CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When Mick and Roz and Charles and Jenay arrived at Charlemagne and walked into Hammer’s massive home office, they saw Deuce McCurry, a muscular, older black man, seated on the sofa with Hammer Reese sipping wine. As soon as they saw him, Mick’s heart relaxed again. And Roz hurried to Deuce, who stood up, and hugged him.

“You’re okay?” she asked him anxiously as she looked him up and down. Deuce was the reason Roz ever hooked up with Mick in the first place when he vouched for Mick and urged her to get in Mick’s limousine and allow him to give her, a struggling Broadway actress, a ride home. That ride changed her life. “You look bewildered. Are you okay?”

“I’m good, Mrs. Sinatra. But confused too. Hammer says they’re trying to rope me into . . .” Then Deuce looked beyond Roz and realized Jenay was standing next to Big Daddy. He frowned. “ Miss Jenay ?”

Mick was astounded. “You didn’t tell him, Hammer?”

“No,” Hammer said, and he and Mick stared at each other.

But Deuce was staring at Jenay. “She’s . . . You’re ? But I thought . . .”

Jenay smiled and went to him. “I know,” she said as she hugged Deuce too. “They needed a cover story, and I became it.”

“So you didn’t get shot in that cafeteria?”

“Oh, yes, I very much was wounded. Badly. But I didn’t die, Deuce, no. Nobody knew about it. Charles didn’t know.”

But they all could tell he still wasn’t believing it. He looked at Mick. If Mick was accepting all of this, then he knew he could.

“It’s true,” Mick said, nodding his head. “Hammer’s ass should have told you.” Then he looked angrily at Hammer. “Why would you give him a shock like that? His heart can’t take all this shit!”

“I’m okay, Boss,” Deuce said. “I just don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Welcome to the club,” said Jenay, still smiling and hugging him.

“Sit back down, Deuce,” Roz said as she helped him back onto the couch. Hammer stood up so that Roz and Jenay could sit, one on each side of Deuce, like two mother hens.

Mick and Charles sat in chairs in front of the sofa. Amelia was already in the office, seated behind Hammer’s desk. Mick used to view her as an ally when he railed against Hammer and his government overreach and excesses, but when she and Hammer decided to reconcile rather than divorce, he knew he had lost that ally forever. She was going to always be on Hammer’s side, in Mick’s view, and he didn’t like it.

“Where were you, Deuce?” Charles asked. “And hello by the way.”

“How you doing, Big Daddy?”

Charles smiled. “Fantastic now,” he said as he looked at Jenay.

“You were a broken man when I saw you last,” Deuce said. “I’m glad the band’s back together,” he added, and they all laughed. “But what’s going on? I was in Africa, in the Congo. I told you, Boss,” he said, looking at Mick, “that I was going on vacation and would be off the grid like I’m always off the grid when I vacation. I told you that.”

“He wasn’t listening to you when you told him, Deuce,” Charles said.

“He said okay,” Deuce pointed out.

“He said okay while he was doing ten other things,” said Charles. “He forgot what you said to him.”

“But what’s this about me and Fourtaine?” Deuce asked. “And why would he tell such an obvious lie about me kidnapping his family and being the mastermind behind what happened to Jenay? Hammer said he’s pointing the finger at me now, when he originally pointed it at himself.”

“Right,” said Charles. “But that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

“But why? I didn’t have nothing to do with your wife’s shooting. Or how those people got in my house and the shooting that occurred there, in my house of all places, that killed them. I don’t know anything about any of that. You have to believe me,” he said to Charles with a plea in his voice.

“He believes you,” said Mick, uncharacteristically. “Don’t worry. We all believe you.”

Charles looked at Mick to make certain that was his hard-hearted brother reassuring somebody. But he also knew Deuce was Mick’s guy. He looked out for Deuce.

“But he’s right,” said Roz. “Why would Parker Fourtaine tell a lie that we could easier check out? Why would he rope Deuce into this when he had to know Mick wouldn’t fall for that?”

“The same way they roped Trevor Reese and Frankie Paletti in it too,” said Charles. “The same way they tried to rope me into it. To keep us distracted. Whoever’s behind all of this knew exactly who to use to tell these lies on people.”

“Especially Fourtaine,” said Mick. “Somebody apparently got word to him in prison that if we came around asking him any further questions, then he was to blame Deuce and claim Deuce kidnapped his family as the reason he told his original lies. Because that family they kidnapped and put in Deuce’s house wasn’t his reason for lying.”

They all looked at Mick.

“Why would you say that?” asked Roz.

“Because he’s his old man’s son. Family was negotiable with his old man. It was negotiable with Parker.”

“Are we even certain those people were Fourtaine’s family?” asked Roz.

“We’re certain,” said Hammer.

“I don’t know what his reason is,” said Charles, “or if he gave a damn about his family or not, but for him to lie to us again? He’s terrified of whoever’s pulling his strings.”

Jenay looked at Hammer. “And you still think this Aristotle is the man they’re terrified of?"

Hammer nodded. “Certain of it.”

“But you don’t even know if he exists,” said Charles.

“He exists.”

“And your geniuses still haven’t found him,” Mick said snidely.

Hammer was offended. “Your geniuses haven’t found him either,” he shot back.

“I don’t have geniuses working for me,” Mick responded. “I have criminals. The best in the business. So don’t get it twisted.”

Mick and Hammer stared at each other as if it was a pissing contest. They were oil and water and they both knew it. On opposite sides of the law. On opposites sides of what’s best for Amelia. On opposite sides.

“If he’s trying to distract us and point us in the wrong direction,” said Jenay, “he’s doing a good job of it.”

“What’s the right direction?” asked Roz.

“Where they don’t want us looking,” said Charles.

“And where is that?”

They all looked from Charles to Mick, but Mick looked as if he was deep in his own thoughts. As if he was keeping his own counsel.

Hammer walked over to his huge office window and began looking out, his back to them all. Charles noticed his movement. “What do you think, Ham? You think he’s distracting us with this bogus Deuce-as-mastermind bullshit?”

“It’s possible,” was all Hammer would say about it.

“What was Parker Fourtaine’s beef with you, Mick, anyway?” Jenay asked.

“He blamed me for what the Costantino family did to his old man. How they set his old man up for murders he didn’t commit. How his old man died in prison.”

“How was that your fault?”

“Because they were getting back at me for taking out Vito Costantino in an ambush I should have died in, but Vito died instead. The Costantino family couldn’t come after me, they were too depleted to wage war against me, so they went after Parker’s old man, who was an associate of mine. And Parker blamed me for his old man’s woes because of that association.”

“Sure about that, Mick?” Hammer asked, his back still turned to them.

They all looked at Hammer. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Amelia, intrigued now since Mick being blamed by Parker Fourtaine was always the reasoning, asked her husband.

Hammer turned around. “Parker Fourtaine didn’t blame you for what happened to his old man. He blamed you for what happened to him.”

“What happened to him?” Charles asked.

“He wasn’t Jumbo Fourtaine’s son,” Hammer said. “He was Vito Costantino’s son.”

Everybody was shocked. None more so than Mick. “ Vito’s son ?”

“He was the son and in line to be the next head of the Costantino crime family when his father was killed that day in Philly.”

“Parker Fourtaine was a Costantino?” Amelia asked, floored too.

“Yes,” Hammer said. “He knew Jumbo wasn’t his father, and Jumbo knew it too. It wasn’t common knowledge, but the parties involved knew. They decided to keep it quiet because Parker was young then. Too young to take over right away. But when Parker did take over he could do so without fanfare. Without Feds breathing down his neck. Without his old man’s enemies coming for him. But he didn’t take over.”

“Why not?” Charles asked.

“Because he was young and a bastard son and the other sons refused to acknowledge his birthright even though Vito made clear Parker was to take over should something happen to him. They put a contract out on Parker’s life and forced Parker, with a few of his father’s closest allies, to leave the country to save his life. And it was all because of Mick taking out Vito. That’s what he blamed Mick for.”

Mick was frowned as he stared at Hammer. “Why didn’t you tell me this when you went through all of that shit to sprang him out of the slammer for me to meet with him?”

“That wouldn’t have made any difference,” Hammer said.

“Like hell it wouldn’t!” said Mick. “My questions would have been different. Now he was an escaped convict killed by the Feds when he supposedly resisted arrest. Now I’ll never know the truth.”

Mick and Hammer continued to stare at each other. Mick was the top dog in the corporate and under worlds. But Hammer was the top dog in law enforcement. And that reality, that he had the power to do whatever he wanted, couldn’t have been clearer to any of them in that room than it was in that moment.

Now it was making sense to Mick. Now he knew the right question to ask. “Is the Costantino family still in business?” he asked Hammer.

They all looked at Hammer. There was a hesitation, but a very brief one. “Yes,” Hammer said.

Then Mick asked the most important second question. “Who’s the head of the Costantino family now?”

On this question Hammer didn’t hesitate at all. “Aristotle,” he said.

There was an audible gasp.

“So that’s the connection,” said Charles. “Aristotle wants revenge on Mick for what happened to Vito Costantino?”

“For what happened to his son,” Mick said, “yes. Isn’t that right, Hammer? We thought some bullshitter was Vito’s old man. But just like with Parker and Jumbo, that wasn’t true either. Was it? Vito was Aristotle’s son.”

Hammer couldn’t stand Mick and his illegalities, but he always respected the man’s intellect. “Yes,” Hammer replied.

Charles looked at his kid brother. “You knew that all along?”

“No,” said Mick. “I’m just finding out too.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Roz.

“We stop putting the cart before the horse,” said Mick. Then he looked at Hammer again. “I have two questions for you.”

“Fire away.”

“How many members are in the Costantino syndicate as we speak right now?”

“Other than Aristotle?”

“Yes.”

“No one.”

“Just him?”

Hammer nodded. “That’s right. And your other question?”

“You stumbled upon this backstory about Aristotle’s secondary, lower-level infiltration in my company and my brother’s company,” Mick said.

“That’s right.”

“You downplay the role of the original infiltration of those one-hundred-and-sixty plus Fortune 500 companies, calling them the backup act and that secondary infiltration as the main event.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s bullshit, isn’t it?”

When Mick asked that question, they all stared at Hammer.

“You were involved because the President of the United States ordered you to protect American corporations from foreign interference at any cost,” speculated Mick. “And the way you did that was to create a side story about that secondary level of infiltration into only my company and Charlie’s, and to institute your death cover protocols on Jenay conveniently as a way to ensure we would be distracted for as long as we were distracted.” Mick gave Hammer a hard look. “Am I right?”

“No, you aren’t right,” Amelia said. “Hammer wouldn’t use our family like that, as if we meant nothing to him. Would you, Hammer?”

“I wasn’t using anyone. I had a job to do, and I did it. It was a means to an end,” he admitted.

Everybody was annoyed by that admission. Amelia was pissed. “A means to an end? You mean to tell me you protected the rich and powerful at my family’s expense? At Jenay and Charlie’s expense?”

“My doctors saved Jenay’s life,” Hammer yelled back at her.

“But that was only a means to an end too,” said Amelia. “Right?”

Hammer stared at his wife. They were destined to always have conflicts. It was the nature of who they were. “Right,” he said honestly.

“You bastard!” Amelia grabbed a stapler off of his desk and threw it at him. Had he not moved to the side, he would have been badly injured.

“Just settle down, Millie,” Charles ordered his kid sister. “Settle your ass down! We’re talking here, not fighting. We’re trying to get the straight story for once from your husband because he’s the only one can give it to us.” Then he looked at Hammer. “So there was no secondary lower level attack in our corporations like you claimed?”

“No, there was not.”

“Then why did you say it was?” asked a puzzled Roz.

“Because we knew Aristotle was behind the foreign interference into our largest and most iconic corporations. That was true. He’s doing all of that because he does want to dominate the world. That’s true too. But we also knew that he was the puppeteer behind all of that craziness that you went through, Roz, and Mick’s baby mamas went through, and Jenay’s shooting. We got there too late to prevent any of it, unfortunately. By letting Aristotle think that Mick’s situation was our focus too, then we could pay closer attention to what he was up to with our largest corporations.”

“And that never included our companies nor the Gabrini companies?” Charles asked him.

Hammer nodded. “That’s correct.”

“I’ll be damn,” said Amelia. “Ain’t this some bullshit? What’s wrong with you, Hammer? Instead of working with my family, you were working against them for the sake of some rich bastard billionaires and their fucking corporations? Are you kidding me?”

“Our doctors saved Jenay’s life,” Hammer said again. “Had I not instituted DCP, she wouldn’t be here.”

“Says who?” Jenay asked him. “You?”

But Mick was oddly silent as he continued to stare at Hammer. They couldn’t stand each other, but they understood each other. Mick was the gangster of gangsters in the gangster world. Hammer was the gangster of gangsters in the law enforcement world. He had to order operatives around the world to lie, steal, and cheat for the government. He found Mick’s line of work despicable. And Mick found his line of work even worse than that.

But Mick had questions, or suspicions, that needed answers. “Jenay’s long term illnesses that baffled all those doctors,” he said to Hammer. “Was Aristotle behind that too?”

Charles and Jenay and everybody in that room were astonished to even hear Mick ask such a question. But when they looked at Hammer, they were even more astonished that he didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

“Yes,” Hammer said which created an audible gasp from everybody.

On that confirmation, Mick jumped from his seat. “That’s where it falls apart,” he said.

“But wait,” said Charles, still staring at Hammer. “Are you telling me that my wife was sick for all that time, going in and out of hospitals, being poked and prodded by all those different so-called expert doctors, and you knew all along it was that bastard poisoning her?”

Hammer quickly shook his head. “No, I didn’t know it. Aristotle’s operatives were poisoning her with a unique, undetectable poison only the CIA and a few other spy agencies around the world know about and utilize. We recently found out, from one of his top people that we were able to flip, that he had acquired that poison. That’s why we checked for it. And we found it. In massive quantities. Only by the grace of God that it didn’t take her out of here a long time ago. We got it all out of her system. She won’t have those issues anymore.”

“Thank God!” said a relieved Charles.

Jenay shook her head in relief too, and Deuce squeezed her hand.

But Roz looked at Mick. “You said that’s where it all falls apart. What do you mean by that?”

“It made sense that he would be targeting my wife, my baby mamas. And me,” Mick said. “But why would he be targeting Jenay? My issues began this year. Jenay’s been having her health issues for far longer than that. That’s where Hammer’s reasoning falls apart. Why Jenay?”

Charles and everybody in that room agreed with Mick as they looked to Hammer for answers.

Hammer shook his head. “It baffles me too,” he said. And for once, they all believed him.

Then Mick’s phone began ringing. “Who’s calling you?” asked Roz.

When Mick looked at the Caller ID and saw that it was Teddy, his oldest son and the head of his syndicate, he answered. “Yep?”

“We got trouble, Pop. I’m glad Jenay’s back, but it’s starting up again.”

“Yeah, I know. They tried to rope Deuce into their bullshit this time.”

“Deuce?” Teddy sounded surprised. “Why would they drag him into it?”

“Damn if I know. What’s your issue?”

“It’s Tommy.”

Mick’s heart dropped. Of all the Gabrinis, he loved Tommy the most. “What about Tommy?” he asked his son.

“Tommy?” asked Roz. “What’s happened to Tommy? Put it on Speaker, Mick.”

Mick placed the call on Speaker. “What happened?” Roz blared out.

“There was an accident,” said Teddy. “His car was forced off the road, it flew down an embankment, apparently, and landed in the river.”

“Jesus!” cried Jenay.

“But he’s okay. He made it out alive. No injuries.”

Roz could see Mick and everybody else let out a relieved exhale. All of this was really getting to him. He looked to Big Daddy.

“Time to call everybody in,” Charles said. “All the family under one roof. This Aristotle is escalating, he’s not backing down. And neither can we.”

“Bring everybody in,” Mick ordered his son over the phone.

“What about my mom and Bella Caine?” Teddy asked. Bella and Ursula Mastriano were Mick’s baby mamas before he met Roz. That was why everybody looked at Mick. Not so much because of Ursula. But because of his way too close relationship with Bella.

Seeing the way his brother suffered when he thought Jenay had died changed Mick. He realized, during that time, how much Roz truly meant to him and how he had to make it his business to stop putting her and her needs on a back burner. But this was different.

“Want me to bring them in too?” Teddy asked when Mick didn’t answer him right away.

But Mick didn’t hesitate any longer. “Yes,” he said. “Bring them in too.”

They all could tell by Roz’s face that she would have preferred he left them twisting in the wind, but they also knew Mick had made the right call. They didn’t care for Ursula or Bella either, but they were Teddy and Gloria’s mothers.

“Yes sir,” Teddy said with relief in his voice, and he ended the call.

Charles was shaking his head. “He was behind my wife’s sicknesses too? We gotta find this bastard,” he said to whomever was listening. “We gotta find him.”

Nobody said a word, because they all, even Hammer, couldn’t agree more.