“Your daughter’s well-being may well depend on us knowing everything there is to know.”
“There is one other thing.”
“Damn it!” he exclaims with disgust before I get another word out, which kind of pisses me off.
“It just happened on Friday night,” I say defensively.
He throws his hands up in the air. “Today is Sunday!”
“When were you planning on returning my call from yesterday?” I retort. I’d heeded Penelope’s plea and called Cedar Heights PD, leaving a message for Jake to call me ASAP.
He looks confused. “Yesterday?”
“Yesterday.”
Anger flashes across his face. “Sorry, then. Mind you, you could have called my cell.”
“I don’t have the number.”
That surprises him. He scribbles it on a notebook page, rips it out, and pushes it across the desk. “You also could have called the feds. I gave you a name and number.”
I shake my head. “Don’t know them, don’t necessarily trust them, suspect they might have fucked things up.”
Jake takes my little diatribe in stride, then asks, “What’s this other thing you forgot to mention?”
“Grab your notebook so we only have to do this once,” I suggest. He does so with a wry smile. Then I tell him about Matteo Giordano’s visit.
Predictably, he blows up. “Another fucking mobster you weren’t gonna tell me about?”
I suspect he’s angrier about gangsters crawling out of the woodwork than he is about me speaking with them. Still. “I was going to tell you, damn it. And it’s not like I’m inviting these assholes over!”
Jake sighs and nods. “Fair enough.”
“The feds would have gone after Giordano if they’d known he was here, wouldn’t they?” I ask. “Even if it put Papa and Brittany at risk.”
“Probably so,” Jake allows.
My interests aren’t aligned with the FBI’s interests. Something to keep in mind. “Anyway,” I say, “Giordano called me this morning to follow up.”
“Did you get a number?”
“Blocked, of course. He’s probably back in Italy by now.”
Jake nods in agreement. “Probably so.”
“Anyway, I told him I’ll do everything I can to raise the 250K tomorrow when the banks and markets open.”
“And until then?”
I shrug. “He reminded me that Papa’s safety isn’t guaranteed until I pay up and they take care of the situation.”
“Speaking of which, any mention of what ‘taking care of the situation’ entails?”
I swallow and shake my head. “No, and that’s been bothering me.”
“How so?”
“What does taking care of the situation mean?”
He shrugs his shoulders in a “don’t ask me” gesture.
“They won’t kill him, will they?” I ask anxiously.
“They might. I doubt they’ll want to keep eyeballs on him for any length of time.”
“I’m not sure I can live with paying for a hit.”
“Then don’t think about it, Tony. Remember Ed Stankowski?”
I swallow and nod.
“All right, then. Fuck this guy. He’s got it coming to him.”
He’s right, I suppose, but it’s going to take some time for me to process things. In the meantime, there are more pressing concerns. “Giordano knows where Papa is.”
The detective’s eyes widen. “He has the address?”
“He didn’t mention an address, but he knows Papa’s in Penne with his sister.”
Jake is clearly shaken by the news. “How the fuck can he know that?”
Like I know.
“Jesus H. Christ,” he explodes. “How? I played that close to the vest. Real close.”
I shrug again. If Jake doesn’t know, I sure as hell haven’t got a clue.
“So, what next?” he mutters.
I feel as if I’m lost in a fun house maze of mirrors. “I don’t know! My daughter is probably dead, and we’re trying to figure out how to bring in Joe without putting her in danger. What do we do about a gangster from Italy who knows where Papa is hiding? Hell, the bastard might have already popped Papa. Either way, he’s going to walk away with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of my money that maybe I could have used to free Brittany.” I push my chair back so hard that it topples over. “The hell of it is, there’s no fucking way to know!”
Jake watches my blowup without comment. After I pluck the chair off the floor, drag it back to the table, and sit down, he meets my gaze. “There is a way to check on Francesco.”
There is? Why the hell hasn’t anyone told me? Not trusting myself to speak civilly, I gesture at him to continue.
We’re interrupted by a knock on the door. Zack Menzies pokes his head in. “Everything okay in here?”
Jake nods and gestures at me. “Yeah, this clumsy ass fell off his chair.”
Menzies smirks at me and backs out.
“The kid who picked up Francesco and Max in Austria… your nephew, isn’t he?” Jake asks.
I nod. “Beppe.”
“Odd name, but he sounds like a good kid. Max and Beppe worked out a backdoor channel just in case one of them needed to reach the other.”
“And?”
“Beppe’s girlfriend’s sister runs a café that he frequents. Max has a sister who lives somewhere north of Bumfuck, Maine. He and Beppe exchanged burner phones and worked out some kind of code to get messages back and forth. If Beppe needs to talk, he’ll call Maine, Max’s sister will get word to Max, and he’ll call the café in Penne. If Max needs to talk, same routine in reverse.”
“Great. Let’s find out if Papa’s okay.”
“My initial thought, as well,” Jake says. “But don’t you think Beppe would have tried to reach Max if anything was wrong?”
There’s a certain logic in that, but. “What if something happened to Beppe, too?”
Jake sighs. “Yeah, there’s always that possibility.”
“There are altogether too many possibilities, almost all of them with shitty endings,” I grumble, then ask, “Why the burner phones? Why not just call her house?”
“Couple of things. Max had the same question. Francesco’s sister doesn’t have a phone. Phone directories, mobsters bribing phone company employees, just too many ways for that to go wrong. When this all began way back when, they decided that sending letters was too risky. Someone peeks in a mailbox and sees a return address, you know. Anyway, they applied the same principal to phones.”
“Sounds a little overly paranoid,”
