Or, well, I hope I know it. I memorized it, weeks ago, when I tried to call him to pay back the money I stole, but my memory’s a bit shaky, so...
I dial it, bringing the phone to my ear, as sirens wail in the distance, flying by. The phone rings and rings and rings, and I’m about to give up, when the line finally clicks and a voice greets me. “Gambini.”
I pause. It’s not Gambini. Not technically. Seven answers. It catches me off guard.
“Hey, Seven... it’s, uh, Morgan.”
“Morgan,” he says. “Everything okay?”
Nope. “Yep.”
“That’s good,” he says. “Did you need something?”
Yep. “Nope.”
He’s quiet for a second before saying, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t know that I’d say anything’s wrong...”
“But?”
“I kind of got myself into a bit of a pickle. Not sure how to get back out.”
“A bit of a pickle, huh? Where are you?”
“Coney Island,” I say. “There’s this apartment building right on west 17th. Big ugly brick one. I’m kind of, you know, hanging out.”
“Hiding out, you mean?”
“Pretty much.”
He laughs. “So Brooklyn, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
He hangs up before I can say anything to him, but I respond anyway. “Thank God.”
I got stuck on a Ferris wheel once.
I think I was five or six at the time.
Something shorted, the operator screwed up, and there I was, stuck in a bucket thirty feet in the sky. Instead of being scared, though, I found it almost calming, being so high up, where nobody could reach me and nothing could touch me.
I still feel that way most of the time.
Like right now, as I sit here, legs stretched out along gray asphalt shingles on the sloped roof of the house in Queens, surrounded by the kind of quiet suburban neighborhood where carpool and playdates are things that exist, I feel okay.
That’s saying something, you know, after the day I’ve had. It seems almost surreal, and I’d think it didn’t really happen, except the file in my lap tells me differently. Gambini.
I’ve read it already.
Actually, okay, I’ve read it a few times.
Can you blame me? Pretty damn sure you would read it, too, if you could.
Sighing, I suck down the last of my frozen sugary coffee when I hear a door open nearby. Glancing down, I watch as Lorenzo steps out of the house, a cloud of musky smoke surrounding him, a joint between his lips.
It’s the first I’ve seen him today. After Seven valiantly rescued me, bringing me back here, I discovered the library door closed for only the second time since I started coming around.
He’s got a headache today, Seven explained. Might not see him.
Yet, there he is...
His hair is unkempt, all over the place, like he hasn’t done a damn thing to it since I wound my fingers through it last. The rest of him, though, seems to be put together—white shirt, dark jeans, black boots. He smokes quietly, alone, watching the neighborhood, before Seven joins him.
“I’m heading home, boss,” Seven says. “Wife is making lasagna for dinner, if you want me to bring you some.”
“I appreciate it,” Lorenzo says, “but I can fend for myself.”
Pfftt, fuck that.
“You can bring me some,” I call down. “I’m not dumb enough to pass up home cooking.”
Seven laughs, waving toward me. “I think I’ve done enough for you today, Morgan.”
I make a face at him.
Seven pulls out Lorenzo’s keys and phone, passing them over before departing. Lorenzo shoves it all in his pocket, continuing to smoke in silence, watching as Seven drives off, leaving us alone.
Lorenzo tosses what’s left of the joint down, smashing it with his boot as he turns slowly, his gaze flickering up to where I’m sitting.
He goes back inside, not saying a word.
I figure he went back to his library, but after a moment, the window from his bedroom shoves open and he climbs out onto the ledge before maneuvering around and pulling himself up onto the roof.
I wish I could say I got up here that smoothly, or that I even considered doing it that way.
I stole a ladder from a neighbor’s backyard.
It’s propped up against the side of the house. Oops.
He sits down beside me, knees bent, elbows leaning against them, his gaze surveying the neighborhood for a moment before he looks my way. He scans me slowly, his attention drifting to the file on my lap.
I know he can see his last name on it. It’s written clear as day.
“You got a file on me, Scarlet?” he asks, his voice casual, nothing accusatory in his tone.
“No,” I say, looking down at it. “Well, I guess I technically do now. It’s your police file.”
“My police file.”
“Yeah, it’s everything they know about you,” I explain. “I kind of stole it from the detective’s office.”
“You stole it.”
“Yes.”
“Takes balls to break the law in a police precinct.”
“Yeah, well, just add it to the list of other laws I broke. I probably have warrants out for me right now. Disorderly conduct. Criminal nuisance. Assault on a police officer. It all adds up.”
“Sounds like you had an interesting day.”
“Very.”
“Kind of jealous,” he says, eyeing me for a moment before turning away. “So, what’s the file say?”
“What makes you think I’ve read it?”
“You wouldn’t go through the trouble of stealing it if you weren’t nosey as shit about what’s inside.”
Rolling my eyes, I pick up the folder and flip it open. There isn’t much to it, just a few papers.
“Lorenzo Oliver Gambini,” I say, reading the top sheet before cutting my eyes at him, watching as he whips out an orange, like he carries them around in his pocket. “Oliver? Really?”
“I distinctly remember your middle name being Olivia,” he says, “which isn’t much different.”
“Yeah, but that’s me,” I say. “You’re you.”
“We’re a lot alike, you and I.”
He says that casually, and I’m not sure how to take it, because my brain suddenly gets hung up on something else. “Wait, you know my middle name?”
Shrugging a shoulder, he starts to peel his orange, like him knowing my middle name doesn’t mean anything, like him remembering any part of my name isn’t a big deal. But it is, so I just gape at him, trying to make sense of that.
“What’s the file say, Scarlet?” he asks again. “Less staring, more spilling.”
“It, uh…” I look away from him, back at the papers. “Born and raised in Kissimmee, Florida. Your father was murdered when you were four. Your mother and stepfather disappeared about fourteen years after that. You officially became legal custodian of one Leonardo Michael Accardi on your nineteenth birthday, although you’d been taking care of him for a year by that point.”
“You already knew all of that,” he points out, seeming rather bored by my facts.
“You inherited an almost 200-acre orange grove that has more than doubled in size and profit under your control. Your business seems on the up and up, so no Al Capone level take down in your future, although they suspect you’ve got something hinky going on down there.”
“Something hinky,” he says with a laugh. “What, like we’re running guns through the grove? Because they’d be right.”
“They seem more concerned about Cuban imports.”
“Ah, yes, priorities. The rum.”
“They don’t have any evidence, though.”
“Of course not.”
“They do, however, have a shitload of stories about you. You’re kind of like Bigfoot.”
“Bigfoot?”
“Yeah, everyone’s heard about him, most people think he’s a myth, with nothing more than a couple blurry pictures and unreliable first-hand accounts as proof of his existence. Most of this file isn’t even about you. It’s a bunch of scary stories about a guy with a scar. Half this shit isn’t even believable.”