By five-thirty, U.S. Marshal Smedley Allen Poindexter was wolfing down his fifth Twinkie, sitting in his nondescript sedan, bored out of his mind. That was the thing about this job-there were times when you sat for hours doing nothing but watching and waiting.
Unfortunately, Smedley had a habit of combating the tedium by eating; there was always an assortment of packaged cookies, donuts, chips, and salty snacks on the passenger seat beside him. Sometimes a quart or two of Big Red soda, which tasted just fine to Smedley even when it was warm. In the past eleven years, he had packed a total of seventy disgusting, blubbery pounds onto his already pudgy body. He now tipped the scales at a whopping 280, way too much for his five-ten frame.
The worst part of it all was that he shared a name with a certain cereal-loving pachyderm. When the Cap’n Crunch folks had come out with Smedley the Elephant decades ago, Smedley Poindexter had been a skinny boy of thirteen. Sure, he had gotten razzed because of the name, but it would have been much worse if he had been overweight. He had had other problems to deal with-acne, shyness, a mild stutter-but thank God he hadn’t been fat!
Now, however, he was fat. Way too fat. And when you’re an overweight guy walking around with a name like Smedley-well, plenty of people can’t resist a setup like that. In Smedley’s office, there was this marshal named Todd-a GQ-looking jerk-who would press his cheek to his shoulder, toss his arm in the air like a trunk, and make a trumpeting noise when Smedley walked by. Everybody just laughed and laughed at that. Including Smedley. He pretended it didn’t bother him, but he secretly envisioned bitch-slapping Todd into early next week. Smedley just couldn’t assert himself enough to tell those guys to shut the hell up. He daydreamed about it, though. A lot.
What the hell, Smedley thought, as he crammed the remainder of the cream-filled delight into his mouth. Maybe he’d start a diet next week. It was never too late, right?
With his hands free now, he twirled the radio dial. He preferred talk radio. Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, even those two goobers who yakked on and on about car repair. Those guys were pretty funny, even if they did have weird accents. Smedley found some sort of program about horticulture and sat back in his seat.
A car came bouncing down the rutted street in front of the Mamelis’ house. Could be a Mercedes. It looked kind of gray, too. Kind of hard to tell yet… nope, it was a Lexus, and it kept on going down the road.
Smedley had knocked on the door when he first arrived, but nobody was home. Looking through the garage windows, all he saw was the kid’s Camaro. So Smedley parked out on the road, a hundred yards down, waiting. A few minutes later, Sal’s Lincoln came ripping along with Sal and the kid inside, returning from who-knows-where.
It was Smedley’s job to drop in on the Mamelis on occasion, maybe a couple of times a month. Kind of keep an eye on them, make sure everything was kosher. Granted, Sal didn’t have a lot to gain by running at this point, but with some of these guys, you never knew what they’d do.
Smedley remembered Gino Riccotto, a wiseguy who had turned federal witness. Late in the game, Riccotto decided he’d made a mistake, he wasn’t a rat, and it was time to kiss and make up with the men he was going to send to prison. So, the day before the trial, Gino slipped away from the safe house while Smedley was asleep on the sofa. Not much you can do for him now, Smedley’s boss had said. He’ll turn up eventually. Three days later, a security guard found what was left of Gino oozing out of a bus-station locker. Maybe that’s how Sal will end up, Smedley thought. Then he realized he was smiling.
Angela and Maria drove along in silence in Angela’s gray Mercedes, the only sound the hum of the tires and the soft classical music on the stereo.
There were times when Angela could hardly stand to look at her housekeeper. She didn’t hate Maria, exactly; in fact she didn’t hate her at all. After all, deep down, Angela knew it wasn’t Maria’s fault. If something was going on between Maria and Sal, Angela felt certain it was all Sal’s doing. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Sal’s infidelity had left Angela plodding through life in a state of despair and regret for twenty years. She didn’t love her husband, and wasn’t sure if she ever would again. Sure, she had loved him at one time, back when they first met. Those days seemed like a fairy tale compared to the last two decades.
Sal had swept Angela off her feet in 1983. She was a secretary working for the New York building inspector’s office, leading a dreary life, living in a dreary apartment, hanging out with dreary friends.
Then one day, in walked a good-looking young man with thick black hair, playful eyes, and a beautiful smile. Tall. Charismatic. In an expensive suit. He had an appointment, he said, and his name was Roberto Ragusa. (Angela couldn’t get used to his new name, Sal. She still slipped sometimes and called him Bobby. Sal always looked around nervously and said, What, you trying to get me killed? It’s Sal, goddammit-Sal!)
While Sal had waited for his meeting, he flipped through magazines and flirted with Angela. She played coy, but inside, she ate it up. He seemed so lively and fun, so different than anybody she had ever met.
They had their first date that night and were married six months later.
They were the toast of the town, attending Broadway premieres, rubbing elbows with important politicians and captains of industry, going to the hottest clubs and dancing till dawn.
Then, fourteen months after the wedding, Vinnie was born.
That’s when things changed.
Angela knew, with a newborn, that she and Sal couldn’t do the things they had done when they were courting. The wild, exciting ride was fun while it lasted, but now it was time to settle down and raise a nice family.
Sal had other things in mind.
While Angela stayed home with the baby, Sal still caroused until all hours of the night, often coming home drunk, sometimes with the lingering scent of perfume woven into his clothing.
He always claimed she was imagining things-but he had affairs, the bastard, and she knew it. He was cold to her, treating her like a nanny and a maid. Their sex life vanished.
But what was she to do? Disgrace herself by divorcing the son of a bitch? Her mother would simply die if that happened. Her new friends-wives of men with money and power-would pity her at first, then slowly stop calling. She’d be out of the loop, dropped from the inner circle, and the extravagant lifestyle she had grown accustomed to would slip away.
There was also the baby to consider. She could never support herself and a child if she returned to her job as a secretary. Also, Vinnie deserved a father-and Sal, Angela bitterly admitted, was a good father. Hell, he spent more time with the boy than he did with Angela.
It was also about this time when Angela reluctantly admitted to herself that her husband wasn’t a mere businessman. Despite his claims to the contrary, Sal was nothing more than a thug. He ran a concrete business, but from snippets she heard while Sal was on the phone, the business was far from legit. There appeared to be kickbacks, strong-arm tactics, and laundering involved. Not to mention the way some of Sal’s associates tended to disappear suddenly. Here one day, gone the next, never to be seen again. She always wondered if Sal had anything to do with those disappearances.
So, for twenty years, Angela had resigned herself to a lonely, bleak existence, the wife of a common criminal.
Then, three years ago, Sal had finally come clean. The federal investigations and upcoming trials forced his hand, and he told her everything. Or at least he said he did. The newspapers referred to Sal as a hit man, but he never confessed to that, despite the mounds of evidence against him. I bent a few tax rules, Sal would say, but kill somebody? Never.
Now she thought Sal was screwing the housekeeper.
It made Angela furious.
When their family had been relocated, Angela, oddly, had been elated. She looked at it as a fresh start, an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin a whole new life. A chance to gain respectability, make up for Sal’s evil deeds in the past. And maybe now, away from the circles that had turned Sal into a corrupt, heartless man, they could fix their broken marriage.
But it wasn’t working out that way at all.
Sal, so far as Angela knew, was staying inside the law, even with his new brush-clearing business. But his womanizing-the thing that hurt her most-had returned.
Wheeling into the driveway now, Angela was on the verge of tears. She shouldn’t let her mind wander like that, because it always made her upset. And angry…oh, so angry.
Twenty yards from the garage, a black cat ran out in front of the Mercedes and froze. Angela’s foot immediately rose from the gas pedal, and lingered over the brake.
In a split second, though, something dark and macabre in Angela’s psyche took over. It was Maria’s cat, she knew, and here, finally, was a way for Angela to spread a little of the pain around, to share some of the misery. It was nonsense, of course. Sal was the one Angela wanted to hurt, not Maria. But Angela wasn’t thinking clearly; she was merely looking for a way to release some of the torment in her soul.
She lightly pushed the accelerator. The fine German engine responded, and the cat seemed to be swallowed up like a piece of lint in front of a vacuum cleaner.
“Mi gato!” Maria cried, as they both heard the thump beneath the wheels.