Mortal Bonds

by Michael Sears

  The truth would have set off an explosion that I did not want to witness. I offered a half-truth. “They’re some men who wanted to talk business with me.”

  “Well, I hope you set them straight. It’s Sunday, for goodness’ sake.”

  When I met Angie, she had not been inside of a church since her confirmation. She claimed to be allergic to incense. This newfound respect for the Sabbath must have had something to do with her twelve-step recovery.

  “I pointed that out to them.”

  The elevator opened.

  “And?” she said in an arch tone.

  “Then I had to give them directions down to Saint Pat’s.”

  We rode up in silence.

  Angie held off until I got the Kid settled in his bed. I came back into the living room to find her commanding center stage—her face a stone carving depicting “Righteous Anger.”

  “I have just as much a right as you to discipline our child. You will not correct me in front of him. You will not take his side. You will not try to undercut me. Those are not requests. We have had our differences, and have failed each other in any number of ways, but as the mother of a child, I will not be disrespected by you or anyone. Is there anything about what I just said that you don’t understand?”

  She didn’t sound Cajun at all. She was angry but controlled, superior without lapsing into a pose of haughty and abused. It was an excellent performance. A lesser man might have applauded. I took three deep, cleansing breaths—a necessary first step in pain and anger management, according to Skeli—and sat down. Sitting lowers the offensive profile without ceding ground. It is nonconfrontational, nonviolent, and maddening.

  “I can see you want a fight, Angie, but I am not going to give it to you. Not right now and never again. The Kid is sleeping and he really needs it. I think you should go now.” And the showdown with the four men out front had caused a major shift in my priorities. Fighting with Angie wasn’t important. I needed her gone, away, as soon as possible. Survival was more important than being right or wrong.

  She struggled. She was ready to blast me, but she held it back. “I’m going back and find Mamma and Tino. They’ll be worried sick.”

  I doubted it. Tino was too steady to waste energy on worrying about things he couldn’t fix. And I didn’t think Mamma had even noticed us leaving.

  “That sounds like a fine idea,” I said.

  She almost made it out the door. It would have been a perfect exit. Silent, proud, controlled. She couldn’t do it.

  “You think about what I said. This is so not over.” Then she left.

  | 23 |

  Fighting with Angie was like screwing with her—it blinded me to anything else that was going on. Once she was gone, the scary stuff came right back. I had stirred up a nest or two. A million a year wasn’t going to be worth it, if the Kid was in danger. I was in danger, too, but that bothered me a lot less directly. If I were gunned down by Central American midgets, the Kid would go back to living locked up in his grandma’s attic. But at least I wouldn’t have to be there to see it. Either way, the threat was to the Kid. I called in the cavalry. My good buddy, Brady, at the FBI.

  “Jason Stafford,” he greeted me. “Whenever I see your name on my caller ID, I know my life is about to become much more interesting.”

  “If it weren’t for me, Brady, you’d still be carrying a calculator in your holster. Instead of being part of a hotshot team on a multiagency antidrug task force, you’d be adding columns of numbers all day as a forensic accountant.”

  “Any number of people have helped me in my career, but you are the only one who reminds me of it every time we talk.”

  “Working on Sunday? No wonder crime is down.”

  “I am a Special Agent. One of the perks of reaching that exalted rank is covering the desk on weekends while more senior agents are otherwise occupied. Is this a social call?”

  “I need your help.”

  “Excuse me for not feigning surprise.”

  I quickly rattled off the highlights of the confrontation with the four Latinos. He didn’t interrupt.

  “I need protection. Not for me. For my son. I can’t protect him twenty-four-seven.” Another thought occurred to me. “And I’m afraid that Angie’s on their radar screen now, too.”

  “I seem to remember a conversation earlier this week—”

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling.” I tried to cut him off.

  “—right here in my office, in which you were warned that just such a scenario was in the cards unless you backed out of whatever nonsense you were up to with Castillo.”

  “What can you do for me?”

  “The short answer? Nothing.”

  “Can’t you pick them up? You must have them all on file, right?”

  “Four Latinos? One of them is short. Are you joking? It sounds like a landscaper’s crew.”

  “You have no idea who they are?”

  He was polite enough not to answer. “And second, they committed no crime. I can’t even put you in witness protection—which you would not want—because you haven’t witnessed anything. So far, a man stopped you on the street and complimented you on your son.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Hear me out. You know they were threatening you, and I believe you. But I can’t sell that story. Your witness, the doorman. What’s he going to contribute?”

  Nothing. “I get it. Any suggestions?”

  “Take your son and go to New Zealand for six months.”

  “Not possible.”

  “In six months this group of toughs will all be in prison or dead. There’s a lot of turnover in their line of work.”

  “Not even funny.”

  “I wasn’t being funny. The way I hear it, talking to your buddy Castillo won’t help either. They don’t take his orders.”

  “I could just find them their money and be done with it.”

  “If you do, let me know. We would be very interested.”

  “I still need someone watching my back for the next week or so.”

  “I hear the family you’re working for has a full security team these days. Maybe they’ll lend you some muscle for a few days.”

  Great. The Kid could have his own pet mercenary.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good luck. Call me if anyone commits a crime, will you?”

  FBI stand-up humor. Did they teach it at the academy?

  “Hey! You can do something for me. I just thought of it.”

  “Oh, good. Now I feel better.”

  I could see his snarky grin right through the phone.

  “An SEC guy. Gibbons. Charles Gibbons. Is he for real? The guy has been following me. He is not like any SEC accountant I ever met.”

  “Don’t know him. But I’ll ask. Give me a day.”

  I didn’t like the idea of Blake’s crew watching over my son—I didn’t trust them or him—but safety was a bigger concern. I called Virgil. This time he answered right away. I filled him in.

  “It’s your investigation that put me here. I can’t work for you if my son is in danger. Period. I’ll need twenty-four-hour protection for him until this is over.”

  “For you and the boy?”

  The only way to get these guys off my case was to find Castillo’s missing bonds. And I wasn’t going to be doing that with the dogs of war looking over my shoulder. “No. Just the boy. But it’s got to be twenty-four-seven.”

  “Talk to Blake. Tell him I authorized rotating two-man teams for the next ten days. He’ll set it up.” He gave me the number and hung up.

  It was a start. I wanted castles with shark-filled moats and minefields and barbed wire and Navy SEALs with machine guns, and maybe a company of Marines—but two big tattooed mercenaries was a start.

  “Blake here,” he said,
answering his cell on the second ring.

  I gave him the bare bones—it wasn’t enough.

  “I’m interested in how this connects to your investigation for the family.”

  “I explained it to Virgil,” I said. “Threats—quite legitimate threats, I would say—have been made against me and my family, directly as a result of my involvement. I think the people who made these threats are both capable and experienced in this kind of thing.”

  He knew he wasn’t getting the whole story. He remained silent for a minute, on the chance that I would keep talking and tell him more. I didn’t fall for it.

  “What do you know that makes these people think this is a productive strategy?” he finally asked.

  Interesting. Virgil hadn’t asked that question. I thought I knew, but I wasn’t quite ready. But I wasn’t going to share anything with Blake. When in doubt, equivocate.

  “I’m not sure. I might know something, but I don’t know that I know it.”

  He sucked on that for a minute.

  “I can have two men there in less than an hour.”

  A small piece of the granite boulder that was resting on my chest broke off and rolled away.

  “I’m not sure how to say this, but the type of men you had up in Newport the other day are going to be a bit conspicuous hanging around the lobby of the Ansonia.”

  He chuckled. “You’d like the special Upper West Side package? I can send you a pair of out-of-work community organizers and a drum circle.”

  “I’m just saying, Blake, that there are people living in this building who won’t like seeing guys with Odin tattoos riding the elevator with them.”

  “My men will be discreet. It is one of the truisms of this business that genuinely nice people, the kind you might invite to a dinner party, are less effective as bodyguards than large, unimaginative types who have never read much good fiction. And don’t worry, we’ve worked the Ansonia before. I’ll contact the security people there before my people arrive.” He clicked off before I could respond.

  I didn’t know the Ansonia had “security people.” What did they think of me? Ex-con. Marginally employed. I vowed to try smiling more when I walked through the lobby.

  But even with two berserker mercenaries in attendance, the Kid was only partially protected. The only way I was going to ensure all our safety was to come up with some answers. Soon.

  | 24 |

  My father and I share a minor nonfatal obsessive-compulsive behavioral tic. When planning a trip, any trip, like him, I must review every possible approach to my goal, even if it’s just across Amsterdam Avenue to the Häagen-Dazs store. And though I am much better than he at controlling these impulses, I had plotted this trip to the site of my last incarceration with infinite care.

  The GW Bridge to Palisades Parkway to the New York State Thruway, all the way to Harriman, where I picked up 17 West to 211. It’s both quick and the scenic route, and the Dead’s Nightfall of Diamonds kept me company until my anxiety over where I was headed got the better of me and I turned the music off.

  My last six months in the federal penal system, I was domiciled at the minimum-security satellite camp at Otisville in the middle of the Catskills. Vinny had been doing his stretch at the main, medium-security facility there, but had already been transferred to the camp. I don’t know that visiting any other federal prison would have been easier on my psyche, but returning to Otisville was giving me a headache, sour stomach, nausea, and a dull-headed exhaustion. I felt like I had all the side effects they warn you about in those TV ads for prescription meds.

  A few miles west of Middletown, the winding curves of 211 finally got to me. I pulled over, but not quite off the road—I hadn’t seen another car in miles—and opened the window. It was hot and humid—it was hot and humid all over the Northeast—but the mountain air smelled of pine, and I took a minute to pull myself together. It was deliciously quiet. My breaths came slower and freer. The rope around my chest eased. Confidence returned. I could do this.

  Movement in the rearview mirror caught my eye. A white SUV with dark tinted windows was slowing down behind me. I rolled down the window and waved him on around me. A GMC Denali. A compact for those who found the Hummer too ostentatious. He stopped twenty feet back and waited. I waved again—a bit more forcefully. A moment later the big engine raced and he sped by me, deeper into the woods. I watched the truck bounce as it hit a pothole a few hundred yards down the road, then it was around a bend and gone. The silence of the woods returned and, almost immediately, became oppressive.

  My hands felt clammy and I felt an annoying buzz in my head, like too much bad coffee or the first shades of an oncoming cold. Or claustrophobia. I was eight months on the outside and capable of going days at a time without thinking of the two years I’d been a reluctant guest of the U.S. penal system, but it didn’t take much more than the sight of a roll of razor wire over a chain-link fence to churn it all up again.

  I started the car and finished the drive. I made the right in the middle of town and a few minutes later the sign for the prison appeared.

  Ahead, there was a series of orange cones guiding any traffic down into a single narrow lane that led to a freestanding guardhouse. I pulled up to the booth. A perfectly pleasant young man in a blue guard uniform very politely asked me my business. He scared the shit out of me. I had to clear my throat twice to answer.

  “I’m visiting.”

  “An inmate?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you been here before? You know where you’re going?”

  Yes, I had been there before. And no, I had no idea where I was going. The last time I hadn’t come in the visitors’ entrance. I shook my head.

  “Okay. Pull through the gate here and park in the visitors’ lot. Someone will show you where to go from there.”

  I cleared my throat again. “Thanks.”

  “You all right?”

  I forced a smile. “Allergies.”

  He smiled back and gave a half-salute as I drove off.

  The gate—a section of the chain-link fence on rollers—pulled back as I approached, and I continued inside. My ears started ringing. I shook my head and tried to ignore it. I drove down a corridor between two fences. I passed a guard carrying a black pump shotgun and walking a German shepherd that looked to be the size of a small horse. I reminded myself to breathe again.

  VISITOR PARKING. I looked around. Antony had been right. If you had to do time in the federal prison system, this is where you wanted to be. The buildings were mostly Quonset huts and two-story barracks, surrounded by green grass, bushes, and even a ball field. It wasn’t the Club Fed, of a bygone era—those had disappeared twenty years ago—but neither was it designed to break your spirit. And that is what the Federal Bureau of Prisons is all about. It is punishment, not rehabilitation. From the ADX or ADMAX facilities—the maximum-security penitentiaries where terrorists like the Unabomber are kept in permanent solitary confinement—and the infamous USPs—high-security penitentiaries—like Beaumont and Big Sandy, to the Federal Correctional Institutions like Ray Brook, where I spent the first eighteen months of my sentence, they all share a unified purpose: to grind away at each prisoner’s last shreds of dignity and humanity.

  FPCs—Federal Prison Camps—like Fort Dix and the camp at Otisville, are a little different. Each has its own style—rules, privileges, privations—but they are all essentially holding areas for short-timers. Usually the camps are attached to some other facility, so that the low-security prisoners can do all of the maintenance for both facilities. Cheap labor. Fights are few, escape attempts almost nonexistent—the calendar is your friend. Any forbidden activity that might prolong your stay by even a day is to be avoided.

  But that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant. It’s still prison.

  Two COs, armed with Tasers and clipboards, took my name, wrote down the license-pla
te number on my rental car, and directed me into the main office, where another steely-eyed bureaucrat with a badge checked my ID against the computer and told me to take a seat in the next room.

  “When you hear your name called, go to the window at the far end and they’ll take you through.”

  Stepping through the door, I had to make a conscious effort not to flinch. I was inside the “facility.”

  The waiting room was almost empty. Three lawyers—two men and a woman, all in suits and carrying both briefcases and expandable file folders—were tapping away on laptops. No families. It was Monday—a workday, a school day, not a regular visiting day. Brady had made the call to get me in. Another reluctant favor I owed him.

  I went to the treasurer’s window and completed the necessary forms to put a hundred bucks in Vinny’s commissary account—he could buy cigarettes, snacks, or newspapers. I doubted he’d be able to get his beloved Racing Form, but maybe they let in the New York Post.

  Then I waited.

  A speaker crackled to life and a name was called. One of the suits got up and went to the window, showed his ID—again—deposited all valuables in a manila envelope, had his picture taken, stepped through the body scanner and the puffer machine, and went into the next room. A moment later, a second name was called and the process repeated, until, last, I heard “Jason Stafford.”

  There was no logical reason for my stomach to lurch, or for the back of my neck to suddenly go ice-cold. I was a free man. Clean. Almost squeaky clean, if you ignored the money I had hidden in Switzerland. I’d even cleared the trip with my parole officer—an ignominious exercise, somewhat akin to raising your hand to go to the bathroom in middle school—though I had somehow managed to leave him with the impression that I was visiting with the warden rather than a fellow felon. Unless I tried to slip Vinny some item of contraband—like a gun, or drugs, or a copy of Penthouse—no one could lay a hand on me. Logic is a cold comfort.

  The CO minding the scanners had biceps that threatened to tear his short-sleeved uniform to shreds. He was bored but alert, efficiently doing his job without giving it—or me—any thought. He waved me through. I patted myself on the back for how well I was handling being this close to the enemy once again—on his own turf.