CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After dropping off Gianna at her friend’s birthday party and talking with the birthday girl’s mother, Grace was running late getting TJ to Redmond where his team was the visiting team for the soccer game that day.
Redmond was only thirty miles outside of Seattle, but they didn’t make it all the way through Tatem, a small town in between Seattle and Redmond, when police sirens were heard.
When Grace looked through the rearview and when TJ turned around to look, they saw the policeman pointing for Grace to pull over to the side of the road.
TJ looked at his mother in disbelief. His Uncle Sal always joked that whenever Grace was behind the wheel it was as if she was driving Miss Daisy she drove so slow. “You were speeding, Ma?” a surprised TJ asked her.
“No,” Grace said as she nervously pulled over. “I mean I was maybe a couple miles over, if that. They can’t write a ticket unless it’s at least five miles over the limit, and I know I wasn’t going that fast.”
“Then why are they stopping us?”
Grace was concerned too. “I don’t know.” Then she looked through the rearview again and realized that two patrol cars had pulled over behind her.
A white cop got out of each one of the patrol cars as if it was some drug bust or something equally major crime that needed assistance.
She looked at her son as her stress began to build.
“Do whatever they tell you to do, you hear me, Thomas?”
“Me? I’m not even driving.”
“You’ve seen those videos on social media. Has that stopped them before?”
TJ exhaled. “No ma’am.”
“Do exactly what me and your father told you to do in these situations. You look white, but they shoot white boys too.”
“I’m black,” said TJ proudly.
“I didn’t say you wasn’t. I’m just telling you to do exactly what your father and me taught you to do.”
TJ could see the concern all over his beloved mother’s face. He hated when she was worried. “Don’t worry, Ma, I won’t do anything,” he said as two police officers were walking up onto either side of Grace’s Bentley.
Grace pressed down the window. “Hello Officer.”
“License and registration.”
Grace had already pulled out both. “May I ask why I’m being stopped?”
“No,” said the officer. “License and registration.”
TJ couldn’t believe it. Grace knew it was wrong too.
By law they had to tell you why they were stopping you, and she didn’t have to give up her license unless she was being accused of a crime or if she was in the commission of a crime, which she knew wasn’t possible.
But to get her and her son out of there alive, she gave him her license and registration.
He looked at the paperwork as if he was confirming something, and then he reached into her car, unlocked the door, and flung it open. And suddenly his no-nonsense move became super-aggressive. “Okay out!” he yelled.
“What did she do?” asked a flabbergasted TJ as the officer pulled his mother out of that car like she was a rag doll and then slammed her against her car.
“What did she do?!” a terrified TJ asked again.
But before he could finish asking his question, the second officer flung open the passenger door and grabbed him out of the car too.
That officer threw TJ to the ground seemingly as hard as he could, placed his knee in his back, and began cuffing him as the first officer was cuffing Grace.
“What did I do?” Grace was asking the officer. “And why are you arresting my son? He’s a minor! Why are you arresting a minor?”
“Resisting arrest,” said the first officer. “Same as you.”
“We didn’t resist anything,” said a terrified Grace. “What are you doing?”
But the smalltown cop didn’t want to hear it. He began walking her as if he was dragging her toward his patrol car while the other cop began hurrying TJ to his patrol car. It seemed surreal to TJ.
But Grace had been around that block too many times. And she was a Gabrini too? It seemed far more sinister than surreal to Grace.
But as the first patrol car sped off with Grace in custody, the second patrol car waited.
When his colleague was out of sight, an SUV drove up and parked in front of the remaining patrol car.
The officer got out of the patrol car, opened the back passenger door, and let a handcuffed TJ out.
Then he walked a confused TJ to the back passenger door of the SUV where one man got out, took TJ and put him inside, and then the man got back in.
Then the SUV drove away with the patrol car following it.
TJ’s heart was hammering. He knew this was no arrest. This was something worse. And he felt right away that it had everything to do with that family business he was never supposed to talk about.
“Who are you?” he asked the man that was already seated on the backseat. He was sandwiched between the two men.
“I’m your daddy until it’s finished.”
TJ was confused. “Until what’s finished?”
“If you don’t do exactly as we say, everybody will die.
” Then the man looked at TJ as if the emphasize his point.
“Your mother will die. Your father will die. Your baby sister GG will die. And your big sister and her daughter will die too. In fact,” he said with a smile, “we’ll get the ball rolling with those two. ”
TJ was terrified. And so confused it was hurting his head. “What two? What are you talking about?”
The man pointed a remote control to a small TV screen on the back of the front passenger seat.
TJ looked and saw his sister Destiny and his little niece come on screen.
They were seated in chairs and tied up with rope.
“Destiny?” TJ blurted out in shock. She and her baby were supposed to be on vacation in the Bahamas. What was happening?
Then he looked at the man. “What’s that?”
“That’s proof that we mean business,” said the man. “Look.”
TJ looked at the screen again as a man walked into view and placed a gun to a crying Destiny’s head. TJ’s heart dropped. “Don’t do that! Why is he doing that?!”
“Because he can,” said the kidnapper. “Because if you don’t do what we tell you to do, your sister and that baby of hers will be shot in the head both of them. And then we’ll come for your baby sister and then your mother and then the great Tommy Gabrini.”
The man then grabbed TJ by the chin. Pure evil and hate was in his eyes. “And that’ll be that,” he said with clenched yellow teeth, “if you don’t do exactly what we tell you to do.”
TJ’s heart was hammering. “What do I have to do?” he asked with a quivering voice.
“You will be implanted with a device that will not only allow us to hear every word you say until the job is finished, but we will see every move you make. You can’t tell anybody.
You can’t try to send anybody a note or drop a hint to anybody.
You can’t write a note to somebody, or raise an eyebrow at somebody without us seeing it.
Do you comprehend what I’m saying to you, boy? ”
TJ shook his head. “Yes sir.”
“If you for one second let your family or friends or anybody else know what’s happening, we will immediately put a bullet through Destiny’s head. And that will only be the beginning of the carnage. Do you understand me?”
TJ nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Good boy. Smart like your old man. But try to be slick like him and everyone of you will die. And that seeing and hearing device that we will implant inside of you? Guess what? It’ll explode. And that will be the end of you too. And if you don’t believe me watch this.”
The kidnapper pressed a different button on the remote and a different video came on. It had a middled-aged man on a table as what looked like a doctor was placing a device in his lower arm and then sewed it up. The entire procedure took less than ten minutes.
“That’s the device you are soon to get placed in your arm,” the kidnapper said.
Then both kidnappers pulled out their phones. TJ could see the face of the man and his full body on one phone, and then whatever that man was seeing in front of him and around him, from that man’s point of view, could be seen on the other phone.
“You see how it works?” asked the first kidnapper. “We have you covered. There’s no getting away from us until the deed is done. Once it’s done, this will happen.”
Both kidnappers then pressed a button on their phones and everything pertaining to that implanted man was gone. “Look,” the leader said to TJ as he motioned to the TV screen again.
TJ looked and saw the doctor remove the stitches from the man’s arm and pull out the device. Then the doctor stitched him back up. “Anybody can pull it out,” the kidnapper said, “and that’ll be that.”
“But until the job is finished, you’re at our mercy. Nobody can help you. Because if you try anything at all, everybody, beginning with Destiny and that baby and ending with you, will die. Do you fully comprehend everything I’m telling you?”
“Yes sir.”
“There’s no way out of it no matter how hard you try. So you’d better not try. Got it?”
TJ was mortified. “Yes sir.”
The leader grinned. “Such a well-behaved son. I don’t know, Pauley. How in the world could a bastard like Tommy Gabrini produce a good kid? How is that possible?”
“It’s not,” said the other kidnapper. “Not that mean son-of-a-bitch.”
“But here we are. We got us a Mister Manners on our hands.”
The second kidnapper started laughing. “What if he’s a gay kid? Can you imagine the great Tommy Gabrini producing a gay kid?”
The smile of the first kidnapper left. “After what went on? Hell yeah I can imagine it. What are you nuts? Don’t forget what happened.”
“Oh right! How could I forget that?”
“I’ll never forget that shit.” TJ could see bitterness in the leader’s small eyes. “Your old man got a lot to answer for, you hear me?” A sadness came into his eyes. “More than you’ll ever know.”
Then his looked turned hard and cold again.
“We aren’t playing with your ass. One false move and you and everybody you love are dead.
Just like that! Including,” he said as he pressed a button again on his remote control and Destiny’s face reappeared, “that gorgeous sister of yours. Pity to kill such a beautiful face.”
Then he frowned. “But I’ll do it in a New York minute.”
And both men laughed. TJ thought he was going to puke.
But he held on. His father taught him to never let them see him sweat.
He was crying. Tears were falling from his big, beautiful eyes, but he refused to beg for his life or the life or his sister or anything weak like that.
Because his father warned him: You let them see you sweat, then that’ll only give them more power.
If sweating gave them more power, he wondered what his tears were giving them. Because as the SUV and the patrol car that was following it pulled up to what looked like a boarded-up diner, he couldn’t stop himself from shaking and crying, as his Uncle Reno would say, just like a bitch.