Chapter Eighteen
***
The person tied to the chair was Eric. Blood ran down the left side of his face. Streaks of blood stained his shirt and pants. His head hung lazily to the side. He’d never been tortured, but he’d been trained to resist it. One thing about training was that it was never as horrifying or painful as the real thing.
Giovanni stood next to Eric with a sick grin on his face, as if he enjoyed seeing torture and wished for more.
“Look,” Papa said, snapping his fingers in front of Eric’s eyes. “Look,” Papa said again, and pointed to me. Eric’s head straightened and swiveled forward. His left eye narrowed as if trying to discern who Paul was, then it widened in recognition.
Papa glanced from Eric to Paul. “Take him!” he yelled.
Giovanni’s smile burst into excitement.
Antonio grabbed Paul from behind, but Paul was quicker. He twisted, snagged his wrist with one hand, and flipped him over his back onto the floor. As he landed, Paul slammed the heel of his foot into Antonio’s head and he slumped into unconsciousness.
Papa Grimaldi swung his golf club but Paul dodged backward. He charged, wildly swinging his club and cursing.
Giovanni aimed his gun at Paul, but his father was in the way. Keeping the old man between Giovanni and himself, Paul lunged at Papa, grabbed his club, and pushed him toward his son.
Paul shoved with all his strength. The two went down in a heap. The gun skidded away.
He snatched the golf club and swung it at Giovanni’s head, dazing him. Papa struggled to get up and Paul drove the club into his stomach. He curled into a wailing ball.
Giovanni lurched to his feet. Paul reversed the club and swung it across Giovanni’s head again. He crumbled like tinfoil.
Paul glanced around the office. All the Grimaldis were unconscious or unable to stop him. That wouldn’t last long. Killing all of them crossed his mind. But if he left them alive, he could use that as leverage against Franco or whoever else tried to stop him from escaping.
He rummaged through Antonio’s pockets, grabbed his BMW key, and dashed to Eric.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
Eric mumbled a response. Paul quickly untied him, put his arm over his shoulder, and dragged him out the door.
“Damn you,” Papa wailed. “We will find you and kill every person you love!”
Those words echoed in his ears as he lugged Eric out of the boathouse.
He stuffed Eric into the passenger seat of Antonio’s BMW then scrambled into the driver’s seat. In seconds, they were speeding away.
“Eric,” Paul said, shaking him with his free arm. “What did you tell them?”
Paul tossed his phone out the window. In a few minutes, the Grimaldis would have every corrupt cop and mafia connection hunting them. Their only hope was to get out quick. But Eric knew their escape plan. If he’d told the Grimaldis about it, they’d have to improvise.
“Eric, what did you tell them?”
Paul glanced at him as he drove. His black hair was matted with blood, his face was pale and drawn, and his shins were broken and bleeding. He needed immediate medical attention.
Papa’s voice ricocheted in his head, “We will find you and kill every person you love!”
Paul’s heart skipped a beat. Portia. They’re going to kill her.
Chapter Nineteen
***
Paul started in his chair as Jacob Li’s phone alarm beeped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s it for today.”
Paul breathed deeply. Retelling the story had put him back in Italy.
Jacob began packing up his things. “How have you been sleeping?”
“A little better,” he said. “I ran last night.”
“Excellent.” He collected his coke cans and tossed them in his blue cooler.
“What about your memories, have you made any progress?”
“Actually, yes.” He told him about what he’d remembered this morning.
“And you put it all on a Post-it board?”
“Yeah, it’s where I’ve written everything I’ve remembered so far.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“Okay,” he said, but a desire to keep it hidden gripped him.
Jacob picked up the cooler. “We can talk about that next session. And you’ll continue to focus on the calming image, correct?”
Paul nodded. “Would you mind leaving before me again?”
“Not a problem. Why don’t we make that standard procedure?” he said, throwing his briefcase strap over his shoulder.
“Thanks,” he said.
Jacob shook his hand goodbye. “I think we’ve made excellent progress.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. For only working on this for two days, it’s very good progress.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
He pondered the last two words he’d just said as he left. He’d never said them to any of the FBI shrinks. Eventually, he walked through the museum into the front hallway. He stared at the floor, his hands in his pockets, still focusing on the shrink session.
“Hey, man,” Chuck said, exaggerating the last word. “What were you doing in the museum?” Chuck stood in the hall, almost as if he’d been waiting.
“You know,” Paul said, trying to think of a response that wouldn’t be a lie. “Just taking in the majesty of Hillcrest.”
Chuck rolled his eyes. “Not going to tell me, huh?”
Paul shrugged his shoulders.
“Come on,” Chuck said. “Maybe I can convince you to open up over dinner.”
As they walked toward the cafeteria, Chuck asked, “You ever been in the back Conference rooms? They’re amazing.”
Paul nearly missed a step. He was about to reply when a voice behind him said, “Mr. Fitzgerald.”
Paul and Chuck turned. Haverford walked toward them from the administration offices. “Mrs. Brown is feeling under the weather and won’t be able to proctor the evening study hall. Please take over for her.”
Chuck and Haverford stared at each other. Paul thought some silent communication passed between them. “Sure,” Chuck said. “Catch you later, Paul,” he said, walking out the side door.
Haverford returned to the administration offices without acknowledging Paul.
“What a dick,” Paul thought, and continued to the cafeteria.
Paul finished dinner quickly and left the cafeteria. Walking up the ramp, he saw a circle of students gathered around the base of the stairs to the second floor classrooms. Some snapped cellphone pictures while others laughed or whispered and pointed in front of them.
That’s never good. As he walked up, he did his best Leslie Nielsen impression. “Nothing to see here,” he said, moving through them. “Move along.” None of them got the Naked Gun reference.
As he parted the students, he saw Kevin. He looked anxious and guilty. David lay on the floor, his face turned away. Stray wires and PVC pipe lay scattered across the floor.
“What did you do?” he said to Kevin.
“He tripped,” Kevin replied. “You all saw it.” He glanced at the crowd, nodding and trying to get them to agree. Paul spied his goddaughter Tiffany near Kevin and his goons.
He knelt down and leaned over David. His left eye was bruised and he looked like he was holding back tears.
If the students saw, they’d come up with nicknames like “crybaby” or “wimpy” or something equally psychologically scarring. He moved in front of David and helped him up, trying to shield him from the other students.
“What’s going on here?” Haverford demanded, as he pushed through the crowd.
Kevin moved backwards and addressed the crowd. “He tripped. You saw it, right?”
Gorilla one and two said in stuttering unison, “Yea, he tripped.”
Kevin nodded to the crowd, trying to get them to agree.
“Well…” Haverford began.
“No,” Paul said. “You can’t let this stand. D
avid has a black eye and Kevin doesn’t have a mark on him. This is obviously about this morning. You can’t let Kevin go without punishment.”
Several other teachers had arrived.
“That’s a lie!” Kevin yelled. “Mr. T. has always had it out for me. He picks on me in class.”
Mr. Haverford looked from the newly arrived teachers to Kevin to David, anger evident on his face with every person he looked at. “Let’s take this to my office.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Kevin said. “This is harassment. I’m going to call my parents. They’ll sue!”
Haverford looked like someone had just punched him in the stomach. His eyes darted around him to all the spectators and some of the anger resurfaced. “In my office, now.”
“Ah man, this is so unfair,” Kevin said.
David walked forward sullenly. He glanced at Tiffany and his face flushed and he quickly looked away.
Oh boy. David had his first crush and he was embarrassed she’d seen him defeated. Tiffany’s cheeks were also red, and he realized something else. She’d seen the whole incident.
“Not you, Mr. Taylor. I will talk to these boys alone.”
Paul wanted to object, but caught the look on Haverford’s face. Following them in would only infuriate the man.
As the boys followed Haverford into the office, the crowd began to dissipate.
“Tiffany,” he said.
She looked at him and her expression changed. She seemed embarrassed that a teacher would single her out in front of her peers. He rolled his eyes, thinking how exhausting it was to deal with teenagers’ pride and egos. He needed her to listen to him carefully, so instead of talking to her in front of all the students, he nodded that she should meet him upstairs. She hesitated, then walked up the stairs.
He followed and they met in the second floor hallway. Every step made him madder and madder. She had evidently stood by and done nothing. Then he realized that was exactly what her father would do.
“What’s up, Uncle Paul?”
He had to phrase his question so she’d realize he already guessed what happened and wouldn’t try to lie, like her father would do. “Why didn’t you step up and stop it?”
She tried to make her face look surprised. “What…”
He held up his finger. “Don’t.”
She sighed. “You saw?”
“No, I just saw you two glance at each other and understood the guilt behind the look.”
“Jeez, you and my mom. You’re like mind readers.”
“Spill it,” he said, trying to make his words seem softer than the anger inside him wanted to make them.
She went into teenager defense mode. She folded her arms in front of her chest, slouched a little, and propped her right leg out like a kickstand. An exasperated expression crossed her face as she looked down and away.
Chapter Twenty
Shelly walked down an unfrequented road in Queens, NYC. It was late afternoon and a few people hurried to their destination. Shelly examined all of them to determine if they were following her.
Ever since she’d returned from Montreal, her gut had told her something was wrong. She’d taken precautions, but in the digital age when even your phone spied on you, you never knew if you were being surveilled. Now, returning from an early dinner, she turned into the blue and orange self-storage building, punched the correct code on the keypad, and climbed the four flights of stairs to her floor.
Orange garage doors ran along both sides of the white metal walls. She turned right and her shoes squeaked on the concrete as she meandered down the rabbit warren of hallways. She unlocked her unit, rolled up the door, and stepped inside.
Six months ago, she’d chosen a self-storage unit as an office for several reasons: you needed a key code to enter any door, it had a wire mesh ceiling that allowed her to escape into any other unit if cornered, and there were several exits that allowed her an easy getaway. Also, no one cared what hours you came and went. The problem was that it continually smelled of bleach and harsh cleaning detergent.
The white concrete box she called an office had a brown folding table and chair along the back wall, with pictures and pertinent information taped to the wall. Everything was disposable. If anyone ever found her, all she had to do was take a phosphorous grenade she kept on the floor and toss it as she fled through the wire mesh ceiling. Instant incineration.
As she took out her secure laptop and placed it on the table, she inspected the wall. Three pictures with brief biographies stared at her. Luther Freedman, a bookish black man; Emily Kowalewski, a white woman who looked like an overweight gym teacher; and Robert Manganello, an Italian man who looked like a banker. Hopefully, Tom Forton would send their files soon.
The meeting with Don Salvini had been more productive than she’d originally thought. By giving her the name of the dead agent’s lover, he’d opened up an avenue of investigation. Earlier today, she’d pored over her digital files and learned that someone had withdrawn money deposited into the 2013 agent’s account the morning after he’d died.
Shelly believed Abelie was alive, or at least had been three years ago. Unfortunately, the money had been withdrawn in cash, so Shelly couldn’t track expenditures. Abelie would have travelled alone under an alias and come in on a tourist visa and simply never left. It happened all the time. Currently, the U.S. government didn’t actively monitor people who overstayed their visas.
Once she arrived in the States, she would have been a stranger in a foreign land. She’d have needed help to open a bank account and all the other little things one needed in modern society. As a recent immigrant, she would do the most logical thing: reach out to family, however distant they might be.
So, after lunch, Shelly had searched genealogy reports, immigration records, and census data—all public records. She’d poured over mundane data for hours on end, searching for any Esposito relative that had arrived from Italy within the last fifty years.
She’d cross-referenced the Esposito’s immigration records with Abelie’s hometown and found seven matches living in four different states. That was where her resources ended. What she needed now was the government database to search state issued licenses, phone records, and all the other things that establish an identity. She dialed Tom on the secure phone. After several rings, he answered, “I’ve uploaded the files to a secure server. I’ll text you the address and password.” His voice sounded muffled, as if he were trying to hide his conversation from others.
“Thanks, but I need another piece of information.”
“Now is not a good time.”
“Can’t help it. I’m stalled. I need you to find an Abelie Esposito. She was the informant of the agent who was exposed in 2013. I think she’s alive and in the U.S. under a different name.”
Silence drifted on the phone.
“Tom?”
No answer.
“Tom?”
“Being followed. Don’t know by whom.”
His words reinforced her own belief that someone might be following her. She wanted to say words of encouragement, but he knew how to shake surveillance.
Shelly wished there was someone else who could get her the information. But there wasn’t. “Once you find her, generate an intra-office report giving her location and relevance. It has to look routine.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. The phone went dead.
She wondered about the people surveilling him. It took a good deal of resources to follow two people on two different continents. Were they the FBI investigating the failed Italian operation? Were they mercenaries hired by the traitor? If she acted without knowing, she risked not only exposing her search for the traitor, but jail for her and Paul.
The best course of action was to continue investigating. If Tom needed her help, he’d ask. Her secure phone dinged and she read the website address and login information.
She navigated to the secure file storage website, and started reviewing the files. The documents conta
ined all the mission reports for each of her suspects as well as NSA intercepts of their phones, emails, bank records, and other pieces of information the government denied that they collected. Some of it was illegal. She imagined Tom had to have called in a lot of favors to acquire it.
It was a lot of material. Ten years ago, it would have taken her days to go through it all. Recently, however, computer programs had been developed that could sift through mountains of data and find the desired information. She’d need to inspect the results, but it would funnel days of work to a few hours.
She downloaded the files, imported them into the program, typed her search parameters, and started the process. As it ran, she thought about the two glaring problems that threatened to stop her. The first was that it was incredibly difficult to find a good spy within a democratic organization. Most had been discovered because agents of the foreign power had defected to the U.S. and fingered the spy. The second was that in this political climate, a suspended agent conducting an unauthorized investigation would get prosecuted, and any evidence collected thrown out. She’d approached the FBI’s internal investigative arm and even her friend Cynthia at the Justice Department, but neither would make formal inquiries without evidence. And she couldn’t get evidence without conducting an unauthorized investigation.
In the end, she’d risked prosecution for three reasons: one, because the traitor needed to be caught. Two, because they’d nearly killed Paul. And three, because she thought that when she found evidence, she could give it anonymously to Cynthia or someone else and no one would ever know she’d broken the law.
Chapter Twenty-One
“It started out all right,” she huffed. “Kevin and I were just talking. David walked by and Kevin was mad David had gotten him in trouble this morning. So he stuck his leg out. David tripped and landed on his hand or something.”
Everything with teenagers was a teachable moment, and Paul wanted to try and undo some of the damage her father had done to her. “What kind of person do you think Kevin is?”
The Italian Deception Page 10