The Box

by Robert Swetz

  “Don’t count on it kid!” Rockford told him.

  Brian leaned forward again. “Haven’t you figured out who I really am yet?”

  Rockford stared at him. “I’m starting to get a strong suspicion,” he replied.

  “Well then suspicion this. If I don’t walk out that door and disappear, an army of the best lawyers in the country will have me away from you in less than an hour. And if that car you’ve got parked outside tries to follow me, it’ll do you no good either. I can disappear a hundred different ways. So I suggest you phone them now and tell them to back off!”

  Rockford stared at him for a moment. Then he reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out Francesca Bianchi’s old driver’s license. He placed it on the table and pushed it to a spot between them where he left his finger on it. “It stays there till we’ve got everything we need.”

  Brian nodded, then leaned back in his chair. “The phone conversation I heard was a very interesting one. One of the more interesting conversations I’ve ever heard, and I could only hear what Michael was saying, not his father.”

  “I’m still waiting,” Rockford told him.

  “He told his father to have someone he called Iris, drug Vincent and Francesca Bianchi, and have them sent to the plane.”

  “Iris?” Rockford asked.

  Brian shrugged. “That’s the name I heard, of course a minute later he called her his sister when he mentioned her again.”

  “Sister?”

  “I don’t know,” Brian said. “That’s what I heard. To me it sounds like Iris is his sister.”

  “Okay,” Rockford said. “Anything else?”

  “Plenty! Then I heard Michael tell his father all about someone he called Pinky who attached a bomb to the plane’s fuel line so it would look like the fuel line ruptured. Then Michael was supposed to meet this Pinky guy at the airport so he could get the detonator from him and detonate it himself.”

  “You heard all that?”

  “I told you, you should be recording this.”

  “We are,” Rockford told him.

  “Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “You didn’t need to know. What happened then?”

  Instead of answering, Brian looked down at the license, then back up at Rockford. “Push that license toward me a little more, because this is the last thing I’m going to tell you.”

  “It better be about who’s getting killed.”

  Brian sat there staring at Rockford, waiting. Rockford finally reached out and pushed the license a little bit closer to Brian.

  Brian nodded, then said, “After that phone conversation, Michael was talking to his two friends. I heard him tell them that a week from now his father would no longer be in the picture and he would have all the control. And he said his sister Iris would be out of the way too.”

  Rockford stared at Brian with an open mouth. “Michael is going to bump off his father to get control of the family?”

  “How should I know? All I heard was what I told you.” He paused for just a moment then said, “By my calculations, you’ve got until midnight tomorrow night to arrest Samuel and Michael Scuderi. Otherwise, they’ll both be dead.” He stood up and purposely picked up the license. “Are you going to call off your tail, or do I show you how easy it is for me to lose him?”

  It wasn’t Rockford, but Crosby who grabbed his phone. It took a minute, but Brian heard him tell the waiting driver to take off.

  Brian nodded at Rockford, and said, “See you…or maybe not.” With that, he walked out the door. He was surprised to see the car that had dropped him off, pulling up to the curb outside, and the car that was supposed to tail him was heading further away down the street.

  Back in the doorway, Rockford watched as a woman got out of the car and held the door open for the boy. With one final glance back at him, the woman got in the car and it drove away.

  The last words of the boy were still ringing in Rockford’s ears. ‘By my calculations, you’ve got until midnight tomorrow night to arrest Samuel and Michael Scuderi. Otherwise, they’ll both be dead.’ With that one statement, he realized that there was more going on here than the kid had told them.

  The last thing the kid had added was that they had until midnight tomorrow. And he had said they had to arrest both Samuel and Michael. Earlier, the kid had told them he wanted them to kill Michael. The kid had told him that Michael was about to kill his own father and take over the family business. In the mafia world, it happened. Not often, but it happened. And from what he knew about Michael Scuderi, it sounded like just the kind of thing he might do.

  But that last thing the kid had said, that changed everything. Not only was Michael going to kill Samuel Scuderi, but someone else was out to kill both Michael and Samuel. And if he didn’t find some reason to arrest them both by midnight tomorrow, then that someone else was going to act.

  As he continued to stare down the road after the car, one other thought went through Special Agent Rockford’s mind. Brian Bianchi was going to bear watching. He was only thirteen years old, and already he was a force to be reckoned with.

  Chapter 19

  That was Brian Bianchi?” Crosby asked once they were back at the police station.

  “That’s my best bet,” Rockford told him. “And I’m guessing the woman in the car was his mother, Francesca. I couldn’t see who else was in the car, but there were a few people there.”

  “How about what he told us?” Crosby asked.

  Rockford shook his head. “Just before he left, he suddenly changed his tune. That last bit was an ultimatum from someone else.”

  “To arrest Michael and Samuel Scuderi?”

  “Yes. The problem is, as far as I can see, we’ve got no hard evidence against either of them for anything.”

  “How about what the boy told us about blowing up the jet? Do you see anything hard enough there to use?”

  Rockford shook his head. “You know as well as I do that it’s all just hearsay. Just what the boy told us. There’s no credible evidence at all that Michael Scuderi was behind it. All it gives us is a place to start looking.”

  “The rest of what he told us checks out though,” Crosby said. “Ballistics from the Scorpion killings matched the three guns that were used earlier. And there was one other bullet from one of those guns that got extracted from Frank’s knee a few days ago too. Same gun. If Michael was the one to shoot Frank in the leg, then I have no doubt that Frank would start shooting as soon as he saw him coming.”

  “Yeah,” Rockford agreed. “I have no doubt everything the kid told us will check out one way or another. But he gave us until midnight tomorrow to arrest them. What he didn’t give us was one single thing that we could use to arrest either of them for.”

  “Do we warn Michael’s father that his own son is about to try to murder him?”

  “We can try, but I doubt it will get us anywhere.”

  “At least it might stop him from getting killed.”

  “Only to have someone else come along right afterwards and take care of it instead. We got played. As much as I hate to admit that he got the better of me, that kid played us, just to get his hands on that dumb license. Why? What the hell could possibly be so important about it? It’s old. Out of date. Completely useless.”

  “I don’t know,” Crosby admitted. “My turf is the street gangs. I don’t know much about anything else. But I do know that the kid backed up everything that ballistics told us. And if there was that much truth to what he said, then I have no doubt that the name he put to the three shooters was correct too. Michael Scuderi. And the first time Scuderi went into gangland to meet with the Scorpions, his only topic of interest was that license. So somehow, it’s got to be central to everything.”

  “Yeah,” Rockford agreed. “But until we can find and talk to him, we’re nowhere.”

  “To me, that says we pull Michael Scuderi in right away and have a little chat. And at the same time, we pat him down for
any guns.”

  Rockford nodded. “Absolutely! It’s the only play we have right now. The sooner we find him, the better!”

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Agent Sargetti ran into the men’s room while everyone else was heading down to the cars. Once again, he desperately tried to phone Michael Scuderi, and once again it went to voicemail. He put his phone away and ran back out to catch up with the others. If Michael wasn’t going to take his calls, then to hell with him. He had tried. He just hoped that the few dollars Samuel Scuderi sent once in a while would keep coming.

  He caught up with the others just as they got to the cars. In moments, they were on their way to Samuel Scuderi’s house. The only thing he couldn’t understand was why the cop was still with them. This was an FBI matter now, completely.

  The ride through the city was a long one, but Sargetti expected that. Eventually he saw the old Scuderi house come into view. He had been there before, long ago. He didn’t mention that to any of the others. It wasn’t the sight of the house though that caught his attention, it was the sight of men holding guns outside that did.

  “Keep going!” Rockford suddenly ordered. Casper, who had been driving this time stepped on the gas and sped up a little. “Turn the corner,” Rockford told her. As the car turned the corner, they all looked out the window at the men they could see, every one of them holding a weapon of some sort.

  “He’s not even hiding it,” Rockford said as the car finally moved past the grounds. “Samuel Scuderi has an army out there, every one of them with guns, and none of them are even trying to hide the fact.”

  “You think he knows his son is out to get him?” Crosby asked.

  “Or someone else is out to get him,” Rockford replied. “My bet is that he’s afraid of Bianchi. If Michael tried to blow him up and failed, then Samuel would have to know that Bianchi would want some kind of retaliation, so the army of guards would make sense.”

  “Except that in this case, the one that might actually kill him would be his own son. And he could walk right in there like he probably does every day and just do it,” Crosby said. “The father would be looking the wrong way.”

  “Exactly!” Rockford replied. Maybe there was more smarts in the dumb cop than he thought.

  “So what do we do?”

  Rockford shook his head. “Nothing. Samuel obviously knows he’s got a problem with someone else, and his problem with his son is something he’ll have to work out for himself. Samuel’s been around for a lot of years. He didn’t get to his position by being stupid.”

  “So we do nothing?” Crosby asked.

  “We fly back to D.C.” Rockford told him. “And you go back to playing with the street gangs. Business as usual. Until something big happens, there’s nothing else we can do at all.”

  Rockford was interrupted when his phone rang again. “Yeah?”

  “Sargetti tried twice in the last hour to reach that same number and failed. Casper didn’t make any calls.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” Rockford replied. “Shut it down. I’ll look into it when I get back.” He put his phone back in his pocket. He was fairly certain now that Sargetti had been the one to leak the information, probably directly to Michael Scuderi. He had no real proof, but that was his bet. Once they got home, he’d have someone dig a lot deeper into Sargetti to see if there was anything else. Internal investigations could go on for years and turn up nothing. This could very well be one of those cases, but he had to try. In the meantime, he would keep Sargetti doing just what he was doing, and he would watch him more closely.

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Four men moved through the shadows toward the house across the street from Samuel Scuderi’s house. All of them wore night vision goggles so they could see in the dark. The goggles also hid their faces. All of them carried military assault rifles, each one with a silencer attached. It was one forty-five in the morning, but they still did everything possible to keep from being seen.

  The trees and furniture behind the house hid their approach as they made their way to the back door. One of them spent a minute working on the lock, and the door suddenly opened. All four men moved inside. One of the men whispered a single word into the microphone suspended in front of his mouth. “In.”

  With guns aimed and ready, they spread out to search the house. As expected, the only people they found were the couple who owned the house. They were upstairs in their bedroom sound asleep. Two men jumped on top of each of them to hold them down and a hypodermic needle was quickly pushed into each of their necks. In moments, the two people who had been so rudely woken were both asleep again. This time, far more soundly. When they woke in the morning, it was doubtful that they would even remember what happened.

  The same man spoke a second word into his microphone. “Secure.”

  The men fanned out across the rooms upstairs on one side of the house, the side of the house that looked out across the street towards Samuel Scuderi’s house. All the lights were left off. The night vision goggles were all they needed. One by one, they slowly opened all four windows on that side of the upper floor and cut the screens away.

  The man spoke a third word into his microphone. “Ready.”

  Down on the street, another man wearing night vision goggles and carrying the same kind of weapon poked his head around the back corner of the yard and stuck his gun barrel through the wrought iron fence. At the same time, at the front corner of the yard, another man did the same thing. Each man spoke into a microphone. “In place and ready.”

  “In his car, a block away, Gerald Giordano looked at his watch. It was still a few minutes before two o’clock. Perfect. “Do it,” he said into his own microphone.

  Six silenced assault rifles suddenly started shooting. The guards outside Samuel Scuderi’s house started dying. In the dark of the night, there wasn’t enough sound for any of them to tell where the shots were coming from. As they ran around looking for targets to shoot, it only put them into position where another of the men could shoot them. Twelve of Scuderi’s guards died in the first ten seconds. The rest they could see took another twenty.

  “Moving in,” the man near the back gate whispered into his microphone.

  In his car, Gerald glanced at his watch again. “That was fast,” he noted.

  One of the men cautiously opened the back gate and made his way into the yard. At the same time, the second man entered through the front gate. Each of them, kept to as much cover as possible while searching for more targets. Only one was found, at the far side of the house. One guard had been hiding in the bushes. In moments, there were no guards left outside the house.

  “All clear outside,” the man said into his microphone.

  The men in the house across the street ran downstairs and out of the house. As Gerald’s car pulled up to the curb, they crossed the street. Four of them waited at the backdoor to the house while two people got out of the car and headed for the door. As they did, a truck backed up to the open gate behind them.

  The lock expert was there at the door, but the backdoor wasn’t locked. The four men with assault rifles went in first, already searching and ready to kill. One of them came back to the kitchen a few minutes later. “Downstairs is clear. Two down,” he said to Gerald.

  “Get everyone from upstairs,” Gerald replied. “I’ll be in the office down here.”

  The men had already been supplied with information about who was in what rooms upstairs and where those rooms were. Only Gerald knew though that it had been Brian who had supplied that information. They entered the master bedroom first, where Samuel and his wife were sleeping. With the night vision goggles they had plenty of light to see what they were doing. They didn’t even bother to wake Samuel’s wife Isabel. They simply shot her in the head while she was sleeping. Samuel though, they grabbed and dragged him from his bed.

  Gerald stood in the hallway outside of Samuel’s office as two men dragged him down the stairs. They dragged Samuel toward Gerald, the
n stopped.

  “Giordano!” Samuel spat angrily.

  “Put him in his chair,” Gerald told the men as he nodded his head toward Samuel’s desk.

  Samuel was dragged into his own office and shoved into his chair. Then the men left the room and Gerald entered and sat in one of the guest chairs across from him.

  “Why bother?” Samuel said. “Why don’t you just shoot me?”

  “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” Gerald replied.

  “You won’t?” Samuel said, surprised that there might be a way out for him.

  From upstairs, they heard a high-pitched scream. Two minutes later, the men dragged Iris into the office. “Let her go,” Gerald told the men. “Search the rest of the house.”

  As the men left, Iris noted the gun Gerald was holding. If it wasn’t for that, she would have already been attacking him. “What do you want?” she asked.

  Gerald chuckled. “Murder,” he said.

  “Iris!” a female voice suddenly said.

  Iris turned and saw Francesca in the hallway with a gun. Before she could say another word, that gun fired and she fell to the floor with a bullet in her chest.

  “Iris!” Samuel yelled as he stood from his chair. But the gun Gerald was holding on him kept him behind his desk.

  Francesca walked over and looked down at Iris. “This is for what you did to my family.” She didn’t hesitate, just as she hadn’t hesitated to shoot her the moment she recognized her. Vince had warned her not to. Vince had told her Iris was a pro and she couldn’t take the time to hesitate even a little. These were dangerous people they were playing with. The bright silver gun with the pearl handles that she held fired again and the bullet went straight into Iris’s head, killing her immediately.

  “Iris!” Samuel shouted again.

  Francesca walked over to his desk and laid the gun on it. In her gloved hands, none of her fingerprints would ever be found on it. The gun had already been wiped completely clean.