CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Copperfield Road was located in a densely populated, rural area on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Although there were houses on the long stretch of road, the houses were nearly two miles apart from each other and the house where Jake Fordham was ordered to take Gloria was at the end of the street down a long path of overgrown weeds and big trees. The goal was to get there well ahead of Brent and that cellphone that alerted Roger Rittenhauser to the whereabouts of Gloria, whom he thought was still his captive. Brent, who was riding the phone in the car with him, made it his business to drive slow enough for the goal to work. It worked. They were well ahead of schedule. Even if Rittenhauser was on the property already, he should not have been expecting anyone this soon.

But just in case, they parked nearly a half mile away and walked through the woods to get to the house.

“How did he find a place like this?” asked Sal as they slogged through the heavy brush.

“He didn’t,” said Hammer. “His flunkies did for him. Any guy willing to pay all those killers four million a pop to do what they did to the family, will be willing to pay top dollar for a hiding place. This is a good hiding place.”

But when they were just about to walk out of the wooded area and saw the house within some fifty feet away from where they were, Charles suddenly stopped in his tracks. Although Hammer wore fatigues, and Mick was suited up in his long white coat of armor, black trousers and turtleneck, Charles, Sal, and Monk were in jeans and sweatshirts. But in their own way, they all were ready for combat. But when Charles stopped suddenly, they all grabbed their rifles tighter as if they weren’t sure they were ready for any of it.

“What is it, Big Daddy?” Monk asked when Charles stopped. All of them stopped too.

“Hammer you said Rittenhauser wants world domination, not just in the business world but in the mob world too.”

Hammer nodded. “That’s right. So what?”

“Look.”

Hammer looked at the three men he was pointing at: Mick, Sal, and Monk.

“If I was a betting man,” said Charles, “I’d bet Rittenhauser knew who would come on this mission if there had been a breach in his security. And knowing us, he would be banking on a breach. He knew it would become a mob mission and the bosses would show up.”

“I’m not a mob boss,” said Hammer.

“Like hell you aren’t,” said Mick. “You just have legitimacy cloaking your illegal shit.”

Hammer and Mick exchanged a knowing look.

“He wants world domination,” said Charles. “By having the three top bosses in the world with us, have we just handed him exactly what he wanted?”

As soon as Charles said it, a lightbulb went off in all their heads. But their sudden stop seemed to have alerted a different response from their enemies, who were waiting for them to clear the brush and get out in the open. But the sudden stop forced their hand and before any of them could answer Charles’s question, gunfire could be heard from a distance. But instead of bullets raining down on them, what seemed like napalm was being dropped because everything it hit caught fire.

This was Hammer’s expertise and the commander in him took over. He pulled out his radio. “Mark-77,” Hammer yelled into his radio. “We’re being hit with Mark-77. Air support now. We need air support now!”

Then he turned to his in-laws. “Get to the house,” he yelled. “Duck, dodge, but get inside that fucking house!” His thought was their thought: If Rittenhauser was onsite, he’d be in that house, and that house would be off limits. That was their only protection. It was a weak hope, but it was all they had.

They ran for the house in a zigzag they knew was their way to keep from being incinerated.

“Prepare for an ambush!” Mick yelled out when they arrived at the door of the house. This was his expertise.

Hammer kicked the door in with his heavy boot and they all ran inside of the dark structure, using the scope on their rifles to light the way. Their natural instincts got them into formation immediately as Mick and Charles went to the right, Sal and Monk went to the left, and Hammer went straight. All of them were sweeping their guns from side to side in case they miss something. They could still hear the napalm-like substance being dropped outside, and they knew they would be fried alive if anything fell on that house.

It was Charles who caught a glimpse of a shadow of a figure running down the hall. “I saw him!” Charles yelled out and he and Mick took off after the figure. Hammer, Sal, and Monk hurried behind them.

“He’s going downstairs!” Charles yelled when the figure opened the basement door and began running down the stairs. They all ran after him, knowing that if they were trapped in the basement of that property and it was targeted for a hit, they were in trouble. Deadly trouble.

They also knew they had to stop that figure, whom they all assumed was Rittenhauser, before he ran out of any door and left them inside to be carpet-bombed.

But Charles and Mick refused to let it happen. They ran so fast around the corners of that basement that they often slid around those corners. The last corner they ran around, they were met with gunfire, forcing them to back back around the corner. But they knew they had to take a chance. They could not let Rittenhauser get out of any door and leave them inside. They turned that corner, firing too, and kept on chasing their target.

But when they saw that a door had opened, their collective hearts dropped. “Stop him!” Charles yelled as both brothers began firing. They knew, once he made it out of the door, that would give permission to his bomb throwers to throw a bomb at that house.

When he ran out that door, and slammed it shut, they raced to get out of that door too. But it was one of those specially made, heavily-fortified doors that was locked from outside and they couldn’t get it open.

As Hammer, Sal, and Monk made it downstairs, all five men were attempting to kick the door in. All five were panicking. All five were sweating bullets as they kicked and kicked. They could hear explosion after explosion outside and just knew they were about to go up in smoke too. They were trapped in a house grave and they couldn’t get out. They fired their weapon. Over and over again. But that did nothing but ricochet off. They had no choice but to keep kicking. They kicked. And they kicked. And they kicked.

Charles, with his devoted son-in-law Monk Paletti right behind him, took off and ran around all those corners again, back upstairs, down the hall, and to the backdoor they had come in through. They had to get outside to let the others out of that death door, but Charles stopped Monk at the door. “You wait here,” he said, knowing he was probably going on a suicide mission once he left that house. “Tell Jenay I love her!”

But Monk wasn’t about to let Big Daddy go it alone. He ran out of that door right along with him.

When they got outside and saw that Hammer’s air support had already arrived and was taking out the napalm throwers, they sighed relief. But when Charles saw Roger Rittenhauser running toward a parked SUV on the property, he knew he couldn’t let him get away. “Get the others out!” Charles ordered Monk as he ran for that SUV.

When he got to the SUV, Rittenhauser had already gotten inside and was attempting to close the door and make a run for it. But Charles grabbed the driver’s side door just in time. He struggled to keep it open, especially when Rittenhauser started driving away. But Charles’s brute force opened that door and he was able to reach inside and punch Rittenhauser with such a punch that it knocked him sideways. And Charles was able to sling the gear into Park and press off the engine button.

By that time, Mick, Hammer, and Sal, along with Monk who had liberated them from that basement, had run up to the SUV too.

Mick grabbed Rittenhauser from the passenger side of the SUV and dragged him out of the vehicle, throwing him to the ground. His anger unleashed, he kicked him and stomped on him and would have killed him right then and there had Hammer and Monk not pulled him back.

They all wanted answers, but because of the fire in the woods, they knew they had to get out of there. Hammer directed one of his huge military choppers to land in the spared area between the house and the woods. A chopper landed and they all got onboard.

But as soon as it was airborne, they all looked at Rittenhauser. It was Charles that asked the obvious question of the human being he used to only know as the tattoo man. “ Why ?” he asked him, his face betraying the anguish and distress he felt inside.

Rittenhauser’s face betrayed a different inner emotion: defeat. He knew it was over for him. “Mick Sinatra,” he said, and Mick’s heart dropped. “That’s why.”

Mick knew he would be the link that caused all of this destruction. He knew it before, when it was Rittenhauser’s flunkies blaming everybody but Rittenhauser. He knew it now.

“Vito Costantino was my brother,” Rittenhauser continued. “Mick killed him. I wasn’t a big man then. Mick was bigger than I was. But I was gonna get him for what he did to my brother. Before I took care of Jumbo Fourtaine for letting it happen, I knew Mick the Tick would eventually have to hide out. I figured he’d go home to do that. I paid one of his guys to tell me where home was, and that’s when I purchased that tattoo parlor in Jericho. So I waited for him to show up. Me and my kid brothers waited. But when Mick finally showed up in town looking for weapons, I knew his guy had told him about me. Then Mick showed up at the tattoo parlor with his straight-laced nephews. While we were in the back negotiating a price, my kid brothers were outside waiting for Mick to go out. Then they were going to kill his ass in a drive-by. But Mick the Tick had more lives than a fucking cat. You two got away.”

Then Rittenhauser directed his attention at Charles. “Big Daddy Sinatra they call you. I asked the people of that hick town why they call you that. Because he owned all the land in the great state of Maine, they said. And he was ruthless and he was mean, just like the government. Only he wasn’t a big brother. He was a big daddy. Bigger than the government, in their eyes. But he saved Mick’s life just like that bitch Bella Caine snitched on my brother and saved Mick’s life too. Then during the chase, there was an accident. You and Mick parted ways. But instead of getting the hell out of town, Mick the Monster chased down my kid brothers like they were dogs in the street and killed them too. He killed my whole family! Parker Fourtaine, who was Vito’s son, not Jumbo’s, was all I had left. And he wasn’t shit.”

But Charles shook his head. “All that happened years and years ago. What took you so long?”

“I caught a RICO charge in another state. They found my ass and extradited me. I served all those years in Folsom prison. When I got out, I had connections that I knew was going to make me a very rich man. I bought and sold government secrets you see. And they didn’t even know I was the main man they were looking for. To them, I was just a petty criminal like all the petty criminals in those prisons. What would I know about spies and shit? But when I made it to the top of the money chain, I knew I was going to make it to the top of every other chain. World domination was my goal. And in the meantime, I was going to make Mick the Tick and his brother suffer. I started small. I acquired a poison that wasn’t detectable in human beings if applied with mild doses over time rather than one or two big doses. So I hired this lady to work at that bed and breakfast Big Daddy owned and turned over to Jenay when he married her. That lady worked in the restaurant area and whenever Jenay came in for her cup of coffee, she would personally make it for her and slip in just enough poison to keep her sick. And it worked like a charm for a long time. I enjoyed seeing that.” He smiled. “You were so worried, Big Daddy. It was beautiful to see.”

Charles wanted to kick his ass, but he kept his cool. He needed the whole story once and for all.

“Then I started terrorizing Mick the Tick through his women. All the Sinatra women I could get my hands on. I tried to kill Amelia, since I knew how you brothers just loved that black bitch to death, but Hammer Reese had her under his thumb and I kept failing to get close to her.”

Hammer wanted to kill him, too, but he kept his cool.

“So I turned my attention to Gloria. I even hired this genius guy to pretend to be an FSU professor to get in good with Gloria teaching her how to speak Greek. The government’s nickname for me was Aristotle, so I told him to pretend to love all things Aristotle so much so that Gloria and Oz Drakos would take to calling him Aristotle. Just to muddy the waters the way I love to do. I used that name as a distraction while I fulfilled my goals too.”

“What happened to the so-called professor?” asked Mick.

“Dead. I killed him before you guys raided his tiny little house in Tallahassee. You see I never leave eyewitnesses alive. That’s why I’ve been so elusive. But before the explosion, I got him to introduce me to Gloria. I was supposedly going to paint a mural at her new restaurant location and I picked her up that day to take her to see it. I asked her to ride with me because I went overbudget and I wanted to explain it to her. She liked me. Flirted with me a lot. So I knew she was comfortable enough to ride with me.”

Charles wanted to kill him again, but he held on.

“She wouldn’t allow her bodyguard to ride with us though, even though he tried. With her mob hubby always out of the country, and her billionaire brother-in-law too busy, kidnaping her was easy. Piece of cake. Eventually, I was going to get Mick and Big Daddy too, but all things in time. I had other worries. They were a slow bleed for me. I didn’t want it to end.”

“Or end up like this,” said Charles.

Rittenhauser nodded, as regret crept into his arrogance. “Right.”

Mick looked at Charles. And Charles looked at Mick. And Charles and Mick looked at Hammer. Mick and Charles knew, in that moment, that they could not leave any stones unturned. That this man had tried to kill Amelia and wasn’t going to stop tormenting their family if they let him live.

Hammer, knowing it too, got up and went to the cockpit of the big army chopper to talk with the pilot. Mick and Charles grabbed up Rittenhauser and dragged him to the back door of the chopper. But Monk Paletti, who knew what was about to transpire, stood up. “Big Daddy?”

Charles looked at him.

“Could you come here for a minute? I need your help.”

Mick looked at Charles too. “Go see what he wants, Charlie,” he said to his big brother. Mick knew like Monk knew that Charles was not like them. He was gangster in the way he ran his family with an iron fist of love and tough love, but he was no gangster like them.

Charles knew it too. He went to see what Monk wanted. And as he walked away, he could hear the door to the chopper open, he could hear the struggle, and he could hear the screams of Roger Rittenhauser as Mick proudly threw him overboard.

When the door slammed back shut, Hammer returned to his seat. Charles and Mick and Monk returned to their seats. And you could hear a pin drop as they made their way back home.