Titans

by Tim Green

  Hunter nodded and stood up. He put his hand on the back of her shoulder and followed her out into the kitchen.

  That night Hunter lay awake utiul finally he got up, shuffled through the dark to their green marble bathroom, and found a Halcyon in one of the many prescription bottles that filled his black leather shaving kit. Within a half hour Hunter was sleeping.

  It was nearly four in the morning when Rachel's screams woke him from his drug-induced sleep.

  "What? What?" he yelled almost angrily at her.

  He looked. She was sitting up but still sleeping. She was pulling her cheeks down with the palms of her hands, and it gave her eyes a sunken, ghoulish look. Tears streamed down her face. "No, no, no-o-ooo," she moaned. Hunter shook her until she awoke.

  "Hunter, they're here," she said wildly. "I saw them! Where's Sara? I saw them!"

  This scared the hell out of Hunter. He looked at the control panel for the security system on the wall next to the bed, trying to think straight. There were no flashing lights, no alarms, nothing, only the soft, harmless light that fell into the room from the full moon that had risen late in the sky and now hung just over the tall trees that protected their home. He looked through the mullioned window and out into the front yard. There were no strange cars, no shadows lurking about, only the luxurious rolling lawn and the finely trimmed shrubs amid the heavy old trees whose leaves the wind rustled peacefully. Reason told him no one could be there, but Rachel's cries couldn't keep his heart and stomach from constricting with fright.

  "No," Hunter said to her calmly but firmly. "No one's here, honey. No one's here."

  "Where's Sara?" Rachel said. She was starting to come around, but she was still nearly hysterical.

  "She's sleeping," Hunter said.

  "Go check her, Hunter," Rachel implored. "Go make sure."

  Hunter got up out of bed and crossed the hall to Sara's room. She was sleeping soundly, undisturbed. Hunter brushed the hair back from her beautiful face and kissed her cheek. When he returned to his bedroom, fresh tears were flowing from his wife's face.

  "Honey," he said in a pleading tone, "honey, don't. Everything is OK. Everything's going to be fine."

  "I dreamed they came for us," she moaned. "I dreamed they were here. I dreamed they wanted Sara ..."

  "No, no," he said, holding her and rubbing her back in big, slow circles. "No, they don't want Sara, or us. It's just money. They want the games, for the money. They don't care about us. It will be all right. It will be over soon. I promise, honey. It will all be over soon ..."

  Cook followed Rizzo and Carl by way of the homing device. Rizzo dropped off Carl at his car, which he'd left on a side street near where he'd waited for Hunter Logan. Rizzo then went straight to his own apartment and, Cook assumed, began preparations for whatever evening activities he had planned. Cook decided to give himself a reprieve from his relentless schedule of work tailing Rizzo, and grabbed a few hours' sleep. Today was a breakthrough. He was sure. In fact, the entire week had been unusually productive. Cook was beginning to think that his perseverance with Rizzo was going to pay off.

  He'd seen Rizzo go into the Waldorf on Monday and waited around after he'd left to see just who was important enough for him to leave Carl and Angelo waiting in the lobby. It was only fifteen minutes after Tony had departed before Mark Ianuzzo and Sal Gamone quietly left the hotel with their respective bodyguards and climbed into waiting limousines that sped off through the Manhattan streets. There was also a loudly dressed man who Cook didn't recognize, but who he later learned was the owner of The Star casino in Atlantic City.

  Cook took photos of all these characters in their different poses at the Waldorf. He would add them to the file that he was putting together in his room at home. He'd set up a mini-headquarters for himself there. His notes and photographs were starting to add up to something that he knew would eventually lead to the downfall of the Mondolffi crime family. Right now he was also the only one who knew about it, and he imagined that the hints of success he was getting were a direct result of his secrecy. It bothered him that there was a leak somewhere in his organization. It was something that he knew would not just go away, and he knew he had to fix it. But the truth was, if he didn't get something on Rizzo fast, there would be no need to worry about it. His task force would be dissolved, and whoever the rat was would be moved into some other area of the Bureau.

  It burned Cook to think that one of his own could be bought like that, but it wouldn't be the first time. Crooked cops were as common as crooked citizens, Cook knew that. He'd seen it plenty. Being a cop, in fact, had allowed him to see more of it than most people. The Bureau, like any other kind of police force, kept its dirty laundry to itself whenever possible. Crooked cops were usually just asked to leave without their pension. Only in the most extreme cases, when there was an airtight case, would an agent be punished for his ill deeds. It was something that was just too hard to prove. So much of what the Bureau did required its agents to go undercover or trade information with existing crime elements that it was often difficult to know where and when to draw the line. Thus it was always easier, when it became obvious that an agent was compromising himself, just to let him or her go and be done with them. For anyone who'd worked his whole life in the agency, being booted without a pension was just as bad as going to some federal prison anyway.

  Cook parked his rented car in a garage around the corner from his apartment and walked back home, enjoying the balmy late September evening. When he walked through his door, Esther and Natasha were at the kitchen table working on a report for Natasha's history class. Actually, Esther was fulfilling the role of companion more than anything. Cook knew that although the woman was mentally as sharp as a tack, she had never gone past the eighth grade in school. But he was certain that her silent interest in Natasha's pratde about the Revolution was an invaluable study aid for a girl whose mother was dead and whose father was working almost twenty hours a day.

  "Daddy!" Natasha shrieked when she saw him.

  Cook opened his arms and his daughter filled them. Esther looked up at him over the rims of an old pair of ill-fitting reading glasses. Cook smiled at her as warmly as he could. He knew Esther was mad at him for his absence these past few weeks. There was no way he could explain it to her and nothing he could do, so he simply made the best of it and smiled at her as much as she would allow. Cook took over for Esther, who grumbled her way out of the kitchen and into the bedroom that she shared with Natasha. Natasha was too excited about the time she was getting to spend with her father to notice her grumbling aunt. Another way, Cook thought, that the little girl was so much like her mother. Naomi had always seen only the bright side of things, even when she had had to look through the gloom of poverty and oppression to do it.

  Cook explained to Natasha that the work he was doing at the moment was extremely important, but that soon, very soon, he figured he would be able to spend more time with her again. He assured her that was what he desperately wanted. They worked on her report some more, then played eight games of checkers while eating an entire pint of vanilla ice cream together before Cook finally told Natasha to get ready for bed. She frowned but did as she was told, and Cook read to her from Charlotte's Web before tucking her into bed.

  Esther, who had waited in their small living room while Cook put Natasha to bed, looked like she had something to say. Cook sat in the big chair opposite the couch and bowed his head to take his medicine from the tough old lady.

  "Ellis," she said in a calm way that surprised Cook, "I want to ask you something."

  "Yes, Esther," Cook said looking up, "of course."

  'There was an old woman down the street who got killed just two days ago." Esther paused to see what kind of impression that made on Cook. "She was an old woman, like me, and she lived alone. Almost like me. They broke into her apartment late at night, and they killed that old lady for her TV."

  Now Esther looked at him with her dark, piercing eyes in a way that made hi
m feel he should know what the meaning of all this was, but he didn't.

  "Yes, Esther?"

  "So, if you're gonna be out until all hours of the night every damn night, doing God only knows what. . . Well, then I want some protection."

  "Esther," Cook said in a pleading tone, "that's why I carry my phone with me wherever I am, so if you need me, all you got to do is call. I carry it for that reason alone. I'm never very far."

  This is a damned mean and ugly city you got us living in, Ellis," she said with a firm nod of her head, "and I want some protection."

  Cook thought about this for a moment, then said, "Aunt Esther, do you want a gun? Is that what you're saying?"

  That or a damn big dog," she said spiritedly, "and they don't allow dogs in this building."

  Cook couldn't help chuckling. The notion of his aunt with a gun was, well, . . . actually, when Cook thought about what it took to shoot another human being, he supposed that Esther would benefit as much as anyone from having a gun. He could see that she had taken his chuckle as a sign that he was not taking her seriously, so he quickly added, "Of course, of course, Aunt Esther, you can have a gun if you feel like you need it."

  "I do," she said with finality.

  Cook nodded and went to the top shelf of the closet in his room. He returned with a nickel-plated .38.

  "Where do you plan on keeping it?" Cook asked. "I don't want Natasha knowing where this is. I don't want her touching it."

  "I plan to keep it under the mattress," Esther said with a tight little smile. "I'm surprised, you being so good about it," she added.

  Cook smiled. He was giving in rather easily to his longtime household nemesis, but he felt it was the least he could do. He knew Esther well enough to know that if he didn't give her a gun, she'd go out and get one somehow. She was that way. Once she got the notion in her head that she and Natasha were in danger staying here alone so much, and that a gun would make them safe, well . . . Cook doubted there were many forces on the good earth that could stop her.

  'These bullets are called glazier points," Cook explained, loading the shells carefully into each of their five chambers. They explode on impact, so they will pretty much kill whatever they hit. And if you miss, they won't go through the wall and hurt someone you don't intend to shoot.

  "Not that I think you'll need it," he added. Those kind of things happen, but they're rare, even in a city like this."

  Cook looked up to see if Esther was getting all this. She was, so he handed her the loaded weapon. Thank you, Ellis," she said, and patted him on the shoulder as she passed by on her way to bed.

  When Cook put his tired head down on his pillow that night, it was the first time in a long while that he felt like he'd had a good day on the job front as well as on the home front. He was very much looking forward to the day when that was the rule, rather than the exception.

  Tony's infatuation with Camille Carter was beginning to wane. Her spirited insolence, which had at first intrigued him, was now beginning to annoy him. And his notion that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen was also growing old. More and more he noticed that other women would catch his eye in the way they always had before he'd fallen in with Camille. He was growing restless. But the fact that Camille had essentially moved in with him, although they had never discussed it, combined with the fact that he still wanted to keep her for business purposes because of her easy access to the team, meant that getting rid of her would be no easy task. The time would come, however, when he would simply tell her to leave and then change his locks.

  Because of this Tony couldn't help himself in treating Camille a little more harshly than she had already become accustomed to. It meant that his roughness began to go beyond the bedroom, where she had shown a great fondness for such treatment since their first encounter. One thing that particularly annoyed Tony was Camille's refusal to keep her nose out of his business. It seemed the more he told her to butt out, the more interested she became.

  Often he had to slam the bedroom door in her face to keep her there when he was discussing business with his cronies in the living room. She would respond by throwing shoes, and even a lamp once, at the closed door. Also, Camille refused to obey his direct command that she not answer his telephone. She complained that she now got calls at this number as well, and would regularly disregard his demands. Tony had taken to cuffing her harmlessly when this happened, and a fight always ensued. He was tired of all this. The thrill was no longer there, and the resultant sex, for him, was becoming more of an exercise in anger than anything else. He knew it wouldn't be long before he bedded someone else, and the thought that he'd have to hide his activities rankled him.

  Their relationship had deteriorated so much that Tony actually winced when he asked Camille to get them two fifty-yard-line tickets and Carl a locker-room pass for the upcoming Titans game against the Colts. He knew she was going to give him grief about asking her. She'd said more than once that the only time he treated her with any respect at all anymore was when he wanted something. It was a mystery to Tony why Camille would continue to live on at his apartment if she really felt that way.

  "So that's why you're taking me out tonight?" she crooned. "I knew it was something. It's never just to be together anymore, Tony. There's always a catch with you."

  That's not why we're going out tonight," he said angrily. The day I need to trade favors with you is the day they put a fucking bullet in the back of my head."

  "Oh," she replied snottily, "you don't need my favors? That's bullshit, because if you don't need something from someone, Tony, you don't say shit to them, in case you haven't noticed."

  "I'll get the tickets from your old man if you don't want to do it for me," he said. "But if I do, I ain't taking your ass with me. That's as simple as it is. So, you want a nice day at the ball game? Get me those tickets and Carl the pass. You want to stay home by yourself, or go up to the box to hold daddy's hand? Then don't get them. I can do it myself."

  "Since when can you call my father?" Camille said with as much condescension as she could muster. "Do you think my father deals with criminals like you? The only reason he'd even talk to you is because of me!"

  Tony chuckled softly, enjoying the humor of what she'd said. He got up from his chair, walked over to the couch where she was sitting, and put his hand gently on her cheek, stroking it softly.

  "Just get the tickets, Camille," he said quietly, still stroking her face.

  Then Tony grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her neck and twisted his hand up in it good. He lowered his face down to within inches of hers. "And don't ever, ever call me a criminal," he said maliciously through his clenched teeth. "I know I let you get away with a lot of shit, Camille, but don't push me on that. You don't talk like that, in front of me or anyone! You got that?"

  Tears welled in Camille's eyes despite her anger. She thought of a million things that she could say to goad him, to insult him, and put him in his place. But there was something dark in his eyes, something she'd seen before but only in an unfocused sort of way. She saw murderous hatred, and this time it wasn't just a vague emotion. This time it was all for her.

  Camille nodded and whispered, "Yes ..."

  "Good," Tony said, returning to normal and gently letting go of her hair. "Now get dressed because I want to leave here in an hour."

  Camille did as she was told without a word of protest. She had always prided herself on her spirit. Why had she not fought against him just now? Did she love this man? She didn't think she knew what love was. She had never been sure. She lusted for him. She thought about him all the time, and when she wasn't with him she felt drawn to him, like she needed to be with him. She knew he was no good, she wasn't a fool. She'd been with him now for months, and she couldn't help seeing little things here and there that told her he was a feared man and that he had what were called "soldiers," men who would do absolutely anything he commanded. She saw fear in the faces of these men from time to time. That told her
a lot.

  She knew what it all meant. But then, why didn't it matter to her that he was obviously a devious and ruthless criminal? She couldn't say. Certainly she hadn't been raised that way. But she hadn't really been raised in any way at all, just grew up surrounded by people who were paid well to watch after her. That was the way it had always been, and she had always sought to make her own way, her own rules. This, however, was the first time in her life that she felt that somehow she didn't have a choice. Now here she was, Camille Carter, daughter of Grant Carter, one of the richest and most powerful men in the city, and helpless in the grasp of a criminal. She had just been cowed. No one had done that to her, ever. And because of that strange force inside her, the one that prevented her from slapping Tony Rizzo in the face and walking out the door, she had the feeling that the worst was yet to come.

  Chapter 30

  The air was cool that Sunday, even for early October. Some of the players for both the New York Titans and the Indianapolis Colts wore long-sleeved thermal tops to ward off the chill. The linemen like Bert, of course, wore nothing on their arms, preferring to brave the cold for an opportunity to show off the massive muscles that they'd worked so hard to develop all their lives. Besides, it was considered a weakness for a lineman to succumb to the elements. For Hunter's part, he always did what was most comfortable. There were some quarterbacks around the league who liked to fancy themselves tough, as tough as the linemen that protected them, but Hunter was not one of these. He was too pragmatic.

  He began his charade early in the day during warm-ups, before the stands filled and while kickoff was still an hour away. Instead of throwing his typical spirals on a string, he put some air under the ball and wobbled it a bit. He would dramatically stop to rub his shoulder every so often too, just for good measure. He wanted an excuse for what he was about to do. After being tormented by Rizzo's words over the past few days, Hunter had decided that winning the game meant nothing. He wasn't taking any chances. If there was any danger to his little girl, or his wife, he wasn't going to risk it just to win a football game.