second reason I wanted to see you this evening was to ask you to stop seeing my daughter.”
“Stop seeing Kate?”
“Yes. Don’t break her heart, just remove yourself from her life slowly. Stop calling so often. Just fade away.”
“Why?”
“Because I love her, and I don’t want her around you.”
“Mr. Sorrentino…”
“Jake. Put yourself in my shoes. Explain why I should support you as my daughter’s significant other. I’m a man of great understanding. If you can help me understand, maybe we can get past this little problem.”
Jake tried not to laugh. If there was one thing Mr. Sorrentino had shown, it was that he was anything but understanding.
“Go ahead and explain why I should continue to let you see my daughter. Take your time Jake. I am a patient man.”
Jake excused himself for a second trip to the bathroom. He threw water on his face and let the drips run down his neck.
Jake walked back into pool room. Mr. Sorrentino was behind the bar sifting through bottles. Two empty shot glasses sat on the counter. Jimmy turned and filled the glasses with bourbon.
“So Jake, do we have an agreement?”
Jake looked down the counter at the gun next to the pile of money that Tony and the Castello brothers had left behind.
“Sir, with all due respect, I need to think it over.”
“Okay, Jake. Okay. You think about it. Like I said, I’m a patient man. But I do expect an answer, and I do expect a handshake.”
“Let me think about it,” Jake repeated.
Mr. Sorrentino pushed one of the glasses toward Jake. “To making the right decision,” he said raising the other glass.
“Salute,” Jake answered, throwing back the drink with one swallow.
Kate’s voice echoed down the stairwell as she ran down the flight of steps. Jake stood from his stool and Mr. Sorrentino gave him a management-busting teamster glare.
“Oh, Jake,” Kate said through forming tears.
He embraced her, closed his eyes, and inhaled her perfume. Mr. Sorrentino looked at Jake’s arms around Kate, hers tight around his neck. Jimmy sneered and cleared his throat, bringing the Hallmark Moment to a sudden end. His little girl could do so much better than this, he thought. And she would. As per the impending agreement. Just as soon as Jake came to his senses and dumped her. For his own good.
“Dad, how could you?” Kate asked. “Quit interfering in my life.”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Jimmy said to his daughter.
“I would like to leave now,” Jake said, safely in the company of his girlfriend. “And I need a ride,” he added.
“I’ll give you one,” Kate answered.
“No, you won’t. Tony and the guys will.”
“Then I am going too,” she said.
Chapter 33
Tony stopped the car near the south end of the Mall, and Jake said goodnight to Kate and the three goons. He had thought long and hard about Al’s advice.
With a light breeze coming off the water hitting his perspiration-drenched shirt, Jake unfurled his sleeping bag and shivered for the first time since March. The flattest terrain he could find was still mountainous compared to his mattress, and Jake knew he was in for a long night. The addition of scrap cardboard boxes did little to absorb the undulations of the ground beneath his spine. Jake “princess-and-the-pea” Patrick flopped around until Al couldn’t take anymore. “What is your problem? Haven’t you ever been camping?”
“Not recently.”
“Well the earth’s composition hasn’t changed much since the last time you went, this much I am sure of.”
“I just can’t get comfortable.”
“I know, and as a result, neither can I.”
Jake sat up and crossed his legs. He looked out at the Kennedy Center, the top of the white marble structure adorned with lights like the jewels on a crown. Al looked over at the silhouette of Jake’s head. “Do you know what used to be there before they built the Kennedy Center?”
“Swamp,” Jake answered with definitiveness.
“Good guess, but wrong. It used to be the Foggy Bottom Brewery. Founded by a German immigrant named Christian Heurich who died in the 1940s at the ripe old age of one hundred two. The beer is rumored to have preserved him quite well, and on his deathbed he was said to have looked younger than his eldest son. The brewery shut down during prohibition, but it came back to life when it was repealed.”
“Must have been an interesting period in history. A country full of drinkers trying to find an illegal drink.”
“Yeah, illegal is always more profitable than legal, all things being equal.”
Jake paused at Al’s statement. “Speaking of illegal, I’ve got a question for you.”
“Shoot,” Al answered. It was dark enough that Jake couldn’t really see Al. He was hidden in the shadows, stuffed in the corner of his worldly possessions.
“Hypothetically speaking, how could someone export illegal goods for years without being caught?”
“Well, it’s not as clear cut as you think. Look at the mob. Investigations into the mob went on for decades and some of them didn’t yield any prosecutable information. And I’m sure during those investigations the mob was still making money. It wasn’t until the mid-nineties when mafia members started ratting out one another that the FBI made real progress bringing the mob to justice. Up until that point, it was just faster to wait for mobsters to kill each other than to build a case against them.”
“And if they’re not the mob?”
“Are we talking about a crime that the FBI knows was committed, or investigating the possibility of illegal acts without a defined crime?” Al asked.
“The latter, I guess. Or the possibility of a crime at all.”
“Does this have something to do with your father?”
“Maybe.”
“Your father is very clever Jake. Very clever, very well connected.”
“How about wiretapping, informants, all that good stuff?”
“Wiretapping an American citizen is a myth, Jake. I mean from a technical perspective, it’s easy. Nothing could be easier. But even the FBI can’t just slap a wiretap on your phone. They need a reason. A good reason. And if you are an upstanding American citizen with political pull, they need a really good reason. They need to have a defined period of time to use the wiretap, and it needs to be for the express purpose of a defined investigation. They need to document this and prove that traditional forms of investigation and surveillance have failed before they can wiretap. Then they need a judge who will look at the case and grant the wiretap. On top of that, wiretaps are granted for specific phone numbers. So if a company has a hundred lines, the investigative authority needs to specify which line they want to tap, and why. And if you have a suspect who changes phone lines regularly, the authorities will always be playing catch-up.”
“Not like on TV. Sounds like it is a miracle they ever catch anyone.”
