Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [26]
The man was rubbing himself against her leg, free hand pawing at her skirt and panties, trying to reach flesh. Mary struggled to free herself from his grip, using the wall as a brace, balancing her feet for leverage.
“That’s it, baby,” the man said. “Fight me. C’mon, trim, fight me.”
Mary turned her face from the wall, moving the man’s arm away from her thigh. She looked in his eyes, brown, glazed, and empty, and saw in them what she had seen in the faces of so many killers over so many years. It was in that fragment of a second that she knew what awaited her. It wasn’t just sex he wanted. Or drugs he needed.
It was blood.
Her blood.
The man with the knife needed a fix that only the blade could bring him. He was laughing as he stood and watched her blood flow past his legs like melted Jell-O, moving down the cracked path of a dark alley on an empty street in Queens. Laughing and staring into Mary’s eyes, watching as the life ebbed out of them.
It was the rush of the killer.
No one understood that feeling better than Mary Silvestri.
• • •
SHE WOKE UP three days later in the intensive care unit of Mission Hospital. Doctors had removed a portion of her lung, sliced beyond use by the man’s knife. Her stomach had also been slashed, requiring forty-seven stitches to close. There were welts and bruises up and down her body, and her right arm and left foot were broken and in casts. One eye was closed shut, and the side of her right cheek was bandaged.
Mary looked around the room, pale blue walls floating like waves, shards of sunlight warming the left side of her face. She saw an IV hanging off to the side, fluid slow-dripping into her arm. The inside of her mouth felt crusted, and there were two small plastic oxygen tubes in her nose. A set of rosary beads was wrapped around the fingers of her left hand.
She turned to her left, past the glare of the sun, and saw her son, Frank, sitting in a chair, wearing a New York Yankee jacket and cap, hands folded in his lap, staring back at her. She gazed at him for several seconds, read the concern etched on his youthful face, saw the tense way he leaned his body forward, and studied the eyes of a teenage boy terrified that his mother would die.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” she said, each word weighed down with a pain that reached into her chest.
“It’s Sunday,” Frank said, surprised to hear her speak.
“Church, then,” Mary said, managing a slight smile. “I could use a couple of prayers thrown my way.”
“Went this morning,” Frank said. “With Dad.”
“Here alone?”
“No,” Frank said. “Dad went down to the cafeteria. To get some coffee.”
“How’s he doin’?”
“Scared,” Frank said. “Stays here all day. Sleeps in the bed next to you at night. Leaves just to check on work and pick me up from school.”
“How about you?” Mary asked, wishing she could sit up, lean over, and, for the first time in many years, take her son in her arms.
“I’m not as scared,” Frank said.
“Why’s that?”
“Dad forgets how tough you are,” Frank said. “I don’t.”
“I’m not as tough as the guy I ran into,” Mary said. “Otherwise, we’d be sending him flowers.”
“They caught him,” Frank said.
“Who made the collar?” Mary asked.
“Not sure,” Frank said. “Russo and some of the other guys started chasin’ him down while you were in surgery. By the time you were in recovery, they had him.”
“I can’t wait to see him in court,” Mary said. Her throat was dry and raw, and her jaw ached whenever she spoke.
“He won’t be in court,” Frank said.
She didn’t have to say anything. She just looked at him, first curiously, then knowingly.
“Russo told me and Dad the guy put up a fight.” Frank went on in a matter-of-fact tone that would have made any seasoned cop proud. “Came at them with the same knife he used on you. Russo and Johnson stopped him.”
Mary nodded and turned from her son. She lifted her head slowly, eyes scanning the flowers and baskets that filled the room.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Mom,” Frank said, standing up and moving closer to the bed.
“I am too, sweetie,” Mary said.
“Dad says now things