Chapter 15
“Mr. Rossi!” Clary exclaimed, surprised right out of her seat. “What were you doing under the window?”
“I think it’s quite plain what he was doing,” Lucy said, her arms folded across her chest. “He’s the spy!”
Thomas’s face was red as he loomed over the bureaucrat. “You’re the spy?”
Robert grabbed the bureaucrat by his jacket’s lapels and lifted him off the ground. “You!” he bellowed. “Why, I ought to pummel you!”
“No! Please! I didn’t want to, I promise you! You’re nice people. I only did what I had to,” Rossi wailed, flailing in the grip of the far larger, angrier man’s hands.
“Robert! Put him down!” Lucy cried, rushing closer to her husband. “He’s a worm, but Christian charity dictates that we at least hear him out.”
Her words seemed to reach him, and Robert lowered the man to the floor. Mr. Rossi was shaking and quivering, his face pale, his eyes brimming with tears.
“Please, please! I’ll cooperate. I’ll do whatever you want,” Rossi moaned.
“Darn right, you will,” Mark snapped.
“I’m being coerced!” Mr. Rossi cried as Mark lifted him up to his feet and shoved him into a chair. The portly little man bounced once but stayed put as he grabbed the seat and held on. “Please! Don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you everything. Everything you want to know!”
That seemed like a golden opportunity. “Maybe we should give him a chance to speak?” Clary suggested.
“Make him tell us where my family is!” Luke cried. He tried to get up but slumped against the cushions with a groan of pain.
Diane turned to him. “That’s it. You’ve had enough. We need to get you cleaned up and off to bed.”
“I can’t go now! I need to know where they are,” Luke cried, his expression pleading. “Are they okay?”
“Yeah, of course. It stands to reason,” Mr. Rossi said.
“They’re definitely fine. There’s no leverage if they’re dead.
He would lose his control over Thomas, and that’s the whole reason why he took them in the first place.
I guess if he’d known about Clary and could have gotten to her, then she would have been better as a hostage to keep Thomas in line. ”
Thomas glared at him, and Rossi cleared his throat, speaking quickly and nervously. “But as it is, he needs them alive.”
That sank into their minds, and Clary looked across at Thomas.
He seemed to have calmed down a little and stepped back from Mr. Rossi.
“I need to get something,” Thomas said. He strode out of the room.
There were sounds of a door opening, things being moved.
A moment later, Thomas returned with rope and tossed it to Mark.
“Mark, tie him to that chair. At least then the snake won’t be able to slither away. ”
“I’m taking Luke to the kitchen to clean him up. I’m sure we’ll be able to hear you from there,” Diane said.
“But …” Luke protested. She gave him a look that silenced him.
“We’ll need some clean clothes,” Diane said, turning to Thomas.
Thomas was distracted. He looked blankly at her.
“Clean clothes for your brother,” she said again.
“Right, of course,” Thomas said and hurried from the room.
Clary watched Mark tie Mr. Rossi to the chair. Robert and Lucy were having a whispered conversation, but soon they turned back to their captive. Mark stood behind him, his arms folded and his expression grim.
“All right,” Robert said. “We think it will be best to take your confession officially now and then deal with everything else afterward.”
Mr. Rossi, who hadn’t moved a muscle while he was being tied up, nodded. “That’s fine. You’ll see that everything I did was?—”
“State your full name, please,” Robert interrupted him.
He handed his notebook to Lucy, and she perched on the edge of her chair, taking notes.
“Vincent Alfredo Rossi,” he said.
“Do you give this information freely at this time, in front of these witnesses?” Robert asked.
“Yes, I do,” Mr. Rossi confirmed. “I don’t have to hide. What I did, I did to save my mother’s life.”
Clary recalled that Mac had said Mr. Rossi had an elderly mother in New York. Perhaps he was telling the truth.
“Why were you under the window?” Robert asked. “How did you know we were here?”
“It was by accident,” Rossi said, looking desperately from Robert to Lucy and then even at Clary, as though searching for an ally.
“I was doing an inspection of the gate and saw Mark letting this man in. I thought it was suspicious and so I followed them. Honestly, I didn’t know it was Thomas’s brother. ”
“You thought you’d eavesdrop?” Mark asked.
“I thought it might prove important,” Rossi said, nodding. “He likes to know everything that goes on.”
Lucy wrote it all down, and Robert continued asking Mr. Rossi questions. The man answered them straight away, without hesitation. Did that mean he was telling the truth? Who could tell?
Rossi’s story was really just sad. It was the tale of an office worker who had become quite ambitious.
He saw himself running an investment firm like Mr. MacGregor’s one day.
That was his dream. Along the way he met a man who said it could all be reality if he was willing to help him and pass on some information.
Being cautious, Mr. Rossi asked what the man wanted to know. It was nothing terribly important. He wanted to know about new accounts being opened in Mr. MacGregor’s firm. That was all.
“I was on contract to the firm at the time and didn’t see any harm in it.
The individual was quite wealthy, and he said he was looking to invest in the firm.
I thought that by giving him a list of new businesses as proof that not only were there new clients, but they were rich, I was helping the company. ”
“You thought you were doing something good?” Robert asked.
Clary snorted. “Surely you smelled a rat?” No one ever asked questions or for favors like that with everyone’s best interests at heart. Was this man an imbecile?
“Well, he convinced me that he was a good man just looking to invest,” Rossi snapped. “Then, the next thing I knew, my contract with the firm was done, and I needed a place to work. That’s when the individual stepped in again.”
“Who is this person?” Lucy asked.
“He’s going to remain nameless until I’m certain that my mother and I are safe,” Rossi said, eyeing them defiantly.
Clary guessed he was trying to negotiate, but would Robert and the others accept it?
“Fine,” Robert said, raising his hands to shut everyone else up. “We can discuss your terms later. Let’s carry on with what you’re prepared to tell us.”
Lucy read back from her notes. “This nameless individual, he stepped in and, what … offered you a job?”
“Yes,” Rossi said. “He gave me a job in his firm.”
Thomas came into the room then and sat beside Clary. He looked worried and nervous and took her hands in his. She squeezed them to let him know she was there for him.
“How is Luke?” she whispered.
“He’s okay. He’s fighting Diane every step of the way, but he’s upstairs in bed now.”
“Good,” Clary said. “He needs his rest.”
“… my mother had a stroke,” Rossi was saying when Clary turned her attention back to the conversation. “It was sudden, and as a single man who worked all the time, I couldn’t look after her, so he sent some people to help.”
Rossi leaned forward as much as possible, given the ropes binding him.
“Listen, you have to help me get my mother out of that facility she’s in.
It’s overrun with his people, and they’re not averse to hurting someone for him.
They’ll kill her if I don’t keep sending him information about you folks. ”
“All right, let’s move on from your mother,” Robert said. “So, you don’t have a wife and a mother-in-law?”
Rossi shook his head. “I made them up to not seem so pathetic,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”
Clary shook her head, as did Lucy.
Diane and Ethan slipped back into the room, quietly taking their seats. Thomas looked over at them, and Diane smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.
Turning her attention back to Rossi, Clary noticed that he had stopped speaking and was looking dejected.
“So, what’s your deal with El Aguila?” Mark asked in the silence. “Tell us everything you do for him.”
“I pass on information, that’s all,” Rossi said. “He wants to know how the mine is doing, how the town is. Its constant growth has been quite an irritation for him. He thought he could break your morale and stop you from rebuilding over and over, thereby forcing you to leave this place.”
It was really so simple. He wanted the land. Could that be the truth? There was plenty of land though. So, why go to so much trouble for this specific bit? It didn’t make sense.
“But there’s lots of land around here,” Clary said. “It looks about the same as the land that Unity is built on. What’s the difference?”
“Existing infrastructure,” Rossi sighed.
“But he’s been having me destroy it,” Thomas said, also sounding confused.
Rossi gave him a withering look. “The things he’s asking you to break are not that difficult to rebuild.
The smelter took a couple of months, and the elevator will be fixed quickly, and then the offices wouldn’t take long …
” Rossi seemed to be warming to his topic.
He looked almost hopeful now. “Like the houses and the church that now need repair. None of it was difficult to damage, and none of it will be difficult to fix. Some of his thugs can do that kind of work.”
To Clary it seemed that Rossi was willing to throw himself on their mercy because he knew they had some. He knew that of the rock and hard place he found himself between now, the people of Unity were by far the more reasonable. They would listen, and they would be fair.
What was bothering Clary was why El Aguila wanted the land. A little town and a mine, however useful, didn’t feel like the full picture. He could have that in any number of places. Why here? What did he hope to do with it? She looked down at the map Lucy and Robert had left on the coffee table.