Chapter 7
ARATH
When we’re finished with the pictures of Elgin’s ransacked house, we move on to other activities that Empire has been up to. I don’t ask Elgin to leave the conference room. Most of what we discuss is petty crime. A mugging. Vandalism. Carjacking. Broken windows at a café in town.
They’ve been strangely slow with their gun violence. The man they’d been after the night they stumbled upon Elgin was in the alley adjacent to the one Elgin was walking down. It was a case of mistaken identity and misread location.
Not that Elgin looks like their target. He doesn’t. I’m not sure if they decided to embrace their mistake, or if they didn’t realize their mistake until they’d already been shooting at him and decided they’d kill him to keep him from identifying them.
It only reinforces my suspicion that they’re not the brightest. Elgin was clearly drunk. I saw that from the other end of the alley. He wouldn’t have been able to identify them. He still can’t. He has no idea who was shooting at him.
We examine the violent crime within Philly over the past forty-eight hours to determine whether Empire has any hand in it. Interestingly, it’s been rather quiet. Not a bad way to end a conference.
I’ve been in Philly for almost a decade now, working on getting the city’s crime under control.
It took me several years to find the right men to work for me.
It took me another couple of years to get law enforcement on the same page.
I feel like we’ve finally begun to make some headway over the last eighteen months. Everything is just falling into place.
Then, the dumpster fire that is the Empire gang has visions of grandeur. They think they’re in the 1950s when mobsters ran the streets. Except that they’re not masterminds. They have a false sense of self-importance and deluded imaginings about how intimidating they are.
They run every time my team closes in. That’s not how the five families ran New York in the fifties, though that’s what they’re attempting to fashion themselves after.
Our conversation derails after a while, and I dismiss the meeting. Elgin sat silently, watching and listening. Gathering as much information as we could put out there while sipping on his tea until it was gone. Then he simply observed.
I bring Elgin out of the conference room to wander around the courtyard for a while.
Dinner is in ten minutes, so there’s no time to get involved with anything else.
He’s quiet as he absently studies the courtyard.
It’s completely enclosed within the structure of the house and beautifully green this time of year.
Elgin remains quiet. Maybe processing what he learned.
“What’re you thinking right now?” I ask.
He glances at me, his shoulders already rising in a shrug. “You all make this Empire gang sound kind of lame, and yet, you’re keeping me here for my safety.”
“They haven’t killed anyone this week. That doesn’t mean they haven’t killed anyone.
” In reality, I half suspect they’re determined to murder Elgin because I’ve taken an interest in him.
I didn’t just run Empire off him in the alley.
I picked him up and brought him home. I haven’t let him go. That didn’t go unnoticed.
They view me and my men as the one obstacle in their way to securing their faux mob status. Making an example of Elgin is just the kind of thing they’re looking for.
“It sounds like they’re kind of… lame.”
“They’re the playground bullies with a false sense of invincibility.
They truly think they’re scarier than they are.
They think they’re the Costellos, when in reality, they’re the thirteen-year-olds coloring on their skin with magic markers and slashing the principal’s tires with a steak knife and calling themselves a gang. ”
He snorts. “You truly paint a picture.”
“The truth is that a security team could likely keep you safe from them. They’re not about snipers.
They’d show up in your face and try to shoot you.
But why take the chance? Why waste the money?
I’ll protect you for free. They’ve already been on our radar, and we’re picking them off one at a time before we send out the grand finale. ”
“The Philly branch of the Van Dorens is the true mob family, huh?” he asks, the corner of his mouth ticking up in an amused smile.
I know the teasing question for what it is. He’s fishing for an answer to what it is we do here. Does my family know?
In a response that drives him crazy, I smile in answer. Elgin rolls his eyes.
A glimpse at my watch tells me it’s time for dinner, so I guide Elgin back toward the house with my hand on his lower back. The door opens into the hall across from the dining room. I pull his chair out for him and slide it in as he sits.
His gaze feels locked on me once I take my seat perpendicular to him. He watches me as I load his plate with samplings from the different platters being passed around. When he’s loaded up, I snap the folds out of his cloth napkin and set it across his lap.
Elgin’s amused. I’m not sure if he cares that I dish his food, though he wants to ask about it. I imagine if he digs his feet in, not wanting me to do so, it’d be in principle more than him actually caring at all.
“Nice to see you back,” Claude says, and Elgin’s attention moves away. He sits up and eats while he listens to the conversation around the table. “Have a good vacation?”
Tommy grins, nodding. “Yep. We went hiking and exploring in the Rockies primarily. I’ll show you pictures later.”
“How’re the kids?”
Tommy laughs. “Maryann wants to play football, and her mother is throwing a fit.”
“Football? American football?” Ross asks.
Tommy nods. “Yep. She wants to run and catch the ball. Of course, my wife is concerned about her being tackled.”
Saul leans in closer to Elgin and murmurs, “Maryann is eight.”
Elgin nods.
“If she’s just interested in running, why not track and field?” Ross asks.
“Wider options of sports don’t really happen until middle school. There isn’t a track and field team for her age range. Besides, she says that’s boring. She wants a purpose and to be challenged when she runs.”
“Maryann has been running with Tommy since she was a baby,” Saul tells Elgin.
His comment makes Tommy look at Elgin. He doesn’t ask who he is. I’m sure he’s already been told what’s happened in his absence that brings Elgin into my home.
“I have three kids. The oldest, TJ, is seventeen. Patrick is fifteen. And Maryann is eight. When Maryann was a baby, Patrick got really sick, and my wife dedicated most of her attention and focus to caring for him. TJ was old enough to keep himself alive. Which meant I had Maryann often. We’d go running every morning, with her in the stroller.
We graduated to her riding her bike or scooter, or something on wheels that I could pull along if I needed to.
When she turned three, she decided she wanted to run with me instead.
I carried her scooter on my back, but that little girl ran her first two miles without complaint.
Without slowing down. Of course, her little legs slowed me down anyway, but to watch her enjoy running with me made it worth the slower speed.
She still runs with me every morning. We do marathons together.
” Tommy shakes his head. “I’m not surprised she’s looking for a new challenge now. ”
“That’s cool,” Elgin says. “You don’t meet many parent-child pairs that run together like that.”
Tommy shakes his head. “Her dedication to running has actually gotten her brothers more active. I’m not sure if she’s showing them up or what, but while they don’t enjoy running, they’ll hike with us anytime Maryann wants to go.”
“It’s an interesting thing to bond over,” Claude says. “Most people hate running.”
I nod along with the majority of the table.
“I can’t say I enjoy it like my daughter obviously does,” Tommy says.
“I’ve been running every morning since I signed up for the military at the beginning of my senior year in high school.
It was part of my routine to get in shape and prepare for boot camp.
Then you run in boot camp—a lot. You have PT throughout your military career, so you’re still running.
At this point, it’s a part of my identity.
I feel it when I don’t run for a few days. ”
“It’s a strange restlessness in your body,” Ross says, nodding. “Like you need to run. You crave it.”
“Yes,” Tommy agrees.
Elgin nods his understanding. “I understand that feeling.”
“Yeah? You a runner?” Tommy asks.
Elgin shakes his head. “No. I’m a hockey player. I miss the ice as soon as I step off it.”
“Hockey?! Ugh,” Saul says, making a face at Elgin.
I attempt to keep a straight face. Since picking Elgin up in the alley, we’ve hidden the fact that we knew his name as soon as he said it.
We have season tickets to the Philly Hatters’ games, and we rotate who attends.
We’re actually a big hockey house. Saul is a huge Philly fan.
He’s actually a big Elgin fan. He has two different Elgin jerseys.
However, seeing Elgin scowl at us when we don’t know hockey keeps us all not fans. Which is rough since we’re at the start of playoffs, and we’re hiding keeping up with it when, any other time, the game would be on in nearly every room.
Elgin rolls his eyes. “True skill. True strength. Or you can stand stationary in a field and wait for someone to maybe hit a ball in your direction.”
“Stop! Baseball is an American pastime!” Claude bellows.
“Yeah, and it should have stayed in the past,” Elgin says, rolling his eyes. “Let me guess. You’re also a fan of driving cars in a circle for several hours?”
“You are not bashing NASCAR,” Tommy says, mortified.
I lean back in my chair, amused. Hockey is our sport of choice in this house, but we tend to have any sporting event on when it’s not hockey season, or when there isn’t a hockey game on. Rarely are they the two sports that Elgin mentioned, but it’s fun messing with him.
“That takes skill,” Wendall says.
Elgin rolls his eyes. “I can drive in a circle all day long. Any sixteen-year-old can once they get their license.”
“Awful, awful man,” Ross mutters, shaking his head. “Go back to your igloo, Bolingbrook.”
Elgin snorts. “Actually, playing in an enormous igloo would be cool as shit.”
“Yeah, it would,” Saul says, momentarily forgetting the game. He grins and then shakes his head. “Anything inside an igloo would be cool.”
Elgin agrees. “I watched a documentary or something that shows how they cut ice blocks from frozen lakes to make the enormous ice bricks to form igloos. And how they’re solid and cold enough that you can even have a fire inside without melting.”
“No shit,” Ross says.
“Yeah. I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to sleep in an igloo. But since my season is during the window—shockingly—I haven’t had many opportunities to fly to the frozen north and find some authentic igloos.”
“There’s an ice castle in Canada. A true, enormous ice castle,” Wendall says. “I took my partner there a couple years ago. It’s the same idea, but it’s not just an igloo.”
“Yeah?”
Wendall nods.
“I think we all need to take a field trip together this winter,” Tommy says. “Team building or some shit.”
The dozen men around the table grin at each other. Elgin looks at me, smiling with them. He fits in with my team pretty easily. I love the easy camaraderie, the easy teasing, the comfortable conversation.
Elgin fits in well.