Chapter 9: The Downhill Slide

     When I pulled into Fitz's driveway, it was completely dark. The porch light that they usually on at night was off along with the two floodlights that lit up the sign over the warehouse. It wasn't more than a second though before Fitz was tapping on the driver's side window with a flashlight. He was dressed head to toe in black and even wore one of those black sock hats that covered every part of your face but the eyes.

        I couldn't help but it made me laugh which was a mistake. Fitz was on edge, "What's with the mask?"

        "Don't be a laughing at me. We are all serious men tonight doing serious business." He pointed the flashlight in the direction of the warehouse and that's when I made out the shadows of two other figures also clad completely in black and wearing the same type of sock hats.

        That's when he noticed that the Stranger bound, gagged,, and blindfolded sitting beside me in the truck. He nodded in question.

      "That's somebody who showed up at Ernies and made a fool of himself asking a lot of questions about Rosa. Haven't made my mind up what to do with him. Figure it could wait until after we take care of our business. Do you think it would be okay to lock him up in the building out back till we get back?"

         "No problem, but I'm going put a few chains on him, just in case. I don't trust the ropes. You can truss a pig up and they'll just give up and lay there. Most men will never quit trying to get loose. That building's the perfect place to lock somebody up though, it used to be an ice-house, the one window's boarded up, and doors about good six inches thick."

        We took care of that first, then we met up with the other two guys. They were waiting for us in the back parking lot of Mama Jo's Cafe about five miles from Fitz's warehouse I could easily tell who one of them was despite the face coverings, but we weren't using any names. Fitz told me later that although they were both stand-up people, their one big flaw, if you could call it that, was that they weren't used to lying, and it thought that it would be easier for them to say that they couldn't identify anyone else if everyone was masked. Fitz handed me a sock hat and made me put it on before we approached them.

       We stood around the picnic table outside the front of the shop where Fitz had lit up a small kerosene lantern. Then he went inside the warehouse office and came back with two devices that I could make out as some kind of home made bombs after he laid them on the table. Fitz went through the plan and told us what we each needed to do. Fitz and I were going to take care of Boot's house, and the other two were going to take a car to his brother's place which was about a half mile away. He handed me one of the bombs and a small pry bar to pry open the back door.

       I was more than a little nervous about handling the device, and even more worried about what we were about to do, this was some real stuff, and I had never so much as lit a firecracker before, "I don't know this, Guys, I've never done anything quite like this."

      It was Fitz who answered, "It will be a piece of cake. We scouted everything out. Boot lives with his mom, but she plays Bingo with her sister tonight and will be staying in town. The rest of us have already been put to the test, every one but you. Do your job and this is where you'll earn the trust of the ones who count. Besides, it will let you use that fancy lighter of yours for doing something besides lighting some lady's cigarette."

       "You've guys have done this before?" I asked surprised.

       The taller of the two guys answered in a familiar voice, "More than once, why you think DeLeo generally stays on the other side of the valley and lets Giancarlo try to tame this place?" The voice puzzled me. It didn't belong to the person I thought it was, but I knew I had heard before, and it bugged me that I couldn't place it. 

     We split up and got in our vehicles. Fitz told me to drive. The other car, an older, black Buick sedan followed behind. At first, Fitz was silent, but once we worked up a head of steam, he rolled his mask up and started talking, "You said this red-headed guy came in flapping his lip?"

      I took the sock hat off and threw it on the seat between us, "You couldn't get him to shut-up if you held a gun to his head. His lips were still moving when I knocked him out."

       "You know any of those guys you play with who'd talk like that?"

      I thought about it for a minuted, "You know, I don't. Those guys will talk to get you off your game, but as far as revealing anything about themselves or what they're thinking, it wouldn't happen. Hell, Old Man Lee could be holding a straight flush or a pair of twos and his face would look the same."

       "My old Da would always said, a good man listens more than he talks. It's usually more beneficial to take in information than to give it out."

        "I take it, you're not going to tell me who that taller guy is?" 

        "No, not yet, at least."

         We didn't talk for the next five minutes before Fitz volunteered some news that I didn't know, "About three years ago, Jimmy DeLeo a couple of his goons came and tried to convince Ernie to sell him his card room. Ernie told him no of course and that night they tossed a bomb through the front window of the bar. One of Ernie's nephews lost an eye in the explosion."

           I kept waiting for him to tell me the rest of the story, but he didn't. So, I had to tell him, "What happened?"

          He smiled and I could tell he was considering if he could string me along a little further, but when I gave him a threatening look all he said was, "DeLeo wears an eye-patch and Ernie still has his bar."

         "Sheesh, Fitz, I know we were just talking about not volunteering any more than you need to, but you brought it up in the first place."

          He laughed again and I realized that he was just trying to keep from becoming overly anxious, "You wouldn't know it to look at them, but those guys who play cards there are some serious men. You should consider it a sign of respect that they let you play in their games."

           I thought about what he said and then he added, "From what I heard, a bunch of masked men caught him at a stop sign and shot out all four of his tires, his headlights and tail lights, then broke out all of his windows, and he was blinded in his right eye because someone punched him in the face while he was wearing his glasses. Since then, he's been kind of afraid to come back that way, but I've heard that his boss is looking to turn Ernie's into some kind of a casino."

          The car behind us peeled off and went in another direction after Fitz and I turned on Holland Drive. We passed Boot's house on the right side of the road; it was the last house on the street, and road continued upward and curved around a small copse of trees where Fitz pointed out a hidden trail that led into the darkness created by the trees. He had me back into the trail until the care was hidden from view. We got out and he handed me the bomb and the pry bar. The trail led us out the other side of the trees and suddenly we were looking down on Boot's house. There was a little grassy field that went up to the wire fence that surrounded the place.

        "Go in through the back door. The lock if pretty flimsy and the pry bar should handle it pretty easily. Put the bomb on the table and light the fuse. You'll have about five minutes before it goes off. Don't hurry and don't rush, you'll have plenty of time." He threw me the sock hat and I put it on.

         I made my way across the field creeping like Pete and I used to do when we stole watermelons from our neighbor Mr. Jenkins' fields back in Oklahoma. The fence only had three strands of wire so, I put the bomb and pry bar down on the other side and climbed over using a fence post to clear it. The back door lock was as flimsy as Fitz said it would be, so, in a matter of seconds I was inside the kitchen. It was an old woman's kitchen, kind of like's mom's and made me a little sad to think of the probability that Boot's mom was going to feel sad because of what I was about to do. I quickly put that thought out of mind by thinking of the pain that Giancarlo would put Rosa through if he had a chance.

        On the way out, I tripped over a mop bucket on the back porch, but I got up and tried to remain calm, but then I snagged my pants on the barbwire fence and took more than a few seconds before I managed to extricate myself. I finally got back to where Fitz was waiting and turned around and saw a bright yellow Plymouth turn the corner on Holland. It had to be Boots coming home as there wasn't any other house on the street. The pulled into the driveway, the driver's door opened and Boot got one leg out before the whole house blew-up in flames. About 10 seconds later, we heard another loud explosion coming from the other side of the hills to the northwest.

         At the start of the drive back to the warehouse, Fitz was pretty quiet. It was as if he sensed my own inner unrest and was trying to give me room to work it out. When we got out of the area, in the what would be considered the neighborhood of the bombings, he got out his pipe, packed the bowl from the pouched he always carried, and started smoking.

         "I know you're probably worrying, lad, but you've a right. You've had a pretty stressful day, would've flagged any man."

         "That's what I was thinking. I've kidnapped a stranger and blew-up a house belonging another man. The worst thing I've ever done before is steal some of my neighbor's watermelons. When I went to church the Sunday after we took those melons, our Sunday School teacher told me and Pete, we were going to hell where we would be burned in cauldron of oil forever and ever. And though I realized, that the punishment far outweighed the crime, I've felt like a criminal ever since and someone who desperately in need of salvation."

         "As well, you should. I wonder who's done more for creating that feeling, that Dante fellow, or Sunday School teachers. My own moment came in Church when Sister Mary O'Neil caught me ogling Peggy Lewis as was swinging from a tree-limb. The good sister was renown through out the County, for her agility in wielding a ruler. I'd come home from church and my Da would see the bruises and tell me,'Ah, you been ogling that Lewis girl again have ya?"

         The image made me chuckle, but I replied, "All my life, I've been trying to be a better man than my own dad. He had major flaws, but he was basically a good man who tried to be honest and not hurt anyone. That example he sat for us though, just shows how easy it is to do bad things."

         "You're right, Errol, for trying to hang on to every ounce of innocence, and to fight those inner battles every time you think it's necessary to cross the line. If you don't it gets easier and begins to snowball to a point where a man justify pretty near any thing he does."

         "Tell me Fitz, if what we did is so right, why does it make me feel so bad? Shouldn't I be happy."

           "There's your mistake. Most people ne'er realize that happiness is not what we really are searching for, at least that kind of happiness. That's why these millionaires like Jimmy DeLeo are never happy with what they got. There's a different kind of happiness that comes from doing the right thing. Sometimes, most times, that is, it involves giving up things, things like hedonic pleasure, or even your own safety, or even your own life. Let's say, for example, you had to chance to save Rosa's life and you didn't because it conflicted with your morals. Would you ever be happy again?"

         I answered without thinking, "Not in a million years, not if I had all the money in the world," and then after a little thought, I asked, "what's the point then, if you can't be happy?"

         "No one said that you can't be happy, Son. The thing that deprives us of that happiness is a lack of meaning. Our brief time on this planet needs to mean something. You'd be surprised though of just how many of our neighbors simply desire to skate through world without attaching meaning to anything they do."

         We drove along quite a bit further while I chewed on Fitz's words and he smoked on his pipe. At lone point, are partners passed us after blinking their lights and honking. One lone arm came out on the passenger side to wave. It reminded me of something.

          "I wish I knew who that guy was. I recognized the shorter guy as Billy Haynes almost right away. I know that voice though, I'm sure of it."

       I looked at Fitz, thinking he might tell me, but he just took another long pull on his pipe, blew the smoke out slowly, and then laughed.

    After a bit, he said, "What you should be thinking on, is what you're going to do with the stranger you got locked up at my place."