Red, White & Dead

by Laura Caldwell

  “Or he doesn’t care, because he wants us to come to him.”

  My father nodded. “But at least we know we’re on our own for now.”

  Maggie and Elena got out of the plane. “Maggie,” my father said, gesturing to the men near the cars. “I don’t want you going home. Is there somewhere these men can take you where you’ll be safe?”

  “Sure,” Maggie said. “My grandfather has been a defense attorney for a long time. His house is a fortress.”

  My father nodded and pointed at the town car. Then he smiled a little at Maggie. “It was nice to meet Izzy’s best friend.”

  He and Maggie shook hands. I gave her a hug and she got in the car.

  Elena’s face was pale, her eyes darting around.

  “Elena, I am so sorry about this,” my dad said to her, his words tender. They hugged. He whispered something in her ear.

  She nodded and, still trembling, followed the two men toward the other town car.

  As it pulled away I looked at my dad. “Where is she going?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  My irritation flared. “Why not? I’m sick of your secrets.”

  He gave me a look of consternation. “Izzy, I’m not telling you these things for your own good. The less you know the better. Your aunt will check into a hotel suite. She is fine, for now.”

  I looked back down at my phone. What about Charlie? Was he fine?

  My father gestured to another town car parked apart from the others.

  “Shouldn’t we have people with us?” I asked.

  “What did that e-mail say?”

  “It said, ‘Bring cops and he goes bye-bye.’”

  “Right.” My dad looked up at the sky then back at me. “I don’t know the American Camorra well, but what I know for sure is that members of the System make good on their threats. So, while we wait for their signal, we’re going to ask a few questions, we’re going to try and figure out what their endgame is. And if the situation appears stable…”

  “Stable?” I said, unable to stop the indignant tone. “How is any of this stable?”

  He glanced at me. “I’m grading on a curve here.” He began walking to the car, his eyes scanning the place as he moved. “If the situation is stable, relatively, then we’ll wait for the address and go on our own.”

  “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.”

  64

  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.

  Victoria looked with a keener eye around the door and finally noticed a black knob on the right. A buzzer? She pushed it. She couldn’t hear anything inside.

  But then the door clicked open-just like that. No one said anything, no one stepped outside. She pulled the door toward her a little bit and peered around it. Inside, it was dark, and with the sun behind her, she couldn’t make out much of anything.

  “Hello?” she called out. “Hello?”

  Nothing. But then she heard a distinct clack…clack…clack…Footsteps. Someone’s heels hitting the floor. She wanted to draw back with anxiousness, but she didn’t let herself. She pulled the door open farther and dipped her head inside.

  She could make out a hallway now, bare with a gray cement floor and brick walls. A man in a suit appeared next to one of the few lights fastened to the brick. He looked like someone Victoria might see down the street from her, having a drink at the Pump Room. He had dark hair, and the suit was well-tailored. His hands clasped behind his back, he appeared, almost, as if he were a host, waiting for the first guests to arrive at a party.

  “Mrs. McNeil?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Do you have the money?”

  She nodded again, a little tentatively, then stuck her hand in her bag and withdrew the cash.

  “Who did you tell?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who did you tell that you were coming here?”

  She looked at him. What answer was he looking for? She told the truth. “No one. My son asked me not to tell anyone.”

  She held out the cash to him. He took a few more steps forward with the clack, clack, clack of his heels on the floor. She moved forward a bit, stepping inside, her arm outstretched, and just then, the door behind her slammed shut.

  65

  “Where are we going?” I asked my dad. I’d been paying no attention to where we were driving, but now I saw that we were almost to the exits for the Loop. “I know you said you wanted to ask some questions, but where?”

  “WGN. The radio station. If someone saw Charlie get snatched by those guys, we might be able to figure out more about the whole situation.”

  I looked once more at Charlie’s picture on my phone, then stowed it in my bag.

  “So, you…” my dad said. But just those two words.

  I looked at him. He was simply driving, as if he hadn’t said anything. “So, I…what?” I asked.

  He shifted a bit in the seat. He’d taken off his jacket. The white cotton shirt he wore was wilted, and there were perspiration stains under his arms. I looked away. It was too human a thing to see.

  “So, you…” he continued. “You went to the University of Iowa for college, is that right?”

  I glanced at him. “Sounds like you know all about it.”

  He swallowed hard, kept looking at the road. “I know the facts. I don’t know if you liked it.”

  I stared at the dashboard, then I leaned forward and drew my finger over it. I don’t know why. I guess I just wanted something to do, wanted to think for a second. But there didn’t seem to be any reason not to respond. “I liked it a lot. I loved it. Iowa gets a bad rap outside the state. People think pigs or corn, but it’s idyllic actually. The perfect place to go to college. Great little town, nice people, good football program.”

  My dad coughed. It sounded like a fake cough.

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, my family was never into football growing up, but during my masters program and later when we lived in Detroit, I followed Michigan football.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. You mean, I not only have to deal with you being alive, but you being a Michigan fan?”

  My father blinked for a second, then we both started laughing.

  After a minute, we fell into silence. Then, staring out the front window, not even seeing Chicago, I started telling my dad about how I’d floated through a few majors at Iowa like Pharmacy (too much science) and Leisure Studies (it sounded more leisurely than it actually was), and eventually ended with a Communications Studies degree.

  My dad nodded the whole time I was speaking, as if he was gulping up the information. “You do communicate well,” he said.

  I chuckled. “Thanks.”

  “And law school? What was that like?”

  “Fairly brutal. I mean, during the first year you can barely see, there’s so much work, and then it gets a tad easier the second year, and then by the third year when you’ve just got the hang of it, you realize that you have to find a job and get your butt out of there.”

  “Did you have a hard time finding the job at Baltimore & Brown?”

  I looked down at my hands, tapping my fingers together. “You know about that, too, huh?”

  He cleared his throat. “Like I said, just the basics, that you worked there.”

  It felt weird that someone I didn’t know, not really, had known all about my life all along. Yet it felt familiar, too, like a recognition inside that I’d always known but never called to the forefront.

  “I lucked out by getting a summer associate position at Baltimore & Brown,” I said. “And after seven months of nail biting they finally made up their minds and gave me a permanent offer.”

  We kept talking. And it got easier. Even enjoyable.

  I was about to ask him some questions when I realized we were on Wacker Drive, not far from WGN, and then all I could think of was Charlie, and I veered the conversation back to today, to what we were facing.

  “Okay,” I said, “so let’s figure out what Dez Romano wants from you. Because if he’s not going to be prosecuted by the Feds, then why isn’t he just keeping his head down at this point?”

  My dad nodded thoughtfully. “He must know that I know more about the Camorra than he does.”

  “So he wants information?”

  “That makes the most sense.”

  “What kind of informatio
n?”

  My father shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

  “We need some dirt on Dez Romano to counter with, something we can use as leverage.”

  My father nodded again.

  The WGN producer, a young guy with prematurely gray hair and frameless glasses, had a horrified look on his face. He’d agreed to talk to us immediately, and now he walked us outside onto Michigan Avenue to show us where they’d grabbed Charlie.

  “We were on the air.” He pointed at a glass wall that looked into a radio studio.

  Two guys were broadcasting now. They were talking into their big microphones but looking out at us with curious, somewhat fearful expressions on their faces.

  “Everyone is freaking out,” the producer said.

  “What’s the purpose of this glass around the studio?” my dad asked.

  “People watch us while we’re live. They walk by all day and they wave, and do silly stuff. Sometimes they hold up signs or something. But this time, these two guys started pounding on the glass and yelling. They wouldn’t stop and you could hear it on air. So I told Charlie to get out there fast and get them to stop.”

  “Don’t you have security for that?” my dad asked.

  “Yeah. In the Tribune Building. But by the time I called them and explained the whole thing, I thought it would take too long. I thought these guys were just drunk out-of-towners here for a Cubs game, and I figured it would take two seconds for Charlie to get them to stop.”

  “But they didn’t?” I asked.

  The producer threw his hands up into the air. “They grabbed him. It happened so fast, I’m not even sure how it went down. I looked up and saw them hauling him that way.” The producer pointed to stairs.

  “Where does that lead?” I asked.

  “Lower Wacker. There’s a parking lot down there, and access to the river.” He ran a hand over his anguished face. “I called security and the cops. I couldn’t get out here myself because we were on air, and by the time security got out there, there was no sign of him. He was gone.” The producer shook his head, looking as agonized as we felt. “He was just gone.”