CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Two hours later and Hammer Reese, along with his wife and Mick and Charles’s half-sister Amelia, arrived at Mick’s estate. They arrived clandestinely and holed up in one of the guest houses furthest away from the main house. Because Hammer was there, which meant the highest reaches of government was in the house, he wanted as few eyes as possible on him. That meant only Charles and Jenay and Mick and Roz were invited to the meeting.

Hammer and Amelia was seated on the sofa. The others sat in chairs around them. “How did you get her so fast?” asked Jenay.

“She had just left the tarmac maybe five minutes if that long and was heading to Jericho. Since it was my plane, I ordered it back to Montreal. Then I boarded the plane and we flew here. My team did determine that it was an A.I. program impersonating you, Big Daddy. That lie won’t go unnoticed again.”

“What about all the other lies?” asked Mick.

“What lies?” asked Amelia.

“We believe Aristotle is after you, too, Millie,” said Charles. “But Hammer hasn’t acknowledged that.”

Amelia was shocked by the invoking of her name. “Why would you think he’s after me?”

“Because he’s targeting Sinatra women, or in Bella and Ursula’s case, Sinatra-adjacent women. Not just Mick’s ladies like we thought. Jenay is a great case in point on that. And then he snatches Gloria. The man that held her, Jake Fordham, said Aristotle said something about Gloria bothering with the wrong client this time. But Glo doesn’t have clients. She has a restaurant. She has customers.”

“But I own a private eye agency. I have clients,” said Amelia.

“Right,” said Charles.

“Are you saying Aristotle was a one of Millie’s clients?” asked Hammer.

Mick pulled up a photo of Rittenhauser and showed it to Amelia and Hammer. “Recognize him?”

Neither did. “Is this Aristotle?” Hammer asked.

“That’s Roger Rittenhauser,” said Mick. “A tattoo artist from Jericho.”

Hammer frowned. “And you think this is Aristotle?”

“Yes. And he apparently knows you call him that nickname because when he phoned to let me know he had Gloria, he called himself Aristotle too.” Then Mick stared at Hammer. “Where did that name come from?”

Hammer exhaled. “He evaded us for years. We considered him brilliant. Thus Aristotle.”

“Why not Eistein? He’s the brilliant one.”

“We already have file open on an Eistein. Totally unrelated to this matter.”

“What are the chances of Gloria meeting a tutor that they nicknamed Aristotle and you nicknaming our nemesis Aristotle?” asked Charles. “That’s a little too much serendipity for me.”

“I suspect,” said Hammer, “that Gloria’s Aristotle works for our Aristotle and our Aristotle told him to constantly quote the philosopher so that they can give him that nickname. He’s done it before in other cases.”

They all looked at each other. “It’s like he’s playing a higher version of chest,” said a disgusted Mick, “while we can’t even get off the checkers board. Like he’s playing with gold medallions and we’re playing with Monopoly money. I don’t like this shit.”

“His government moniker,” said Hammer, “is Twenty-Ten. I created the name Aristotle when I realized you guys were involved because everything I was telling you would be off the record and against government policy. I had to have a separate line of inquiry. Aristotle is that separate line toward the same end: to get the bastard wreaking havoc on our corporate structure and attempting to wreak havoc on our family structure.”

“Attempting to?” asked Charles. “What he paid Fourtaine to do to my wife was more than a fucking attempt.”

Hammer nodded. “Point taken.”

“But how can Rittenhauser be Aristotle,” asked Mick, “when Hammer you said yourself that Aristotle was Vito Costantino’s father. Rittenhauser is too young to be his old man.”

“We knew he had a connection to Vito Costantino. We weren’t sure what the connection was.”

“So you just made shit up?” asked Mick.

Hammer didn’t respond to that.

“Are you sure now of the connection?” asked Jenay.

Hammer shook his head. “No.”

“Has he targeted Millie?” asked Charles point blank.

Everybody looked at Hammer. He paused, but then he spoke up. “Yes. He attempted to kill her three times.”

“Motherfuck!” said Amelia, looking at her husband.

“Amelia, you didn’t know?”

“No! I didn’t know shit about it,” she added, looking none too happy with Hammer when she said it.

Charles shook his head. “Her ass as gangster as yours, Hammer. You can’t coddle Amelia “Cleopatra Jones” Sinatra,” he said to laughter. “I don’t know why you keep trying.”

But Mick was pissed off. He didn’t like that government overreach. “Why didn’t you tell us, Hammer? We’re her family. We have a right to know.”

“You didn’t have a right to know a damn thing! I told you this whole deal is a government operation. Didn’t I tell you that, Mick? I’m not supposed to so much as mention it to anybody. Still!”

“What does Millie have to do with the government?” asked Charles.

“She doesn’t. The plot against her was discovered while we were working on what Twenty-Ten, or Aristotle, was doing to our corporations. That’s all true. Where Amelia fits into this is still unclear.”

“It’s clear to us,” said Charles. “He’s been targeting Sinatra women, or Sinatra-adjacent women. All connected to Mick and me.”

“Is that why you took Jenay to Charlemagne?” asked Roz. “For insurance?”

“No. The government wants Aristotle because of his foreign interference in our corporate commerce. I wanted him because of Amelia. The two interests converged. Jenay was useful for both: to keep you guys distracted from their spies in those companies and, once or if Jenay came around, then I knew you guys would help my investigation into why Aristotle was targeting Millie.”

“Again,” said Mick,” why didn’t you just tell us that?”

“Again,” said Hammer, “I couldn’t tell you shit. It has top secret classification. I have no business discussing this with you or anybody else. How many ways do I have to tell you that?”

They kept going in circles. Each trying to figure out what Rittenhauser was up to. Until the call finally came in, Jake was instructed by Rittenhauser to take Gloria to an old house on Copperfield Road, and they all rose ready to get this over with. Once and they hoped for all.

Hammer took charge, as they knew he would. “Me, Mick and Charles will go,” he said. “And who else?”

“I want full protection here at the house,” Charles said. “Most of the heavy hitters need to stay here just in case we get blindsided by this joker. I say Teddy and Nikki and Reno and Tommy stay here, along with Alex Drakos and Trevor Reese. And with all four of my boys in place that’ll leave behind maximum protection for the family.”

Hammer looked at Mick. “Mick? That enough protection to stay back for you?”

Mick nodded. “It’s enough.”

“Okay good. The rest goes with us,” Hammer said, and nobody disagreed. This was one trip Roz nor Jenay were trying to get in on.

But when everybody had left the room, Jenay and Charles stayed back. Charles went and sat beside her. And looked into her eyes. “I’ll be careful,” he said to her, taking her hand. “You needn’t worry.”

“I was going to get you to promise me you won’t play the hero, but I know that’s like asking a baby not to cry. But please do everything in your power to come back home to us, Charles. To me. Please?”

Charles’s heart melted. This was when he hated that he was a Sinatra and not some boring joe with a boring life. Boring looked good right now. But he and Jenay both knew boring would never be his life.

He pulled her into his arms. But then he had to go.