Laura Caldwell - Red, White & Dead

“What could the endgame be?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out. If we were in Italy, they would have killed Charlie already.”

I closed my eyes and felt myself sway.

My father put a hand on my shoulder. It was the first time he had touched me since I’d seen him.

I looked at his hand then back at him.

He drew his hand away quickly. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

I shook my head. “That’s okay.” And it was.

“Let’s get in the car and we can talk more.”

I felt safer once we were inside. We drove away from the airport and I pointed out the highway exit to my dad. “I can’t figure out what they want,” my dad said as he drove. “I know they want me. But there’s no reason for them not to kill Charlie, and then try to find me later.”

I closed my eyes and winced. “Will you please stop saying that about Charlie?”

He looked at me curiously. “It kills me, too. But I’ve learned that the way to deal with everything I’ve seen and done is to simply be up front about it. Hiding anything from myself, even my worst fears, never leads to anything good.”

I stared at him. The skin around his mouth sagged as if he’d spent a lifetime frowning, but he was still an attractive man, one of those guys who used to be cute but has aged into handsome. From what he told me on the plane, he had spent most of his life on his own. That made me incredibly sad.

He must have felt me looking and glanced my way.

I turned and put my hand on the gray felt armrest. “So you think they want to draw you there and then kill you? Or us?” Was I really having this conversation?

My father glanced at me again, then back at the road. “It’s obvious they want something from me. I know you don’t like me to say it, but I have to analyze it from an intellectual capacity. From what I know, there is no reason not to-” another glance at me “-harm Charlie if they simply wanted to send me a message. We’ve been watching Dez Romano for a long time. He is an exceptionally smart businessman and a shrewd strategist. He wants something from me. I just wish I knew what it is.”

“Why isn’t he in trouble with the Feds if Michael DeSanto was arrested?”

“Excellent question. The charges against DeSanto are the closest things the Feds have been able to get on Romano, but the truth is they don’t have anything lock solid on him in particular. They can’t prove that he and DeSanto are tied. The evidence the Feds have on Michael DeSanto, they didn’t even get themselves, or at least they didn’t start the trail that led to that evidence. You did that.” He looked at me, and if I could read his expression, it was satisfaction. He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe it. My daughter.” Another shake of his head. “The work you did with Mayburn and the bank brought DeSanto to his knees.”

“But if they bring Michael down, won’t they be able to do that to Dez, too?”

“They can’t tie Dez to the corporation that Michael was laundering money for.”

“Advent Corporation,” I said, remembering what Mayburn had told me. “They were in the suburbs, and they did corporate consulting or something like that.”

“Right. Allegedly. It was mostly just a shell corporation.”

“Who were the registered agents or officers?”

“Dez was never listed. The registered agent was a lawyer who sets up corporations over the Internet. He never met anyone face-to-face. And the president was listed as Michael DeSanto. And although they’re pretty sure it was Mob owned, by Dez or the Camorra, they couldn’t tie it to him, but they wanted to send a message to him. And by prosecuting Michael, whether they’re successful or not, the message is still clear.”

“We’re on your ass.”

“Exactly.”

“It sounds like what we need is something on Dez then. Whether it’s something the Feds can use or not, it would give us more equal footing when we see him. It might stop him from…” I opened my phone, looked again at the photo of Charlie and the swollen, bleeding side of his face. I looked back up at my dad. “How are you so calm? My insides are boiling and it’s all I can do to not scream or cry or pass out.”

I held the phone toward him. I thought that seeing the image would make my dad crumble. But he only glanced at it, then set his mouth firm so that the folds of skin grew taut. “You just have to turn it around.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at the picture again, then narrowed his eyes. “Don’t let that make you weak. Let it make you stronger. More determined.”

“Right. More determined to get this mother hen in a basket,” I said.

My father’s steely look turned to one of confusion.

“I’m trying to stop swearing,” I said. “What I meant was it should make us more determined to get this motherfucker.”

My dad laughed. “Now you got it.”

Victoria drove up and down Lake Street. Minutes before, she had found the address Charlie had sent her an hour ago, but she was still trying to get her bearings. That was something she often had problems with-getting her bearings, her footing…whatever you wanted to call it. Her whole life she had been like that. Not someone who assessed a situation and adapted immediately-like Izzy-but rather someone who was constantly surprised by life and needed to watch and wait and, yes, often retreat before she could act. But she didn’t have that kind of time now. She was delivering money to her son’s drug dealer. Charlie’s drug dealer. She’d been saying that over and over in her head-Charlie’s drug dealer, Charlie’s dealer-as she drove from the Gold Coast into the Loop and then west. The mantra didn’t work. The reality wasn’t settling in, and it didn’t help that the world around her appeared so normal-tourists snapping pictures and dawdling on Michigan Avenue, bike messengers zipping past them, almost hitting the tourists and yet not even seeming to notice them. And certainly no one was noticing her, a woman in her late fifties driving her car, wearing her sunglasses.

She drove up and down the block once more, having decided that it was time to park the car, that she would never get used to the situation that presented itself. She’d lain awake all night, debating and debating whether to tell Spence but finally deciding against it. She would do what her son asked. She would help her son.

She pulled up to a restaurant. It was called Carnivale.

The valet opened the door for her. “Here for lunch?” he said with a bored, fake smile.

“Just parking,” she said.

She lifted her purse from the passenger seat and got out of the car, wondering if she was someone who looked as if she was about to make a drug deal. Except that in this case the drugs had, apparently, already been purchased, taken, ingested, whatever you called it, by her son.

She walked down Lake Street. When she approached the spot where the street hovered over the Kennedy Expressway, she felt a clenching in her stomach and she tucked her arm closer to her side, holding her purse even tighter. She had driven over this spot often, easily a hundred times, but she had never walked it. Underneath her feet, cars sped by, horns blared. Exhaust rose up and circled her, the street shaking as a semi rumbled by.

Finally, she reached the address-a three-story building, probably once a warehouse. At some point, it appeared the building had been turned into offices or residences-back in the seventies, judging from the glass blocks. The brick was now flaking, chipped away in parts.

She looked around for a doorbell. Seeing none, she raised her hand and knocked on the black metal door. No answer. She knocked again, thinking about how to handle Charlie when she saw him. With compassion? With a stern lecture of some sort? She had never been much of a disciplinarian. She’d been lucky that, until lately, neither of her children had needed much guidance.