Chapter 5 - The Shadow on the Fire Escape
“Mom?” Eli’s voice was barely a squeak. He slid down off his chair, his little body trembling, his eyes locked on the narrow window that opened onto the rusted iron fire escape.
“Under the bed, Eli,” I whispered, my voice cold with absolute panic. “Now. Don't make a sound.”
“Mom, is it him?”
“Under the bed. Grab your book.”
Eli didn’t argue. He had lived through the yelling when he was two; he had seen the broken plates, the bruised arms my father had tried so desperately to hide from the neighbors. He grabbed *The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome*, darted down the short hallway into our bedroom, and slid underneath the bed frame, pulling the faded dust ruffle down behind him.
*Crash.*
Another sound came from the alley—the sound of an empty trash dumpster being kicked with violent force.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the iron rungs of the fire escape outside our kitchen window.
I grabbed the heavy cast-iron skillet from the cold stove, my knuckles white, my breathing coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The apartment building had no doorman. The back alley door was always broken, held open with a brick for the smokers.
A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the fire escape window.
A fist banged against the frame, rattling the cracked panes.
“Clara! I know you’re in there!” Mark slurred, his face pressing against the dirty glass. His nose was red, his hair unkempt, his jacket torn at the shoulder. “Open the window! The guys down at the club said you were working at the Hartwell tonight! You got cash, Clara! I know you got cash!”
“Get away from here, Mark!” I screamed through the locked glass, raising the skillet. “I called the police! They’re already on their way!”
“Bullshit!” he spat, rattling the rusted latch. “The cops don’t come to Humboldt Park for a domestic! You open this damn window or I’ll kick it in! I got people looking for me, Clara! I need two grand! Give me two grand and I’ll leave you and the kid alone for good!”
“I don’t have two grand! I don’t have anything! Leave, or I swear to God I’ll kill you!”
“You won’t do shit!”
He kicked the lower pane of the window.
The glass spider-webbed, several sharp shards falling inward onto our kitchen linoleum. A blast of freezing winter rain blew into the room.
Mark reached his hand through the jagged hole, groping blindly for the interior window lock.
I raised the skillet, ready to bring it down with everything I had across his wrist.
Suddenly, a massive, gloved hand came out of the darkness behind Mark on the fire escape platform.
It clamped onto the back of Mark’s neck like a steel vise.
Mark let out a choked shriek as he was yanked backward through the broken glass, his sleeve tearing on the sharp edges.
Through the broken pane, in the dim glow of the alley floodlight, I saw Leo Rossi.
The huge man didn’t look winded from climbing three flights of iron stairs. His expression was dead calm. He had Mark pinned against the brick exterior wall by his throat, lifting him until the heels of Mark’s boots were dangling three inches off the iron grating.
“Who... who the hell... are you?” Mark wheezed, his fingers clawing uselessly at Leo’s thick wrists.
Leo didn’t answer.
Behind Leo, another figure stepped up the iron stairs.
Gabriel Hart.
He hadn’t left. The Maybach had never driven away. He had remained parked in the shadows of the street, watching my window.
Gabriel was wearing his dark cashmere overcoat now, the collar turned up against the rain. He stepped onto the narrow fire escape platform, completely unfazed by the thirty-foot drop beneath them.
He looked at Mark with mild curiosity, as if observing a particularly offensive insect.
“You’re Mark Vance,” Gabriel said quietly.
“Who... who are you, man? Clara! Tell him to let me go!”
Gabriel stepped closer, his face coming within inches of Mark’s.
“Arthur Vance was a craftsman,” Gabriel said, his voice smooth and deadly quiet over the rush of the rain. “You are a parasite who stole from his safe and left your own flesh and blood to starve in a drafty tenement. You smell of cheap gin and fear.”
“I’m the kid’s father!” Mark gasped, his face turning purple under Leo’s grip. “You can’t... you can’t do this!”
“You were never a father,” Gabriel said. He reached inside his overcoat, pulled out a thin leather wallet, and extracted a single crisp, ten-thousand-dollar cashier’s check.
He held it before Mark’s bulging eyes.
“There is an Amtrak sleeper train leaving Union Station for Denver at four-fifteen this morning,” Gabriel said. “There is a ticket waiting in your name at the counter. When you arrive in Denver, you cash this check. If you ever set foot in the state of Illinois again, or if you ever say Clara or Eli’s name to another living soul, Leo will not use his hands. He will use a trenching spade. Do you understand me, Mark?”
Mark looked from the cashier’s check to Gabriel’s icy eyes. The realization of who was standing before him finally hit his alcohol-soaked brain.
“H-Hart,” Mark choked out, absolute terror draining the last bit of color from his face. “You’re... you’re Gabriel Hart.”
“Do you understand me?” Gabriel repeated.
“Yes! Yes! God, yes! Denver! I’ll go to Denver!”
Gabriel nodded once.
Leo released his grip. Mark hit the iron grating in a heap, coughing violently, gasping for air. Gabriel dropped the check onto his chest.
“Take him to the station, Leo,” Gabriel instructed softly. “Make sure he is on the train when the doors lock.”
“Yes, boss.”
Leo hauled Mark up by his jacket collar like a sack of laundry and dragged him down the fire escape into the dark alley.
Silence returned to the small kitchen, broken only by the whistling wind coming through the shattered window pane.
Gabriel stood outside on the wet iron platform.
He looked through the jagged hole in the glass. His eyes met mine.
I was still holding the cast-iron skillet, trembling from head to foot, rain misting across my face.
“Clara,” he said, his voice cutting through the whistling wind.
“Why are you doing this?” I breathed, my voice breaking. “Why are you protecting us?”
Gabriel reached out with his gloved hand and gently pushed a large, sharp shard of glass out of the frame so it wouldn’t fall inside.
“Because your father saved my family’s history,” he said softly. “And because Eli shouldn’t have to hide under a bed to read about Rome.”
He looked down at the floor, then back at me.
May you like
“Pack your things, Clara. You’re not waiting until ten o’clock. You and Eli are coming to the estate tonight.”
***