Angelo shifted his eyes away and swallowed guiltily. “Isn’t that convenient? Grant tells the authorities Carlo confessed to killing the man he is suspected of murdering.”
“It’s not only Grant who heard him say that—there are other witnesses too!”
“As if Carlo would kill his own cousin,” Angelo protested weakly, still not meeting Joe’s eyes. He stood abruptly. “I need a drink,” he said. But his journey to the bar was halted when Joe leapt to his feet in a moment of epiphany.
“You knew,” Joe said.
Angelo froze, then slowly turned to meet Joe’s appalled gaze. “Knew what?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
“You knew Carlo killed Logan!”
Fuck. He’d coolly led the detectives to believe he had no idea Carlo was the killer, but apparently Joe could read him more easily than he thought. “Of course I didn’t know that,” Angelo said evenly.
“Save your bullshit for someone else,” Joe seethed. “You could have prevented all of this from happening. You could have turned over your son and stopped the bloodshed.”
Besieged by Joe’s attack, Angelo felt overwrought. He’d been awake all night, and his brain was too muddled to argue with this incensed military man, this man who thought he was too good for the Barberi family.
Angelo was still reeling when Joe yelled, “You knew how evil Carlo was! He pretty much forced Grant to shoot him—it was the only way to stop him! And now Grant has blood on his hands. You could have prevented it all.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Angelo screamed back, feeling his hands furl into fists. “He was my son!”
Joe studied Angelo, ready for his next move. Mario stuck his head in the door, but his boss impatiently waved him off.
Suddenly another image from Carlo’s childhood flooded Angelo’s brain. Remembering Carlo’s handsome, youthful face at his first communion, he felt his fury dissipate, replaced by sadness and guilt. “He was my son,” he repeated, more softly this time. He coughed loudly. Worn out, Angelo slowly returned to his chair and slumped into the leather. He stared at the plush carpet.
Carefully, Joe also resumed sitting, never taking his eyes off the Mafia boss. Angelo sighed and looked up, shooting a dirty look at his guest. “So, that’s the game you’re playing, huh? Either I promise not to pursue Grant or you go to the cops and tell them I knew Carlo killed Logan.”
Joe was surprised, but maintained a cool façade. Eventually he said, “No. I will not blackmail you. That’s your way, not mine.” He sighed. “I came here, man to man, to ask you to do the right thing. Grant is not a ruthless criminal—he never has been and he never will be. And if you coerce him into that role, he’ll get killed. Please. There have been enough deaths already. Please, Angelo.”
There was silence, the only sound the ticking of the grandfather clock. Angelo shook his head, feeling the burden of heading the powerful family. He missed Enzo’s leadership. Enzo would know what to do.
Finally Angelo looked up, and the uncles’ gazes locked. Angelo appeared pained as he pledged, “You have my word that I won’t go after Grant. But if he ends up back in Gurnee, I can’t control Enzo.”
Despite his relief, Joe pressed on. “Why not? You’re the head of the family now, right?”
“You don’t understand Enzo.” Angelo shook his head sadly. “What my father did to him …” His voice trailed off.
“What happened to Enzo?” Joe asked.
It was a rare window of vulnerability, and just as quickly as it had opened, it slammed shut. “None of your business.”
A sharp rapping on the door made Angelo frown. “What?” he yelled.
Mario entered the study. “You got a phone call, boss.”
“Take a damn message!”
“It’s, uh, urgent. She made me come get you. She said it was an emergency.”
Angelo yanked the cordless phone to his ear. “Yes?”
“Ben’s missing!” Ashley’s frantic voice filled the phone line.
“He’s missing? Calm down, Ashley,” Angelo ordered.
His instruction did not diminish her panic at all. “He wasn’t here when I woke up, and I thought he went to school early, but the school said he isn’t there! He’s not answering his cell phone. I’ve called all his friends, but he’s not with them.” She forced herself to ask, “Is he at the compound?”
“Not that I know of, but we’ll look for him. Relax, Ashley.” Angelo handed the phone back to Mario. “Have you seen Benjamino, Meat?”
“No, boss. But he knows the code so he could have snuck in.”
Joe did not like the thought of a sixteen-year-old boy coming alone to this house. “Ben looked really upset at the funeral yesterday. He doesn’t know about Carlo yet, does he?”
“No,” Angelo acknowledged, looking guilty. “I’ll go myself to see if he’s up in his room.”
“I’m coming with you,” Joe insisted. “We’re both his great uncles. I’m worried about him just like you are.”
Angelo narrowed his eyes but did not protest when Joe trailed him out of the study and up the stairs. Meat followed closely behind. They walked down a long, ornate hallway and arrived at a closed door.
“Ben?” Angelo called, knocking on the heavy wood. “Are you in there, son?”
Hearing no answer, Angelo turned the knob, grateful the door was unlocked. Smoky vapors hit both men like a sandstorm, swirling and enveloping them. Joe peered through the smoke to locate Ben, propped up on the bed, puffing away happily on a joint.
Angelo turned to Mario and quietly instructed, “Call his mom back and tell her we got him. But don’t mention anything about the weed.”
As Mario hurried down the hallway, Joe looked angrily at Angelo. “Don’t tell his mom he’s been smoking pot? A sixteen year old? His mother deserves to know her son is using an illegal substance!”
“It’s no big deal. Lo smoked all the time at his age.”
“And look where that got him,” Joe sneered. “Six feet under.”
Their argument was interrupted by Ben, who finally realized he had guests in his room. “Hey, the military dude is back,” he said slowly, sending Joe a relaxed smile. Noticing Angelo, he amended his statement. “Oh, actually both my great uncles are here. Bitchin. I got both, uh … gruncles her wit me, yo.”
“Gruncles?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, military dude. Great uncle takes too long to say. I’ll call you my Gruncle. You down with that?”
“I’d be more down with taking you to rehab,” Joe muttered.
“You want some of this?” Ben invited, holding out his joint. “It’s great stuff. I sell only the best.”
Joe wondered if he was getting a contact high from the secondhand smoke. So, not only was Ben using drugs, he was dealing too? Angelo was allowing this to happen? Had he learned nothing from Logan’s experience in juvenile detention? From Logan’s lifelong struggles with addiction?
Watching Angelo just stand there, Joe marched over to Ben’s bed and extended his hand. “Sure, I’ll try some.”
“You’re cooler than I thought, military dude,” Ben smiled woozily and reached into the backpack next to the bed, extracting a large plastic bag. “Let me just roll you a toke.”
Joe swiftly swooped in to grab the bag of pot.
“Heyyy,” Ben protested, his grin fading.
“Did you honestly think I was going to light up a doobie with a sixteen year old, Ben?” Joe hid the bag behind his back with one hand while ripping the lit joint out of Ben’s grasp with the other.
“Give it back,” Ben whined.
Joe fought the urge to order the boy to drop and give him twenty. He glanced at Angelo standing uncomfortably by the door. “You knew about this too, didn’t you?” Joe asked. “You let a teenage boy use drugs—deal drugs? Out of your house?”
“Hey, he’s cool with it,” Ben said. “Why do you gotta be such a jerk?”
“Because I care about you and your future, Ben,” Joe responded gruffly. “And y
our father had a lot of wonderful things about him, but getting busted for selling pot as a teenager was not one of them.”
At the mention of Logan, Ben immediately felt tears. He clenched his jaw, attempting to hold them in, but his bloodshot eyes glistened.
Noticing the boy’s emotional torment, Joe sighed and sat down in a chair next to the bed. Ben drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his skinny arms around his legs. Grant had sat on his bed that very same way as a teenager, trying not to cry on his deceased mother’s birthday. Joe sighed again. “It was a long, difficult day yesterday.”
Ben nodded and angrily swiped away the tears that had begun to cascade down his cheeks.
“Why did you leave your mother’s house?”
Looking down, the teenager mumbled, “’Cause my stash was here.”
“Getting stoned will not help anything.”
“Who c-c-cares?” Ben sputtered angrily. “No one cares anyway.” He looked angrily at Angelo in the doorway. “You don’t care.”
“What do you mean, kid?” Angelo asked.
“You don’t care that your son killed my dad!”
Angelo drew in a sharp breath, too stunned to speak.
“I was here!” Ben said, his tears falling in earnest now, “I was here when those detectives showed up. I heard the whole thing. Carlo k-k-killed my dad, and then my Uncle Grant killed Carlo.”
Ben crumpled onto himself and sobbed. Joe ached for him. No wonder the boy had smoked himself into oblivion. It was more than anyone should have to bear—to find out his father was murdered, then discover his idol was the one who killed him.
Realizing Angelo was still too floored to speak, Joe took action, attempting to gather the weeping teenager into a hug. Ben resisted, then gradually melted into the man’s firm embrace, continuing to sob. “I’m so sorry you lost your dad,” Joe murmured, patting Ben’s back. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll get through this.”
They held each other for several minutes while Angelo looked on, appearing uncomfortable. He knew how to run a business by cheating, stealing, and killing, but comforting a crying teenager was not in his repertoire.
“How about I take you home to your mother’s?” Joe suggested.
He was surprised when the boy readily nodded. Joe could only hope that learning of Carlo’s evil might make this compound less appealing. Hiding the bag of pot behind his chair, Joe picked up Ben’s backpack, and they walked out of the room.
“You’re welcome anytime, ragazzo,” Angelo told Ben as he headed down the hall.
“Okay, godfather,” Ben responded.
Once the boy was out of earshot, Joe said, “Get those drugs out of here.”
Angelo bristled. “This ain’t over between us, Madsen.”
“You bet it’s not,” Joe agreed. He’d successfully extricated Grant from the family’s clutches, and that was a good start, but he wasn’t done yet. He had to free Ben as well, if the boy was to have any chance of becoming a good man. Joe knew Angelo wasn’t going to let Logan’s son go easily. The battle for Ben was just beginning.
39. Bonnie and Clyde
Suppressing a yawn, Grant smoothed his hands across his chest, feeling the rough black T-shirt provided to him by a police officer. The cotton was coarse and heavy. He much preferred the soft, supple feel of a well-worn shirt, but he might as well get used to scratchy clothes issued by the state. The prison blues bestowed upon him at Gurnee would be even more uncomfortable, if memory served.
He’d been puzzled when the guard gave him the shirt but told him to continue wearing his own jeans after his shower earlier that morning. This was his third day of captivity, and he thought surely he’d be dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit by now, awaiting his hearing. He wondered if they didn’t quite know what to do with a parolee-turned-murderer.
The click of heels on the concrete caused him to push his body off the bed. Just then Detective Marilyn Fox rounded the corner.
“Mr. Madsen,” she nodded, taking in his lean arms and freshly scrubbed appearance.
“Good morning, ma’am.” He smiled shyly. “Is there any word on my hearing?”
“Actually, I’m here to escort you to your attorney, and she will tell you the deal.”
Grant nodded and immediately stuck his hands through the small opening to be cuffed. He was dismayed to find submitting to restraint becoming routine once again.
Marilyn paused, contemplating whether or not to cuff him. She looked up into Grant’s expectant eyes and searched them for a moment, finding only warmth and gentleness reflected there.
Clearing her throat, she muttered, “No cuffs. We’re walking just a short distance.” She unlocked the cell, and Grant hesitantly stepped out. Looking up at him and suddenly seeming to doubt her largesse, Marilyn added, “Don’t even think about making a move, though, Mr. Madsen, or I’ll have you on the ground so fast you won’t even know what hit you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he smirked, loping along next to the feisty shorty with his hands in his jean pockets.
Once Marilyn dropped him off in the interrogation room, she waltzed into an adjacent conference room where Jerry Stone sat waiting. “Okay, let’s synchronize watches,” Jerry said playfully, pinching the face of his watch on his left wrist. “Nine-thirty-seven … mark.”
Marilyn rolled her eyes and also glanced at her watch. “In fact, it’s nine-thirty-eight, Jerry. Just to make sure we’re on the same page, you’re saying Mr. Madsen is going to accept the prosecutor’s deal within five minutes, right? And if he does, I owe you twenty dollars. If it takes him more than five minutes to accept the deal, you owe me twenty bucks.”
“You got it,” Jerry nodded, looking smug.
“But what if he doesn’t take the deal at all?”
“Then he’s dumber than I thought, and his ass belongs in Gurnee.”
Inside the interrogation room, Grant waited until his attorney sat down before he took a seat as well. Nic was positively beaming.
“Grant,” she began. “The prosecutor just offered us a deal. A damn good one, I might add.”
“A deal? I thought I was going to have a hearing?”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Haven’t you been listening? The deal negates the need for a hearing or a trial.”
“Okay,” he responded tentatively. “So, what is it? The deal, I mean.”
Nic leaned in as if disclosing a juicy piece of gossip. “They’re offering one more year—”
“One more year?” he repeated instantly, sitting back in his chair. He felt undeniably relieved. He’d been expecting a much longer sentence. Carlo’s blood was on his hands.
One year without seeing Sophie. Could he do it? He seriously doubted the DOC would allow a parolee to visit him at Gurnee, and she had a good ten months left on parole.
One more year of his uncle’s intense worry while he was behind bars with his father. Could Joe handle it?
Despite his misgivings, Grant had to admit it would be quite liberating to know that in one year’s time, this whole ordeal would be over. Nic had expressed concern about a longer sentence if they ended up with a tough judge, and eliminating that nerve-wracking uncertainty would be quite a bonus.
Nic watched as Grant pondered the pros and cons of the deal, deliberating intently. He drummed his long fingers on the weathered wood table. Finally he asked, “Do you think I should take it?”
She squinted her eyes and peered at him as if he were the daftest, most dim-witted specimen in the universe. “Um, yeah,” she replied. “Your PO and Detective Fox think you should too.”
“They—they know about the deal?”
Again she shot him an incredulous look. “Of course they know about the deal—they were instrumental in getting the deal!”
“Wow” was all Grant could say.
“I’m good at what I do,” Nic asserted proudly. “But I’m not that good. To get a deal this sweet, we definitely needed their help to grease the wheels with the prosecutor, who agreed to knock t
he charge down to a parole violation: consorting with known criminals. You sure know how to win people over, Grant.”
He took a deep breath and rubbed his temples with his forefingers. He just wanted this to be over, and he felt quite alone at the moment. His attorney seemed thrilled with the idea, but only he knew what it would be like to serve another year in prison. “Maybe I should talk to my uncle about this first?”
Nic arched one eyebrow. “I’m sure he would tell you to take the deal, Grant. And once you do, you’ll be seeing him soon enough.”
Grant tilted his head. “They’ll let him visit me here again, ma’am?”
Her expression was equally perplexed. “Why would Joe come here?”
“To visit me before I’m transported.”
“Transported?”
Grant had the distinct feeling he was missing something. “To Gurnee?”
Nic sat frozen for a moment, then she burst out laughing. Grant was offended by her amusement, seemingly at his own expense, until she finally choked out, “N-n-not Gurnee! One more year of parole, not imprisonment. The deal is an additional twelve months of parole, to be added to your remaining eight months!”
He stared at her, speechless. “Parole? I—I—I don’t have to go back inside?”
Her face glowed with pleasure, heartened by his look of pure joy as the reality of his freedom sunk in. Reactions like his made her career well worth it. “You can leave here anytime,” Nic confirmed.
Startled by the immediate scraping of his chair on the floor as he bolted upright, Nic watched his eyes glow even brighter with happiness.
“I can go to Sophie?”
As he turned to fly out of the room, she called, “Grant, hold on! You have to sign these papers first!”
Almost to the door already, he spun around and returned to the table. Pointing to each signature line, Nic frowned. “You really should review these first. You need to know the conditions of the deal.”
“Who cares about the conditions—I’ll do anything as long as I don’t have to return to prison. Will you, um, mail a copy to me, ma’am?” he asked, frantically scribbling an illegible signature on each line.
With Good Behavior [Conduct Series #1] Page 44