Forgotten Place (20 page)

"Helen, don't apologize for that.  I'm
not sorry things played out the way they did.  I don't regret
blowing my cover.  It was more important to me that I was able
to go to the hospital and be with you than deal with a bunch of
bullshit red tape that would've raised more questions anyway."

"Your career would be in a much better place
if you'd never met me."

"I met you before Darkwater Bay, Helen," he
reminded me.

"You should've let Zack back out of our date
Saturday night.  If the reactions of my friends have been this
drastic, I don't think I want to see what the rest of my brothers
and sisters in blue think of the transformation."  I perched
on the edge of the bed and traced rose patterns on the duvet with
the tip of my finger.  "I wasn't sure I was in the mood for a
social thing anyway."

"Why did you agree to go?"

I shrugged.

"Helen?"

"I think I got goaded into it a little
bit.  He kept insisting that I would probably rather go with
you when I turned him down, and then... well..."

"You decided to go and show me, huh?"

"A little bit."

"I have a date too," he said.

"Oh."

"She runs the security thing."

"I see."  My mind tried to wrap around
what he was doing camped out at my house and how it fit with his
decision to give up on me.  Figuring out how I felt about it
was impossible. 

"Are you all right?"

"Fine.  Tired I guess."  I picked
at a loose thread.  "You really meant it when you said you'd
let me go when I get my strength back, didn't you?"

"If that's what you want, and I think you've
made it pretty clear that it is, I don't see any way I can convince
you to stay here, Doc.  Even as broken and weary as you are
right now, you're still valuable to us.  You have the ability
to help us look at these crimes in different ways.  We're
better for your presence, Helen, no matter how much you hate me, or
yourself for what happened in the past."

"I uh... I lied to you, Johnny."

"Color me surprised.  What about this
time?"

"It's not something recent.  About my
father.  I lied about Wendell."

"Oh?"

"I don't hate him, Johnny.  I know I
should, but he's my father.  He's all I have left."

"I knew you lied when you said it,
Doc.  You wouldn't be the woman I – well, the one that I know
if you really hated him."

There was no graceful segue to what I really
needed to confess.  He needed to understand that the FBI was
coming after me again.  Johnny would be livid if he learned
about the phone hidden and charging upstairs.  I could tell
him that Avery Ritter showed up at the gate without outing my only
mode of communication to the world without his knowledge.

"Something happened while you were gone
today, and I didn't tell you about it because... well, frankly I
was concerned how you would react to hearing it."

"I'm waiting."

He seemed pretty damned calm, which
should've tipped me off but didn't.  "The FBI was here."

"At the house," not a question.

I nodded.  "Not Seleeby again, this was
some guy I don't know.  Avery Ritter.  He wanted to talk
to me about the shooting in October."

Orion still showed no outward
reaction.  "I see.  Did you agree to speak to him?"

"Not immediately," I said.  "It isn't
like I could let him in the house for a cup of coffee and a chat,
is it?  Or did you prefer that I create more questions by
letting the FBI see that I'm a prisoner in my own home?"

"Hmm," he nodded.  "And that's it?"

"You're awfully calm.  I tell you that
the bureau is nosing around my shooting like it's linked to Marcos
and –"

"You never mentioned that part.  How do
they think it relates to Sully?"

This would be tricky.  "I guess they
kept digging into that waste management business after the gun was
found and suspected some kind of link to terrorism.  Maybe
Marcos was selling his fertilizer and biogas to people who wanted
to use it for nefarious reasons, I don't know."

"Well, I wouldn't worry about it,
Helen.  David Levine called and left several messages about
it."

Shit.  "Oh?"

"Yes, the early ones were a head's up that
Ritter was coming.  The one he left this afternoon was that it
was acceptable to Agent Soule that you have this official sit down
with them after our case closes.  Naturally, I called David
back and explained what was really going on out here."

A sensation of pin pricks followed my spine
from base to the back of my brain.  "You knew all along and
didn't tell me."

"Two things motivated my silence. 
First and foremost, I didn't want another fight on my hands,
particularly since you've stopped dragging your heels about eating
on a regular schedule.  Second, I hoped that you would tell me
about it, which you did."  Johnny stared at me with some
lingering suspicion.  "Ready to admit the rest of it?"

"I had an old prepaid cell phone upstairs in
one of the boxes of storage," I muttered.  "It's plugged in
charging right now."

"Were you planning to use it to get away
from me?"

"What?  No, of course not!"

"Is that the truth?"

"I panicked after Ritter showed up. 
And why wouldn't I?  You left me stranded here without any
means of communication, any way to get out, any protection."

"So shooting an FBI agent crossed your
mind?"

"What if it had been someone else,
Johnny?  What if Datello finally decided he's had enough of my
presence in town, or that he couldn't live with the abomination of
my continued existence?  He sent a card and flowers after the
shooting."

That got his attention.  "What did it
say, Helen?"  He perched on the edge of the chaise, eyes
glowing with intensity.

"It was nothing really, but enough to make
me uncomfortable knowing that he's paying attention to what I'm
doing."

"Tell me what the card said."

I shrugged.  "Peace for Rick at
last.  Now we know who took him from us."

"Helen..."

"I know, all right?  Franchetta is a
kept pet for Uncle Sully.  There's no way he bought the story
that Sully put a hit out on Rick."

"Are you positive?"

Frustration bubbled up the back of my
throat.  "Family means something more to these people than it
does to the rest of the world."

"And in a sense, it means less.  You
know Datello's family tree at least as well as I do."

"You're talking about Rick and how he fit
into –"

"No, I'm talking about Datello's
parents.  His father was expendable.  He wasn't a blood
relative."

"Meaning what exactly?"  I
frowned.  This was unexpected.

"Helen, I thought you knew everything there
was to know about Rick and Danny and Sully Marcos.  How could
you not know the history of Danny's father?"

"So fill in the blanks."

"Antonio Datello worked as an underboss for
Sully Marcos a very long time ago.  That was how he met
Sully's sister Carmella.  They allegedly fell in love and got
married."

"Danny was born in Darkwater Bay,
Johnny.  He didn't turn up on the east coast until his
mid-teens."

"Uh-huh.  Carmella wanted to get away
from her brother, from the trouble that Antonio was always finding,
so she relocated to the city where Antonio's parents lived. 
Darkwater Bay."

"I don't –"

"Danny started finding trouble as a teen out
here, Helen.  I clearly remember when the sisters expelled him
from school for dousing the altar in the chapel with alcohol and
setting it on fire.  His parents claimed that it wasn't
Danny's fault, that some other boys had goaded him into doing it,
but the sisters were firm."

"How much older is he than you are?"

"Five or six years."

"Same number of years that separated him
from Rick," I mused. 

"So one day, they were simply gone. 
What I know now is that Papa Datello resumed his position with
Sully on the east coast, and they decided that the strong influence
of a man who had no patience for such shenanigans – particularly
those directed toward the church – would be the best thing possible
for young Daniel."

"The Catholic thing."

"Yeah, the Catholic thing, which was and
probably still is a double whammy for the Marcos women at least,
considering their Irish-Italian lineage."

"How does this –"

"Urban legend has it that Datello's father
had a hard time adjusting to life under his brother in law's thumb
again.  I understand that fifteen years of unfettered freedom
can do that to a man."

"He had Datello killed," the words thudded
from my lips like bricks dropping onto the dirt from the roof.

"No evidence, but Antonio Datello was shot
in the back of the head, actually behind one ear, when Danny was
seventeen years old.  Uncle Sully rattled his saber and
demanded justice for the lawless behavior that led to the murder of
one of his own, but it was clearly a mob hit."

My voice dropped to a whisper.  "A
twenty-two caliber weapon?"

Johnny rubbed one eye vigorously. 
"Yeah, so I'm sure Rick's death dredged up a pretty bitter old
memory for Danny-boy."

"And you're telling me that Antonio Datello
was fair game because he was family by marriage."

"Which made Rick blood only to Danny, not
Sully."

"I don't know," I shook my head. 
"Blood ties wouldn't mean squat to either one of them if it was a
choice between freedom and prison."

"I can promise you one thing.  After
Danny's father was murdered by an assailant hiding in the back of
his Cadillac one dark, wintry night and the whispers pointed
straight at Uncle Sully as the man behind the deed, Danny got the
message loud and clear.  Blood is blood.  Marriage does
not a family make."

"But Rick was Danny's blood relative."

"He gave a damn when Rick died too,
Helen.  Were you aware that Datello went as far as firing up
the private jet before the funeral?  He wanted to be
there.  Something stopped him."

"Uncle Sully."

"It's a safe bet.  How many of Rick's
business associates showed up for the service?"

"None.  It was me in a sea of FBI
suits."

"It would be easy enough to
argue that the bureau's presence was enough to scare away any show
of solidarity toward their fallen brother in crime, Helen, but no
matter how Sully looked at the situation, respect wasn't owed,
because Rick wasn't
his
family.  Why go there?  Why invite more
FBI scrutiny?"

"David says Sully wouldn't have wanted Rick
dead because one of the funds Mark Seleeby didn't manage to find
had been cleaned out, embezzled just like Mark said."

"Then David is naïve.  Sully had less
reason to kill Antonio Datello than millions of dollars. 
Laundered money in the wind is next to impossible to find,
particularly when the one who specializes in cleaning it is the
prime suspect for the theft."

My appreciation for Johnny's expertise in
the subject deepened.  "You really have been focused on
getting Datello out of here, haven't you?"

"It might seem stupid to you, but
yeah.  I have my reasons."

"They wouldn't have anything to do with what
a sensitive Catholic boy witnessed as a child, would they?"

"The man was bad news, even as a kid. 
He laughed when Sister Agnes Marie was inconsolable over the loss
of that altar.  It was a relic, Doc.  More than two
hundred years old, and a gift from Sister Agnes Marie's convent
when she was just a novice. Sister Agnes Marie was special. Even
her superiors saw that before she'd taken her final vows."

I think it was Tony Briscoe who once told me
about Johnny's loyalty to those he loved, how unshakable and
infinite it was.  I thought at the time, that it was
exaggerated nonsense spewed by a man with no objectivity. 
That was before Johnny took matters into his own hands and made
sure someone worthy of prosecution far beyond me was implicated in
Rick's murder. 

Easy to chalk that act up to his lust. 
That's what I told myself in October at least.  Now I started
getting a clearer picture of the man who claimed to know me at
least as well as I know myself, maybe even better.  It had
been decades since he saw someone he loved and respected hurt by a
senseless act of vandalism, and the wound was still deep.

"Do you think that Datello believed Eddie
Franchetta could've killed Rick?" I asked.

"What I think and what I can prove are two
different things.  History had to make Datello suspicious,
since Rick died very much the same way his father did – same
weapon, same kill shot.  But what I know is that it had to
have resonated on a deeper level."

"How and why do you know that?"

"I didn't learn until about a month ago, but
the person rumored as most likely to have executed Antonio Datello
was a very young Eddie Franchetta."

That was the moment paranoia overrode all
common sense for me.  There was no way that Johnny randomly
pulled Franchetta out of thin air as the likeliest suspect, or that
he managed to link the weapon to a business that was guilty of far
worse than the random murder of a thug here and there. 
Franchetta's history... Marcos and a possible link to
terrorism…

Johnny was definitely being led blindly by
someone else.  And I was pretty sure I knew exactly who the
puppet master was.  My fight for personal freedom to come and
go ended right then.  Johnny didn't know it, but he was on the
radar of a true mastermind and needed backup.

Chapter 18

I watched the golden disks flip into the air
above my stove Wednesday morning and wondered at the boundless
energy from the hands doing the work.  Orion couldn't be
getting enough sleep.  The good intentions of his Sleepy Time
chia concoction the night before had been for naught.  I
hadn't slept so well either, but not for lack of effort on his
part.