Chapter Six #2
“Suit yourself.” I lean forward and soak up the tense silence just to give the knife a good twist. “You want to know why things went to hell when ‘all I had to do was lie low for a few months and keep my mouth shut?’ It’s because your friend, Saddler, was playing everyone.”
Lattimore’s eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. “Turn it off,” he shouts, swinging a flailing arm across his partner’s chest. “Turn that damn thing off now !”
Gibbs all but throws himself out of his chair and sprints out the door only to return fifteen seconds later, wiping sweat from his brow. “What the hell are you saying, Marchesi?”
“I’m saying Henry Saddler, the marshal that two of the highest judicial organizations in the government assigned to escort their prize witness into Witness Protection, was my father’s bitch boy.”
“You’re lying.” Gibbs’s head snaps toward his partner, his eyes bulging as he sinks into his chair. “He’s lying , Ted. He’s making up shit to deflect blame.”
“It’s possible,” I say, savoring the sound of their knees bouncing under the table. “I’ve been known to create a diversion or two. However, if you pull Becca in this office, she’ll tell you it was Henry who kidnapped her and brought her across state lines to my father.”
“That’s unprovable,” Lattimore insists.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
“Perhaps. But you know what isn’t? Bank records that show regular deposits into an offshore account from a shell corporation listed in the Marchesi name.
” I shrug, leaving out the fact it’s mine.
“If that’s not enough to convince you, perhaps a less-than-flattering conversation between my father and your boy Saddler will do the trick.
” Pulling my phone from my pocket, I hit play and hold it up for maximum acoustics.
Within seconds, the room fills with the sound of the gloriously damning audio Anton didn’t play for the Authority.
Once it ends, I glance between them. If Gibbs clenches his teeth together any harder, they’re going to break apart. Lattimore is just staring off into space, stuck in some petrified limbo between shock and acceptance.
“So, you see, gentlemen,” I say, tucking my phone away.
“I have you by the proverbial balls. I hold a can of worms neither the Bureau nor the Marshal’s office wants opened.
You stay out of my business, and it stays closed.
Don’t, and, well…” Standing, I button my suit jacket and straighten my tie with a wink.
“I’m sure we all know what happened to Pandora. ”
I open the precinct door to find Anton leaned against the driver’s side of my parked Maserati, his arms tucked tightly across his chest like the end of some cheesy chick flick.
As if my night couldn’t get any worse.
I lumber down the steep concrete staircase to the parking lot, my temper bouncing like a ping-pong ball between extremes. By the time I hit the bottom step, I’m not sure if I want to give him a raise or run him the fuck over. “Remind me to take my keys away from you.”
A normal person with any self-preservation would get the hell out of my way. Not Anton. The only movement he makes is a stiff nod toward the station. “Are you going to tell me why you voluntarily put all our asses on the line?”
“Are you going to move?”
“No.”
Scowling, I walk around the car to the other side and open the door and drop into the passenger seat to ride bitch in my own car. Once he’s settled behind the wheel, I side-eye him. “You’re late.”
“You’re ungrateful.”
“Stop being so fucking needy.” I jerk my phone from my jacket. No missed calls. My imagination plunges into a dark place. “How did things go with Becca?”
“Exactly how you’d expect,” he mutters, giving zero fucks about the cars behind us as he guns it into traffic. “She asked questions, challenged what I said, ordered me to leave, then called Owen.”
“She did what ?”
“Why are you so surprised? You’re the one who told her to ‘press one for Anton and two for Owen.’” He takes his hands off the wheel to draw air quotes. “Don’t fault her for following directions. If you want to get mad at somebody, look in the mirror.”
“I meant in an emergency, not to track me like a bloodhound.”
I don’t know whether to be proud or pissed.
“Did you forget you married a psychiatrist? That woman’s trained to sniff out coded bullshit, and you’ve been spewing it like fertilizer.
Are you surprised she put ‘two and two’ together?
” This time when he carves out his fucking air quotes, the car veers to the right, nearly sideswiping a utility pole.
A last-minute forearm to the window keeps my skull intact.
“Anton, so help me God, if your hands leave that wheel again, you’re going to lose one.” His haughty chuckle only shaves a sharper edge to my shitty mood. “Does she know?”
“Yeah, she knows.”
I close my eyes, my night sinking deeper into the toilet. “I couldn’t let them get to her.”
“I know.” A strained silence settles between us as he continues to weave in and out of traffic. “So, what did they want?”
I’m too tired to give him a play-by-play of the whole interrogation, so I hit the important highlights, emphasizing their lack of substantial anything, as well as their sad little Keystone Cop search for Saddler.
“ Dio santo ,” he mutters, scrubbing his hand down his face. “You talked to the feds without having a lawyer present?”
“Watch your tone, and what did I say about both hands on the wheel?” He scowls, but slams his hands back on. “I’m not an idiot. I know what to tell them and what to hold back. Besides, having a lawyer there would’ve impeded my counterattack.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“I simply introduced irrefutable proof that their missing marshal was a two-faced mafia associate who’d kidnapped and assaulted my wife.
I may have also insinuated that if they continued to harass or prosecute my family, I’d ensure every news outlet from here to Siberia knew how the U.S.
government sent its star witness into hiding with a dirty marshal on the Marchesi payroll. ”
“So you threatened to blackmail the FBI?”
“I prefer to think of it as a negotiation of leverage.”
“It’s fucking blackmail, and it’s a felony.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Because extortion and murder are slaps on the wrists? Do you even know what you do for a living?”
“Do you ?” Anton snaps. “You’re not some nameless, flame-toting enforcer anymore, Gianni. You’re the don of New Jersey. You have eyes on your front and scopes on your back. Every move you make is going to be scrutinized. One small mistake is all it’ll take to?—”
“Don’t you think I know all that?” I shout. “But we both heard Toscano’s threat against Becca. The minute the feds pull her in, it’s over. She’s dead. So, don’t fucking lecture me about the weight that’s on my back. I feel it every second of every day.”
He turns his attention back to the windshield. “You’re right. That’s a burden no man should carry.”
I don’t like this. I don’t like pain. I don’t like worry, and I sure as hell don’t like fear. I used to be perfectly one-dimensional, but thanks to Becca’s mental gymnastics, I’m taking hits from so many foreign emotions, I’m surprised I’m still conscious.
I can hear him grinding his teeth, so I slide a narrowed side-eye across the car. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He lets out a labored breath. “We may have run into another problem.”
Of course we have.
“Christ, what now?”
“Cathalina came over to talk to Becca after you left.”
“And you let her?” Son of a bitch, that woman is like a bad case of herpes. Just when you think you’ve gotten rid of her, she shows back up and shits on your whole day.
“She pulled her away from me. What was I supposed to do, clothesline them? I couldn’t follow without putting Becca on high alert.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Nothing that’d warrant immediate intervention. In fact, she seemed rather nice, pleasant, even.”
“When was the last time you encountered someone in the mafia who was nice or pleasant.”
He tips his chin. “Fair point. So, if it wasn’t small talk or curiosity leading the charge, what was her angle? You and Becca are already married. Instigating a cat fight wouldn’t have changed that.”
No, but Cathalina showing up to places unannounced and uninvited is becoming a bad habit. First, my wedding night, and now my father’s service. Her appearances are always “nice and pleasant,” containing questions just vague enough to skirt the lines of suspicion.
Almost as if she’s being coached.
“Intel?” I say as Anton nearly blows the transmission shifting into third gear. “Maybe Toscano and Carmine are using her to spy on me.”
“Unknowingly?”
“If I had to say so, yes, but I give no one the full benefit of the doubt.” I blow out a hard breath as he sends the back wheels skidding into a hard turn. “Are you sure you know how to drive a stick?”
“Stop side seat driving. You’re going to cause an accident.”
“ I’m going to…?” I grit my teeth around the rest of the words.
Punching him at eighty-five miles per hour isn’t worth the insurance claim.
“Forget it. Just get in touch with Owen. Have him run surveillance on Toscano and both Damianos.” I catch Anton’s pinched expression out of the corner of my eye. “What’s that look for?”
“Are you sure we can trust him?”
“Are you questioning my judge of character?”
“Of course not. It’s just odd to go from squeaky clean to dirty and damned in twenty-four hours.”
Normally, I’d agree with him, but he’s casting too wide of a net on this one.
“It was forty-eight, and you don’t know Owen like I do. That man’s loyalty runs as thick as they come, but, like us, when it’s betrayed, it changes and curves.” I arch an eyebrow at his skeptical stare. “Maybe not for the better, but for the more deserving.”
He forces out a long exhale. “I hope you’re right.”
Me, too. If not, we’re all fucked.