-Press. This was Jack be nimble, Part 24. To read past instalments, click here.