Where Is Sonny?

Sasha pulled up to the mansion on the outskirts of Vegas and offered a prayer to her grandmother in heaven to protect her from getting shot, or worse, from finding a dead body. She wanted to get into the house somehow and check on her long-time friend and best customer. She was surprised of the state of the house. The front gate unmanned, the gardens and yards in desperate need of attention. She admitted she shouldn’t have been startled. Sonny had not been himself for the last year and a half since he’d given his grandson and his siblings control of the family early. They’d taken it and then left him to rot.

She knew who Sonny Allegretti was, or at least who he used to be. One of the most ruthless leaders of the Italian mob Vegas had ever known. Now he was a sad old man who came to her club and drank whisky at the end of her bar every night. Except the last two nights. He hadn’t shown up. It was unheard of.

She lifted her eyes in another silent prayer begging she didn’t walk in on an old, settled score and climbed out of her little sedan and walked to the front door, the gravel crunching under her feet echoing in the eerie silence.

A man like Sonny should have protection and guards and she had just driven right up to his front door without question. She knew what kind of people would take advantage of him being so isolated and alone. She knocked on the door. “Sonny? You home?” She called out and waited for an answer. She rang the doorbell and called out to him again. She tried the door, but it was locked tight, and she grimaced.

Sonny had always had a soft spot for her. If he wasn’t answering the door to her, he either wasn’t home or was incapable of answering. She nervously rung her hands in front of her debating her next steps.

She shook her head knowing intuitively something wasn’t right. If the roles were reversed, he would look for her, she was certain of it. They’d been friends her entire life. She walked back down the steps of the front door and wandered around looking in windows and seeing nothing but dusty, grimy furniture and empty rooms. The last time she had been here was long before his wife had passed away. She felt sick to her stomach at the state of the rooms. Ruthie would have yelled at him for letting the house go so badly. Where was the housekeeper?

“Sonny, where did you go?” she whispered as she climbed through a thick bush of roses to get closer to a window, wishing fervently she hadn’t stupidly worn shorts. She realized peering into the window she had found Sonny’s office. She looked in the room and wondered how many mob deals had gone down in this hallowed room. It was a room she’d never been permitted to enter all the times she’d visited. Ruthie had always said it was the room where only the big boys got to play. She studied the dark walls and furniture and then caught sight of the man himself, stretched out on a sofa, one arm dangling to the floor and the other on his chest. Through the grimy window he did not look well.

She rapped on the window hard, uncaring she might crack the glass and called his name. “Sonny, it’s Sasha. I’m worried about you. Can you let me in?” The man didn’t move. “Sonny, can you hear me?” She slapped her hands frustratedly against the window. She wiped the dirt off the window with her arm and tried to make out if he was breathing. Her forehead pressed tight to the window, she shivered as she brushed a spider web off her face and squinted her eyes in Sonny’s direction. Could she tell if his chest was moving? She refused to admit he looked dead. He couldn’t be dead. “Please don’t be dead,” she whispered to him through the glass.

“Fuck, shit, balls,” she hissed furiously as she tried to open the windows, but they were sealed shut. “Who the hell seals windows Sonny?” She yelled at him smacking her palm against the glass again. He didn’t move a fraction and she felt dread settling deep in her stomach.

She scrambled back through the rose bushes with certainty her thighs were covered in thorns at this point and went back to her car. Opening her trunk, she dug through it and found a crowbar. She walked around the house looking for a way and then remembered how she used to run through the gate in the back yard as a kid and Sonny would chase her all around the giant house. There had to be a way into the house. She found the gate and her entrance to the house in the form of a set of patio doors near a giant pool which was overgrown with algae and appeared not to have been touched in years.

“Sonny, Ruthie would kill you for ruining her beloved pool,” she muttered under her breath. She used the crowbar to smash the glass around the panels of the patio doors and reached through and unlocked the door and then stepped inside, the broken shards crunching under her sneakers. She tried to remember which room she had seen Sonny sleeping in, she refused to say dead, and after the third try found the office and tentatively moved towards the sofa. It had been too long since she’d been in his house. She should know these rooms like the back of her hand.

“Sonny,” she whispered softly and stood over him. “Sonny, are you dead?” She watched his chest barely lift up and down and gave a sigh of relief and then made a face as she smelled something foul. “Sonny, are you dying because you smell awful? What the hell is that?”

She stood there wondering if he’d soiled himself and looked him over and noted his leg closest to the back of the sofa was rolled up and he had a large gaping wound on the leg which was very infected. Sasha considered it was the kind of infection in the movies maggots crawled out of. She gagged at the smell and pulled her t-shirt over her face. “Oh Sonny, this is why you were limping the other night. You foolish old fart.”

“Why are you standing over me with a crowbar? Here to finish me off?” his raspy voice made her jump.

“You old fool, you scared me half to death. I’ve been calling out to you for nearly thirty minutes. I had to break a window and get in. I thought you were dead.” She stomped her foot as her heart raced furiously from the way he scared her.

“I wish. Only the good die young, Sasha and I am not good. I imagine I’ll still be on this miserable earth at least another twenty years.” He didn’t move though he was grinning weakly at the way he’d frightened her.

She leaned over and kissed his clammy head, “I for one am glad you are not dead. You keep my club afloat in whisky tabs.” She noted he wasn’t moving from his position. “I’m calling an ambulance. You need to be checked out.”

“I don’t want to go to any fucking hospital,” his words were weak at best.

“You don’t get a fucking choice,” she grumbled back at him and noted the hint of a smile. “What did you do to your leg?”

“Went down to the wine cellar. It was me and Ruthie’s anniversary last Friday. Caught the leg on a nail.”

“That was a week ago,” she chastised as gently as she could. “We toasted her together. You didn’t mention you had hurt your leg.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It looks like flesh eating disease.” She shook her head. “Have you eaten anything in the last few days? Checked your blood sugars even?”

“I ate.”

“When?” she helped him into a sitting position as she dialed for emergency services.

“I had some toast,” he argued with her.

She noted the glassiness to his eyes and shook her head. She turned away from him and spoke into the receiver, “Hi. I need an ambulance. My friend is elderly. In his eighties. I just found him semi-conscious. He’s a diabetic with a significant leg wound which appears quite infected. I’m concerned the infection has spread to his body. Also, I’m worried his blood sugars are off. He’s unfocused and his speech is slurred.” The operator assured her she would have an ambulance to her in minutes and she provided the address.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital and I’m not elderly.”

“Tough and you’re old as hell,” she looked over her shoulder. “Where’s the staff, Sonny? Where is your nurse and your housekeeper and the guards at the gate?”

“Fired them all fifteen months ago.” He closed his eyes letting his hands rest on his slow-moving abdomen. He appeared frail and sad. “One man doesn’t need all those people.”

“Who cleans for you?”

“Cleans what?” He argued, “I’m one man. I know how to take a piss and not get it everywhere. Ruthie trained me well. I can even run a dishwasher.”

“What about a dust cloth or cook your meals? She always said the reason the pair of you needed a housekeeper was because you were both sloppy. Who has been feeding you?”

“A lovely woman named Marie Callender. Freezer is stocked.”

“Full of sodium and sugars your body doesn’t need,” she turned to face him with her hands upon her hips. “Sonny, Ruthie would have your balls.”

He was quiet for several minutes and then he spoke softly, “what I wouldn’t give to hear her yell at me one more time. God, I miss her, Sasha.”

Her heart broke at his words, and she fought the tears welling in her eyes, “I know you do, Sonny but this isn’t how she would want you to live. I miss her too. I miss her like crazy but if you die because you let yourself go, she’s not speaking to you for all of eternity and you know it.” She sat beside him and gave a sigh. “My friend, I love you like a grandfather, and you scared me today. We need to get you some help. Please don’t fight with the paramedics.”

“I’ll be here all alone again,” he whispered. “You’ll take me to the hospital and drop me off and then I’ll come back here and be all alone.”

His words cracked her chest open internally, or at least it felt like it because the pain was excruciating. Guilt consumed her and she fell to her knees in front of him and stared into his dark eyes sadly. “Do you want me to stay with you?” she lifted her hand between hers. “Tell me what you need.”

“Your father would lose his mind if you came here.” He looked away as if embarrassed he’d shown her vulnerability.

“He doesn’t need to know,” she laughed. “It’s not like he tells me his every movement.”

“It’s for your protection,” Sonny frowned at her. “Your family has dangerous work which keeps him busy. What you don’t know, cannot hurt you.”

“Well, all I know is, I’m twenty-eight years old. I didn’t know him the first thirteen years of my life which is damn near half of it. He doesn’t get to dictate all of my actions now. If I want to come and temporarily,” she said the word very clearly, “stay with my friend until he’s back on his feet and feeling better, then I will. My father can kiss my shiny white trash ass if he objects.”

The wailing of an ambulance in the distance caught their ear.

“You could have just left me here to die.” He looked away and sighed, “I wish you would have. You could have just pretended you didn’t remember the address.”

“I could have. Then I’d feel guilty. Besides, I’ve always wanted to be in this room. It’s a very sexy room, Sonny.”

He gave a little chuckle at her words. “Ruthie said the same thing. God, I miss her.” He repeated his earlier words.

She touched his cheek softly and felt the weight of her remorse on her shoulders.