Lola on Fire Read online

  “He hurts you,” Lola had said, which surprised Chloe, because her daughter rarely acknowledged Mav, let alone spoke about him. This had been on the afternoon of Lola’s eleventh birthday. She and Chloe were eating chocolate cake in the kitchen. Mav was in the yard, changing the exhaust on his Ford truck.

  Chloe had covered her mouth and felt a pang of hurt deep inside. Hurt and shame. She managed to say, “He does a lot of good things for us.”

  “Can he do those things without hurting you?”

  “Everybody’s different, Lola.” This wasn’t an answer. Not even close. “Eat your cake.”

  Lola did, and said no more. She went about her day-to-day in her usual solemn manner, but over the next couple of months Chloe logged a certain change. Her daughter would sporadically emerge from her containment, and always with unwavering focus. She read novels in a single sitting, smashed rocks, climbed tall trees. She spent all of one Sunday afternoon chopping wood, and didn’t stop until both hands were blistered and bleeding. Lola even started a conversation with Mav—a rare phenomenon, indeed. “Do you know,” she said across the dinner table, looking him in the eye, “that the human skull is made up of twenty-two pieces? It’s like some crazy jigsaw puzzle.” And Mav had wiped gravy off his chin and said, “That a fact?”

  The snow melted. The trees wore pale green at the tips of their branches. Mav watched the Pirates play their preseason games and swore at the TV a lot. One night in late March, Lola walked out to Mav’s toolshed and selected a hammer from its place on the rack. It was the one he’d used to shoe the pony that day at the county fair. It wasn’t too heavy—about the right weight for a purposeful eleven-year-old—with a blunt, square face and a squat claw. Mav called it his spanging hammer. Lola held it at her side and walked out of the toolshed, across the yard, and into the house. She went through the side door so she wouldn’t have to pass through the kitchen, where Chloe was making corned beef sandwiches for Mav’s lunch the next day—because how could she know that his days of eating solid food were behind him? Lola walked into the living room and crossed to Mav’s armchair. He was too absorbed in the baseball game to notice her. Without breaking stride, she raised the spanging hammer and rang the blunt, square face off the side of Mav’s skull. “Christ that?” he blurted. His muddy eyes rolled and a rivulet of blood raced from his hairline. He looked giddily at Lola and she spanged him with the hammer again, this time impacting his right cheekbone so deeply that his eye sagged in its socket. He sneered and tried getting to his feet but his legs noodled beneath him. “Oooh,” he said, and dropped to one knee. Lola rapped the hammer off the top of his skull—right in the middle of the jigsaw puzzle—and she felt some of the pieces separate. Mav’s entire right side started to jitter. The blood didn’t trickle, it poured. The last coherent words he ever spoke were “Willie Stargell at the plate,” then Lola whopped him again and this was lights-out.

  * * *

  Birds called across the neighborhood, the first verses of evening song, and the sunlight had deepened to a coppery pink belt in the west. It was reflected in Brody’s eyes.

  “How do you know all this?” he asked.

  “Chloe died at forty-eight. Breast cancer. She spent the last five weeks of her life with her sister—my mom—and I visited most days. I’d take her her meds, read to her, puff up her pillows, and in return she shared her story.” Renée blinked and wiped her eyes. “I learned a lot about my Aunt Chloe during that time, and even more about Lola.”

  A stillness fell between them, with each lost to their own complicated emotions. It continued until Manuel brought out Renée’s meds in a small plastic cup, along with a glass of water. “Five minutes,” he said, and wagged his finger theatrically. “Then you come inside; it’s getting cold.”

  “Yes, thank you, Manuel,” Renée said, spilling the meds into her palm. “We’re nearly finished here.”

  He nodded and clicked his Fitbit. “It’s five twenty-seven. I leave soon.”

  “Okay.” Renée smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Ten a.m.” Manuel turned and headed toward the house, but before going inside he called over his shoulder, “Five minutes. Cinco.” He flashed five fingers and closed the slider behind him.

  Renée downed her prescriptions and sipped her water. Molly, in camaraderie, dug Motrin from her purse and took it dry. Their eyes met. They shared a smile.

  “I wish we could have met under happier circumstances,” Renée said, looking from Molly to Brody. “But I’m so happy you’re here.”

  Molly reached across, clasped Renée’s hand, and held it with a meaningfulness Brody couldn’t remember seeing before. He knew then that he would continue this wild journey—wherever it took him—on his own.

  He needed more information, though. We’re nearly finished here, Renée had said to Manuel, but Brody thought they were just getting started. There were so many questions left unanswered, so many blanks to fill in. He looked at the darkening sky and wondered where to begin, and it was Molly—always Molly—who led the way. How would he manage without her?

  “What happened to Mom?” she asked, still holding Renée’s hand. “You know . . . after Mav?”

  “Cormorant Place happened,” Renée replied, turning her face to the colorful old maple. “It’s still there, right in the heart of Lycoming County, and if you visit their website it still professes to be a juvenile care facility. But it is now and has always been a psychiatric hospital for children.”

  Brody had an image of doped-up kids playing Connect 4, eating mashed potatoes with plastic spoons, watching non-stimulating TV—Little House on the Prairie, maybe—on a small set bolted high on the wall.

  “How long was she there?” he asked.

  “Just over three years,” Renée said. She slipped her hand from Molly’s and eased back into her seat. “She was discharged in August of 1982. That was when I first met her. We’d been living in Oregon, but moved back to Pennsylvania when my dad lost his job. I was thirteen at the time, crushing on Simon Le Bon and playing Atari. Lola was only a year older, but you’d think she came from a different planet. Her hair was short and scruffy, her skin was pale. She’d never heard of Magnum, P.I. or Duran Duran or Pac-Man. I’d talk to her but . . . there was nothing.”

  “Poor girl.” Molly winced and stretched out her left leg, kneading the muscles in her thigh. “But things got better, right? She got better.”

  “Eventually,” Renée said. “I like to think I had something to do with that. I saw her all the time—we lived twenty miles from each other—and it was good for her to be around a regular, happy kid. That was Grandpa Bear’s idea. He was a smart old fella, and he was the real reason Lola . . . developed the way she did.”

  “Grandpa Bear.” Brody dragged a palm across the stubble on his jaw. He might have laughed if he wasn’t so tired. “Sounds like something from a fairy tale.”

  “It does. And he was kind of mythical.” Renée took another sip of water. The glass flashed in the evening sunlight. “Frankie Bear. Lola’s grandfather on her daddy’s side. He used his influence to get Lola out of Cormorant Place.”

  “His influence?” Brody frowned. “Was he a mobster, too?”

  “He was in the military,” Renée said. “A decorated war veteran. Wars, actually—one of the very rare individuals to have served in World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam.”

  “He saw combat in ’Nam?” Brody asked.

  “Not directly. He was a general, one of Westmoreland’s crew, then he stuck around to help train the ARVN. He came home in ’72 and opened a shooting range in Altoona.”

  “You think he’d be sick of the sound of gunfire,” Molly said.

  Brody said, “Maybe it gets comforting after a while.”

  “Maybe,” Renée said. She looked at the old maple again, then continued. “Chloe went off the rails after what happened with Mav. Alcohol. Antidepressants. She declared herself unfit to be a parent and Frankie took guardianship, then pulled the strings to ge
t Lola out of that god-awful hospital. Good for Lola, but good for Frankie, too. He’d lost his wife in a traffic accident in the late fifties, and his only son was killed in Vietnam. Lola was all the family he had, and he cared for that little girl with every piece of his heart.”

  “Why didn’t he help before?” Brody asked. “When Mom was a little kid, and Chloe most needed help?”

  “He did,” Renée said. “He sent money on occasion, and dropped off a bag of groceries whenever he was in the neighborhood. It was never much, but Frankie was a hard-nosed old dog, and he believed that Chloe fending for herself would make her stronger. He was the same with Lola. To say he raised her tough is the understatement of the century.”

  Brody thought of the spanging hammer looping down on the jigsaw puzzle of Mav’s skull and said, “I think she was already tough.”

  “She was tough inside,” Renée said. “But she had no skills. Frankie changed that. Now, a cynical person might say that Frankie turned Lola into the ultimate trophy kid. I prefer to believe he was preparing her for all the harshness and mean-spiritedness in the world. He knew that he wouldn’t be around forever, and that Lola would have to be tough to make it alone.”

  Renée yawned, then finished her water. A breeze knifed across the deck, much colder than it had been.

  “So he gave Lola the benefit of his wisdom,” she said. “And Lola—machinelike, unaffected by her emotions—learned extremely quickly. Frankie taught her how to survive in the wild. They’d go off for weeks and live in the mountains, with nothing but a sharp knife and the clothes on their backs. He taught her how to make smoke bombs and booby traps, how to camouflage herself, how to hunt with a bow. He shared his knowledge of firearms and close-quarters combat. He also introduced Lola to Benjamin Chen, one of the most renowned Xing Yi instructors in America.”

  “Xing Yi?” Molly asked.

  “One of the martial arts,” Renée responded. “Xing Yi Quan. It focuses on swift, direct movements with explosive power. Your mom held a third-degree black sash by the time she was seventeen—a rank that can take the serious student seven years to achieve. She did it in three.”

  Brody’s upper lip twitched, the closest he’d come to smiling since arriving at Renée’s house. A memory had floated into his mind: his mom steering him toward a particular YouTube video, and the subsequent hours he’d spent striking a pillow duct-taped to a fence post in their backyard.

  “Additionally,” Renée continued, “and off her own back, Lola learned kendo, judo, and kickboxing.”

  “Holy shit,” Brody said. “It’s like The Matrix.”

  “There was nothing Hollywood about it,” Renée said. “It was bare-bones and ugly. She used to get up at four o’clock every morning and grind.”

  “That’s unbelievable,” Molly said, shaking her head.

  “And then there was me, providing some degree of ordinariness by pinning John Stamos posters to Lola’s bedroom wall and introducing her to the new Culture Club record.” Renée drifted for a few seconds, her eyes shining in the early evening light. “We had some fun. It was nice to see her emerge. But she was more interested in becoming an elite warrior than she was in being a teenage girl.”

  A fire truck howled a few blocks west and faded somewhere toward downtown. Brody thought of Tank Hill, his neighborhood in Rebel Point, where the sirens were so commonplace he failed to hear them after a while, but the gunshots always woke him at night. We’ll get out of here, he’d promised Molly—a promise, by pure bad luck, he’d managed to keep. But maybe this tranquil neighborhood, with its hushing trees and occasional sirens, might be the beginning of something, if only for Molly.

  “Lola blew the roof off everything she did. The martial arts, the shooting, the weapons combat. I thought she was some kind of superhero.” Renée brushed a fallen leaf from her lap and adjusted her position in the wheelchair again. “Then she met Vincent Petrescu, and if the first electrical storm of emotion she displayed was rage, at eleven, then the next was love, at twenty-two. My God, she was besotted.”

  Another breeze scraped across the deck. Brody cupped his elbows and shivered.

  “Yes, it’s cold, it’s getting late, and I’ve talked for too long.” Renée eased the brake off her wheelchair. “I’ll say one more thing before we go inside. Vincent introduced Lola to Jimmy Latzo. I told you that. And it was Jimmy—twisted with jealousy—who took everything away from her.”

  “He killed Vincent,” Molly said.

  Renée nodded. “Not a smart move.”

  Brody’s palms moved from his elbows to his forehead. Scraps of information flickered through his mind: Karl Janko beaten up and drowned in a barrel; his father plummeting to his death from the roof of the Folgt Building; Jimmy Latzo’s fiery collapse in 1993. The authorities suspected gang warfare, according to the numerous articles Brody had read, but there was another theory: that an anonymous soldier had been responsible. The work of one vengeful man.

  Or one woman, Brody thought.

  “I saw Lola briefly before she left,” Renée said, grasping the hand rims on her chair and wheeling smoothly toward the house. “That was the last time I saw her. I could still smell the smoke.”

  Before

  AKA Jennifer Ames/Margaret Ward

  (2010–2019)

  Jennifer Ames had lived for two years, seven months.

  She was a librarian in Little Rock, Arkansas. She had shorter, darker hair than Lola Bear, and was about fifteen pounds heavier. She wore different clothes, too. Frumpy sweaters and leggings, and cheap jewelry from Banana Republic.

  This invention of Lola’s—this middle-American calendar girl—had been at the range, and had noticed some jackass checking her out. Because of her shooting, or because he wanted to jump her bones. Lola didn’t know. But there was another possibility. Maybe he recognized her. Lola subtly pointed him out to Arlen Stoat, whom she’d known since arriving in Little Rock. “Steer clear, Jen,” Arlen warned her. “Jason Kazarian. Fancies himself a gangsta. You know, with an a. Sells shooters to street kids in Memphis.” Lola remembered that Jimmy Latzo had associates in Memphis. He was part-owner of a restaurant on Beale Street. He’d likely circulated her photograph among the criminal element. Alarm bells chimed loudly. Lola spent the next week in a state of hypervigilance—making note of suspicious persons and vehicles with out-of-state plates, and checking the backseat of her car before getting in—and just when she began to believe that she was being paranoid, Bruno Rossi came to town.

  Karl had warned her about Bruno in their final communication. “Jimmy’s new guy,” he’d said. “Fucking man-ape.” A brief but fair description. Bruno was big—six-four, packed with gym muscle that would slow him down and expose weaknesses. Lola didn’t want a fistfight, though. One bullet to center mass would do it.

  She had led Bruno to a quiet industrial street in East Little Rock, with enough distance between them that she could park up and quickly hide behind a storage crate. He’d just exited his car when Lola jumped out, leveled her Baby Eagle, and took the shot. Bruno staggered back several feet and hit the blacktop. He shrieked, clutching his midsection, or so Lola thought. In fact, he was removing his .45 from where it was secured between his jacket and ballistic vest. As Lola approached to finish the job, he sat up and fired five times at her legs (he didn’t want to kill her—oh no, that was Jimmy’s privilege). Lola anticipated the move. She rolled to her right, feeling the rounds cut through the air only inches away. In a previous life, she would have completed the move by popping to one knee, aiming on instinct, and blowing a hole through Bruno’s skull. In this life, she lacked that Jedi-like prowess. She did pop to one knee, but overbalanced, staggered, and had to plant one hand to steady herself. Another bullet rippled the air—Bruno firing behind him as he took up a better position. He got behind his car and kept low. He’d moved slowly, though. The ballistic vest had saved his life, but the impact of a 9mm round would have bruised or broken several ribs. Coupled with the fact that he couldn’t kil
l Lola, this gave her a distinct advantage.

  She zigzagged toward his car, giving him nothing to aim at, then slid across the hood in one slick movement. Bruno anticipated the maneuver, but she was too fast for him to guarantee a nonlethal shot. He used muscle instead, throwing himself at her, wrapping his thick arms around hers so that she couldn’t raise her gun. The trauma to his central mass had upset his power, though, and Lola made room to move. She simultaneously head-butted his chest and drove her knee into his groin, then freed her non-shooting hand and elbowed him in the throat. He spluttered and stepped away, sweeping his left arm downward, knocking the gun from her hand. They traded blows. Lola connected with his solar plexus and ribs, feeling the tight bind of the bulletproof vest. He answered with a punch that she blocked but that knocked her back anyway. It gave him the space he needed. Grimacing, clearly in pain, he raised his .45 and fired twice.

  The first bullet fizzed between Lola’s legs. If Bruno’s aim had been steadier, he would have shattered her left kneecap and everything behind it. The second bullet ripped across her calf. She felt the burn of it, then the warmth of her blood. It dropped her to one knee.

  “You’re not so tough,” Bruno gasped. He stepped closer, aimed at her other leg, pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  An eight-round mag. Bruno stared at his gun stupidly. Lola picked up hers. She thrust forward, close enough to plant a kiss on Bruno’s surprised mouth, and shot him point-blank in the stomach—the ballistic equivalent of a one-inch punch (she thought, dazedly, of her son, from a lifetime ago, striking a post in their backyard). Every one of Bruno’s two hundred and thirty pounds was raised off the ground. He flew backward and landed hard. Lola stepped over him and shot him in the head. His blood made a satisfying pattern on the sidewalk.