Part 10
Lou took another step, the tire iron swinging slightly at his side. His face was twisted into something ugly and pathetic—the expression of a man who had spent his whole life defending a lie he knew he hadn't earned.
"Who’s going to believe you, Clara?" Lou said, his voice dropping to a low, desperate hiss. "You’re a waitress. You’ve got fifteen dollars in the bank. You think the cops care about a forty-year-old tax dispute? You think some judge is going to look at that book and hand you the keys?"
"They will if Teresa Marcone is the one testifying," Clara said.
Lou froze. The tire iron stopped its small, rhythmic swing. His eyes widened, the white showing all around the dark pupils. "Teresa’s dead. She died in Illinois twenty years ago. My old man checked."
"Your old man was wrong," Clara said. "She was here yesterday. She sat right in that booth. She’s at my apartment right now, Lou. And she’s got the original receipt for the lock your father broke to get into the safe."
Lou’s breath came in short, sharp gasps now. He looked around the diner as if he expected the walls to start closing in on him. The small-mindedness Teresa had warned her about was there, written in the frantic movement of his eyes. He wasn't a criminal mastermind; he was a bully who had run out of small girls to push around.
"Give me the book," he whispered, raising the iron bar. "Give it to me, Clara, and we’ll call it even. I’ll clear the debt. You can keep the job. Forty hours a week, guaranteed. No deductions."
Clara looked down at the oilcloth on the floor. She thought about her mother, dying in that hospital bed with Lou’s fake debt hanging over her like a shroud. She thought about her grandmother, quitting her life’s work in the middle of a Friday rush because she couldn't bear to look at the man who had stolen her dream.
"No," Clara said.
Lou lunged.
He was heavy and slow, his knees stiff from years of standing on the same concrete floors. Clara didn't try to fight him. She grabbed the heavy metal coffee pot from the warmer beside her—the one she’d filled with cold water to soak the glass—and threw it straight at his face.
The glass didn't break, but the heavy water-filled pot caught him square on the cheekbone. Lou let out a sharp howl of pain, his hands flying to his face as the tire iron clattered against the linoleum.
He stumbled backward, tripping over the very stool Mr. Henderson always sat on, and hit the floor hard, his head striking the edge of the pie case with a dull crack.
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He stayed down, groaning, his fingers leaking a thin trail of dark blood where the coffee pot had cut his cheek.
Clara didn't wait for him to get up. She scooped up the ledger and the yellowed documents, rolled them back into the oilcloth, and ran out the front door, the bell chiming a long, frantic song behind her.
