Lola on Fire Page 17

  It took forty minutes, not twenty-five, to reach Terracotta Avenue. There was a silver Toyota Sienna in the driveway of 1516—no Colts pennant in the window—and a Smart car parked behind this.

  “You think she still lives here?” Brody asked.

  Molly nodded, using her crutch to point at the ramp leading to the front door. “I guess she bought another minivan since the Google car zipped through the neighborhood.”

  A Hispanic man with deep eye makeup answered the door. He looked Brody up and down, and regarded Molly with a softer expression.

  “Is Renée home?” Brody asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “Family.”

  He looked doubtful, but flitted away. Moments later, Renée rolled into the hallway. She didn’t get far before stopping, tires squeaking on the hardwood. Her jaw dropped an inch.

  “Brody,” she said, and he detected the tightness in her voice. “I’ve only ever seen you in photographs, and the last one I saw was nearly thirteen years ago.”

  Brody had nothing. He opened his mouth, but . . . silence.

  “And Molly,” Renée said. “Your mother lost sleep for you, praying for you. And look at you now. So beautiful.”

  “Hello, Renée,” Molly said.

  Renée smiled, and Brody saw what Reverend Mathias must have all those years ago, and what had shone through in those old photographs. An unassailable beauty. A deep and penetrating kindness.

  “Come in,” she said. “Come in, come in.”

  * * *

  Renée’s caregiver, Manuel, he with the eye makeup, brought them sodas, then left them alone. Renée led them onto the rear deck. “You can never get too much fresh air.” A wonderful old maple provided shelter from the afternoon sun.

  Molly sat with a sigh. She dropped one of her crutches. It clattered to the deck and she left it there—flapped a weary hand at it—then plucked a near-empty strip of pills from her purse.

  “Baclofen?” Renée asked.

  “Yeah.” Molly popped two into her palm and gulped them. “Lioresal.”

  “Me, too,” Renée said. “I can’t wilfully move anything south of my boobies, but sometimes my legs do the funky chicken. It’s the darnedest thing.”

  “God bless pharmaceuticals.”

  “Amen.”

  “I’m on antidepressants, too. Lexapro. And Motrin for the pain.”

  “Celebrex here, and Prozac. Also, stool softeners and anticonvulsants.”

  “Where,” Molly said dryly, “would we be without the miracles of modern science?”

  “And how are you paying for these miracles?” Renée’s gaze switched between Brody and Molly. “Excuse my bluntness, but you look like you just hopped out of a garbage can. I assume you don’t have insurance.”

  Brody squirmed in his seat. “I, um . . . we . . .” He looked at the maple, leaves peeling from it in the breeze.

  “I had a part-time job,” Molly said. “In Rebel Point. It wasn’t much money, but it helped.”

  “Right, and we had savings,” Brody added. “Dad’s savings, mostly. And we sold his car—”

  “Which didn’t cover the lien. Upside down, they call it in the car business. But we sold some of his other possessions—power tools, his vinyl collection, his stereo—and when the money ran out, Brody robbed a convenience store.”

  A crow called from the maple’s high branches, accenting its pitch as if to question Molly’s statement, if not her audacity. It was met with a silence that begged for someone to fill it. At length, Renée did.

  “I guessed you were in trouble. Why else would you come here? But back up a moment.” Renée made a rewind gesture with the forefinger of her right hand. “Your dad’s savings? His possessions? Did something happen to him?”

  “He died,” Molly said.

  “Oh my.” Renée pressed the same forefinger to her lips. “He wouldn’t have been very old.”

  “Fifty-four.”

  “I’m so sorry. That’s just . . .” Renée shook her head. “Cancer?”

  “Suicide,” Molly said.

  “Really?”

  Something in the way Renée said this—a bleakly curious tone, rather than one of surprise—triggered an uneasy feeling within Brody. He might have dismissed it, but her further questioning didn’t help.

  She asked, “Do you mind if I ask how?”

  “He jumped off a building,” Molly replied.

  “He jumped?” It was doubt, not curiosity, in Renée’s voice now, and Brody didn’t like it, not one little bit.

  The crow called again and the maple’s branches clattered as it flew away. That uneasy feeling settled close to Brody’s heart. Renée gripped her armrests—clearly bracing herself—and asked the same question as Reverend Mathias.

  “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  * * *

  Molly had told Brody on their short hike from Bayonet to Elder that this was on him. You own this shit, she’d stormed, and Brody intended to. It would have been easy to paint himself in a less damning light while relating events to Reverend Mathias, but he hadn’t. He’d recounted his sorry tale with candor, shouldering the responsibility for his errant actions. He did the same with Renée. “I fucked up,” he began, and started to tell her how he’d tipped his and Molly’s precariously balanced world into the shitter. He added no filler, no shine, and paused only twice—once to take a long drink of soda, and again after mentioning Jimmy Latzo for the first time.

  “I knew it,” Renée said.

  “What?” Brody asked.

  The kindness in Renée’s eyes faded, replaced with a knot of deep thought. Dark lines crossed her brow. Her irises flicked from side to side, as if she were viewing many things—incidents from her past, perhaps, replayed in clear and startling snapshots.

  “Are you okay?” Molly asked.

  “Yes, I . . .” Renée exhaled from the depths of her lungs. She blinked twice—coming back to herself—and looked at Brody. “Carry on.”

  Brody did, hesitantly to begin with, and with a set of questions tumbling through his mind. They tailed a notion that there was more to this, and that his part in it was relatively minor. Distracted, he stumbled through, still with candor, describing the fear and anxiety—looking over their shoulders every mile of the way, outrunning Jimmy’s goons in Bayonet, dumping his old shitbanger and riding bus after stinking bus across the Midwest—before finishing on a sweeter note: their meeting the Reverend Wendell Mathias.

  “He sends his fondest wishes,” Molly said to Renée. “I think he still misses you.”

  “Wendell,” Renée said. The kindness returned, not just to her eyes, but to her entire body. She sighed wistfully and appeared to expand in her chair. “Reverend?”

  “He was pardoned in 1999,” Brody said. “Found his calling with the church.”

  “He’s the reason we’re here,” Molly said. “In fact, we didn’t know you existed until he told us.”

  “Right,” Brody said. He took another sip of his soda and leaned forward. “Why wouldn’t our mom tell us about you?”

  Renée hesitated, then shrugged and looked down at her hands. “I was a part of her old life. The life she ran away from.”

  “We are the life she ran away from,” Molly said.

  “No, sweetie.” Renée shook her head. “This was before you came along.”

  “Before?” A shallow crease appeared in the center of Molly’s forehead; she was lost in thought, but not for long. “Her name was Lola,” she said suddenly. Her eyes brightened and she sat up straight. “Byrd or Blythe. Right?”

  “Did Wendell tell you that?”

  “Kind of. He thought he had Mom mixed up with someone else. It was a long time ago, but he said he was usually good with names.”

  Renée offered a small smile. “Bear, not Byrd. Her name was Lola Bear.” She sat back in her chair and spoke her next sentence with an icy suddenness: “You may have been followed here.”

  The notion that there was more to this
deepened, but it was too big for Brody to grasp. He pushed against it. “That’s not possible. Jimmy’s guys jumped us in Mississippi but we lost them. I told you that. Then we dumped my car, dumped our phones. We rode buses and used cash. We’ve been careful.”

  Molly must also have sensed something bigger at play, but didn’t push against it. She asked, “What’s going on, Renée?”

  Renée’s jaw tightened. She drew her shoulders in again and watched a leaf skate across the deck. “How much do you know about your mother?”

  The sunlight shone through the rustling leaves of the old maple. Renée started talking, and by the time she stopped, it was close to dark.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At the height of his influence and infamy, Jimmy Latzo had twenty-six people on his payroll. They ranged from personal assistants, lawyers, and crooked cops to soldiers and enforcers. When a “situation” needed attention, Jimmy liked to go in strong, and he only hired the best: the most accurate shooters, the smartest negotiators, the deadliest fighters. Lola Bear ticked every box, and a few boxes that Jimmy hadn’t considered. She joined his ranks in 1991.

  “It was highly irregular—hell, totally unheard-of—for a woman to be on the front line,” Renée said, adjusting her position in the wheelchair. “But your mom was special.”

  “She worked for Jimmy Latzo?” Brody’s voice hit a rare pitch, reserved for his most disbelieving of statements. “She was a . . . a fucking mobster?”

  “No,” Renée replied. “Jimmy was the mobster. Lola worked for Jimmy. There’s a difference.”

  “One degree of separation,” Molly noted. “How did she get involved in that?”

  “She fell in love,” Renée said. A faint smile pinched the corners of her mouth. “His name was Vincent Petrescu, and he was everything to your mom. Her world entire, as the poets might say. She met him at the Western Penn 3-Gun, and it was Vincent who introduced her to Jimmy.”

  “I’ve got so many questions,” Brody said. The uneasy feeling in his chest had turned into a cold hand. It squeezed and let go, squeezed and let go. “I don’t know where to begin, but . . . who is Vincent Petrescu, and what the hell is the Western Penn 3-Gun?”

  “It’s a shooting tournament. Three different types of firearms. Rifle, pistol, and shotgun. Whoever hits the most targets in the shortest time is the winner.” Renée spread her hands, as if the outcome of this competition were never in question. “Lola won by a considerable margin. Vincent finished second.”

  “Who was he?” Molly asked.

  “One of Jimmy’s most trusted soldiers,” Renée said. “He was capable, strong, and he respected your mom. A lot of guys in the life treated their women like shit. But not Vincent. He was a gentleman.”

  Renée cleared her throat. She sipped from her glass and breathed the air for a moment. Her dark hair, shimmering white at the roots, moved lazily in the breeze. Brody and Molly looked at each other deeply, if only to see something familiar, something they knew to be true.

  “Your mom started running errands for Jimmy,” Renée continued. “She told me, on one of the few occasions she talked to me about that part of her life, that she only did it for the money. That may have been true, but there was more to it. Lola had a solemnness about her, a certain . . . coldness. I think working for Jimmy warmed her in some way.”

  “A coldness?” Molly frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “She rarely showed emotion,” Renée said. “She hardly ever laughed, and I never saw her cry. Everything was repressed, pushed down deep. Any psychologist in the world would point to her childhood, which was extremely tough.”

  “How so?” This was Brody.

  “Lonely. Lacking. Abusive.” Renée shrugged. A sad light touched her eyes. “Lola’s father was killed in Vietnam, three months before she was born. Chloe—Lola’s mom—struggled in every way imaginable. She took handouts, worked multiple jobs, sometimes leaving Lola at home—six, seven years old—so that she could earn enough money to put food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. They were hard times. Then Chloe met Mav Hamm, and they only got harder.”

  Molly glanced at Brody, all this information—these truths—passing across her face, evoking an expression he’d never seen before and couldn’t quite name. A reddish leaf tumbled from the maple, landed in her hair, where it fluttered for a second, then blew away.

  “Lola’s stepdaddy, Mav Hamm.” Renée lifted one eyebrow, as if the name alone were cause for mistrust. “Or Maverick Cooper Hamm, if you want to be formal about it. He was a nasty piece of work—a mean, shitty human being—and he shut down everything worth nurturing inside Lola. He may have even killed some vital part of her. But he brought something to life, too. Something dangerous.”

  More leaves swirled across the deck, brushing over the tops of Brody’s sneakers and against Renée’s legs. One caught beneath the hem of her jeans and tapped uselessly against her ankle.

  “I mentioned that your mom rarely showed emotion,” Renée continued. “That’s true, but I don’t want you thinking that she was emotionless. Believe me, she had everything inside her. It just took a long time to come out. But when it did, when she felt something, she felt it furiously. That worked for love—Vincent Petrescu is proof of that—but it also worked for hate. For rage.”

  The cold hand inside Brody’s chest squeezed tightly, and didn’t let go for a long time.

  “What did she do?” he asked.

  “She beat Mav half to death,” Renée replied. “Put him into a coma.”

  “A coma?” Molly repeated, her voice reaching a higher octave than usual. “Jesus Christ.”

  “He came out of it eventually, but . . .” Renée shook her head, as if to suggest that things were never quite the same for Maverick Cooper Hamm. “The crazy thing is, Lola was only eleven years old at the time.”

  Molly sat back with such force that her chair nearly tipped over. Brody had to reach to steady it.

  Renée finished her drink and said, “It happened like this.”

  * * *

  Chloe met Mav at the Lycoming County Fair. She’d taken Lola, then nine, because it had been months since they’d spent any real time together, and she had a few dollars in her pocket from the extra shifts she’d pulled at the car wash. Mav had been shoeing a pony, and afterward had handed Lola a brush and invited her to groom the pony’s mane. She did, working carefully, with smooth, gentle strokes. “Nice and easy, girl, that’s the way,” Mav had said. “Say, Mom, I think you got a natural here.” He’d looked at Chloe and winked and something inside her had fluttered in a way it hadn’t for many years. He was not all the way handsome, Chloe thought. He had a chipped front tooth and a squint in one eye, but his voice was barrel-deep and his chest looked large enough to curl up on. Chloe made a point of passing by the pony pen later that day. She got talking to Mav. He was funny and charming. She saw depth in his eyes. He took her for dinner at Bello Italiano three nights later.

  It was all peaches and cream for the first few months—holding hands, tender promises, long walks in the park. The warning signs only appeared after Chloe had confessed her love for him, although she didn’t view them as warning signs at the time. They were more like . . . mannerisms, the curious traits of the Y chromosome. He had started to pinch the tender skin at the back of Chloe’s arm to get her attention, and to switch the TV show she was watching over to whatever sport was playing. Yes, these boorish quirks were frustrating, and yes, Chloe believed she deserved more respect. But Mav was good to her in other ways. He put new brakes on her car, always paid when they went to the movies or to dinner, and bought Chloe her very own Steelers jersey to wear on Sundays.

  Besides, Chloe mused, no relationship was perfect. No honest relationship, at any rate.

  Mav hit her once before they were married, but only because she’d stepped out of line. They’d been drinking at their local bar with Mav’s friends, and Chloe had suggested Mav slow down just a bit—jeez, did he want to spend the night sleeping on
the bathroom floor again? Just a joke, was all, and they all laughed, Mav hardest of all, but when they got back to Chloe’s place, he socked her cleanly in the eye. Chloe sagged against the wall, holding her face in her hands. “Don’t ever disrespect me in front of my friends,” he’d snarled. “Take heed, Chlo, that gun was about one-quarter cocked. Next time, I’ll take your fucking head off.”

  Chloe nodded and cried, partly at the pain, mostly at the miserable surprise of it all. That was the first time she’d been hit by a man that wasn’t her daddy, and it was scary. She slept on the sofa that night—except she didn’t sleep, of course; she lay awake with a bag of frozen peas pressed to her left eye, thinking it all through, and with a little perspective she concluded that she had disrespected Mav, and that was silly of her. Mav came down the following morning and she pushed a stack of strawberry banana pancakes in front of him—his favorite—and kissed his forehead and told him she was sorry.

  Meanwhile, Lola drifted in the background, silently registering every degree of abuse. She was always a quiet girl—contained, Chloe often thought of her—but had become particularly subdued since Mav arrived on the scene. This didn’t change, even when they moved into Mav’s ranch house in Salladasburg. It was a nice place, if a little run-down, with a huge yard for Lola to run around in, and sometimes the cows would dawdle down from Clemons Farm, lift their big heads over the fence, and chew the tall grass on Mav’s land.

  “Isn’t this a wonderful place to live?” Chloe asked her daughter, which was her way of skirting around the real question: Do you like Mav? Lola didn’t reply, but the stillness that came over her, and the ice in her eyes, was all the answer Chloe needed.

  She and Mav were married in July 1978. Things were better for a while—Mav showed flashes of his old charming self—but by Thanksgiving the bloom was truly off the rose. The little pinches that Mav administered to get Chloe’s attention became harder and meaner, and left welts that didn’t fade for days. On the plus side, the cold weather allowed Chloe to wear clothing that hid the bruising on her legs and throat, and when friends saw the broken arm that Mav had given her for Christmas, she explained in her best oh-silly-me voice that she’d slipped on the ice.