Mortal Bonds (17 page)

At any other time, she might have been causing a scene, but at three-thirty in the afternoon on a Sunday, Forty-fifth Street was almost deserted. I stepped back against the building and squatted down, still holding the Kid as tightly as I could.

He wriggled halfheartedly.

“Easy, Kid. You’re okay. I have you. You are safe now. We’ll get you some ice cream in a little bit and you’ll feel better.”

He began to relax. He took his teeth out of my left pec. My own little vampire. I felt a tickling stream of blood down my side.

Angie took a quick breath between rants, and I jumped in.

“Angie, shut the fuck up,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice from spiraling out of control. “Right now, I don’t want to hear your shit. You’re pissed because he was acting up. I’m worried because he was stressed out. We’re not even the same species. It’s like we come from different dimensions. We both observe the same phenomena, but our conclusions are light-years apart.”

The Kid heard the anger in my voice and was instantly a squirming, ferocious wild animal. But he was spent. Done. The spasm lasted seconds and he went limp. He did not slowly melt, he simply transformed into a liquid gel and passed out.

“I need to get him home,” I said. He would need to nap for an hour or so and then he’d be ravenously hungry.

Angie took a moment to decide that she didn’t need to continue her tirade on the sidewalk. She strode to the curb and put a hand in the air for a cab. I thought of telling her that she was delusional. She wasn’t going to find a cab on a cross street in the theater district until late afternoon when the shows let out. Every New Yorker knows that.

An empty, off-duty cab came through the green light at Broadway and continued down the block toward us. Angie waved. Off-duty. It was never going to stop. It stopped in front of Angie.

While the cab lurched up toward Amsterdam Avenue, I checked my wound. My shirt was stuck to my chest with dried blood, but when I pulled it away I could see the damage was minimal. I’d have a bruise, but no scar. I thought I might not have minded a scar. It would be something to show the grandchildren someday and tell them how I got it.

I brushed a few sweaty hairs from the Kid’s face, marveling for the thousandth time how much he resembled his mother. Maybe we’d both be lucky and he’d outgrow it.

“You know something, Angie? You’re going to think this is screwed up, but I’m proud of this guy. He just put a big sentence together. He identified what it was that was bugging him, and before he let himself go nuts or catatonic or wet himself or start biting people, he asked a question. A seven-word sentence! That’s not a record, but it’s damn good. Against all his natural instincts, he tried communication to get relief. That’s huge.”

Angie didn’t say anything for three long, tense seconds.

“I may have my failings, as a person, as a mother, but I am not a witch. I want to love my son and have him love me. But I look at you with him and I see a man drowning in self-delusion. You claim the boy is so much better, but I just saw him
bite
you. He has no sense of discipline, no self-control. And you seem to think that’s just fine. What exactly are you doing for him? Do you think he’ll ever be able to live around other people? He is one step from a wild animal. I believe he can be better than that, and if it takes some tough love to get him there, then so be it.”

It was like that asinine game from Psychology 101—the one with the picture in black and white where half the class sees a chalice and the other half sees two mirror images of a face in silhouette. We both had the same information, but we interpreted the problem entirely differently. And I was right. I believed it with all my heart. So did she, most likely. And anything I said would only further convince her that she was in the right. So I said nothing. Call me a coward or call me passive-aggressive, but I did not want to fight with her. I just wanted to be left alone to raise my son.

We pulled up in front of the Ansonia. I got out, awkwardly exiting with the Kid in both arms. I let Angie pay the fare. She had plenty of my money, she could afford it.

Raoul, our trusty doorman, saw us and rushed over to help Angie out of the cab. I started across the sidewalk.

The Kid moaned.

There were four of them. Dark-skinned mestizos, all with the sloped, bony brow and chiseled noses of the Maya. They could have been the Hondurans Castillo had mentioned—or Guatemalans, or Mexicans, or they could have been born in the Bronx for all I knew. Two were in suits, white shirts, no ties. The other two wore dark hoodies in the early-summer heat, partially eclipsing their faces, each with hands thrust in the front pockets and holding something heavy. I didn’t recognize any of them, but I knew who they were.

“You were supposed to be finding something of ours, Mr. Stafford. Is there a problem? You need to let us know if there is a problem.” The man was noticeably shorter than his three companions. In any gang situation, always be careful of the short man. He’s the one with something to prove.

They fanned out across the sidewalk. The two hoodies backing up the short man, the other suited man facing off in front of Raoul, who looked frightened. I was, too, but I hoped I didn’t look it. Angie marched through and went straight for the door of the building, Saks bag swinging—still angry, determined, and oblivious. She disappeared inside.

I tried a brusque brush-off. “I told Mr. Castillo I would keep him informed. I didn’t say I was working for him.”

“Are you not taking this seriously? That would be a mistake. You see that. You are not a stupid man.”

Great. Everyone else thought I was an idiot. I didn’t have much to offer. The bonds were still missing, and I had only a vague idea of where they might be.

“Tell Mr. Castillo I’ll give him a call Monday morning.” I tried to push past, an impossibility while carrying my son.

One of the hoodies stretched out a hand and stopped me. The other hand remained in the big front pocket. I didn’t need to see it to understand the threat.

“This is your son?” the short man continued. “Very nice. Beautiful boy. He goes to school uptown, doesn’t he? Yes, and the fat girl picks him up and walks him home every day.
La gordita.
A long walk, and some of those blocks are not so good. By the projects, I mean. Bad things happen there sometimes. You should tell her to be careful.”

His tone was conversational, but the message was clear. I flashed on all the possible ways that a determined man or woman could get to me or my son. We were wide open. My only defense was cooperation.

“Believe me, I’m working it. If he wants to meet with me, just set a time and place. I’ll be there.”

He hadn’t bothered to deny that he was there on orders from Castillo—or one of his close acquaintances. His stare turned hard and he tried looking through me. I met the gaze. Some magic must have passed between us. I didn’t faint from fright, and he softened.

“I think you are sincerely a man of honor. I will take that back with me.”

Angie took that moment to stick her head out the door and call, “Jason! Are you coming? I know you wouldn’t give a thought to keeping me waiting, but I would think you would be in a bigger hurry to get our child to bed.”

The four Latinos all smiled smugly. In one of my many impromptu language lessons in prison, I had learned that the word
“esposas,”
the plural of “wife” in Spanish, was also the word for “handcuffs.” Raoul didn’t smile. He was still too scared to move even a face muscle.

“We’re just finishing up,” I said. “We’re coming.”

The short man and I shared a look again.

“Your wife is very pretty, too. I see where your son gets his looks.” He grinned to let me know he was both complimenting me and insulting me. And threatening me. “You will hear from us. Please have some good news.”

They melted away—one moment a concentration of evil, the next just four vague strangers dispersing through the crowds on Broadway.

“You all right, Raoul?” I said.

He didn’t look so good, but he pulled himself together.

“You know those guys, Mr. Stafford?”

“Me? Never saw them before in my life.” I followed Angie inside.

The adrenaline rush that had carried me out of the theater, all the way home, and through the confrontation with the four Latinos was now an adrenaline jag. My arms ached, my knees were shaky, and I felt like I couldn’t catch a full breath. Nevertheless, I managed to cross the lobby on white squares only. Angie made a point of standing solidly on a black tile as we waited for the elevator.

“What were you doing out there?” She was not making a scene, she was simply hissing at me loud enough to turn heads the length of the building.

The truth would have set off an explosion that I did not want to witness. I offered a half-truth. “They’re some men who wanted to talk business with me.”

“Well, I hope you set them straight. It’s Sunday, for goodness’ sake.”

When I met Angie, she had not been inside of a church since her confirmation. She claimed to be allergic to incense. This newfound respect for the Sabbath must have had something to do with her twelve-step recovery.

“I pointed that out to them.”

The elevator opened.

“And?” she said in an arch tone.

“Then I had to give them directions down to Saint Pat’s.”

We rode up in silence.

Angie held off until I got the Kid settled in his bed. I came back into the living room to find her commanding center stage—her face a stone carving depicting “Righteous Anger.”

“I have just as much a right as you to discipline our child. You will not correct me in front of him. You will not take his side. You will not try to undercut me. Those are not requests. We have had our differences, and have failed each other in any number of ways, but as the mother of a child, I will not be disrespected by you or anyone. Is there anything about what I just said that you don’t understand?”

She didn’t sound Cajun at all. She was angry but controlled, superior without lapsing into a pose of haughty and abused. It was an excellent performance. A lesser man might have applauded. I took three deep, cleansing breaths—a necessary first step in pain and anger management, according to Skeli—and sat down. Sitting lowers the offensive profile without ceding ground. It is nonconfrontational, nonviolent, and maddening.

“I can see you want a fight, Angie, but I am not going to give it to you. Not right now and never again. The Kid is sleeping and he really needs it. I think you should go now.” And the showdown with the four men out front had caused a major shift in my priorities. Fighting with Angie wasn’t important. I needed her gone, away, as soon as possible. Survival was more important than being right or wrong.

She struggled. She was ready to blast me, but she held it back. “I’m going back and find Mamma and Tino. They’ll be worried sick.”

I doubted it. Tino was too steady to waste energy on worrying about things he couldn’t fix. And I didn’t think Mamma had even noticed us leaving.

“That sounds like a fine idea,” I said.

She almost made it out the door. It would have been a perfect exit. Silent, proud, controlled. She couldn’t do it.

“You think about what I said. This is so not over.” Then she left.

F
ighting with Angie was like screwing with her—it blinded me to anything else that was going on. Once she was gone, the scary stuff came right back. I had stirred up a nest or two. A million a year wasn’t going to be worth it, if the Kid was in danger. I was in danger, too, but that bothered me a lot less directly. If I were gunned down by Central American midgets, the Kid would go back to living locked up in his grandma’s attic. But at least I wouldn’t have to be there to see it. Either way, the threat was to the Kid. I called in the cavalry. My good buddy, Brady, at the FBI.

“Jason Stafford,” he greeted me. “Whenever I see your name on my caller ID, I know my life is about to become much more interesting.”

“If it weren’t for me, Brady, you’d still be carrying a calculator in your holster. Instead of being part of a hotshot team on a multiagency antidrug task force, you’d be adding columns of numbers all day as a forensic accountant.”

“Any number of people have helped me in my career, but you are the only one who reminds me of it every time we talk.”

“Working on Sunday? No wonder crime is down.”

“I am a Special Agent. One of the perks of reaching that exalted rank is covering the desk on weekends while more senior agents are otherwise occupied. Is this a social call?”

“I need your help.”

“Excuse me for not feigning surprise.”

I quickly rattled off the highlights of the confrontation with the four Latinos. He didn’t interrupt.

“I need protection. Not for me. For my son. I can’t protect him twenty-four-seven.” Another thought occurred to me. “And I’m afraid that Angie’s on their radar screen now, too.”

“I seem to remember a conversation earlier this week—”

“I know. That’s why I’m calling.” I tried to cut him off.

“—right here in my office, in which you were warned that just such a scenario was in the cards unless you backed out of whatever nonsense you were up to with Castillo.”

“What can you do for me?”

“The short answer? Nothing.”

“Can’t you pick them up? You must have them all on file, right?”

“Four Latinos? One of them is short. Are you joking? It sounds like a landscaper’s crew.”

“You have no idea who they are?”

He was polite enough not to answer. “And second, they committed no crime. I can’t even put you in witness protection—which you would not want—because you haven’t witnessed anything. So far, a man stopped you on the street and complimented you on your son.”

“No, no, no.”

“Hear me out. You know they were threatening you, and I believe you. But I can’t sell that story. Your witness, the doorman. What’s he going to contribute?”

Nothing. “I get it. Any suggestions?”

“Take your son and go to New Zealand for six months.”

“Not possible.”

“In six months this group of toughs will all be in prison or dead. There’s a lot of turnover in their line of work.”

“Not even funny.”

“I wasn’t being funny. The way I hear it, talking to your buddy Castillo won’t help either. They don’t take his orders.”

“I could just find them their money and be done with it.”

“If you do, let me know. We would be very interested.”

“I still need someone watching my back for the next week or so.”

“I hear the family you’re working for has a full security team these days. Maybe they’ll lend you some muscle for a few days.”

Great. The Kid could have his own pet mercenary.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good luck. Call me if anyone commits a crime, will you?”

FBI stand-up humor. Did they teach it at the academy?

“Hey! You can do something for me. I just thought of it.”

“Oh, good. Now I feel better.”

I could see his snarky grin right through the phone.

“An SEC guy. Gibbons. Charles Gibbons. Is he for real? The guy has been following me. He is not like any SEC accountant I ever met.”

“Don’t know him. But I’ll ask. Give me a day.”

I didn’t like the idea of Blake’s crew watching over my son—I didn’t trust them or him—but safety was a bigger concern. I called Virgil. This time he answered right away. I filled him in.

“It’s your investigation that put me here. I can’t work for you if my son is in danger. Period. I’ll need twenty-four-hour protection for him until this is over.”

“For you and the boy?”

The only way to get these guys off my case was to find Castillo’s missing bonds. And I wasn’t going to be doing that with the dogs of war looking over my shoulder. “No. Just the boy. But it’s got to be twenty-four-seven.”

“Talk to Blake. Tell him I authorized rotating two-man teams for the next ten days. He’ll set it up.” He gave me the number and hung up.

It was a start. I wanted castles with shark-filled moats and minefields and barbed wire and Navy SEALs with machine guns, and maybe a company of Marines—but two big tattooed mercenaries was a start.

“Blake here,” he said, answering his cell on the second ring.

I gave him the bare bones—it wasn’t enough.

“I’m interested in how this connects to your investigation for the family.”

“I explained it to Virgil,” I said. “Threats—quite legitimate threats, I would say—have been made against me and my family, directly as a result of my involvement. I think the people who made these threats are both capable and experienced in this kind of thing.”

He knew he wasn’t getting the whole story. He remained silent for a minute, on the chance that I would keep talking and tell him more. I didn’t fall for it.

“What do you know that makes these people think this is a productive strategy?” he finally asked.

Interesting. Virgil hadn’t asked that question. I thought I knew, but I wasn’t quite ready. But I wasn’t going to share anything with Blake. When in doubt, equivocate.

“I’m not sure. I might know something, but I don’t know that I know it.”

He sucked on that for a minute.

“I can have two men there in less than an hour.”

A small piece of the granite boulder that was resting on my chest broke off and rolled away.

“I’m not sure how to say this, but the type of men you had up in Newport the other day are going to be a bit conspicuous hanging around the lobby of the Ansonia.”

He chuckled. “You’d like the special Upper West Side package? I can send you a pair of out-of-work community organizers and a drum circle.”

“I’m just saying, Blake, that there are people living in this building who won’t like seeing guys with Odin tattoos riding the elevator with them.”

“My men will be discreet. It is one of the truisms of this business that genuinely nice people, the kind you might invite to a dinner party, are less effective as bodyguards than large, unimaginative types who have never read much good fiction. And don’t worry, we’ve worked the Ansonia before. I’ll contact the security people there before my people arrive.” He clicked off before I could respond.

I didn’t know the Ansonia had “security people.” What did they think of me? Ex-con. Marginally employed. I vowed to try smiling more when I walked through the lobby.

But even with two berserker mercenaries in attendance, the Kid was only partially protected. The only way I was going to ensure all our safety was to come up with some answers. Soon.