Chapter 50

the sound: Golden Earring – Twilight Zone

Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the back seat of a police car on my way to my parent’s home…the father had sent in reinforcements.

We arrived home to my mother sitting on the couch in the living room with the bother and the blister and 4 of the officers that worked for my father milling around. I sat with my mother and asked “hi mom…..what’s going on?”

“Your father is once again concerned with how the results of your actions affect the rest of the family” she said….scathingly.

“but mom…these guys are small potatoes…their just cheap thugs…and not even really good thugs….they seriously couldn’t organize something like this…someone else did the thinking for them...I just know it!” I started.

“His point exactly Baby, once again, that calibre of people you are making your life with can and will take the law into their own hands….your father is just not taking any chances…he will not allow your need to ‘do your own thing’ cause harm to anyone else.”

“oh blah blah blah”…I replied, and then sat back and remembered the sound of the rifle as it exploded so close to my head, and the sound of the bullet going into the wall where I’d been sitting. “maybe she’s got something there” I thought.

My father…ever the pragmatist was on the phone to the local police department ‘making arrangements’ and no sooner had I finished this conversation with my mother he and another officer furtively whisked me out the door, into the back seat of the patrol car and off to his office.

“In a police car twice in one day” I thought…”this can’t be good.”

At the police station my father and his men rallied around loaded for bear, they truly seemed caught up in the expectation that Frankie and Bennie might come bursting through the door with guns blazing.

I on the other hand was not so convinced….and as always in the presence of my father was beginning to feel pushed around and just the tiniest bit belligerent in return.

Two detectives from the local PD arrived and in no time at all I was ensconced in a small room with them, one of my father’s men and a stenographer to take notes.

I made a cursory statement about the robbery and then they began to grill me.

In not time at all I was at the ‘refusing to further answer’ stage of my morning. I was tired, and pissed and disgusted with being treated like, what I considered at criminal might be treated.

Just to firm my resolve, at a moment when I was being particularly obstinate about not sharing what had happened the police officer that worked for my father asked me if I was aware that someone had “taken shots” at my parent’s home that night?

What?...what do you mean shots? I asked.

“shots Baby…with a gun you bloody fool!” came the reply

I drew in a breath, my initial gut reaction was to tell them nothing further but then three things occurred to me simultaneously. One being that everyone at the hotel had known but me, two being that I had come very very close to loosing my life to a junkie and three that in fact a life had been lost, Amelia had lost her child.

I resolved to be done with the kind of people that would take life so lightly, mine, Amelia’s baby’s nor that of the rest of my family.