The Exceptions

FIVE


I jump in my car, toss the towels on the seat and spin out of the parking lot, drive down the road toward the city center. My eyes are peeled for any sign of Melody, but beyond the drivers of cars and commercial trucks, there are no signs of any living thing whatsoever. Even the two kids have disappeared far from view. After a mile, I hang a U-turn in the middle of the street and head in the opposite direction, speed toward the exit for the Jones Falls Expressway and stop just before the ramp and sit on the shoulder, defeated. Too much time has passed now. She could be anywhere, with anyone. It’s like looking for a needle across an unharvested field of hay.

I attempt to methodically run through all of the options; only three possibilities surface:

(1) She left on her own, officially having lost all faith and trust in me after my foolish reaction to the spitheads, from my lack of self-control that would eventually implode any master plan I professed to have. I’d never blame her for leaving.

(2) Somehow the feds knew where she was, managed to track us amidst all of my casual absconding, and spirited her away at the perfect moment. How I criticized Sean and his feeble protections of Melody in Cape Charles, how distracted he was, how his attention was distinctly elsewhere. Did I not just fail Melody the exact same way? Who’s to say he didn’t slip those kids twenty bucks to spit in my car and create a diversion.

(3) Someone from our crew preempted our successful arrival in New York. This someone figured I would do what I was truly attempting: Keep the girl alive. This someone decided enough was enough and Melody’s life needed to end, and now she’s riding in the trunk of a large black sedan. The question I can’t seem to answer is how anyone in my family might’ve had the slightest clue where we were; even I had no idea that we’d end up at this particular restaurant at this particular time.

Unless.

I hang another U-turn, narrowly beat a dump truck coming off the ramp from the expressway, and drive back to the restaurant. I barge into the kitchen, corner ’Tone, and ask in English he will fully understand if he has had any contact with my father or anyone else in our crew. He shakes his head like a dog trying to throw moisture off his fur. I scan the rest of the kitchen. “Anyone in here? Anyone call up to New York? Now is the time to speak up!” Everybody stops and stares, every motion frozen.

’Tone puts his hands up in a way that could be read as both not me and I have no idea what you’re talking about. I slowly walk backward toward the door. And when I return to my car, I grab my cell and call my brother.

“Pete,” he answers.

“Checking in. You at Sylvia?”

“There earlier, everything’s fine. Ryan’s got it under control.”

Sylvia’s head chef has opened for me before—during the majority of my other off-schedule journeys to locate Melody—and I am certain of Ryan’s reliability; this is hardly why I called.

“Everything else coming together?” I ask. People dropping like flies?

“Pop and Eddie got a close eye on everything, everyone.” Eddie Gravina, my father’s consigliere.

I shake my head even though Peter can’t see my reaction. “What’s Eddie got to do with anything? Where’s Pop?”

Peter ignores me. “You’re the only one who’s probably going to arrive late to the party.” You’re the question mark.

“You can’t have the party without all the party favors, right?” Pop’s not going to rest until every loose end is knotted. “And I’m bringing mine home shortly.”

Peter’s reaction is all I care about. Any delay, any slight cough of confusion—any sign that someone else is after Melody—and I’ll be screaming into the phone with such furor I’ll crack the plastic, returning to New York at a hundred miles per hour.

As much as I would dread this response from my brother, it would nonetheless bring me direction, a place to point my energy, a way to begin again and attempt to rescue her one last time. Unfortunately, he answers me with assurance, with a clear tone of relief.

“My brother,” he says with a laugh, “it may have aged like wine, but the flavor is that much greater, wouldn’t you say?” Then louder, “I will pass along the news. Can’t wait to open that bottle and take a drink.”

The most recent time I hated my brother Peter: two seconds ago, when he delivered this weird metaphor implying Melody was something he would consume, how he’d derive pleasure from putting her down, or knowing she was already with the fishes. I can’t shake the imagery, the sick look he’d get on his face from opening the trunk of the car and seeing another person lifeless and cold, the proportional punishment for disrupting his world, our world.

I say nothing more and Peter hangs up.

Fury builds inside me and for the first time I recognize it. I want so desperately to push it away, to be the man Melody suggested I could be—that she wants me to be—but I’ve been trained that the better use of a blazing temper is to harness the power behind it. I try to beat it back like a demon attempting possession, but the violence runs through my veins like an amphetamine. But this time—the first time—I pin it down, begin the process of suffocation: I have every intention of finding Melody, and when I find her I’m going to bring her right through the front door of my father’s house, and I’m going to present her, the innocent girl that she is, to my father and Peter and the rest of my family. My original plan now has fuel; Peter’s asinine metaphor has given me clarity and purpose. I will challenge them to look at Melody, to meet her and touch her, to take in her beauty and honesty and integrity and to try and find the slightest ability to take her life. Call me a hopeless romantic. Just call me hopeless. But I pray my family will see what I see, that they will lay down their frigging weapons this one time and say, Maybe you’re right. And if one of them—any of them—reach for a weapon or turn her way with evil intent, they will have to kill me first.

Take that, fury.