Deep Zone

by Tim Green

  “Where else would I sleep?” Ty asked.

  “Well, tonight you need to go home, and I just don’t like you being alone in the house is all,” Thane said. “After Ian drops you off, I want you to lock everything and put on the alarm and call me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ty asked.

  Thane nodded toward the TV. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about Uncle Gus. It’s all over the news.”

  “They’re in jail, Thane.” Ty didn’t want his brother to worry, so he pretended he was fine with staying alone, even if he wasn’t. “No one is going to get me. Does it hurt?”

  “A little.”

  “This is the bad part of playing in the NFL, right?”

  “I’ll have some juice,” Thane said.

  Ty reached for the cup and when it slipped, he fumbled with it to keep it from dropping. His foot hit the wheel of the cart holding the tray and sent him tumbling onto the bed and his brother’s elevated and bloody knee. Thane jumped and his glassy eyes widened. Plastic bags dangled above the bed; one dribbled saltwater into the vein in Thane’s arm. A second bag dripped painkilling medicine. In his hand, Thane held a red button he could push to make the pain medicine drip faster. He pushed it now, several times, and his eyes rolled back in his head before he closed them and lay back.

  A new nurse came through the door, young and pretty with blond hair in a ponytail. She gasped and fussed over Thane, frowning at the monitor and making a note on her chart before calling someone to clean up the spill.

  “Who are you?” she asked Ty.

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Oh, well, I think he’s going to be out of it for a while.”

  “That’s okay.” Ty sat down in the big chair he’d slept in the night before.

  The nurse went about her business, then left them alone. Ty took the TV remote and began flipping through channels. After a while he found an old movie, the kind their mom used to try and get them to watch. Ty didn’t like black-and-white films, but he’d seen a few that were all right and this one, Angels with Dirty Faces, caught his eye in the beginning because it was a couple of kids running from the police. The ending saddened Ty, even though he supposed he should have been happy that the gangster got his punishment, and he wondered if Lucy Catalone and Big Al D’Amico had started out as good kids who just happened to find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Ty tried to comfort himself that, deep down, the mobsters after his uncle might not be completely rotten.

  Thane’s dinner came, and he woke up only long enough to take a sip of juice and pump the painkiller button. Ty eyed the bloody bandage, still feeling awful for having bumped into it and wondering if he should tell the doctor when he came in a few minutes later.

  The doctor ordered the bandage removed and changed, and Ty turned away when he saw the gory slit along Thane’s knee that oozed blood and stitches.

  “I don’t like it.” Dr. Pietropaoli spoke almost to himself before he seemed to notice Ty. “Hey buddy, you can’t stay tonight. Sorry. Hospital rules. I know you got away with it last night in all the confusion, but we’re worried about an infection.”

  “I’m okay,” Ty said. “I’ve got a ride. Can I come back tomorrow in the morning?”

  “Sure,” the doctor said. “Hopefully by then he’ll be out of the woods. Nurse, would you make sure Ty gets to his car?”

  Ty wanted to ask about whatever woods his brother was in, but before he could form the question, the nurse led him gently by the arm out of the room and into the hallway. Another doctor rushed past and entered Thane’s room. Ty looked at the nurse with alarm.

  “He’ll be okay,” the nurse said. “The best thing is for you to go home and get some rest. I’ll go down with you to make sure about your ride. How old are you?”

  “No, that’s okay, you don’t have to,” Ty said. “I’m twelve.”

  “You may be able to tell Dr. Pietropaoli no, but I can’t,” she said. “I’ll watch you go.”

  When they stepped off the elevator, Ty groaned. Ian owned several limos and when he did an airport job, he sometimes brought out a car Ty called the white whale. Ty hated that because he felt incredibly silly getting into a ridiculously long white stretch limo.

  “Do you see your ride?” the nurse asked, walking Ty to the double glass doors. “It’s not that silly stretch limo, is it?”

  Ty peered out through the foggy glass at the long white limousine, then back at the nurse.

  “Yes, that’s my ride.”

  The nurse’s eyebrows went up. “That’s . . . some ride.”

  Ty raised his hand in a halfhearted wave. “Good night.”

  He trudged through the slushy snow and climbed in.

  “Hey, Ian,” Ty said, his eyes adjusting to the gloomy interior.

  The panel between the front seat and the rear of the big limo was closed.

  “Ian?” Ty said, shouting to be heard through the panel.

  It took only a second for Ty to realize that he wasn’t in the back alone.

  Halfway down the long bench seat sat a man, a scary-looking stranger Ty had never seen before. He had a bald head and thick, dark eyebrows. When he flashed a grin back at Ty, a gold tooth winked from the corner of his mouth. Fat pink rolls of neck seemed stuffed into the white collar of his shirt. Shoulders and arms bulged like cannonballs beneath a dark overcoat.

  Ty knew in his heart that whoever the man was, he’d been sent by the D’Amicos.

  Chapter Nine

  TY YANKED ON THE handle. The door flew open. He reached for the frame of the door to steady himself so he could launch himself out of the car.

  Before he could get loose, a hand gripped his collar. Ty’s hand caught the molding on the outside edge of the door, and he tried to pull free. His hand slipped, and he felt a sting as the sharp metal edge sliced open his skin.

  “Hey, kid, stop.” The man raised his voice as he tugged Ty back into his seat. The man pinned him down with thick hands.

  Ty’s own hand bled. He pressed it tight to his blue jeans. “Who are you?”

  The man reached inside his coat and flipped open a wallet. “Take it easy, kid. I’m okay.”

  Ty squinted in the darkness. Enough light seeped in through the tinted windows so that he could see the man had an FBI badge. Ty had seen one before.

  “Agent Sutherland.”

  “Where’s Ian?” Ty asked.

  “He went inside with my partner to talk to your brother and look for you.” The man nodded his head toward the hospital door. “Don’t worry, he made me call my boss and some Newark cop he knows to confirm we were the real thing.”

  As if on cue, Ian’s face appeared in the window. Beside him was a blond man in a dark suit. Ian opened the door Ty had tried to escape from. “Ty, we must have passed you in the elevator. Everything okay?”

  “The kid got spooked,” the agent said. “Tell him I’m the real deal, will you?”

  “These guys are real FBI agents, Ty. Believe me, he wouldn’t be in my car if he wasn’t. Are you okay?”

  “I cut my hand.”

  “Should we go back inside and get it taken care of?” Ian asked.

  “No, let’s just go home. I’m fine.” Ty pressed his hand even tighter against his pants leg.

  Ian nodded.

  “Ty, this is Agent Chance,” Sutherland said.

  Chance looked in and gave Ty a salute, but said nothing.

  “I’ll ride with the kid; you follow,” Agent Sutherland said to his partner.

  Ian got in up front, and the car began to move.

  “You planning on going home to your brother’s house and staying by yourself?” the agent asked.

  “I was going to lock myself in and put on the alarm,” Ty said.

  “Aren’t you only twelve?”

  “People say I act older than my age.”

  Agent Sutherland shook his head and said, “Well, we need to talk. You shouldn’t be staying alone under normal circumstances, and right now th
ings are anything but normal.”

  “Why?” Ty asked, then his stomach sank. “Is this about Big Al D’Amico?”

  “Relax. You’ll be fine,” the agent said.

  Ty felt like he’d be sick. “Then why are you here?”

  “Here’s the thing: We overheard a conversation earlier today on a wiretap, a couple of D’Amico’s people talking about a kid. They didn’t say your name or anything like that. Actually, we think they were talking about your uncle. They talk in code, but we think when they talk about ‘the birthday cake,’ they mean your uncle. They’re looking for him.”

  “But they can never find him, right?” Ty said. “If you’re in witness protection, no one ever finds you.”

  Agent Sutherland tapped a finger on his knee. “It’s very rare.”

  “But it happens?”

  “Almost never.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Just because it’s almost impossible doesn’t mean they won’t try,” Agent Sutherland said.

  “But why would they bother me?”

  “It seems they think that you and Charlotte might somehow be in contact with each other,” Sutherland said. “If you were, they could use that to find your Uncle Gus.”

  Ty swallowed and tried to keep his eyes on the agent. He wondered about Charlotte’s Facebook account, if it was possible she’d answered him, and how in the world the mob could know about it.

  Ty thought he knew the answer to his next question, but he had to ask it anyway. “And, what if they did find him?”

  “Let’s not even think about that. The big question is, have you been in contact with your cousin Charlotte?”

  Chapter Ten

  TY LOOKED AT THE agent for a minute, thinking of all the things he could say, like the FBI had no business asking him about his online activity. Something from social studies came to mind about privacy and the Constitution, but Ty knew the real problem was that he shouldn’t have tried to contact Charlotte. By doing so, he might have stirred up the hornets’ nest of mobsters.

  “I, uh, I posted something on Facebook.”

  “So, you’ve been in contact?”

  “No; not yet, anyway. It’s not even under her name. I left a message.”

  Sutherland winced. “Did she answer you back?”

  Ty shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “On your computer at home?”

  “Yes.”

  Agent Sutherland immediately dialed someone on his cell phone. It sounded like the agent’s boss. He said he had Ty, and that they were on their way to Tiger Lewis’s house, and he told whoever it was about Facebook.

  Ty couldn’t hear what the other person was saying, but before he hung up, Sutherland said, “She didn’t answer him, yet, but we’re about to find out.”

  After a moment of silence, Sutherland said, “I hope not too, boss.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes before Ty asked, “They let you have a gold tooth like that in the FBI?”

  Agent Sutherland grinned and tapped the tooth. “You like that? It’s a prop. I’m undercover, kid.”

  The agent knitted his eyebrows into a V as Ian pulled up into the curving driveway of Thane’s stone mansion and cut the engine. A dark blue Ford Five Hundred pulled in behind them.

  “That’s your partner?” Ty asked the agent.

  “Yeah,” the agent said.

  The panel hummed down, and from the front seat, Ian asked, “Ty, you want me to stay with you for a while?”

  “No,” Ty said. “I’m fine. These guys are the FBI, right?”

  “That, you can count on,” Ian said. “My friend in the Newark PD confirmed it. Agent Sutherland is going to be driving you around the next few days, but if you need me, you know you can just call.”

  Ty thanked Ian, got out, and used his key to open the side door by the five-car garage.

  “Is your partner coming?” Ty asked.

  “No, Ian will drop him off so he can get some sleep. I got the night shift.”

  Sutherland followed Ty inside, looking around the cavernous space as Ty put on the lights. The kitchen opened up into a living room the size of a small hotel lobby. Ty went to the kitchen sink and found a towel to wipe off some of the dried blood on his hand.

  “Where’s your computer?” the agent asked. “Hey, is that hand okay?”

  “It stopped bleeding. It’s not deep, like a paper cut.”

  “It made a mess of your pants. I feel bad about that. I didn’t mean to scare you in the car.”

  Ty looked down at the stain on the leg of his jeans. “It’ll come out in the wash. My computer’s upstairs. It’s a laptop. I’ll go get it.”

  Ty went upstairs and turned on the computer so that by the time he set it down on the kitchen table, it was booted up.

  “You got a wireless network in the house?” the agent asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Sutherland nodded knowingly. “That’s an easy way for a hacker to get in.”

  “But you’d have to be in the house to use it,” Ty said.

  “Or outside in a van or a car or something. Those things have some range.”

  Ty glanced out the window toward the front of the house and swallowed. His fingers danced over the keyboard. “Okay, here’s the site.”

  Sutherland peered over Ty’s shoulder. What Ty saw made him think he might throw up.

  “Is that her?” Sutherland asked. “Fern Arable? She answered you?”

  Ty could barely whisper. “Yes.”

  The agent whipped out his phone and dialed.

  “Yeah,” the agent said, “it’s Sutherland. The girl made contact with him. We got a code red.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “WHY CODE RED?” TY asked, shifting nervously in his seat.

  Sutherland put his phone away. His face was deadly serious. “You’re in contact with someone in a government witness protection program. If the mob thinks they can get to your uncle through you, you’re in danger, Ty.”

  Ty saw now that the agent had a briefcase in one hand. Sutherland reached into it and removed a large envelope. He laid it on the table, pulling out a chair for himself and sitting down beside Ty.

  “Okay,” Agent Sutherland said as he removed a folder from the envelope. “I know you’re a little kid, but I got to show you this.”

  Ty wanted to say he wasn’t a little kid, but kept quiet.

  Agent Sutherland flipped open the folder. “Take a look.”

  Ty leaned forward.

  Chapter Twelve

  ONE PICTURE SHOWED THE face of a young man with a jet-black flattop haircut. He had eyes that bulged like a lizard’s, tan skin, and a muscular neck.

  “That’s Pete Bonito,” the agent said. “He’s Big Al’s nephew, and this is Benjamin Tucci; they call him Bennie the Blade. Sometimes they call him Zipper.”

  While Bonito looked like a stone-cold killer, Bennie the Blade appeared harmless, scrawny, with pale, blotchy skin, a tuft of reddish orange hair, and eyes that looked wet and irritated.

  “Zipper?” Ty said.

  “Let’s just say he’s dangerous.”

  “You can tell me.”

  Sutherland sighed. “Okay. He uses a knife when he kills people. Opens their bellies like you unzip your jacket, just zip zip.”

  Ty clutched his stomach. “Why are you showing me these guys?”

  Sutherland cleared his throat. “These are the guys we heard on the wiretap. They seem to have filled in for Big Al and Lucy, Bonito for his uncle as acting boss, and the Blade for Lucy running the gambling books. These guys are like roaches. You squash a couple of them, and two more jump right into their spots.”

  “But they want my uncle, not me.”

  Sutherland pressed his lips together before he spoke. “You’re in touch with your cousin, and we think they may know about it.”

  Sutherland seemed to study Ty’s face. “Maybe we’re wrong, but if we’re not, they’re going to try to get to you before your uncle c
omes into town. This is going to be their only chance to get at him until the trial. If they could find out the details of his trip, it wouldn’t be hard for them to make a plan that would silence him for good. That’s why I’m going to keep an eye on you, and I want you to know what these people look like so you can keep an eye out yourself. With your uncle out of the way, the government has no case. Big Al and Lucy would go free tomorrow.”

  “But you’re just guessing they want to talk to me?” Ty asked.

  “It’s more than a guess.” Agent Sutherland grimaced. “The Blade said he’d pay the kid a visit.”

  “But that could be Bennie the Blade’s own kid they were talking about,” Ty said, feeling suddenly hopeful.

  Then Sutherland shook his head and said, “The Blade doesn’t have any kids. In fact, he hates kids.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “THEN I’VE GOT TO hide, like Charlotte,” Ty said, looking around at the beautiful home he lived in with his brother and fearful at the thought of going into hiding and having to live once again with a grouchy aunt and an obnoxious uncle who drank too much beer.

  “They’re not going to hurt you,” Agent Sutherland said, shaking his head. “They’ll just try to scare the information out of you, but I’m not going to let that happen. And once we get past this grand jury testimony, they won’t be bothering with you.”

  “Why won’t they?”

  “If they think you know something? Trust me, they’ll make their move before your uncle testifies to the grand jury. Then they’ll see us and they’ll know that we know.”

  “I don’t see how that makes me safe,” Ty said with a moan.

  “When they know we’re on to them, they’ll also know that we’re going to move Gus to a new place and cut off any communication between you and your cousin.”

  “They have to move again?” Ty felt horrible.

  Sutherland nodded. “You don’t think we can keep them where they are, do you? The whole thing’s been compromised. So, once he’s been here and gone, you’ll be safe. No more Facebook, though, right?”

  “No.” Ty shook his head. “Thursday. Three days.”

  “Yeah, well, you better get to sleep, right, kid? You sure that hand is okay?”