CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tommy couldn’t get there fast enough. Mick was speeding like a crazy man, but it still wasn’t fast enough for Tommy. His heart was hammering as he phoned his grounds security and ordered them to detain his trusted driver.
“He just left, Boss,” his security chief said.
“Jeremy just left?”
“Yes sir. About ten minutes ago. Want me to call him back?”
“No,” said Tommy. “Don’t notify him at all. Did he say where he was headed?”
“He was off for the night, so I assume he’s heading home.”
“Okay. Keep it all on lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out no matter what. I’ll be in touch,” he added, and then ended the call.
“Where does that fucker live?” asked Mick.
But Tommy was thinking about it. “He knew we were closing in on his ass when we went to pick up Luddie.”
“Did he know we were going for Luddie?”
“Yeah he knew it,” said Robby. “He asked me what all the commotion was about, and I told him we bringing in Luddie Jelinski. I had no idea, Tommy.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sal said, defending his underboss. “You thought he was on the same team we were on. I thought that shit too. I told that asshole many things myself. He seemed like a good kid.”
“Only his old lady is a billionaire with a mighty big grudge against us.”
“Where does he live, Tommy?” Mick asked again.
“I don’t think he went home, Uncle Mick,” said Tommy, looking as if he was in deep contemplation.
“Then where is he?”
“Go to Jake’s.”
“The airfield?”
“Yes,” said Tommy. “If I was Jeremy, I wouldn’t be going home. I’d wait, like he did so that he wouldn’t draw suspicion, but then I’d leave. I’d say I’m calling it a night since the boss doesn’t look like he’ll be back any time soon.”
“And then you’ll hop a plane?”
“Or chopper his mother had waiting for him, yes,” said Tommy. “Go to Jake’s.”
And Mick did a wild U-turn and headed in that direction.
To their delight, Jeremy was just getting out of his little Mini Cooper when they drove onto the airfield. And just as Tommy had predicted, a helicopter was waiting to whisk Jeremy back to his land of privilege.
Not so fast, Tommy thought as Mick sped up to that Mini Cooper and flung in front of it. Everybody hopped out, except for Robby, who got onto the third seat and kept his gun trained on Luddie.
While Tommy, Sal, and Reno ran to Jeremy, Mick pulled out a pump-action shotgun and aimed it at the chopper pilot. The pilot, no fool, placed his hands in the air.
Tommy flung Jeremy against his car. “Why would you do that to my children?” he angrily asked him. “Not man enough to do it to me, so you go after my little ones? Why?” he yelled again as he slammed Jeremy’s thin body against that car again.
“It’s all because of you,” he said. “You had to suffer. I knew what was important to you. That wife and those children. But it was better to go after the children. Because they’re innocent. That’s why I did the school. That’s why I went for the kids. All that blood is on your hands.”
“Bullshit,” said Sal. “All that blood is on your hands. Your ass did that shit, not my brother.”
“Why?” Tommy asked Jeremy again, his face filled with anguish. He was pained to know. The betrayal was just that deep for him.
“You killed her,” Jeremy finally said.
“I killed who?”
“My big sister. She wasn’t even two years old when it happened.”
Tommy frowned. “I killed a two-year-old? That’s a gotdamn lie.”
“You killed her!” Jeremy screamed out.
“How did Tommy kill your two-year-old sister?” asked an equally confused Reno.
“Remember Marjorie Donaldson?” Jeremy asked Tommy. “Remember that whore, Tommy?”
Tommy stood erect when he heard that name. It was one of the more painful chapters of his life.
But Reno frowned. “Marjorie? Tommy’s ex-girlfriend? You’re talking that Marjorie?”
“Yes, that Marjorie,” said Jeremy. But his eyes stayed on Tommy. “You broke up with her to be with Grace, and on that fateful night she was in your limousine crying about it. It was all in the papers because I looked it all up after she died.”
“After who died? The two-year-old?”
“Yes. Only she didn’t die right away. She wasted away for years. And then she died.”
Tommy was confused. “But what happened with Marjorie was years and years ago. What are you talking about?”
“My mom and my baby sister were in the car.” He had tears in his eyes now.
But Tommy still didn’t understand. “I thought Ingrid Hawken was your mother.”
“She’s not my mother. She’s my half-sister on my mother’s side. My father was black. Her father was white. Our mother was white.”
“But Ingrid was the one that was in the car?” asked Sal.
“No!” said Jeremy. “Don’t you ever listen? Ingrid wasn’t in the car at all. It was my mom and my little sister that were in the car.”
“But what car are you talking about?” asked a still confused Tommy.
“The one that had to swerve when Marjorie Donaldson jumped out of your moving limousine. She committed suicide right there on that highway. Or at least that what you bribed the papers to claim.”
“Fuck you!” said Sal.
“My mother was driving behind your limo and she and all those other cars had to swerve to avoid running over that fool when she jumped out. Only my mom swerved into another car and her car went airborne. It ended upside down. She and my baby sister both were badly injured.”
Tommy remembered there was a lot of wreckage that night, but he didn’t remember the details.
“My mom recovered, but my baby sister never did. She had horrific health issues and paralysis for the rest of her life. Until she died seven months ago. My mom, still filled with guilt after what happened to my baby sister, died a few days after she did. And that when me and Ingrid decided it was time.”
“Time for what?” asked Reno.
“To do it. To test it. Tiffany was our test case,” Jeremy said.
“Tiffany? Who’s Tiffany?” Reno asked.
“I thought Tommy told you everything,” said Jeremy. “But he didn’t tell you about her, hun? I wouldn’t either. It took us years, but Ingrid was able to purchase an implantation device. And we made Tiffany, one of your girlfriends, the test case.”
Tiffany was not nor had ever been Tommy’s girlfriend.
She was a business associate that wanted more from him, but he turned her down the one time she asked.
It was months later that she suddenly appeared in that hotel room frantically asking him to marry her or they would kill her. “You threatened to kill her?”
“Very much so,” said Jeremy. “That’s why she got in touch with you.
Did everything we ordered her to do because she knew we had control of her through that device.
She told you they were trying to kill her.
And you had to marry her. All kinds of crazy stuff.
But she wasn’t playing. She knew we could do anything to her we wanted to do.
We told her to blow her brains out or we would set her on fire and she would die a slow, painful, horrible death. So guess what she did?”
“What she do?” asked Reno.
“Right in front of Tommy she put that gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Had they done an autopsy, they would have seen that she was implanted with a device. It could have stopped right there. But we knew you wouldn’t play by the rules because no Gabrini does.
They never got the chance to autopsy her.
Did they, Tommy? You and your brother’s cleanup crew saw to that.
She became a missing person. She disappeared.
That was three months ago. But who cares about that whore? Right, Tommy?”
“They would have blamed him for her death,” said Sal, defending Tommy the way he always did. Tommy told a lot to Reno, but it was Sal he told everything to. “They would have never believed it was suicide. He did what he had to do.”
“And I did what I had to do,” said Jeremy. “My sister got me the credentials Tommy was looking for, and I became one of his drivers. Then Ingrid said it was time, and so it was.”
“You keep talking time,” said Reno. “Time for what?”
“Time for revenge!” said Jeremy with satisfaction in his voice. “Time for Tommy to feel the agony we felt.” He looked at Tommy. “Time for you to lose a child. Time for Destiny to lose a brother and TJ to lose a sister. That was the plan. That was the plan.”
When Jeremy saw just how anguished Tommy was because of his own actions, he took full advantage of it. He grabbed Tommy by the neck, turned him around, and used him as his human shield.
Sal and Reno quickly began pulling out their guns, and Mick was aiming his shotgun at Jeremy, when they suddenly realized he had a knife to Tommy’s throat. “One false move,” he said the way his hired guns had said it to TJ, “and he’s dead.”
They held back. The knife was against Tommy’s neck. They knew one puncture and he could bleed out.
“Drop those guns,” Jeremy ordered all of them. “Get away from that chopper,” Jeremy ordered Mick. And Mick backed away. And they all laid their weapons down.
Tommy, who was afraid to speak because that knife was within one slight move of puncturing his lungs, held up his hands as Jeremy turned his back to the chopper and began to climb up on its landing gear with Tommy as his prisoner.
But when he got on board and the chopper pilot lifted it high off the ground, Jeremy angrily kicked Tommy off of the chopper, expecting him to die a horrible death from the fall.
But Tommy clung to the landing bar of the chopper, and held on for dear life.
That was when Mick, Reno, and Sal picked back up their weapons and did what they had to do.
They knew without saying a word that their decision would probably kill Tommy.
But if they didn’t try it, they knew Tommy’s death wouldn’t be probable, but certain.
All three of them began firing their weapons.
They shot the pilot first, which was essential, and then Jeremy too.
Just as they expected, the chopper began to circle wildly into a tailspin, as it was swirling around and around and losing altitude fast, and then it began to nosedive. They knew, and Tommy knew, that it was his only chance of survival.
He jumped from the chopper just as it was about to crash land, and he rolled away from that chopper as fast as his momentum could carry him. The chopper slammed to the ground, and then exploded.
Sal, Reno, and Mick had no idea the state Tommy was in as the smoke covered their total range of sight. But they ran through that smoke even as sirens could be heard coming toward the chopper. That was when they saw Tommy on the ground. He was badly banged up, and he was not moving at all.
Sal was the first to get to him. His heart was hammering harder than he could ever remember. That was his beloved brother. That was the man he’d die for. He ran to Tommy.
“Tommy, are you okay? Please be okay!” Sal was asking his brother the same things over and over as he sat his head on his lap and tried to shake him awake. “Tommy? Tommy? Tommy, please wake up! Tommy!”
Mick was the second to arrive at Tommy’s side, and he was as devastated at Sal was. Reno was too.
But Sal would not accept anything but total victory. He kept shaking his brother. He kept insisting that it wasn’t so.
And he was right. It took several more shakes, but Tommy finally woke up and opened his eyes.
Mick and Reno both fell on their knees too when Tommy woke up.
But Sal smiled. He’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life than his brother waking up.
“You’re okay, big brother?” he asked him. “You’re okay, Tommy?”
“I will be,” Tommy said in a strained voice, “if you stop squeezing the life out of my hand.”
They all looked down and saw that Sal had a death grip on his brother’s hand. And they all laughed.
But Sal still wouldn’t let go of that hand.