Deadly Promise

by Brian Crawford

  “Go, L.T. Get the bitch!” Marshall yelled.

  “Not hardly.”

  “Damn you. She’s getting away. You have to get her.”

  “Special Agent Marshall,” I said in a firm, soothing tone, looking her straight in the eye as I spoke. “How many times have I told I don’t care about Shelley Baxter or George Mansfield? My goal has always been, and still is, to save my friends.”

  ***

  The luxury of being alive afforded Marshall the opportunity of being angry. That’s what I told her the next day in the hospital when Jessica and I went to visit her while she recovered from her near-fatal injury. Shelley Baxter had stabbed her high in the right thigh, hitting one of the branches coming off the femoral artery while missing the all-important main arterial supply to the lower extremity. Marshall was lucky to be alive, and she knew it.

  “You know, McCain, I tried like hell to trap Baxter’s knife like you told us. I almost had it, too, but then her crazy brother pistol-whipped me in the side of the head.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, Marshall. We were planning on teaching that to the class next week,” I joked.

  “You didn’t trap the knife, either. I saw that crazy bitch stab you in the side. Twice. How come you aren’t sitting in a hospital bed next to me?”

  “I didn’t want to make Jessica jealous. She thinks you have a strange fascination with me.”

  Marshall laughed. “I am going to miss your wit, L.T. McCain.”

  Jessica said, “You should have seen him before he lost his inner voice. It was like living with two sarcastic smart-asses.”

  “About that inner voice thing, I have a theory on that. Let me know if you want to hear it.”

  “I guess I should feel flattered; I have a blonde, a brunette, and now a redhead worrying about me.” Agent Marshall looked at me confused. “My mother is a brunette.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “Seriously. Why don’t you look injured?”

  “I’ve got 13 stitches to show for Baxter’s attempts. To answer your question, her blade hit a rib both times and never penetrated any deeper. Nothing more.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? Baxter stabbed a man through a bulletproof vest in Wisconsin.”

  Jessica said, “The doctors said he was too dense for the blade to do any real damage.”

  “My bones were too dense. They were talking about my bone density.”

  “You tell it your way, and I’ll tell it my way. You went into battle against two gun and knife-yielding psychotic killers armed with nothing but your bare hands. That sounds pretty darn dense to me.”

  “I thought about turning around and letting the Baxters do their thing, but the FBI saved my life last year, so I felt obligated.”

  “Is that it?” Marshall quipped. “Regardless, thank you for coming to my rescue, McCain. I understand that you were questioning my motivation in the Baxter case right up until the end.”

  I cast Jessica a dirty look. She huffed at me, dismissing me with a flick of her hand.

  “Yeah, about that. You’re weird, Special Agent Marshall,” I replied jokingly.

  Marshall laughed. “Alright, maybe I deserve that. But we’re good now, right?”

  “We’re good.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. It’s nice to know that getting stabbed in the thigh and bleeding like a stuck pig was enough to convince you that I’m one of the good guys. Otherwise, it would have all been for naught. I haven’t seen it,” Marshall said with a nod to her right thigh. “How did it look before they sewed me up?”

  “Bloody.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Were you ever planning on pursuing a career as a bikini model?”

  “No.”

  “Then you should be okay.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Stick to modeling skirts, and you should be fine.”

  Jessica said, “I think she wants to know if it’s hideous or not. If some lucky guy might be repulsed by it.”

  “An inch to the left, and you would have been dead. You needed five units of blood and three hours of surgery, Ann. I’d say it doesn’t look too bad. At least, I didn’t have to cauterize it for you.”

  “In other words, it doesn’t look as bad as yours. I can live with that. By the way, Boyd was by here earlier. He wanted to thank me for everything I did for him to get the FBI off his back. He also wanted to apologize for helping Baxter in the first place. I think he felt guilty about what happened.”

  Jessica said, “Well, he was sleeping with the enemy. Ha, ha, see what I did there.”

  Marshall groaned at Jessica’s pun. A direct reference to the movie Sleeping with the Enemy, a story about a wife who fakes her death to escape her abusive husband, then kills him at the end when he finds her. The story seemed similar on paper but not in tone. Maybe George and Roger Mansfield had tried to kill Shelley Baxter. Maybe they hadn’t. Neither of them was alive to tell us otherwise. The similarities stopped there. Shelley Baxter was hardly a victim. She meticulously planned and strategically manipulated people while remorselessly leaving a trail of dead bodies behind her and her brother.

  The FBI put the D.C. area on lockdown after one of their own was nearly killed. Local police put up roadblocks. Transit police were notified at the bus depots and train stations. The airport authorities were put on alert. I wasn’t hopeful. Neither was Agent Marshall. Baxter was smart. She had means. She had experience.

  Shelley Baxter and her brother got away. The FBI was able to locate approximately 50,000 dollars of Mollie Chrisman’s money, but there was no sign of the millions Admiral Buie mentioned she made as a Forex trader. She apparently laundered that money as well as she laundered the ransom money seven years earlier. All that remained of the brother and sister team a month later was Evan’s bar, Shelley’s smashed up BMW, and a place on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

  Shelley Baxter killed her husband. She had her millions. And her freedom. She won. I had my friends, old and new. So had I.

  CHAPTER 32

  November 11, Veteran’s Day was decided upon before we even started our plan. Boyd fully appreciated my desire to go back to the beginning, to coincide my visit with Robert Deluca on the day marking the one-year anniversary of my first encounter with Tony Mancini and Anthony Genovese. Operation Offer He Can’t Refuse took a month of planning and preparation. Not only did we have to watch Deluca to determine his patterns, but we had to watch for any federal agents keeping surveillance on the Mafia lieutenant.

  From the beginning, I insisted upon a dramatic flair to the operation. Something so big that Deluca felt any further threats against my family or me would result in a ten-fold response. Our final plan was exactly that. Big. Bold. Overwhelming. And dramatic.

  If today doesn’t work, I will have to kill him.

  “Boss. Yes, I know it’s five in the morning. There’s a fella here at the front gate, a Navy officer, carrying a bunch of red balloons.” The man speaking was a security guard named Frank sitting inside a small shack at the front gate to Robert Deluca’s property minutes outside South Chicago. He was talking to his boss on an intercom line. “He says the balloons are for you.”

  I cleared my throat loudly to get his attention. “I said 11 red balloons. It’s very important that you tell Deluca that L.T. McCain is here to deliver 11 red balloons.”

  “Correction, boss. He says it’s important to tell you he has 11 red balloons. Yes, boss, regular balloons. Yes, boss.” The young guard put down the phone and addressed me. “It’s five in the morning, and he didn’t order any balloons.”

  “I know what time it is. Listen, Frank. You got the number of balloons right this time. But Frank, you forgot to tell him who is carrying the balloons. They say the third time is a charm. Eleven balloons, Frank. Tell him L.T. McCain, Frank.”

  “I know how to relay a message.”

  “Then, please, for the love of all things holy, prove it.”

  It was easy to see why Frank was working the night s
hift.

  In the last month, I had performed a lot of research on the man I felt was behind my troubles within the Chicago Outfit. Robert Deluca was a capo, short for caporegime, within the Outfit. In other words, he was someone who carried a lot of clout and power within the organization. Deluca had a crew of 14 known soldiers, or made men, under him. Also, he was known as someone with a lot of influence with many Chicago aldermen, which explained his association with Scott Beyers.

  Deluca’s exact status within the organization was easy to determine. Anyone who followed organized crime in Chicago knew who the boss, the underboss, and the capos were. Learning what I really needed took much longer. I couldn’t ask my friends at the FBI or NSA for help. Determining Deluca’s daily routine took feet on the ground and a small, trustworthy crew of helpers. It took hours of surveillance and hundreds of photographs. In other words, it took my friend Boyd Dallas, assisted by Jessica when she could, and two men on loan from Kent Rutherford.

  The guard pulled the phone away from his ear. “Mr. Deluca would like you to wait inside the gate. He will be out in five minutes.”

  “Thank you, Frank. And Frank, please tell Mr. Deluca to bring his cordless phone if he has one. Someone will be calling him, and he will want to take that call.”

  The guard shut the glass to the guard shack as he relayed the message before opening the front gate. I was inside. Part two of Operation Offer He Can’t Refuse was complete. Part one was already in place.

  The guard ushered me inside, asking me to stop shortly after entering. “I gotta make sure you’re clean.” I acknowledged consent and let him pat me down for weapons. “Alright, you can stand over there. Stay off the boss’s grass.”

  Deluca didn’t rush right out to greet me. Five minutes turned into ten. Ten turned into fifteen. Probably his subtle way of letting me know he didn’t answer to me. I stood in the driveway, waiting patiently; we had allowed for an extra hour in case Deluca was resistant to my request for a meeting.

  The 52-year-old Deluca exited the front door of his home looking like he was ready for a day at the office, or wherever a Mafia capo did his business. His straight black hair was slicked back. Clean shaved. Suit and tie. I half expected him to meet me wearing an expensive tracksuit; no wonder it took him ten minutes. Meeting with me was important to Deluca. That seemed like a good sign. The smaller man following him in an expensive track suit was John Carlisi, the head of Deluca’s security team. What Carlisi lacked in size, he made up for in attitude and a penchant for violence.

  “It’s five in the morning,” Deluca said as he approached. He didn’t try to hide his obvious irritation. “L.T. McCain, I assume you have a good reason for being here at this hour.”

  “I do.”

  “Then spit it out, boy.”

  “It’s Veteran’s Day.”

  “So what?”

  “This day doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “Did you wake me so I could thank you for your service? You could have waited a few hours. I might have waved at you in the parade.”

  “I’m not in the Veteran’s Day Parade. I’m wearing this uniform for you. I hoped we might talk, Navy Lieutenant to Mafia Lieutenant.”

  Deluca turned to Carlisi and laughed derisively. “You hear this guy? Lieutenant to lieutenant, I like that.”

  “Deluca, before we get started, do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Scott Beyers’ stepson. The one with the weird name. Legend something.”

  “Thaddeus.”

  “What?”

  “The T is for Thaddeus. And Scott Beyers is no longer part of our family. I can’t say I’m sorry to see him go.”

  “Come on, son. At least he had good taste in women. Is your mother still a looker? Where’s she hitching up now that Beyers is out of the picture? I’d like to give her a call.”

  Deluca was trying to get under my skin. If he knew how much I wanted to beat him unrecognizable, he might have taken a more cautious approach. Then again, he probably thought he had the upper hand.

  “Here and there,” I replied through gritted teeth. “I’m fairly sure you run in different circles.”

  “You never know; I’m quite the cosmopolitan.”

  “If you’re still interested after the message I came to deliver, I’ll let her know you’re available.”

  If I don’t deviate from the plan and kill you right here and now.

  “That’s right. You have a message for me. Something to do with these balloons.”

  “I’ll get right to the point. I have 11 red balloons for you, each with its own message. It is crucial to remember there are 11 balloons. Before we start, are you familiar with the song ‘99 Red Balloons’ from 10 years ago?”

  “Yeah, that German girl with the hairy armpits sang it.”

  “Your knowledge of pop culture surprises me.”

  “I told you, I’m a friggin’ cosmopolitan.”

  “Well, the song factors into the message. A smart cosmopolitan guy like you will grasp and appreciate the meaning. I promise.” A friendly smile formed on my face as I said cosmopolitan.

  Deluca laughed. “Look at this guy,” he said to Carlisi. “He’s got a flair for the dramatic. Alright, Thaddeus, I’ll bite.”

  I separated one of the balloons from the others, one I had discreetly marked ahead of time, and handed it to Deluca. “This balloon is the first message, Mr. Deluca.”

  Deluca squinted his eyes at me, trying to read me as I stood there with a friendly smile on my face. He looked at Carlisi, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled back at me before reaching out to accept the balloon.

  I waited for Deluca to step back. “And now for the first message,” I said while raising my right hand in the air, my pointer finger up to indicate the number one.

  Pop!

  The balloon Deluca was holding exploded a split second before the sound of a rifle report rang through the air. Deluca, Carlisi, and the guard instinctively hunched down to make themselves smaller targets.

  “Deluca, eyes on me!” I yelled as they started to run for cover.

  Deluca stopped, looked at me, and started to reach inside his suit jacket. “You’re dead. Dead, I tell you.”

  “You might want to rethink your next move,” I said, pointing to his chest.

  “Screw you.”

  “Boss,” Carlisi said loudly and urgently. “Stop!”

  Deluca paused with his right hand inside his jacket. “What?”

  Carlisi pointed at Deluca. “Um...um...um,” he said while moving his hand around in little circles pointed at Deluca’s torso.

  Deluca took his subordinate’s hint and looked down. His eyes widened as he spotted numerous red laser dots moving across his chest.

  “I have 16 snipers waiting for you to do something stupid — 12 on you and the rest on your buddy here. Yeah, I came heavy. Carlisi, I need you to untuck your shirt slowly, put your hands up as high as you can reach, then turn completely around. Deluca, don’t move a muscle.”

  Carlisi did as ordered. I turned to the guard. “He has a pistol. Bring it to me. I cannot stress the word slowly enough. At least two of the men I brought have very itchy trigger fingers.”

  The guard approached Carlisi, carefully pulled the pistol from the back of his pants, and carried it back to me, holding it with two fingers. I grabbed the pistol and thanked the guard.

  “A .380. What is the mob’s fascination with weenie guns? Now, I want both of you on your bellies,” I said, gesturing towards Carlisi and the guard. “Hands out wide. Deluca, you remain standing. Unbutton your jacket and drop it to the ground. Slowly.”

  Deluca’s head of security and the night guard dropped to their bellies while Deluca complied with my request.

  “Where’s the gun, Deluca? A guy like you has to have a gun.”

  “It’s in the jacket. Inside pocket.”

  I walked to his discarded jacket, kicked it with my foot until I felt the gun, and kicked the jacket across the driveway. “I told you
I came here to deliver a message. Or should I say, finish a message that your men were supposed to deliver. Welcome to hell, Robert Deluca.”

  “You are a goner. You know that, right?”

  “What are you going to do, Deluca? Take me out for an airing. Fit me for a cement overcoat. Maybe a set of cement shoes. How about a nice Sicilian necktie? Oh, wait, one of my favorites — a barrel murder. You guys still stuff people in a barrel and let them rot?”

  Deluca defiantly stood in front of me, brow furrowed, nostrils flared. “You better end me now.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Deluca. Or do tempt me. Yes, please tempt me. That would please me. A lot.”

  The capo maintained his aggressive posture. “I’m not kidding. It’s the only chance you have of living to see 1995.”

  “Deluca, I’m gonna party like it’s 1999...when it’s actually 1999. See what I did there? Another song reference. Which reminds me, it’s time for balloon number two.”

  I picked through the balloons until I found the one numbered two and offered it to Deluca. He refused to accept it.

  I let go of the helium-filled balloon and watched it fly away. “Fine. You should know there was a message inside the balloon. It said ‘Listen to What the Man Said.’ Great song by Paul McCartney. Do you know it?”

  “You’re dead, I’m telling you.”

  “Deluca, I don’t think you are grasping the importance of the theme today. All the song references and the fact that I only brought 11 balloons. The song title is ‘99 Red Balloons.’ You should be asking yourself where the other 88 might be.”

  I paused to let my statement sink in before extricating another balloon from the bundle and offering it to Deluca. “Take it, asshole. I’m not asking this time.”

  Hesitantly, he accepted the balloon and quickly stepped away from me.

  “Pop it. Find the paper inside and read the address on the paper.” He looked at me like he thought I was crazy. “Go ahead, squeeze it. Or should I get one of my snipers to do it for you?”

  He grabbed the balloon with both hands and squeezed the balloon, diverting his head before it popped as if he was scared of the imminent pop. The note inside fell to the ground. Deluca picked it up and read it quietly, his eyes widening as he recognized the address written on the note. His defiant stare, his cocky, contemptuous posture instantly wilted in front of me.