Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Harrison
I get the call around eleven in the morning, and it changes everything.
Fillmore.
We haven’t spoken for a while, and when I hear his voice over the phone, a sense of dread fills me. He wouldn’t just call me to chat.
“What’s up?” I rub my forehead while I wait for him to speak. “Everything okay?”
“We need to talk. Now.”
“That doesn’t sound good. Talk away.”
“Not over the phone.”
I sigh. That must mean it’s really not good news. I glance at my watch.
“At the dock,” I say. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Fillmore responds, his tone short. “Give me thirty.”
“See you then.” I end the call with the sense that he has some bad news I don’t particularly want to hear at the moment. I have enough on my plate without something from Fillmore, but he wouldn’t call and ask to meet if it wasn’t really important.
I put away a few files and close my computer. Before I leave the building, I speak with the security guard at the front to let him know I’ll be gone for an hour or so but can be reached on my cell if anyone needs me.
Then I go down to the parking garage in the basement and pick up my vehicle.
I don’t want to tell Bill or Fogarty about Fillmore.
He has to remain secret. Everything else about my current life is tracked, measured and monitored.
Fillmore is the only person who isn’t known to the FBI or the O’Connor family. I aim to keep it that way.
He’d be the kind of emergency backup I can rely on if things start falling apart.
I drive to the docks and pull into the usual spot where we’re to meet and wait, reading news headlines on my cell. The location is distant from O’Connor territory and that of Andropov. I hope it’s safe and picked it when I met with Fillmore previously.
My mind keeps going back to Natalia and our evening of pleasure the previous night.
My wife.
It’s hard to believe that the role the FBI assigned us has become real.
I love her. My only concern is to protect her and to take my family’s business out of the underworld, where it’s been for decades, so we can have a safe and peaceful life together.
When we’re alone is the only time I feel truly at peace. I know we are meant to be together, and I’ll do anything and everything I can to make her happy and to ensure we can remain together.
Finally, a white Jeep drives along the dock towards me, and I recognize the driver as Fillmore. He’s wearing a Mets baseball cap and dark sunglasses, but it’s him. When he sees me, he nods and parks his vehicle beside mine. He gets out and comes over to my door, to my open window.
“Let’s walk. I need some air.”
“Okay,” I say and turn off the ignition. I leave the car and walk beside him, my hands in my pockets. “What’s so important that you needed to meet?”
He takes in a deep breath and then exhales as if he has to prepare himself for what he is about to say.
Then he stops and glances at the sky.
“Come on,” I say, impatient. “Spit it out. I’m a big boy.”
He turns to me and removes his sunglasses. I can see his eyes, which are dark, as if he has really bad news.
“You mentioned the last time we met that you were concerned about your uncle. Tommy, right?”
A sense of dread fills me at the mention of Tommy’s name.
“Yeah. What have you got? For a while now, he’s been acting strange.
I have the sense he’s really angry with me for returning to the family.
It’s like he wanted to take over from my father instead of me.
Probably got used to the idea I would never return to the fold, and was upset to see me in charge.
I’m worried he’s working with the enemy to take me out. Am I right?”
Fillmore shakes his head and starts walking again. “Not Tommy.”
I grab his arm. “Who?”
Fillmore stops and turns to me. “Ryan.”
“No,” I say, the very idea abhorrent to me. “Impossible.”
“Sorry, but I did some sleuthing. You’re not gonna like what I found…”
I turn and glance over the shore at the water. In the distance, a ship is being towed into the port. The sound of waves is soothing. The warm sun on my face is pleasant.
Neither does anything to relieve the pain I feel at the thought that Uncle Ryan is a traitor.
He’s been so helpful since I returned, always cooperating with me.
Defending me when Tommy seemed reluctant to listen to my ideas about how to clean up the business.
He defended me when Tommy pushed back. He even confided in me that Tommy was disgruntled and thought I would hurt the business instead of helping…
“Tell me,” I say and wait for the details.
“I have intercepts of his calls with Ivanov. He has gambling debts, Harrison. Lots of them. Ivanov is quietly paying them off, and now, Ryan is under his thumb.”
I rub my eyes, a sudden pain behind them. “How long has this been going on?”
I hope to hear that it’s only been since my brother’s death. Maybe the sadness drove him to gamble to relieve tension.
“Eighteen months.”
“What?” I turn to Fillmore, who has a determined expression on his face. “Eighteen months?”
He nods. “I’ve traced bank drafts going back eighteen months. The gambling started before that, and I guess Ivanov knew about Ryan’s debts and thought it would be a great way to get into Ryan’s good books. Into your family. He could use the debt as leverage.”
“How much?”
“Several hundred thousand.”
I feel sick. Ryan could have come to me. I have money. But when his debt started, I was on the outside. I made it clear to my father that I didn’t want anything to do with the business.
Then, Liam died…
That brought me back in.
If I had been inside sooner… If I hadn’t been so adamant about keeping my distance, maybe I would have been there. Then I kick myself mentally.
No. Coming back into the fold was something I did out of necessity because of Liam. Liam made his own choice, as a fully-grown adult. Just as Ryan had made his choice to become indebted to Ivanov. My father’s world is a dangerous one, and if you let yourself get too close, you pay the price.
For Liam, it was the ultimate price. For Ryan? Well, I’ll have to think about it. I could have wiped out his debt immediately, and who knows what would have happened?
My only question is this: how did Ryan pay off Ivanov?
He had to either pay Ivanov back for the money he borrowed or in kind…
Which was it?
“What’s he been selling?”
Fillmore shakes his head. “Nothing too bad, but enough to allow Ivanov to use your company to further his own business.”
“How could he do that? We’re in construction. Ivanov is in shipping and running arms.”
Fillmore shrugs. “Your company orders lots of material from other countries, requiring that it be shipped by sea and rail. Lumber, aluminum, you name it. Stuff comes into port on a weekly basis, according to my intercepts. Lots of opportunity to smuggle some guns in from abroad.”
“Jesus…” I rub my forehead. Ryan. Why?
“Did my father know?”
Fillmore shakes his head. “Nope, and based on my intercepts, Ryan wanted desperately to keep it that way. He didn’t want to lose face, so to speak, with Ronan.
You know Ronan was dead set against gambling, especially with company money, which Ryan was also doing.
I’ve got some intercepts showing him being very creative with invoices… ”
I want to hammer my fist against something. Preferably, my uncle Ryan’s face, but instead, the fence bordering the East River ends up taking the brunt of my frustration with my uncle.
“What do you want to do with this info?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I have to think about this. And I need to see the intercepts myself and how you got them.”
Fillmore holds up a hand to stop me. “Sorry. No can do. I can’t tell you how I got them, or I’ll lose access to my source, but I can show you the evidence. That’s gonna have to be enough.”
“How do I know you’re not playing me?”
Fillmore sighs heavily. “Am I asking you for anything in return? No. I’m worried about a former brother-in-arms. That’s all.
When I heard you were getting back into the family fold, I worried about you, because if there was one thing you used to go on about, it was your family and the mistakes they made with the Russian mafia.
If you could do anything, it would be to extricate your father and brothers from their grip.
So, when you went back inside, I thought I could help you.
I did some sleuthing on my own, have a friend in tech, a hacker, and asked him for help. ”
“I need to see the intercepts.”
“You’ll have to come to the warehouse and meet with my guy.”
“Name the time and place, and I’ll be there.”
Fillmore nods. “Look, I know this is hard. Believe me, I can see the pain you feel. You’ve lost so much in the past year. I just want to help a friend.”
I glance at my watch and sigh. “I should go. Email me with a time and place, and I’ll be there.”
“Sounds good, and Harrison,” he says and reaches over to grab my shoulder. “I’m sorry it came to this. The last thing you need is more bad news.”
I exhale and turn back toward my car, leaving Fillmore in silence.
When I get back to the apartment, I expect to find Natalia asleep, her eyes closed, her face peaceful, and her body under the covers on our bed. Instead, she’s sitting up in the living room, in her nightgown and robe.
She looks worried rather than happy to see me.
“Hey,” I say and hang up my coat before coming over to sit beside her on the sofa. “What’s up? I thought you’d be in bed asleep.” I kiss her and then wait.
She leans forward and retrieves something from the coffee table.
“This is what’s up,” she says and hands the item to me. It takes me a moment, because it is entirely unexpected. I thought at first it might be a COVID test, but instead, I see it’s a pregnancy test.
She’s pregnant.
With our baby…