Footsteps (37 page)

Trying to remember how to
sell
his
ideas was harder. Taking absurd questions that focused on the
bottom line was nearly impossible. He got impatient and
sharp-tongued fairly quickly. Peter excelled at that part, though,
and he knew Carlo well enough to know exactly when to take a
presentation over.

This meeting, with the C-level executives of
Connelly, Crowe, & Mitchell, a major investment firm, was a
huge deal, the kind of job that could singlehandedly make
Pagano-Cabot a design force in Rhode Island—possibly New England
itself. This was a big, beautiful project. They wanted to meet with
the second-round candidates to refine their wants and needs before
3D models were made. It was a lot of interaction for Carlo with
people whose vision was much narrower than his own. Under the best
of circumstances, meetings like these required an exertion of most
of his energy just to stay focused and calm.

On the day of this meeting, as important as
it was, his focus was poor and quickly tested. Though the day had
started out well, with a homey breakfast with Trey and Bina, the
first item on his agenda had been a meeting with the Uncles, and
his mind kept wanting to return to consider that event.

As always, Uncle Lorrie had sat back, more
observer than participant. Uncle Ben was angry at both Luca and
Carlo for interfering with Joey’s mistake. Carlo had been
surprised, as had Luca. Because of their intervention, the Uncles
were
not
out $40,000. And they’d both taken heavy hits,
physically and financially, to fix the problem.

But this morning, Uncle Ben had pushed all
$40,000, in neat, bound stacks of crisp bills, across his desk at
them. When neither of them had moved to take the bills, Ben had
said, “This repays what you lent to Joey, and it compensates you
for handling the problem of those who disrespected us by attacking
one of our representatives. What you lent will be repaid to us from
Joey’s future earnings. The rest is straight payment from us to
you.”

Carlo and Luca had looked at each other and
then back at Uncle Ben, but they still hadn’t moved.

“Don’t disrespect me, boys,” Uncle Ben had
finally said, his voice low. They’d taken the money.

When they’d sat back, Uncle Ben continued,
“There is still the problem of your involving yourselves in
business you profess not to want to be involved in.”

Luca had spoken up at that. “We were helping
our brother. Family, Uncle. We weren’t trying to step in your
business.”

“And yet, of course, you did.”

“Why is it a problem?”

“When you interfere, you complicate our
right to handle a situation in the way we see fit. That complicates
our…as Nick calls it…our messaging. The ones who stole from us—we
should be accorded the respect to deliver our message ourselves.
And Joey made a bad mistake. One that can’t happen again. Yet what
were the consequences? What did he learn—that his big brothers will
ride to the rescue. I think that’s a lesson Joey has already
learned well.”

Always the rebel, Luca pushed again. “He’s
not a kid, Uncle.”

“No?”

Carlo was out of patience for this
discussion and for Joey himself. He wanted to cut to the chase,
figure out how badly he was fucked, and get on with his day. “How
do we fix it?”

Uncle Ben regarded him calmly. “You
understand how this works. You are both helpful souls, willing to
step in where you’re needed. So you’ll help us. At some point,
we’ll need you to step in. You’ll do it. When we ask, what we ask,
as we ask. And you will not meddle again. Am I understood?”

“We should have let him come to you
empty-handed? Uncle, I don’t understand how you would rather we
turn our backs on our brother. How is that the right thing?”

“You mix family with business, Luca. If Joey
had simply been mugged on the street, then of course you should
defend him. But he was working for us, and
we
were robbed
and beaten.
Our
money was carelessly lost. We deal with our
own problems and certainly don’t need amateurs running around like
idiots.”

Carlo and Luca had come out of that meeting
with their coffers refilled and a heavy sense of foreboding.
Knowing that the Uncles could call in a marker at any time was
unsettling—more now than when Carlo had made a bargain to help
Bina. Then, he’d gone in with his eyes open, making a choice to
entangle himself and for a reason that had seemed—had
been—honorable. Now, he felt swept up in Joey’s wake. He was having
a lot of trouble finding patience and forgiveness for his baby
brother these days.

At least lunch with Peter had gone well.
With the office back up again, and work coming in, Pete was calmer.
And Carlo had offered part of his recent windfall to buy a 3D
printer. He thought he’d still do models by hand as much as
possible, but the technology would be, at a minimum, a good
backup.

With Pete feeling better about the company
and not making more noises about leaving, they were able to focus
on preparing for the Connelly meeting, and they’d enjoyed each
other’s company for the first time in weeks. The meeting with Uncle
Ben lingered in his mind, though. It was hard not to wonder what
that future held. Funny—when he’d made a bargain for Bina, he
hadn’t given much thought to the question of what price Uncle Ben
would exact. He’d simply been willing to pay it.

They’d gone from lunch straight to Connelly
and had sat in a conference room, waiting for the executives, for
twenty minutes—long enough for Carlo to begin to pace and fume.
Pete had been chill, reminding him what a huge deal this get would
be, how great his design was, how important the right attitude was
in meetings like this, all the while giving him specific details to
focus on so that his mind could do something more worthwhile than
simply storm around hating people. Pete was managing him. Carlo
knew it, but he didn’t mind. He was glad. It was what he needed,
and why they worked so well together.

By the time the chief officers and board
members had filed in and sat around the table, Carlo was calm and
focused, and he and Pete had their mojo back. The meeting went
well—and Barrett Connelly, the CEO and President, even asked the
kind of questions that Carlo loved to answer. Design questions.
Visionary questions.

The meeting went nearly half an hour over
schedule as Carlo and Connelly began to speak in detail, each of
Carlo’s answers spurring on a deeper question from Connelly. Carlo
was getting excited. He could feel Pagano-Cabot getting their hands
around this prize. He could see his building featuring in the
Providence skyline.

His phone began to vibrate in his pocket; he
ignored it. When a third alert came through in quick succession
while he was deep in a detailed answer, he reached in and turned
the phone off completely. He’d check his voice mail after the
meeting.

~oOo~

Pete drove Carlo’s Porsche all the way back
to Quiet Cove, to St. Gabriel’s Hospital.

He hadn’t even allowed Carlo to get a
sentence of protest out. He’d said, simply, “Let’s go. I’ll drive,”
and held his hands out for Carlo’s keys. Even in the midst of his
rage and panic, Carlo had seen that his friend was back as well as
his partner, and he’d been grateful.

Pete dropped him off at the ER entrance and
then went off to park. Carlo tore into the hospital and, when the
elevator wasn’t right there waiting for him, he ran up four flights
of stairs to the surgery wing, where his family was gathered.

Jenny had taken his son.
And Bina had
let her. Joey had failed to protect Trey, and Bina had turned him
over.

As he ran into the waiting room, he saw
everyone—his siblings, his father, the Uncles and their wives,
Nick, even Mrs. D. Everybody but Rosa. They were all in the waiting
room. Waiting. He couldn’t believe that
here
was where
everybody was. Here, at the hospital, with Joey. Joey, who wasn’t
missing.
Why was no one looking for his son?

Four cops were in the room, too—two uniforms
from Quiet Cove and two suited detectives, a man and a woman, from
who the fuck knew. Feds, maybe, with a child abduction? They were
all in a group, talking amongst themselves, which indicated to
Carlo that they’d done all the interviewing of his family that they
intended to do here.

One of the uniforms was Irv Lumley, Quiet
Cove Chief of Police. Irv and Carlo’s father had a long, friendly
history. They’d gone to school together. He got along with the
Uncles, too. The other uniform was an officer Carlo didn’t
recognize.

Bina saw him first and began to come to him.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at her or touch her or anything,
not now, not yet. He couldn’t think for the klaxon going off in his
head, and he must have sent her a look that conveyed his state of
mind, because she stopped suddenly, halfway to him, and he saw pain
and guilt in her swollen eyes. She’d been crying heavily.

Luca and Carmen, too, both looked like
they’d intended to come over, but Carlo shook his head. He wasn’t
ready for his family.

He went instead to Chief Lumley and his law
enforcement buddies. “Irv—what’s going on?”

Irv put his hand on Carlo’s shoulder. “Hey,
Carlo. We don’t know much yet.” He turned to the Feds. “This is the
boy’s father, Carlo Pagano Jr. Carlo, these are Agents Darby and
Kohl from the FBI. And this is a new officer of mine, Trent
Lincoln.”

Carlo made a show of giving a shit about any
of the people’s names and turned back to Irv. “What’s going
on?”

Agent Darby, the female Fed, spoke up,
cutting Irv from his answer. “How much do you know?” She was tall
and blonde, probably decent-looking when she wasn’t trying so hard
to look like a Fed. But her hair was pulled back into a severe bun,
and her blue suit was cut to show nothing of her body.

“That my ex-wife ran off with my son. And
shot my brother. That’s it. I want to know more.”

“You’re divorced?”

“Yes. Annulled. What’s going on?”

“When was the marriage officially
ended?”

“It was all finalized about five months ago.
Almost six, now. Are you going to answer me at all?”

“At this point, Mr. Pagano, we have no
answers. Our questions will help us get some. What is the custody
and visitation arrangement between you and your ex-wife?”

“There is none. She has no custody at all.
No visitation at all. She has no right to him at all. Nothing.”

Agent Darby’s eyes went wide. “Must have
been a nasty battle.”

“No. She didn’t want him. It was her
idea.”

The agents glanced at each other. Darby
looked across the room, where Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie were
standing with Aunt Angie and Aunt Betty and his father. When Darby
looked back at Carlo, there was a skeptical glint in her eye. “She
gave her son up of her own free will?”

“Yes. She did. She ran off in the night. She
left a note saying she wanted nothing except to be away from us
both.”

“And Sabina Auberon. She was with your son
at the time of the abduction. How does she fit into this equation?”
That question came from the other Fed…Kohl, Carlo remembered. He
was short and stocky, salt and pepper hair going thin in the usual
way. He looked like an asshole. Both agents did, frankly.

“She’s my…girlfriend, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I know. Just a weird word at my age. But
that’s what she is.”

“Her husband passed not long ago. Nasty
death. She seems to have gotten past her grief pretty fast.”

Carlo didn’t answer. He stared at the little
asshole and waited for him to ask a fucking question.

“Any chance there’s some connection
here?”

With a slow shake of his head, Carlo
indicated that no, there was no chance the incidents were
connected.

Darby took the interview back. “What can you
tell us about your ex-wife’s circumstances, anything that might
give us some insight into where she could have gone, or why she
took your son?”

“As far as I know, she’s lived in New York
City since she left us. She had a place in the Village—I have her
address on some of the legal stuff somewhere. She lives with a guy,
or she did six months ago. Somebody she met here.”

“We’ve got that. Had agents at their place
already. Neighbors haven’t seen them for three days, but the place
looks occupied—just like they went on vacation or something. We’ve
got eyes on the building. Your…girlfriend got the plate on the car
they were in. A rental.”

“Then you know more than I do.”

“Your brothers say that she tried to see
Trey over the weekend. For his birthday. And you wouldn’t let her.”
Kohl again. His tone was confrontational.

Carlo narrowed his eyes. “You have kids,
Agent Kohl?”

“Yeah. Two girls.”

“If somebody hurt them, turned their whole
world upside down. Made them cry for weeks—gave them night terrors
so bad
you
were afraid to sleep at night—would you
ever
let that person near your kids again? Would you ever
give that person another chance to do that kind of damage,
especially after your kids were better, after they were happy
again?”