Subject Seven

Chapter Twenty
Tina Carlotti

Tina woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the door. There was no moment of confusion for her. She simply opened her eyes and knew exactly where she was. The same hotel that had been her home for the last three days.

She couldn’t go home. There was still the matter of a mobster or two that she might have hurt and the two million dollars in her possession. That was enough money to guarantee that someone, somewhere, wanted her head on a silver platter. There was also the fact that her mother was dead. With her mother gone, there was nothing for her in Camden or, really, anywhere else.

She’d called Tony two days ago. He answered the phone on the second ring. “Hello.”

“Tony? It’s me. It’s Tina.” She was terrified, of course, but hearing his voice had also jump-started her pulse. Even though part of her was afraid of him, she still longed to be near him.

His voice when he spoke was colder than December. “Where are you, Tina?”

She’d looked out the window at the cracked, ruined parking lot of the dumpy motel. “Are you okay, Tony? You sound upset.”

“We had some serious shit go down here, Tina. But you know that. Your little bitch girlfriend? The one that knocked me around? She killed five people. She also took a lot of money.”

Girlfriend? She shook her head. She didn’t have a girlfriend. Even if she did, no one Tina knew was dumb enough to go stealing from the mob.

Her chest hurt and she opened her mouth, trying to find the right words to make this all go away.

“Tina, baby, I might be able to get you off the hook, but I need my damned money back and I need the name of your friend.” He was lying to her. She knew him well enough to know that. The guy she was seriously thinking about being with for the long haul, who she’d planned on letting get past second base, was lying to her, acting like she was some stupid little gumar.

“Tony, I don’t know anything about no girlfriend or your money. Tony, something happened to my mom.” Her mouth tasted like pennies and she realized she’d bitten down on her tongue while he talked. The pain was barely even noticeable.

Before Tony could respond, she could hear the sound of the phone being passed to someone else.

“This is Tina Carlotti?” The voice was deeper, older than Tony’s and almost familiar.

“Yeah.”

“Where are you, little girl? This is Paulo Scarabelli.” She took in a deep gasping breath. She’d seen the man before but never ever thought about speaking to him. Paulo ran the mob in all of southern New Jersey. He was a powerful man. She was too frightened to respond.

“Tina? We had some serious shit go down. But you know all about that, don’t you? Your little girlfriend? She killed five people. She also took a lot of money.”

Girlfriend? She shook her head. She didn’t have a girlfriend. Even if she did, no one Tina knew was dumb enough to go stealing from the mob.

“Mister Scarabelli. I don’t know nothing about no money or about no girl that hurt anyone.” Her voice shook.

“Don’t believe you, girly.” He was quiet for a moment and she could hear his raspy breathing. She recalled that he smoked big, fat cigars, and back before her mom had started getting stupid, the man had come by a few times and seen her. Last time Tina had seen her “Uncle” Paulo, the man had been coming out of her mother’s bedroom late at night, stinking of red wine and one of his cigars.

When he spoke again, his voice was deadly calm. “Tina, I knew your daddy. He wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to you, and so I’m trying to give you a chance. I got Tony and three other guys say they saw you and then they saw the girl that came in after you left the room. All of them said the same thing, girly. They said you and her, you were probably working together.”

“I-” She shook her head, forgetting that he couldn’t see her. The words didn’t want to come. This was crazy! She’d never, ever do the family wrong.

“You listen to me. You got maybe three days to get back here with my money, little girl, before they have to drag your skinny little ass out of the river and plant you next to your momma.”

His words had sounded like hammers inside her head and she’d started crying right then and there, like a little baby. She couldn’t help it. She was so scared, more terrified than she’d ever been in her life.

She hung up. After two minutes, she pulled the battery from the disposable phone and then threw the phone as far as she could into the scrubby bushes behind the motel. Just in case they could track her. She’d heard about that sort of stuff. People tracked by their cell phones. She wasn’t ever letting them do that to her.

Then she’d come back to the room and gone to sleep.

She seemed to be sleeping a lot. More than was healthy. Normally Tina slept for maybe six hours a night, but lately she was losing extra hours. Maybe it was grief. Maybe she was just shutting down. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? She’d heard that grief was like that. She’d never known anyone who was dead, not until now. Well, except for her dad and that had happened when she was just a kid.

She’d watched the news and tried to see if there was any news about Tony Parmiatto. There was nothing. She was starting to worry too much about that. If Scarabelli was waiting to talk to her and waiting with Tony, it maybe meant he blamed Tony for the money. And that could be bad for Tony. If he was dead, there should be something. If he was alive, he might be one of the people who came looking for her and he would be so angry Someone knocked on the door very hard. “Tina Carlotti? I got a telegram for you.”

Tina’s heart hammered in her chest and she sat up fast, barely even aware of whether or not she was dressed decently.

She opened and closed her mouth half a dozen times without saying a word. No one knew she was here. She’d signed the register as Anna Smith, and that was all she had put down.

She stood up and made herself go over to the door. Her hands shook, but she forced herself to be brave. If someone knew she was here, well, there had to be a reason for that.

She opened the door and looked up at the man standing there. He was young, somewhere close to her age, but he was dark and he was muscular and he was handsome. His eyes looked her over from head to toe and he flashed her a smile that was too short lived to be sure she’d even seen it.

“You Tina Carlotti?”

“Maybe.” He handed her an envelope. His eyes took her in and he must have decided she was as broke as she looked because he turned away, not waiting to see if she would offer a tip.

Just as well, really. She wouldn’t have.

After she’d relocked the door, Tina opened the envelope and read the contents.

It read: Tina,

You have questions.

I have answers.

Meet me in Boston, at the Stevenson Hotel.

Bring enough money to get here. Hide the rest.

A Friend

She read the note several times and then threw it away. Then she paced the room like she was doing laps.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled it out of the trash and read it again.

She really had very little to pack.

Thirty minutes later she left the dive behind and started walking. Most of the money made it as far as the bus station in town. Once there, she locked it in one of the lockers you could rent and shoved the key in her jeans. Four thousand dollars, mostly in twenties, wound up in her pockets and the insides of her shoes. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was simply that money would spend, even if it smelled like her feet.

She bought another disposable phone while she waited, and ate food because her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t for almost two days. She climbed aboard the bus and stared at the other people already there, making sure to meet each of them eye to eye. No fear. Not ever. Fear got you killed or worse.

There was nothing left for her but to maybe get some answers. And really, it beat the hell out of waiting for something to happen.

Most of the people on the bus couldn’t have cared less about her, but there was one guy, sort of cute, who checked her out as she walked toward the back of the long vehicle.

Tina closed her eyes, tired for no real reason, and when she opened them again, the bus was just pulling into the station in Boston.

The cute guy was gone. Typical.

Getting to the hotel was easy. She handled it the way she handled everything, with a hard look in her eyes and a big bluff about how confident she was. Down where it counted, Tina was a wimp. Up on the surface, she could fake it with the best. So she did. The Stevenson was a big, sprawling affair with the sort of architecture that the oldest parts of Camden had. Classy, expensive. The difference was that Boston was alive and Camden was too stupid to know it was dead.

She shook her head and pushed her grief aside. Her mom was dead. She couldn’t fix that. Her life sucked. She was working on fixing that part. Crying about Mom wasn’t going to help, but getting angry would. Getting pissed off about all the crap going wrong in her world would go a lot further than dealing with the blues, so she set her face and walked into the hotel with long, fast strides and a calm expression on her face.

First person to mess with her was getting kicked in the nuts. No more Ms. Nice Guy.