The Game Changer Page 19

  I really loved the dress, but priced at a ridiculous twenty-five thousand dollars, it was very impractical. I suspected that although I determined what I wanted, we would have to look elsewhere for a more reasonably priced gown.

  “It’s twenty-five thousand dollars,” I whispered. “Papa will throw a fit.”

  “We get to buy one wedding dress. Only one. Your father has worked his entire life for this moment. Everything he does, he does for you, and for Peter. Not for himself,” she said. “Order the dress.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I can’t wait until he sees you in it.”

  “I can’t wait, either.”

  I love you, Papa.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Michael

  After Cap took the oath of Omerta, Jimmy, Sal, Little Frank, Cap and I stood in Agrioli’s office drinking wine.

  Agrioli turned toward his bookcase. “Which of you men is man enough for this?” he asked as he turned around.

  He cradled a twenty-five-year-old bottle of Macallan scotch in his hands.

  Cap looked at it, cocked an eyebrow and cleared his throat. “I’ve heard rumors about the existence of a twenty-five-year-old bottle of Macallan, but I’ve never seen one. Count me in.”

  “I’ll have a taste,” I said.

  “I drink that shit every time I’m at the kid’s office,” Sal said.

  Little Frank nodded.

  Jimmy nodded.

  Agrioli poured a double shot for each of us, handed them out and raised his glass. “The new regime. May our wives remain young, our opposition turn weak and our wallets grow fat.”

  “Hear, hear,” I said.

  Everyone stared.

  “Salute!” Cap shouted.

  Everyone laughed and raised their glasses.

  “Salute!” I said.

  We sipped our scotch, talked about business and told stories about who’d made the largest cash pickup of all time.

  Agrioli claimed to have made a 1.8-million-dollar cash deal early in life, and Sal confirmed having seen the cash.

  “Hell, I would have retired,” I said with a laugh.

  “Gonna tell him about the gold?” Cap asked.

  In Baghdad, our platoon stumbled onto a cache of weapons, and while waiting for orders to either destroy or confiscate them, we searched the remaining portion of the home and the surrounding area for more weapons. In doing so, we found a hole that had been dug in one of the rooms.

  In it were twenty-four twelve-kilogram bricks of gold.

  I’d forgotten all about it.

  “You tell it,” I said. “Hell, I forgot all about that.”

  “So Tripp and I were in Baghdad before they had liberated it all, and people were just shooting AK-47s in the streets like idiots. We ended up following a guy into a house who had taken a few shots at another platoon, and after we got him captured and zip-tied, we searched his house and found a cache of weapons. About thirty AK-47s and a handful of RPGs. We secured the weapons, and were waiting on orders, and Tripp tells two of the PFCs to search the rest of the house.”

  He took a sip of scotch and glanced at each of the men.

  “So they start searching the place for more weapons, and our POW gets all wild-eyed when they go into the back of the house. Tripp sees him wigglin’ around and actin’ all nervous, and he figures they’re onto something—probably a bomb. When he goes back into the room, he can tell the floor is hollow.” He paused and stomped on the floor, producing a thud with each step. “Hear that? Now, all them poor fuckers over there got dirt floors in their houses, they ain’t got subfloors and wood construction. So, a hollow sound like that means you’re in for trouble.”

  “We dig it up, and find a wooden box that’s buried about a foot down. I take my bayonet and pry it open, and inside is six hundred and eighty pounds of fucking gold.”

  “Holy shit,” Little Frank said. “What’d you do with it?”

  “Hold on,” Cap said. “Let me tell ya about it.”

  I shook my head, realizing the point he was going to make. I was anxious to see what everyone had to say about it.

  “So, the two kids that dug it up were about nineteen years old. They wanted to know what it’s worth. Ol’ digit-head here does the math in his head. Any of you fellas wanna guess what it’s worth?”

  “Two-fifty large,” Sal said.

  Cap shook his head.

  “Mil, at least,” Jimmy said.

  Cap laughed. “Nice try.”

  “Two million bucks,” Little Frank said.

  “Ten million,” Agrioli said.

  In current prices, he would have been right.

  Cap shook his head and took a sip of scotch. “Then, it was worth eight and a half million dollars, but gold was only about eight hundred and fifty dollars an ounce.”

  “What’d you do with it?” Little Frank asked.

  “This is the part you’ll either love or hate. Tripp calls it in, and tells the captain. Captain secures it, takes it back to company headquarters, and the company commander takes it to Battalion. Battalion does who-knows-what with it, and in the end, it comes up missing. Nobody knows what happened to it. But I know who didn’t get it. Me or Tripp.”

  Everyone started giving their opinions at once. Agrioli raised his hand, silenced the group and looked right at me. “Could you have taken it? I mean, would it have been possible to take it, if you wanted to?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It would have been easy.”

  “Could you have got it out of the country?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked at Cap. “What did you want to do?”

  “Didn’t matter much, boss. Tripp was in charge.”

  “If you were in charge, what would you have done?”

  “Same as Tripp.”

  Agrioli nodded.

  He looked at Jimmy Cupcake. “What would you have done?”

  “Snuck that shit right out of there. Gave each of the two kids that found it a bar each for hush money.”

  He looked at Little Frank. “You?”

  “Same as Jimmy, boss. But I’d have had them split a bar.”

  He looked at Sal. “You?”

  “I’d have put a bullet in each one of their heads, and taken it all. Dead men tell no tales.”

  Agrioli grinned, and then looked at me. “Why didn’t you take it?”

  “It would have been stealing, and I’m not a thief.”

  He kept his eyes fixed on mine for long enough that he made me uncomfortable. Eventually, I looked away, and it appeared even moments later that he was still in deep thought. As the men told stories and talked, I was left to wonder what Agrioli thought about the story, and about my decision not to take the gold.

  It was apparent he either loved it, or he hated it.

  But I didn’t know which.

  Chapter Forty

  Terra

  Michael motioned toward my plate. “How is it?”

  “It’s good, how’s yours?”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I’ve always liked veal, but this is really good.”

  “I can’t think about eating little baby lambs,” I said. “It makes me sad.”

  He chuckled. “Veal isn’t lamb. It’s beef. A calf, to be specific.”

  “It is not.”

  “It sure is.”

  I turned toward my father. “Papa? What’s veal?”

  With his mouth filled with pasta, he looked up. “Meat.”

  “What kind of meat?”

  “Beef,” he said. “Veal is beef.”

  “Is it really?”

  He glared at me.

  “Veal is beef, Terra,” my mother said
.

  I looked at Michael. “I had no idea.”

  “Now you know,” he said.

  I was shocked. Either way, I wasn’t interested in eating it, but I’d spent a lifetime believing it was lamb. I wondered how many more childhood beliefs I had that were later going to be crushed when I learned the truth.

  Santa Claus and veal were the biggest two so far.

  We were eating out, and although Peter didn’t make it, I still considered it a family dinner. After I’d moved out of my family’s home, I didn’t return regularly for their Sunday dinners. At first I did, but as time passed, the occurrences became less frequent, until I reached a point that I rarely saw them on Sundays.

  Now things were different. I looked forward to spending time with them again. I glanced at my mother, and then at my father, and wondered how many times they had similar dinners with their parents and had the same thoughts I was having.

  Being able to one day have dinner with my own children was my dream, and hopefully, in time, Michael would make my dream a reality.

  My mother nudged my father. “Tell him about the restaurant.”

  “What?”

  “The restaurant. For the dinner.”

  He set down his fork and looked at Michael. “Vito knows a guy. He’s got a restaurant a mile away from the church. Nice place. Called the Waterfront. It’s by the river. Steaks, chops, seafood, pasta. He said he’d let us use it for the rehearsal dinner.”

  “Sounds great,” Michael said. “We’d discussed it, but we haven’t decided anything yet.”

  My father looked at me.

  “I don’t care. It’s fine with me.”

  He looked at Michael.

  “It’s fine with me. If I need to pay a deposit let me know,” Michael said.

  “No deposit. It’s taken care of.”

  “I’d like to take care of it,” Michael said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “We’ll talk.”

  I looked at Michael and smiled. “It might be a nice place.”

  “It is a nice place,” my father grunted. He looked at my mother. “Did I say it was a nice place?”

  She nodded. “You did.”

  He glared at me. “I said it was a nice place. It’s a nice place.”

  Sometimes, he was impossible. Having him communicate at dinner was a nice change, though.

  I lifted a forkful of my pasta and looked at Michael and shrugged. “It’s a nice place,” I said with a Philadelphia accent.

  My father peered at me over his glass of wine and laughed. “You should be on the television.”

  “She should be a model,” my mother said. “You should have seen her in her dress. She looked so—”

  “Mother!” I shouted. “You can’t tell them. It’s a secret until the wedding.”

  “He can’t see you,” she said. “He can hear about it.”

  “I want it to be a secret.”

  My father looked at her. “She wants it a secret.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “What about the tuxedos?” My father asked. “Can we talk about them?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s not a secret subject.”

  He looked at Michael. “What color?”

  “Black.”

  “What about the shirts?”

  “White.”

  He raised his glass of wine. “I was afraid of the powder blue.”

  “I knew it,” I said. “I knew if he picked a color other than black, you’d have something to say about it.”

  He glared at me. “Tuxedos should come in the one color. Black. It’s classy.”

  “Mother says you have no taste in clothes.”

  “Terra Agrioli!” my mother shouted.

  “You don’t like my suit?”

  “I think you look nice, Papa.”

  “I have taste.”

  “Mother says she picks your suits.”

  He shot my mother a glare. “She buys them. I tell her what to get.”

  “She said she picks them, and you get them fitted.”

  “Terra!” my mother hissed. “No more secrets.”

  Michael looked at my mother, and then at me, and laughed.

  “Who picks out your suits, Michael?” my mother asked.

  “I do.”

  “Your shirts and ties?”

  “I do.”

  “You always look so nice.”

  He grinned. “Thank you.”

  “He’s got big feet,” my father said. “Have you seen his feet? They’re like the water skis.”

  “Papa...”

  “It’s true. Look at them.” He held his hands two feet apart and looked at the space between them. “Like this.”

  I shook my head.

  Michael chuckled out a laugh.

  “You know what they say about the big feet,” he said.

  “Papa!” I screeched.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. My father was making jokes at the dinner table. For my entire life, we ate when it was time to eat, and talked only after we had finished. Seeing him enjoy himself was a change I could easily become accustomed to.

  I had no idea what he saw in Michael that he didn’t see in Peter, but whatever it was, I was glad that he recognized it as being valuable. Maybe it was that he saw how happy I was, and was appreciative of what Michael offered me.

  I had no idea for sure, but for whatever reason, he was happy.

  And seeing him happy made me want to see more of him.

  We finished our meal, ordered tiramisu and then had coffee. After deciding we’d all go to my parents’ house and enjoy some wine, we got up and walked to the door.

  My father held the door, and Michael and I walked out onto the sidewalk. After he and my mother walked out, we let them walk in front of us. I admired them as they passed.

  It was as if I were seeing them in an entirely different light. She walked by his side with her head resting on his shoulder while he spoke to her so quietly that I couldn’t hear. His long strides expressed his confidence, and his strut reminded me of Michael’s.

  I decided as I watched him walk up to the door of the car that he and my mother were Michael and me, only older.

  They were every bit as in love as we were, and he was her protector, just as Michael was mine.

  He pressed the button on the key fob, unlocked the car and reached for the door. My mother glanced in my direction and smiled.

  I smiled in return as he opened the door for her.

  All of a sudden, men jumped out of cars that were parked along the curb and started screaming. Dressed in black, they came from everywhere, all carrying machine guns.

  “Don’t fucking move!” one shouted.

  “Freeze!” another said.

  One jumped out of the back of a truck. “Freeze!”

  “Don’t move, Agrioli!”

  Several men stepped from behind the building adjacent to the parking lot, all screaming and waving their guns.

  And then, the man I recognized as Special Agent Whistler stepped from behind the building. Standing between us and my father, and holding a machine gun, he was wearing black pants, a black shirt, a bulletproof ATF-labeled vest and boots. He looked like a commando, not a cop.

  This can’t be happening.

  They said they couldn’t arrest him again.

  My stomach knotted.

  I felt sick, and scared, and vulnerable, and lied to all at the same time.

  “Don’t, you’re hurting him,” I shouted as they shoved my father to the ground.

  Whistler looked at Michael. His index finger was positioned right by the trigger of his gun, and it was twitching. “Looks like you need to find a bett
er crowd to run with, Tripp. It’s Tripp, right?”

  “Fuck you, Whistle-dick” Michael snapped. “You want to know my name, arrest me.”

  “I just might,” Whistler said.

  Please, no.

  “Tell them you won’t answer any questions without your attorney present,” Michael shouted. “I’m calling him right now.”

  “It won’t do you any good this time.” Whistler locked eyes with Michael. “We’ve already served the search warrant.”

  Michael pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his phone numbers.

  “We’ve got the teeth,” Whistler said, grinning from ear-to-ear as he spoke. “He’s fucked.”

  Teeth?

  I glanced at Michael.

  His face had gone stark white.

  “Michael?”

  He fumbled with his phone, but I could tell he was upset.

  “They’re arresting him again... I don’t know. Right now, I’m standing in front of agent Whistle-dick. We just walked out of the restaurant, and they were waiting for us... Alright, I’ll tell him. Appreciate it.”

  Michael hung up.

  “Attorney’s on his way,” Michael said.

  “He’s sure going to need one,” Whistler said with a laugh. He turned around and walked toward my father.

  As they pulled him to his feet, I looked at Michael.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. “They said they wouldn’t arrest him again. They can’t keep doing this.”

  Michael placed his hands on my cheeks and looked me in the eyes. “There’s two things you need to know. One: they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. They don’t play by any rules. And two: no matter what you hear on the news, or what the outcome of this is, always remember this—your father’s an innocent man.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked. “You don’t even know what they’ve charged him with.”

  His eyes remained locked on mine.

  “Do you? Michael?” My lip began to quiver. “How do you know he’s innocent?”

  He didn’t have to respond. I could see it in his eyes.

  I may have spent my lifetime with my head buried in the sand, but as they took my father away in handcuffs—charged with a crime he apparently didn’t commit—I realized something.

  My father was willing to be arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.