Killing The Rat (An Organized Crime Thriller) (21 page)

58.

Jack shot the first man out of the house. The .38 slug took the top of the man’s head off and he crumpled. The next man was halfway out the door when he saw the dead man. He stopped and was starting to duck back into the house when Jack shot him in the chest. He sank to his knees and fell on his ass, his back slumped against the wall of the house.

The third man out stopped at the edge of the doorway, and Jack fired through the windows on the each side of the door until his gun was empty. He sprang to his feet and raced for the other side of the house, keeping low. He moved quickly and with no wasted motion, navigating the carefully landscaped grounds with ease. He’d already picked out his next point-of-entry. A small balcony on the second floor. A picnic table sat ten yards away. Jack dragged it underneath the balcony, climbed on top, then jumped and caught the handrail of the balcony. He pulled himself up and slid over the top. The door to the balcony was a sliding glass door.

It was unlocked.

59.

Loreli felt the last layer of duct tape give away and she pulled her arms free. The circulation wasn’t good. She felt tingles all along her arms. And they weren’t right. She could barely feel them. She reached down to tear off the duct tape holding her feet and she couldn’t move her hands. She waited a moment and felt the blood trickle down, regained some sense of feeling. She felt along the circle of tape until she found the outer edge. She pinched it with her fingers and pulled the tape off in layers. Her hands were covered in blood, but she got the job done.

She got to her feet and ran to Liam. “It’s okay, honey. We’re going to get out of here.” She pulled the duct tape from his eyes and he cried out in pain. He started sobbing as Loreli worked his hands and legs free.

“Mommy.”

“Shh. It’s okay.” Loreli’s hands shook as she worked the last of the tape from Liam’s legs. She knelt in front of him and swept him into her arms. She felt his small body against hers, felt the warmth. She began to cry. “I’m so sorry, Liam.”

The boy continued to cry into her shoulder. She wiped the tears from his face. She said, “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to be strong. Okay, Liam?”

The boy looked at her, his wide eyes brimming with more tears. He nodded.

Loreli stood and took his hand in hers. She lifted him off the chair and he stood, feebly. “My legs,” he said. Loreli dropped to her knees and rubbed his legs. She squeezed his thighs, his calves, rubbed them until he said, “That hurts, Mom.”

She got to her feet and they hurried toward the basement stairs.

Suddenly, gunfire erupted. Liam clung to Loreli with all the strength his arms could muster. Loreli was awash in fear. She knew that the gunfire was good, but she considered waiting in the basement. No. She would certainly be dead if she stayed here. Her only hope to get Liam out safely was to make a break for it.

Loreli climbed the stairs, Liam behind her.

She could hear screams and shouts, more gunfire.

“Please God,” she said.

And then she put her hand on the knob and turned it.

Loreli was in the hallway, debating which way to go, when the big hand came out of nowhere and clamped across her mouth. She grabbed Liam and pulled him toward her, even as the strength of the man behind her put enormous pressure on her spine.

“Move,” he said.

60.

Jack moved briskly through the great room, firing as he went. The two men standing by the door he took out first. Another man running in from the garage Jack shot between the eyes. He heard a wisp of movement and whirled, just in time to see a man swing a baseball at him. He ducked, but the bat caught him a glancing blow. He dropped to the floor and shot the man in the chest.

Jack looked at the man.

Nick Falcone.

“Shit, sorry about that Nick,” Jack said, stepping over the dead man and hurrying down the hallway.

 The cops would be here any minute.

The question was, where was Romano?

Jack figured the blonde woman was the hooker Tommy had shacked up with in Ann Arbor. He saw the frightened boy at her side. Jack didn’t like this. Romano should have figured out a way to resolve this whole thing without bringing women and children into it.

He circled around past the kitchen, thought he heard a whisper, maybe a child’s voice, down the hall. He stayed low, then ducked into the library.

And came face to face with Vincenzo Romano.

The woman next to Romano said to Jack, “Please, help.”

Her eyes begged him and Jack looked at Romano.

“A woman and a boy?”

Romano laughed. “Not my style, but it couldn’t be helped. This was Tommy’s all-time fuckup, too bad he didn’t live long enough to witness it.”

“Put the gun down, Vincenzo, I’m not here for you.”

“You blew up my house, killed most of my men. You sure you’re not here for me?”

“It was the only way I knew how to get you to call the Spook.”

Romano laughed.

 “So do it. Call him.”

A shadow moved at the edge of Jack’s peripheral vision. The slug tore into his shoulder as he heard Romano’s words:

“I already did.”

61.

Rierdon was nearly five blocks from Romano’s estate when she saw the flashing lights of the Grosse Pointe police cars. The streets were nearly empty, denizens of Grosse Pointe safely ensconced in their palatial homes for the evening.

Rupert gunned the car past the local police cruisers and slid to a stop in front of Vincenzo Romano’s home. The flames were coming from nearly every window in the house. Amanda’s heart caught in her throat. She leapt from the car, her gun drawn. She radioed in to headquarters and requested backup.

This was the moment she’d been waiting for. Romano had screwed up, and by the look of things, maybe for the last time. But she wanted to make sure he was dead or that she could put him away forever.

Amanda wondered who else was in the house.

Everything was at stake for her.

Professionally.

And personally.

62.

The gunshot had barely registered in Loreli’s mind when she felt the man’s grip around her neck relax. With sudden, vicious power, Loreli threw her elbow back into the center of the man’s chest. It wasn’t much, but the fat man’s arm flew off her and he screamed in pain.

The gun dropped to the floor.

Loreli didn’t stop to wonder what was happening. She scooped up the gun with one hand and grabbed Liam with the other. She ran down the hall. She had to get out of the house. Flag down a ride or call a cab. And then what? She didn’t know. But she knew she and Liam had to get away.

The hallway fed out onto two more hallways and what looked to be a sitting room.

Loreli whirled. The big man had disappeared from the hallway. She pulled Liam into the first hallway and raced down its length. It ended in a bathroom.

Shit.

She turned around and ran back from where she’d come. Loreli found the glass doors of the great room and crashed through them.

She scooped up Liam and put him over her shoulder, then took off at a dead run along the grass of the mansion’s grounds. Even in the dark, Loreli could make out the dips and rises of the ground. She ran faster than she’d ever run before. She felt no exhaustion, no pain. Her hair was flying behind her. Liam was sobbing, his voice spasmodic from his body bouncing on Loreli’s shoulder. Get to the road. Get away. She had nothing left, now. No job. No home. Nothing. She would get on a bus with Liam and go.

She scampered down the driveway toward Lakeshore Drive. She could hear traffic. The world was outside. The nightmare was almost over, she thought.

She hit the last thick stand of shrubbery and pushed her way through only to have a spotlight hit her face with such intensity that her eyes were momentarily blinded.

Loreli sank to her knees as she saw the silhouettes of big bodies fanning out around her. “Oh God,” she said. She had come so close. Romano’s men. There were just too many of them, she thought. She thought of the cellar again. Of the torture. What they would do to Liam.

“Please...” she said, sobbing. Her hair hanging down on her face. She cradled Liam in her arms and rained kisses down on his face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

And then a woman spoke.

“Loreli, you take the party with you, don’t you?” she said.

The spotlight was averted and Loreli looked up into two smaller, green spotlights, surrounded by a halo of red.

“Amanda Rierdon. FBI.”

63.

Jack fired at the moving figure, but knew instinctively that none of his bullets found their mark. The man was just too quick. And now he was gone. Jack got to his feet and tested his body. Nothing broken, nothing hurt too badly. The shoulder wound was bleeding profusely, but he could move his arm with only marginal difficulty. No muscle or nerve damage.

Jack looked around the great room. A fire was raging on one side of the house, and he swore he heard a woman speaking through a bullhorn. Which meant the cops were here. And that meant there was only one way out.

Jack raced across the great room, out the wide French doors, and into the night.

64.

“Kiss my fat Italian ass,” Vincenzo Romano said. He was sweating. He was uncomfortable. He was in a great deal of pain, both physically and psychologically. This flaming red-haired bitch across the table from him wasn’t helping matters.

“Vinny, Vinny, Vinny.”

“You fired on federal officers, V-Man. You’re looking at some serious time.”

“You’re full of shit.”

Just then the door opened, and a slim bald man in a black Calvin Klein suit entered the room.

“About time, Wally,” Romano growled.

“What are the charges?” the man asked.

Amanda Rierdon smiled at him. “Attempted murder. Conspiracy to commit murder. Extortion. Racketeering. You name it.”

“Evidence?”

“There were over a thousand rounds fired at a group of federal officers at Mr. Romano’s compound.”

“And witnesses who saw Mr. Romano firing?”

Rierdon paused. Before she could respond, the man called Wally said, “Are the other charges this flimsy?”

Rierdon again didn’t speak.

“Mr. Romano, you will be out of here by the end of the day. They don’t have any evidence. We’ll go before the judge and get this all dismissed. In the meantime, I expect you’ll treat my client with the utmost care. He just had surgery.”

“That’s right, Half-Tit! I’d forgotten,” Rierdon said, another brilliant smile flashing across her face.

“Kiss my —” Romano started to say, but Rierdon was already gone. She slammed the door behind her.

65.

Jack pulled into the parking structure a half-mile from the Lodge and 7 Mile exit. It was a security guarded parking lot, mostly for the office tower two blocks away. But it was far enough away from any of Jack’s activities that he deemed it reasonably safe.

Besides, the car he had left here wasn’t in his name, anyway.

Jack took a ticket at the entrance, then went up to the fifth level. He went to the section marked with an “F” and pulled into a spot next to a tan Buck. He got out, took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the trunk’s lock.

“Hello Special Agent Macaleer,” he said.

The trunk swung open and revealed a curly headed man clutching a suitcase to his chest and with a bullet hole between his eyes.

66.

The final blow came not from the authorities, nor from the realization that unless there was a fucking miracle, he’d be spending the rest of his life behind bars, confined to a prison cell.

No, the final blow to Vincenzo Romano came courtesy of his wife.

Gloria Romano entered the special lockup at FBI Headquarters and stood outside her husband’s cell. Vincenzo thought she’d never looked more beautiful. The light from the small row of windows near the ceiling cast a faint glow down on her from above, and the light cast faint shadows under her eyes and face, creating a visage of beautiful ivory skin, dark hair and eyes, and swaddling her in the shroud of what Romano thought of as the ultimate what-might-have-been.

“They wouldn’t let me bring you anything,” she said.

Vincenzo Romano felt shame. It burned through his body, circled the scar where his left breast used to be and rushed to his face. He hadn’t realized that despite the fact he didn’t love Gloria, he still desired her respect. And now, too late, he knew he’d lost that as well.

“I’m going to ask for a divorce,” she said.

The shame reached a flash point and instantly blossomed into anger. Not toward Gloria. He knew this was coming. No, the anger was directed at the now deceased Tommy Abrocci. The fucking rat. He’d spent the rest of his life dreaming of killing the rat.

“I’m going away for awhile, too,” she said.

The words came to his throat and he brought them out, painfully, one by one. “Take it easy, Gloria. Whoever it is, I hope he makes you happy. You deserve it.”

The silence fell between them like a curtain after the final act. They both knew there was nothing else to say.

“Good-bye,” she said.

Vincenzo Romano sat, alone in his cell, save for the final disintegrating scent of his ex-wife’s perfume.

67.

They sat around the conference table on the 26th floor of the Federal building. Loreli and Liam on one side, Amanda Rierdon and SAC Vawter on the other.

Between them, sat Wanda Bernstein, the attorney Loreli had hired.

“Sign the papers, Loreli,” Rierdon said. “It’s the last time we’ll make the offer.”

Loreli looked at her attorney and when the woman nodded her approval, Loreli picked up the pen and signed with a flourish. Her eyes raced over the paper, the words a meaningless jumble. Only one word was in her head: freedom. She was going to make it out of this mess, with Liam intact. Her own psyche, her self-image, her future were possibly in ruins, but she had Liam and her freedom. She could work the rest of it out later.