Promise Me

CHAPTER 40

Joan Rochester took a pull from the flask she kept under the car seat.

She was in her driveway now. She could have waited until she got inside. But she didn’t. She was in a daze, had been in a daze for so long that she no longer remembered a time when she really felt truly clear-headed. Didn’t matter. You get used to it. You get so used to it that it becomes normal, this daze, and it would be the clear head that would throw her out of whack.

She stayed in her car and stared at her house. She looked at it as though for the first time. This was where she lived. It sounded so simple, but there it was. This is where she was spending her life. It was unremarkable. It felt impersonal. She lived here. She had helped choose it. And now, as she looked at it, she wondered why.

Joan closed her eyes and tried to imagine something different. How had she gotten here? You don’t just slip, she realized. Change was never dramatic. It was small shifts, so gradual that it becomes imperceptible to the human eye. That was how it had happened to Joan Delnuto Rochester, the prettiest girl at Bloomfield High.

You fall in love with a man because he is everything your father isn’t. He is strong and tough and you like that. He sweeps you off your feet. You don’t even realize how much he takes over your life, how you start to become merely an extension of him, rather than a separate entity or, as you dream, one grander entity, two becoming one in love, like out of a romance novel. You acquiesce on small things, then large things, then everything. Your laugh starts to quiet before disappearing altogether. Your smile dims until it is only a facsimile of joy, something you apply like mascara.

But when had it turned the dark corner?

She couldn’t find a spot on the time line. She thought back, but she couldn’t locate a moment when she could have changed things. It was inevitable, she supposed, from the day they met. There wasn’t a time when she could have stood up to him. There wasn’t a battle she could have waged and won that would have altered anything.

If she could go back in time, would she walk away the first time he asked her out? Would she have said no then? Taken up with another boyfriend, like that nice Mike Braun, who lived in Parsippany now? The answer would probably be no. Her children wouldn’t have been born. Children, of course, change everything. You can’t wish it all never happened, because that would be the ultimate betrayal: How could you live with yourself if you wished your children never existed?

She took another swig.

The truth was, Joan Rochester wished her husband dead. She dreamed about it. Because it was her only escape. Forget that nonsense about abused women standing up to their man. It would be suicide. She could never leave him. He would find her and beat her and lock her up. He would do lord-knows-what to their children. He would make her pay.

Joan sometimes fantasized about packing up the children and finding one of those battered-women shelters in the city. But then what? She dreamed about turning state’s evidence against Dom — she certainly had the knowledge — but even Witness Protection wouldn’t do the trick. He’d find them. Somehow.

He was that kind of man.

She slipped out of her car. There was a wobble in her step, but again that had become almost the norm. Joan Rochester headed to her front door. She slipped the key in and stepped inside. She turned around to close it behind her. When she turned back around, Dominick stood in front of her.

Joan Rochester put her hand to her heart. “You startled me.”

He stepped toward her. For a moment she thought that he wanted to embrace her. But that wasn’t it. He bent low at the knees. His right hand turned into a fist. He swiveled into the roundhouse blow, using his hips for power. The knuckles slammed into her kidney.

Joan’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Her knees gave way. She fell to the floor. Dominick grabbed her by the hair. He lifted her back up and readied the fist. He smashed it into her back again, harder this time.

She slid to the ground like a slit bag of sand.

“You’re going to tell me where Katie is,” Dominick said.

And then he hit her again.

Myron was in his car, talking on the phone to Wheat Manson, his former Duke teammate who now worked in the admissions office as assistant dean, when he realized yet again that he was being followed.

Wheat Manson had been a speedy point guard from the nasty streets of Atlanta. He had loved his years in Durham, North Carolina, and had never gone back. The two old friends started off exchanging quick pleasantries before Myron got to the point.

“I need to ask you something a little weird,” Myron said.

“Go ahead.”

“Don’t get offended.”

“Then don’t ask me anything offensive,” Wheat said.

“Did Aimee Biel get in because of me?”

Wheat groaned. “Oh no, you did not just ask me that.”

“I need to know.”

“Oh no, you did not just ask me that.”

“Look, forget that for a second. I need you to fax me two transcripts. One for Aimee Biel. And one for Roger Chang.”

“Who?”

“He’s another student from Livingston High.”

“Let me guess. Roger didn’t get accepted.”

“He had a better ranking, better SAT scores—”

“Myron?”

“What?”

“We are not going there. Do you understand me? It’s confidential. I will not send you transcripts. I will not discuss candidates. I will remind you that acceptance is not a matter of scores or tests, that there are intangibles. As two guys who got in based much more on our ability to put a sphere through a metallic ring than rankings and test scores, we should understand that better than anyone. And now, only slightly offended, I will say good-bye.”

“Wait, hold up a second.”

“I’m not faxing you transcripts.”

“You don’t have to. I’m going to tell you something about both candidates. I just want you to look it up on the computer and make sure what I’m saying is true.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just trust me here, Wheat. I’m not asking for information. I’m asking you to confirm something.”

Wheat sighed. “I’m not in the office right now.”

“Do it when you can.”

“Tell me what you want me to confirm.”

Myron told him. And as he did, he realized that the same car had been with him since he left Riker Hill. “Will you do it?”

“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“Always was,” Myron said.

“Yeah, but you used to have a sweet jumper from the top of the key. Now what do you got?”

“Raw animal magnetism and supernatural charisma?”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

He did. Myron pulled the hands-free from his ear. The car was still behind him, maybe two hundred feet back.

What was up with all the car tails today? In the old days, a suitor would send flowers or candy. Myron pined for a brief moment, but now was hardly the time. The car had been on him since he left Riker Hill. That meant it was probably one of Dominick Rochester’s goons again. He thought about that. If Rochester had sent a man to follow Myron, he’d probably at the very least known or seen that Myron was with his wife. Myron debated calling Joan Rochester, letting her know, but decided against it. As Joan had pointed out, she’d been with him a long time. She’d know how to handle it.

He was on Northfield Avenue heading to New York City. He didn’t have time for this, but he needed to get rid of this tail as quickly as possible. In the movies, this would call for a car chase or a swift U-turn of some sort. That didn’t really play in real life, especially when you need to get to a place in a hurry and don’t want to attract the cops.

Still, there were ways.

The music store teacher, Drew Van Dyne, lived in West Orange, not far from here. Zorra should be in place now. Myron picked up his cell phone and called. Zorra picked up on the first ring.

“Hello, dreamboat,” Zorra said.

“I assume there’s been no activity at the Van Dyne house.”

“You assume correctly, dreamboat. Zorra just sits and sits. So boring this, for Zorra.”

Zorra always referred to herself in the third person. She had a deep voice, a thick accent, and lots of mouth phlegm. It was not a pleasant sound.

“I have a car following me,” Myron said.

“And Zorra can help?”

“Oh yes,” Myron said. “Zorra can definitely help.”

Myron explained his plan — his frighteningly simple plan. Zorra laughed and started coughing.

“So Zorra like?” Myron asked, falling, as he often did when speaking to her, into Zorra-talk.

“Zorra like. Zorra like very much.”

Since it would take a few minutes to set up, Myron took some unnecessary turns. Two minutes later, Myron took the right on Pleasant Valley Way. Up ahead, he saw Zorra standing by the pizzeria. She wore her ’30s blond wig and smoked a cigarette in a holder and looked just like Veronica Lake after a real bad bender, if Veronica Lake was six feet tall and had a Homer Simpson five o’clock shadow and was really, really ugly.

Zorra winked as Myron passed and raised her foot just a little bit. Myron knew what was in that heel. The first time they met, she had sliced his chest with the hidden “stiletto” blade. In the end, Win had spared Zorra’s life — something that surprised the heck out of Myron. Now they were all buddies. Esperanza compared it to her days in the ring when a famed bad-guy wrestler would all of a sudden turn good.

Myron used the left-turn signal and pulled to the side of the road, two blocks ahead of Zorra. He rolled down his window so he could hear. Zorra stood near an open parking spot. It was natural. The car following Myron’s pulled into the spot to see where Myron was headed. Of course, he could have stopped anywhere on the street. Zorra had been ready for that.

The rest was, as already noted, frighteningly simple. Zorra strolled over to the back of the car. She had been wearing high heels for the past fifteen years, but she still walked like a newborn colt on bad acid.

Myron watched the scene in his rearview mirror.

Zorra unsheathed the dagger in her stiletto heel. She raised her leg and stomped on the tire. Myron heard the whoosh of air. She quickly circled to the other back tire and did the same thing. Then Zorra did something that was not part of the plan.

She waited to see if the driver would get out and accost her.

“No,” Myron whispered to himself. “Just go.”

He had been clear. Stomp the tires and run. Don’t get into a fight. Zorra was deadly. If the guy got out of his car — probably some macho goon who was used to breaking heads — Zorra would slice him into pizza topping. Forget the morals for a moment. They didn’t need that kind of police attention.

The goon driving the car yelled, “Hey! What the—?” and started getting out of the car.

Myron turned around and stuck his head out the window. Zorra had the smile. She bent her knees a little. Myron called out. Zorra looked up and met Myron’s eye. Myron could see the anticipation, the itch to strike. He shook his head as firmly as he knew how.

Another second passed. The goon slammed his car door shut. “You dumb bitch!”

Myron kept shaking his head, more urgently now. The goon took a step. Myron held Zorra’s gaze. Zorra reluctantly nodded.

And then she ran away.

“Hey!” The goon gave chase. “Stop!”

Myron started up his car. The goon looked back now, unsure what to do, and then he made a decision that probably saved his life.

He ran back to his car.

But with slashed back tires, he wouldn’t go anywhere.

Myron pulled back onto the road, on his way to his encounter with the missing Katie Rochester.