Heart's Desires (15 page)

CHAPTER 25

On Sunday, Jake went into the office.  He called in all of his guys that were working on the Angeletti case, as well as Chase.  They needed to go over everything they had, and figure out what the hell was going on with this family.

Mike and Marcus were already in the office when Jake arrived.  They were setting up the surveillance videos and going through the pictures that they’d taken at the different businesses where Tommy had been seen.

“Morning, guys.”  Jake walked into the room, his face strained with worry and exhaustion.

“Mornin’…”   Both Marcus and Mike replied in unison.

“So what do we have?”  Jake sat down in a chair close to the equipment.

“Plenty, but what I don’t get is with all this activity this guy has going on, why Chase’s superiors won’t get the subpoenas to use this stuff to take this guy down,” Marcus said in disbelief.

“So we’ve got that much?”  Jake’s eyes narrowed and he stroked his beard.

“Yea, it’s like he’s not even trying to hide all the shit he’s doing.  If he was this bold in Jersey, how in the hell did they let him get all the way down here?”

“That’s a question that we need to ask our resident super-agent,” Jake stated in a serious tone.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the door chimed, and in walked the woman herself.  She looked way more relaxed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.  Her hair was still pulled back in a severe ponytail, but she still managed to look professional even in her casual attire.

“Good morning, gentlemen.  You must have something good if you want to meet this early on a Sunday,” Chase stated as she walked deeper into the room.

“We have a lot of evidence on your boy, but what we can’t seem to figure out is why he moves around so freely.”  Marcus asked the question on everyone’s mind.

Chase inhaled.  “What do you mean?”

“Come on now, Agent.  This guy is walking around here like this is his home turf.  He’s running guns and drugs in and out of at least three businesses.  We have him on surveillance meeting with a couple of well-known dealers, and he’s definitely not trying to hide in the shadows.  If he’s this bold, why are your superiors so hard to convince that he needs to be brought down?”  Marcus narrowed his deep brown eyes in suspicion.

“Ok.  Look, I was telling the truth about my higher ups.  They aren’t convinced Tommy isn’t anything more than an errand boy for his father, but he’s proven to be more than that.”  Chase sighed again before she continued.  “Every time I’ve gotten close to him or gathered evidence against him, something happens.”

“What do you mean ‘something happens?’”  Mike asked, moving closer to Chase.

“The evidence is lost, or he disappears before we can catch him in the act.”

“You think he has somebody on the inside of the Bureau?”  Jake asked matter of factly.

Chase nodded her head.  “I’m convinced he does, but I just don’t know who it is yet.  That’s why I took a chance and came down here on my own without the help of the Agency.”

The guys nodded as understanding dawned on them.  “That’s why you didn’t care about the legality of the surveillance.  You don’t plan on going to court.”  Marcus smiled, rubbing his hands through his beard.

Mike’s eyes narrowed in question.  “What do you mean, ‘not going to court’? Why wouldn’t she go to court?”

“His case would never make it to trial. Like I said, the evidence always comes up missing.  But if I could get something that looks like it would stick, maybe I could weed out the rat in the Agency.  And I could take both of those bastards down.”

They all spent the next couple of hours going over the evidence they had against Tommy Angeletti. There were hours of photos and videos of him meeting with different well-known criminals.  There was no way that it could be misconstrued as being anything legit. Chase also told them about all of the evidence she had on him and later lost.  They all came to the same conclusion that Angeletti was trying to expand into Texas, but they weren’t sure why.  Mexico was close so it could be drugs or guns, maybe both, but he had to be pissing off some very powerful crime families that were already in Texas by the bold way he was moving in without batting an eye.

They also concluded, based on the evidence they collected, that Moretti most likely wasn’t working with him because Angeletti had only been seen at Premier twice, unlike the other clubs where he was a regular fixture.  However, they decided that Chase would stay undercover to see if she could get any information on what it was Tommy wanted with Lorenzo’s club in the first place.  And Jake decided that Charlie would be taking some time off for a “family emergency” until all this was all settled.

***

It was almost noon, and Charlie was still asleep in bed.  She was emotionally drained from last night’s conversation.  She kept dreaming about the mob and being killed, and she tossed and turned more than half the night.  Jake had woken her earlier when he left for the office, and she barely managed to go back to sleep, but when she did it was a deep sleep unlike before.

She woke with a start.  Her head was pounding, but it was the nauseous feeling that had her running toward the bathroom.  She made it just in time to deposit what little she had in her stomach.  Charlie rinsed out her mouth before brushing her teeth and getting in the shower.  Her head was still spinning after she got out of the shower, but she did feel better.

Charlie meandered into her kitchen, deciding she would make herself some coffee, but when she opened the canister the smell almost made her want to puke again.  She stopped dead in her tracks.  She loved coffee, and never started the day without some, except back in college when she was pregnant. 

Holy shit… this cannot be happening right now!

Charlie’s thoughts were growing more frantic by the minute. 
First the mob stuff, now this? Wait, it’s only been a couple of weeks since our slip. I can’t have symptoms this soon.  Must be stress.” 
Charlie sighed loudly.  She found some green tea and decided that her next move would be to try to relax and stop stressing herself out.

Before she finished drinking her tea, Charlie’s phone rang with an unavailable number flashing on her screen.

“Hello?”  Charlie answered tentatively.

“Hello, Charlene.  It’s Jan,” Jan said in a monotone voice.

“Uh… hi Jan. What can I do for you?”

“I need you to come in and bring the keys to Lorenzo’s office.  Frank is nowhere to be found with my keys, and I can’t get ahold of Lorenzo.  I need to have payroll done today, and you’re the only other person with a key,” Jan explained, sounding frustrated.

Charlie quirked an eyebrow at Jan’s explanation.  She never needed or asked Charlie for anything before, and she didn’t believe for one minute that was the real reason Jan wanted her to come to Premier.  “Sorry, Jan, I don’t have a key to the offices,” Charlie lied smoothly.

“What?”  Jan all but growled in the phone.  “You’re lying.  You work in Lorenzo’s office.  You must have a key to get in there.”

Charlie’s curiosity really rose at Jan’s accusations.  “No,” Charlie said slowly.  “Lorenzo never gave me a key. He’s there when I come in, and locks up after I leave.  I don’t have a key.”

Jan huffed in the phone.  “I’ve seen you go in there when he’s not around.  I don’t know what game you’re playing, Charlene.  I just need to do my job.  Why can’t you just be a team player about this?”

“Look, Jan, I’ve already told you that I don’t have a key, so I can’t help you.  Maybe if you called Lorenzo…”

Before Charlie could finish her sentence, Jan had disconnected the call. 
That bitch is up to something. I just know it. 
Charlie thought. 
Jan sure wants into that office pretty bad.  I wonder what she’s looking for.

Charlie was glad that she remembered she’d decided to bring some of her work home with her.  After all the talking and stressing, she’d forgotten all about putting a jump drive and files in her bag to go over if she had time. She felt badly about taking so much time off to move, so she’d decided to bring the files home with her to go over once she finished unpacking.  As soon as she started sifting through the records, she began to see substantial incoming and outgoing payments to a vendor by the name of A Entertainment.  The amounts were large, and always in the middle of the month, coinciding with the large influx of cash discrepancies.  This didn’t raise any flags however; what raised a red flag was that A Entertainment was not on any vendor list that Charlie could remember. Another thing that had Charlie on high alert was the fact that this vendor made payments into the club in the same amount every month. 

Why would a vendor pay into a business . . . who were the payments coming to and for what? 

Charlie knew that she had stumbled onto something big, but she had to go into the one place she was scared as hell to go into at the moment… Premier.

CHAPTER 26

              Once Jan disconnected her call, she huffed and slammed the phone down.

              “Well, I guess that means she’s not giving you the keys?”  Frank, Jan’s assistant manager, stated the obvious as he rolled his eyes at Jan’s dramatic display.

              “You might think this is funny, Frank, but we are in deep shit if that little bitch is going through this place’s financials.”  Jan’s shoulders were tense as she rubbed her temples with her slender fingers.

              “Why do you even think that’s what Charlie is doing?”  Frank asked.

              “What else could she be doing?  You are such an idiot.  She’s an accountant, and I saw Amber, Lorenzo’s assistant, bringing in files.  Charlie had them on her desk when I went in to see Lorenzo, and I saw her lock them up before she left.”

              “So if she has the files already, what is stealing them going to do?  That will just let them know for sure there is something to be found.”  Frank looked at Jan with doubt marring his slender face.

              “I don’t want to just steal the records.  I need to replace them with the doctored ones.  I wasn’t able to do that before they were locked away.  Since they were put away in storage, I figured nobody was looking at them anyways, so there was nothing to worry about.  But if they are being combed through.”

              “Then we are so fucked!”  Frank finished Jan’s sentence before she had a chance.

              “Exactly!”

              Jan made Frank believe that they were the only two benefiting from her little scheme.  She also led him to believe that it had been going on for only a short while, and not for almost the three years that she had actually secretly been selling drugs and stealing money. 

              Jan had been working with Justin for years, helping him to move his product through Premier
.
  With Justin’s connections to high society, and the upscale location of Premier, it had been easy to make money.  Lorenzo was a busy man, and Jan did all of the payroll for the business, so it had been easy to fix the books by making up a vendor that payments came from and went to.  It also cleaned the drug money in the process.  Old man Simms loved his paper, so that was easy enough to fix, but it was especially easy when they transitioned to the new computer system.

              Now, with all of her fixing and covering up, it still wasn’t enough if Charlie was able to get a good look at those records.

              Jan knew she had to come up with a plan to get to those records.  Trying to lure Charlie to the club would not be as easy as she first thought.

              She knew that she and Charlie didn’t have any type of relationship, but she was counting on her goody two shoes nature to be willing to come and help.  However, that didn’t work. She needed to get into that office and get to those files ASAP!

              Jan started to pace inside her spacious apartment.  Her blonde hair was in a messy bun as she continued to chew on her nails in contemplation.  Frank sat idly by, watching as his partner in crime became steadily unraveled.  Frank decided that it was time to get out while the gettin’ was good.             

              “Jan, look, maybe you should just quit while you’re ahead.”  Frank shook his head at the blonde.  “Nobody knows it was you who took the money.  Maybe you should just…”  Frank’s sentence died off at the disgruntled look on Jan’s face.

              Jan narrowed her big blue eyes as she stopped her pacing and stalked toward Frank.  She got in his face, and with a low growl she told him to get out of her apartment.

              Frank was all too happy to leave.  He’d made his extra cash, and it was time he took a little vacation from work.

              As soon as Frank was gone, Jan decided that she needed to call Justin to help make this Charlie problem disappear.

              “Hello?”  Justin picked up her cell on the third ring.

              “What took you so long to pick up the damn phone?”  Jan huffed, her voice angry and full of frustration.

              “It’s the middle of the fuckin’ day, Jan.  I’m a busy man.  So cut the shit.  What tha fuck do you want?”  Justin was short, his own voice full of anger.

              “We have a serious problem on our hands.”  Jan took in a deep breath and tried to calm down.  “I’m pretty sure that Charlie is looking into the financials.  I thought we would be ok, but I saw old files that I wasn’t able to doctor.”

              “What do you mean, you weren’t able to doctor them?”  Justin took his own deep breath before continuing.  “When we started this whole thing, you said it would be a piece of cake to make any record untraceable.”

              “I know what I said, and it is, except for the old ones when we first started this whole thing.  I wasn’t as sophisticated in my cover up, but I never thought we would need to since the files had been locked up somewhere.”

              “Where are these files now, Jan?”  Justin asked, trying to calm down.  His whole operation was about to go up in flames.  He was finally able to get Tommy to back off and give him some time by telling him that Lorenzo was getting antsy, and could possibly start asking more questions.  Tommy agreed that he didn’t want Lorenzo asking any more questions than necessary.

              “The files are locked in Lorenzo’s office.  Apparently, he has the only key,” Jan stated exasperated.

              “So if you don’t have the key, you simply make your own.”

              “What do you mean by that?”  Jan questioned, her mind going a mile a minute in every direction.

              “Damn, you can be dense as hell sometimes.”  Justin massaged his temples. He would take Jan out before she got him caught in this mess.  “Break into the damn office.  Geez, do I have to think of everything?”

              “Right.  I can do that later this evening.”  Jan smiled to herself, growing more relaxed at the thought.  “You’re going to come help me, right?”

              “Hell No!  What tha fuck would I look like breakin’ into an office?  Think about it, Jan.  You have a reason to be at Premier, even if you get caught, you can make up an excuse about why you’re there. But I can’t, and I don’t have any reason to be at Premier after hours.”

              Jan huffed, but didn’t say anything.  She knew he was right, but she didn’t want to do this alone.  Now, she would have to do some serious groveling to get Justin to come.

              “Baby, I need someone to watch my back while I’m in there.  It won’t look suspicious because I’m supposed to do payroll anyway.  If anyone comes in, I can just tell them that, and you were there looking for Lorenzo.”  Jan had her most seductive tone.

              “Fine, I will be there for backup, but you better take care of this shit once and for all, and Jan…”

              “Yeah?”  Jan questioned.

              “Don’t fuck this up!”  Justin disconnected the call without another word.

***

              Across town, Tommy had finally talked his father into postponing his trip to Texas.  He convinced him that profits were up because of the business he was doing, but that it would take a little more time because he was still getting established.  He also convinced him that it wouldn’t be a good idea for them both to be out of Jersey at the same time right now.  His father reluctantly agreed to stay in Jersey for the time being, but Tommy knew he needed to make some big moves to get his father off his back.  He also knew that Lorenzo would not be a part of that plan for the time being.  According to Justin Russo, Lorenzo had some heat on him, and Justin warned Tommy that he should probably stay away from Premier, and wait until Prime was open to move in his business.

              Tommy didn’t trust many people, and he couldn’t say that he trusted Russo either, but the man knew what it took to make money.  So he had to sit this one out and trust that Justin knew what he was talking about when it came to Lorenzo and his clubs.  Tommy also had to keep Russo close because of his contacts in Dallas, and until Tommy gained more power, he still needed to use him.  And Tommy Angeletti was definitely not above using someone.