Someone To Watch Over Me Part 7

Angelini's Market was narrow, but very deep, with creaking linoleum floors, terrible lighting, and the pervasive smell of kosher pickles and corned beef emanating from a deli counter that occupied the entire left wall. The right wall was crammed with shelves of canned and boxed goods from floor to ceiling.

Wooden crates of fresh produce and cases of soft drinks were stacked in the center, leaving only a narrow aisle on either side to reach the refrigerators and freezers at the rear of the store. Despite the market's unprepossessing appearance, the Italian pastas and meats in the deli section were wonderful and so were the small homemade frozen pizzas.

Leigh took the last shrimp pizza from the freezer and put it into the store's microwave; then she went to the crates of produce, looking for pears.

"Did you find your shrimp pizza?" Mrs. Angelini called from behind the cash register at the deli counter.

"Yes, I'm heating some of it right now. I got the last one in the freezer," Leigh said as she located a wooden box of pears. "I always get the last one-I guess I'm just lucky," she added, but she was thinking of Logan, not pizza.

"Not so lucky," Mrs. Angelini replied. "I only make one shrimp pizza at a time. I make them for you. You're the only one who asks for them."

Leigh looked up, a pear in each hand. "You do? That's very nice of you, Mrs.

Angelini."

"Don't bother looking through those pears; we got better in the back. Falco will bring them." Raising her voice, she called to Falco in Italian.

A few moments later, Falco emerged from the storeroom, wearing a stained ap.r.o.n over his s.h.i.+rt and jeans and carrying a small bag. He walked past Leigh without a glance and gave his mother the bag, from which she extracted two large pears. "These are for you," Mrs. Angelini told Leigh. "These are the best of all."

Leigh retrieved her heated pizza from the microwave, slid it back onto its cardboard dish, and covered it with its original plastic wrapping; then she headed for the cash register, where she properly admired pears so s.h.i.+ny that they looked polished. "You're always so nice to me, Mrs. Angelini," she said with a smile, trying very hard to convey some sort of warmth and cheer to the long-suffering woman. Mrs. Angelina's oldest son, Angelo, had been killed in a gang fight long before Leigh moved to the neighborhood. Her youngest son, Dominick, was a thoroughly likeable, gregarious young man who used to help out in the store all the time, but then, one day, he disappeared. Mrs. Angelini said Dominick was away at school, but Leigh's roommate-a native New Yorker -said that in their neighborhood "away at school," meant "away at Spofford,"

New York's Juvenile Detention Center, or away at one of the state prisons.

Soon after Dominick "left for school," Falco started working in the store, but the only thing Falco Angelini had in common with his outgoing, younger brother was a record-and not at Spofford, either. Based on what Leigh's roommate overheard in the store one day, Falco had spent several years in Attica for killing someone.

Even if Leigh hadn't known that, Falco would have made her extremely uneasy. Silent and forbidding, and over six feet tall, he moved through the store like a towering specter of impending doom, his expression ice cold and distant, his powerful shoulders seeming to crowd the narrow aisles. In jarring contrast to his thick black eyebrows and full beard, his skin had a ghostly pallor that Leigh's roommate said was from being in prison. His voice-on the rare occasions when he spoke-was hard and brusque. He made Leigh so uneasy that she actually avoided looking at him whenever possible, but there were times when she caught him watching her, and it made her even more uncomfortable.

Mrs. Angelini, however, seemed almost comically unaware of Falco's fierce features and intimidating demeanor. She called orders to him like a drill sergeant and referred to him affectionately and possessively as "my Falco," and "my caro" and "my nipote." Leigh figured that since she had already lost two of her boys, it was probably natural that Mrs. Angelini would treasure the remaining one, regardless of his very obvious character flaws and social shortcomings.

As if Mrs. Angelini knew what Leigh was thinking, she smiled sadly as she counted out Leigh's change. "If G.o.d had given me a choice," she confessed with a nod toward the front of the store, where Falco was stocking shelves with canned goods, "I think I would have asked Him for daughters. Daughters are easier to raise."

"I'm not sure most mothers would agree with you." Leigh joked uneasily. She was uncomfortable with the topic, sad for Mrs. Angelina's sadness, and eternally disconcerted by Falco Angelina's presence. Picking up her purchases, Leigh politely said good-bye to Mrs. Angelini, then she called a hesitant good-bye to Falco-not because she wanted to speak to him, but because she was a little afraid of snubbing-and therefore offending-him. Leigh was from a quiet, small town in Ohio, and she had absolutely no experience with ex-convicts, but it seemed to her that deliberately offending an ex-convict-particularly one who'd been in prison for killing somebody-was probably an unwise, even dangerous, mistake.

She was preoccupied with those thoughts as she walked out of the market and started down the street, so she was taken completely by surprise when two menacing-looking young men materialized from the shadows and stepped purposefully into her path. "Well, well, look what came out of the market," one of them said as he reached into his jacket pocket. "You look good enough to peel and eat."

A knife! He had a knife! Leigh froze like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Her one idiotic thought was that she mustn't be killed now, not now when she'd just found Logan. Suddenly, Falco Angelini erupted from the market behind her and began taunting the youth holding the long, thin blade.

"Do I see a knife?" he jeered. "Do you know how to use it, s.h.i.+thead?" Opening his arms wide, Angelini invited Leigh's would-be attacker to lunge at him. "You can't earn your bones cutting up little girls. Try cutting up a grown man. Cut me up. Come on, a.s.shole, try it!"

Mesmerized, Leigh saw the second youth pull a knife out of his pocket just as the first one lunged. Angelini sidestepped the attack, grabbed the a.s.sailant's arm and yanked it back over his shoulder with a sickening bone-breaking sound that sent the youth stumbling backward into the alley, howling in pain. The second attacker was more skilled, less rushed, than his companion, and Leigh watched in paralyzed horror as he circled Angelini in a half-crouch, his blade flas.h.i.+ng beneath the streetlamp. Suddenly the blade shot upward, Angelini stepped back, and the older boy screamed in pain and fell to his knees, clutching his groin.

"You sonofab.i.t.c.h!" he whimpered, glaring at Angelini, trying to roll onto his side and get up.

While he was trying to get to his feet, Falco grabbed Leigh's arm and yanked her unceremoniously backward, into the doorway of the market. She stayed there, frozen, until both youths had taken off down the street and then disappeared into an alley. "We-we-we should call the police," she stammered finally.

Angelini scowled at her and pulled off the ap.r.o.n he'd been wearing. "Why?"

"Be... because we might be able to pick out their pictures. I'm not sure I could do it alone, but between the two of us, we might be able to identify them."

"All punks look alike to me," he said with a shrug. "I can't tell one from another."

Rebuffed, Leigh leaned forward and peered apprehensively in the direction of her apartment building. "I don't see any sign of them. They're probably a mile away by now." She glanced awkwardly at Angelini, trying to hide her fear of walking home alone. "Thank you for coming to my rescue," she said, and when he didn't reply, she stepped out of the doorway.

To her vast relief, he stepped forward, too. "I'll walk you home." He waited a moment for her to react and mistook her nervous silence for a dismissal. "Maybe you'd rather walk alone," he said, turning away.

Completely unnerved, Leigh actually clutched his arm to pull him with her.

"No, wait! I'd like you to walk with me! I just didn't want to cause you any more trouble, Falco."

Her involuntary gesture seemed to amuse him, or perhaps it was what she'd said that amused him. "You haven't caused me any trouble."

"Other than almost getting you killed back there."

"I was not in any danger of being killed by those-" Whatever profanity he'd had in mind, he checked the words.

Encouraged by the communication they'd established, Leigh said, "I really think we should call the police."

"Suit yourself, but leave me out of it. I don't have time to waste on cops."

"How do you expect the police to protect us if citizens won't cooperate?

Among other things, it's every citizen's duty..."

He shot her a look filled with such withering disdain she felt like sinking into the sidewalk. "What planet are you from?"

"I'm from Ohio," Leigh replied, so completely off balance that she could not form a better reply.

"That explains it," he said flatly, but for the second time in the last few minutes, she thought she heard a glimmer of amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice.

He walked her to her building, up four flights of stairs to her apartment door, and left her there.

HER narrow escape from violence that night put a permanent end to Leigh's solitary nocturnal trips to Angelini's Market, but she continued to go there during the day for her groceries. On her next visit, she told Mrs. Angelini about her brush with danger, but instead of being proud of Falco, the poor woman was upset. "Ever since he was a little boy, he finds trouble and trouble finds him."

A little taken aback, Leigh looked around for her rescuer, and spotted him just inside the storeroom at the back of the store, stacking boxes. "I wanted to thank you properly," she announced, coming up behind him. He stiffened, as if startled; then he turned slowly and looked down at her, his black brows drawing into an impatient scowl, his thick black beard concealing the rest of his expression. "For what?" he said shortly.

He seemed somehow more distant and daunting than ever, his body taller and more ma.s.sive than before, but Leigh was determined not to let any of that faze her. Ex-convict or not, he had risked his life to save hers, and then he had walked her home to make certain she got there safely. That was true gallantry, she thought, and as the word popped into her mind it crossed her lips. "For being so gallant," she explained.

"Gallant?" he repeated ironically. "Is that what you think I am?"

Despite Leigh's determination to stand her ground and not be thwarted in expressing her grat.i.tude, she took a tiny, cautious step backward before she nodded emphatically. "Yes, I do."

"When did they let you out of your playpen, yesterday?"

Frustrated, Leigh put up her hand to stop any further argument. "My mind is made up. Don't try to change it, because you can't. Here," she said, holding out her other hand. "This is for you."

He eyed the gift-wrapped box she was holding as if it were a container of rat poison. "What's that?"

"A memento of the occasion. Open it later and find out for yourself." When he refused to reach for it, she stepped around him and put it on the bottom rung of an old wooden stepladder, next to some textbooks. "Are those yours? What are you studying?"

"Law," he said sarcastically, and Leigh choked on her laugh, horrified that her laughter would give away the fact that she knew he'd been in prison. And, unfortunately, it did. "If you're finished slumming," he said shortly, "I've got work to do."

"I didn't mean-" she said, backing out of the room. "I'm sorry for interrupting. I'll just-"

"Leave?" he suggested.

She never knew if he'd opened the gift she'd given him. But she had a feeling that if he had opened it, he wouldn't have liked or wanted the small pewter figure of a knight in armor she'd found in an antique shop. He never addressed a voluntary word to her after that, but at least when he saw her, he nodded curtly, acknowledging her presence. If she spoke to him first, he answered, and Leigh always smiled at him and said h.e.l.lo.

A few weeks after Falco had frightened off her attackers, Logan and she went to Angelini's for late-night snacks. Leigh introduced Logan to Mrs. Angelini; then she saw Falco and introduced the two men. After that, Mrs. Angelini always asked Leigh about her "young man." Falco never referred to Logan by any name or description, and not long afterward, he vanished completely. Mrs. Angelini said Falco had "gone back to school."

LYING in her hospital bed, Leigh thought of all that because the night she'd nearly been attacked had been the most terrifying experience of her life-until now, when Logan was missing. Then as now, she'd felt the same sense of terrifying helplessness, the feeling that she should have been more prepared, should have been able to antic.i.p.ate this and safeguard Logan and herself from it.

CHAPTER 9.

Leigh's doctor, her nurse, and the hospital's administrator escorted her down in a wheelchair to an ambulance backed up to the rear entrance of the hospital.

Brenna was waiting for her there, wearing a heavy jacket and red woolen cap.

"Security says the coast is clear," she told Leigh.

The security guard standing beside her nodded. "Most of the press people left when they heard you were being discharged this morning," he told Leigh with a grin. "Two of them hung around though, hoping for a look at you. They gave me ten bucks to tip them off when you were leaving, so I pointed out that empty ambulance you arranged for; then they hopped in their cars and went after it. I figure they're sixty miles ahead of you by now."

Leigh asked Brenna to give him twenty dollars more for being so helpful.

Two paramedics tried to help her out of the wheelchair, but she waved them away. "I can do it myself," she insisted, wincing with pain as she slowly eased herself into a standing position. All she'd done that morning was sign some autographs for the staff on her floor, shower, and get dressed, but she was already feeling weak and shaky. Mentally, however, she was alert and filled with purpose. The prospect of retracing her path and locating Logan in the next few hours had her geared up and ready to go the distance.

Brenna got into the ambulance behind her, and the vehicle began moving slowly down the driveway. "Where's our car?" Leigh asked.

"About two miles down the highway, at the American Legion Hall. I've already told the ambulance driver to take me there so I can get my car. He knows where the place is."

Shortly afterward, the ambulance slowed and turned into a parking lot filled with enough deep potholes to rock the vehicle and make Leigh grit her teeth in pain. "Are you okay?" Brenna asked worriedly.

Leigh slowly expelled her breath and nodded. "The hospital gave me some painkillers to take with me, but I don't want to use them because they make me feel woozy. I need to be completely focused and clearheaded right now. Would you help me up?" Leigh added as the vehicle drew to a stop.

One of the paramedics got out and went around to the rear of the ambulance to help Brenna down. He opened the doors, saw both women on their feet, and stepped back, staring at them. "I promised I'd leave the hospital in an ambulance," Leigh explained to the young man, "and that's exactly what I've done. However, I did not promise to stay in it all the way to Manhattan."

"I can't let you do this, Miss Kendall!"

Leigh managed a little smile and held out her hand to him for help. "You really don't have any choice."

"But-"

"If you make me jump down from this thing," she warned lightly, "the jolt will probably kill me." She stepped forward, and left with no other choice, the paramedic reached up to help her. The ambulance driver came around to see what was causing the delay, and Leigh held up her hand to halt his outburst.

"There's no point in arguing," she told him.

They helped her into the silver Chevrolet Blazer Brenna had rented. "My secretary has your names," Leigh told them with a grateful smile. "She'll arrange for you to have four tickets to Blind Spot next Sat.u.r.day night."

Normally, the promise of complimentary tickets to a sold-out Broadway play made even the most jaded New Yorker extremely happy, so Leigh was understandably taken aback when both men looked a little disappointed.

"If it wouldn't cause you any extra trouble," the driver said after exchanging a glance with his companion, "we'd rather wait until you're starring in the play again, Miss Kendall."

They were so young, and they saw so much suffering and horror, that Leigh had to restrain an impulse to pat his cheek. "Then, I'll arrange for that," she promised. "Brenna will call you when-when everything is back to normal," she finished. Normal...

Leigh clung fiercely to the concept; she yearned for it-prayed for it as Brenna started the Blazer's engine.

CHAPTER 10.

s...o...b..nks piled as high as the Blazer's hood, and sometimes its roof, lined the main highways and made the secondary roads so narrow that it was often difficult to squeeze two cars heading in opposite directions past each other.

For the first hour, nothing looked particularly familiar to Leigh except some major landmarks she'd noticed soon after she reached the mountains, landmarks she'd already been familiar with from her few previous trips to the Catskills.

However, the deeper into the mountains they went, the more unfamiliar the landscape became and the more uncertain she was of the directions Logan had given her. Three hours after they started searching, Brenna insisted they stop for lunch and pulled into a McDonald's. "Has anything seemed familiar since we pa.s.sed that little gas station back there?" she asked as they waited at the drive-up window for their order.

"I might as well have been driving blindfolded in a tunnel that night," Leigh said bleakly. "The visibility was so bad that I could only see a few feet beyond my headlights." She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to ma.s.sage away the tension and anxiety that made her head feel as if it were going to explode. "I should have been concentrating harder on Logan's directions, but I was concentrating on keeping the car on the road. And Logan's instructions weren't the kind you'd normally give someone. He was so excited about our 'mountain hideaway' that the map and directions he gave me were more like a treasure hunt -"

Leigh stopped herself from repeating that explanation yet again to Brenna.

"Even so," she said bitterly, "I should be able to remember if the directions said to turn right when I was four-tenths of a mile past the stoplight in Ridgemore, or four miles past it! When I wrote the directions for the detectives on Tuesday, I thought I remembered everything important. But now, I'm not sure of that or anything else."

"You have to stop beating up on yourself," Brenna warned.

Leigh couldn't stop, but she tried not to do it aloud, for Brenna's sake.

After two more hours of searching and turning back whenever Leigh thought she might have recognized something, everything was beginning to look familiar to her. In desperation, Leigh began systematically exploring side roads and private roads, and even driveways, looking for the cabin Logan had described. She was prepared to explore every overgrown, rutted path that might have been a driveway long ago-but the snow made that impossible.

Several times they nearly got stuck, but Brenna was surprisingly skilled at handling the heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle-a skill she said she acquired growing up on her parents' farm. Brenna's ability to maneuver the Blazer through s...o...b..nks, and the change that occurred in the weather that afternoon, were the only two positive events in an otherwise heartbreaking day. Shortly after they stopped for lunch, the sun appeared. In the s.p.a.ce of an hour, the heavy clouds parted, the sky turned a brilliant blue, the temperature climbed above freezing, and the snow began melting.

In addition to bringing Leigh some clothes to wear, Brenna had also brought her a handbag with some spare items she'd found at Leigh's apartment. The sungla.s.ses came in especially handy because they hid the tears that began gathering in Leigh's eyes and spilling over with increasing frequency as the afternoon wore on.

"If you're going to be on time for the press conference tonight," Brenna said, "we need to turn around and head back to the city pretty soon."

Leigh heard her, but she was craning her neck to see down a lane that had a steep drop-off. "Slow down-" she said excitedly, and Brenna stepped on the brake, slowing the Blazer to a crawl. "There's a house down there; I can see the roof." At the end of the steep drive, Leigh caught a glimpse of a large old house with a green roof, but Logan had said the only dwelling on their property was a tiny, three-room cabin, and its roof was gray slate. "That's not it," Leigh said bleakly. In the wake of her frustration and disappointment, a burst of anger swept over Leigh. "I haven't seen the helicopters Commissioner Trumanti was supposed to send out here today. What is he waiting for, anyway-summer?"