Law and Vengeance

by Mike Papantonio

  More than ever, Bryan hoped Gina’s recovery would be swift. “I can give you a ride to a nearby hotel,” he said.

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to work,” said Peter. “When I saw the news about Gina’s accident I took off in a hurry and mistakenly left my credit cards at home.”

  “That’s alright,” said Bryan, “I’ll pay for your room.”

  Peter reluctantly nodded. His body language suggested it was the least Bryan could do for him.

  Bryan refused to leave Gina’s room until someone else came to visit, even though Peter didn’t seem to think that was necessary.

  “You said she’s in a coma, right?” he asked.

  “An induced coma,” said Bryan.

  “That means she doesn’t know if anyone is here or not.”

  “You might be right,” said Bryan.

  The two of them said little after that, although every few minutes Peter offered up an impatient sigh as he paced around the room. Since Bryan didn’t feel comfortable speaking to Gina in front of Peter, he spent his time holding her hand. Still, the appearance of Martin Bergman was a relief to both of them.

  Bryan had met Martin on several social occasions and shook his hand.

  “How is she?” asked Martin.

  Before Bryan could answer, Peter interrupted. “You’re Gina’s boss, right? We met once. I’m her brother, Peter. Remember me?”

  Although Martin acknowledged knowing the young man, his smile was initially guarded and grew increasingly so when Peter tried to get Martin to vouch for him and endorse his idea of having a key to Gina’s place.

  Refusing to get involved, Martin said, “I think you should appreciate Bryan’s looking out for your sister’s interest.” Then he patted the younger man on his shoulder and moved by him, walking over to Gina’s bedside.

  “My poor girl,” he said, reaching for her hand.

  “I guess there’s no point hanging around here any longer,” said Peter.

  Bryan ignored him and pointed out to Martin the TV remote in case he wanted to turn it on while he sat with Gina.

  “Good idea,” said Martin. “I’ve got just the show to get Gina better on my watch.”

  The older man took the remote and turned on the TV and did a little channel surfing. His choice of shows surprised Bryan. Martin selected Fox News.

  Winking at Bryan, Martin offered an explanation. “Gina hates this televised box of butts. This will help her rally.”

  When Bryan pulled Jennifer up to the passenger loading zone at the hospital, Peter unsuccessfully tried to hide the smile on his face. As much as Gina teased him about Jennifer, Bryan knew it was all a joke. Gina wasn’t one to put on airs. Her smile was never superior, as was her brother’s at that moment.

  “Quite the chick magnet, huh?” said Peter.

  “It’s a work vehicle.”

  “Are you in construction?”

  “I’m a vet.”

  Peter looked surprised. “And this is a work vehicle?”

  “I have patients that weigh a lot. And sometimes I haul a thousand pounds or more of monkey chow, dog kibble, bird feed, and medical supplies. That doesn’t take into account the seven hundred and fifty pound alligators I occasionally have to transport.”

  Peter’s smirk was gone. He seemed to be reconsidering Bryan and the relationship he apparently had with Gina. “So, do you think you’re Mr. Right for my sister?”

  “I think so Dr. Phil.”

  “Are you good for her?”

  “I think we’re good for each other.”

  “Has Gina told you about our wonderful parents and upbringing?”

  “She’s told me a few things.”

  “Now I remember,” said Peter. “Gina called me a few months ago. At the time, she said she was dating a real animal whisperer. I didn’t expect she’d still be with the same guy.”

  Bryan smiled at Gina’s description of him. Being an animal whisperer wasn’t something he called himself. Still, people liked to comment on how good he was with animals.

  “It’s probably a good thing that you’re a vet,” said Peter.

  “Why is that?”

  “I know my sister. She can be every inch a wild animal, the kind I’m not even sure an animal whisperer can take on.”

  “Maybe your sister has changed from when you knew her.”

  “Are you sure you’re a vet?”

  “I’m sure. Why do you ask?”

  “A vet would know a leopard can’t change its spots.”

  Two minutes later Bryan pulled into the parking lot of a Motel 6. “Really?” said Peter.

  “Really,” said Bryan.

  9

  A TIME FOR TARDY JUSTICE

  The only reason the waiting room at the hospital wasn’t overflowing with employees from Bergman-Deketomis was because of a memo sent out by Deke. He requested that all staff refrain from visiting until Gina’s doctor and/or Gina deemed it appropriate. Of course, Deke exempted himself from his own memo.

  He and Bryan waited together for hours. In the late morning, a few hours into their wait, they were joined by Peter. So far there had been two updates on Gina’s condition delivered by Portia Ridge, RN. Nurse Ridge was Dr. Bray’s go-between and would have made a good drill instructor. She was an imposing figure in starched scrubs, a no-nonsense woman of color who wasn’t about to put up with fools or anyone wasting her time. Nurse Ridge told them when Gina was removed from the anesthesia and life support and later confirmed the patient was conscious and that Dr. Bray was running tests on her.

  “When will we be able to talk to her?” Deke asked.

  Nurse Ridge stared him down and said, “You may talk to her when and if the doctor says you can.”

  Another hour passed until Nurse Ridge reappeared. “Please come with me, Mr. Deketomis and Dr. Penn. Dr. Bray is ready for you.”

  “What about me?” Peter asked. “Does Gina know I’ve been waiting here?”

  Without answering, Nurse Ridge turned around and began walking away. Deke and Bryan hurried to catch up with her.

  Behind them Peter yelled, “Ask Gina if it’s okay for you to give me a key to her house.”

  “Five minutes,” said Dr. Bray, who was standing outside the door to Gina’s room. “That’s as much time as I’m giving the two of you, and the only reason you’re getting that long is because of Gina’s being so insistent. When she initially awakened, Gina didn’t remember what had occurred, but then everything started coming back to her. That’s when we were forced to restrain her. Even with her leg in traction, she was trying to get out of bed. It was only after I sedated her that she calmed down enough to start insisting that she be able to talk to the two of you. I suspect she’s holding on to consciousness now only because of that.”

  “Me first,” said Bryan.

  Deke nodded as Bryan walked by him and into Gina’s room. Her eyes instantly bored into his. They were wild, afraid. Bryan wondered if they were the eyes of a mad woman. Then he noticed how Gina was trussed up and how frightened she was. Bryan hurried to her bedside, and then, as gently as possible, worked his hands under her restraints and cupped her trembling left hand between his.

  “I was so afraid,” Bryan said.

  “You didn’t leave me,” Gina said.

  “Of course I didn’t leave you. I have been here every day. A lot of us have been. Every night the nurses have had to kick me out. But I always came back the next morning, and I stayed here for as long as they let me.”

  Gina’s eyes weren’t as wild looking now. His presence reassured her, but it seemed as if she was trying to remember something.

  “Did I hear you singing?” she asked.

  Bryan started laughing. “I did sing for you. I serenaded you with ‘Gina with the Light Brown Hair.’”

  “I don’t have light brown hair.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I don’t have any hair now, do I?” she asked.

  “Hair grows back,” he said.

 
; “I’m a mess,” said Gina.

  “In a few months this will all be behind you,” said Bryan, “and you will be as beautiful as you were.”

  With a sad shake of her head, Gina said, “I don’t think it will ever be behind me.” Then she added, “I need to talk to Deke now.”

  Deke hated hospitals. He hated the sights and the sounds, but most of all he hated the smell. All the chemicals in the world couldn’t mask the odor of death and dying. The scent from flower arrangements, he thought, only made everything worse.

  He walked up to Gina, a phony smile on his face, but she immediately put an end to his masquerade. “Angus is dead, isn’t he?” she asked. “I kept asking the doctor that, but he never answered my question.”

  “We lost Angus,” Deke consoled.

  A tear rolled down her cheek, but Gina refused to give in to grief. This wasn’t the time. She had something important to say.

  “He was murdered,” Gina said.

  “You’re certain?” asked Deke.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Her voice was getting weaker. She was finally letting the sedation take effect.

  “Okay,” said Deke.

  “He saved me,” said Gina.

  “I wouldn’t have expected anything less of him.”

  “I am going to find them,” she vowed. “I won’t let them live.”

  Deke nodded, as if what she was saying was the most reasonable thing he’d ever heard. He didn’t try to calm her or change the subject. All he said was, “I want to help.”

  That was enough for Gina. She closed her eyes and nodded off.

  Dr. Bray caught Deke on his way out. The doctor wanted to know what Gina had said.

  “She was asleep by the time I got into the room,” Deke told him, and he then excused himself.

  Deke took the stairway to avoid people. It would be easy to discount what Gina had said. She was doped up, in critical condition, and had undergone brain trauma. Notwithstanding all this, he was absolutely sure she was telling the truth.

  He also knew she was serious about wanting to find and kill Angus’s murderers. Deke had been just as serious telling her he wanted to be part of that. For years, Deke and Martin had been afraid something like this would happen. That their enemies would decide it wasn’t enough to combat them in the courtroom. Now they’d taken the battle to them, and a member of the firm’s family had been murdered.

  For some reason, Deke kept remembering this course on criminal justice he’d taken long ago in law school. Professor Hodges had been an old dinosaur who was overly fond of quoting long dead English poets. One of his favorite rhymes, which the class was forced to hear on several occasions, was from John Dryden:

  Murder may pass unpunished for a time,

  But tardy justice will o’ertake the crime.

  This time Deke wasn’t going to wait on tardy justice. He was an officer of the court, but he wasn’t going to be a servant to statutory or common laws. Hammurabi had called for an “eye for an eye.” Sometimes the old laws superseded all others. This was personal. This was family. And because of that, Deke was determined to practice the oldest law of all: the law of vengeance.

  10

  MUTUALLY ARMED DESTRUCTION

  “Are you still in Florida, Ivanhoe?”

  Ivan didn’t immediately answer, even though he’d been expecting Lutz to contact him after the car crash. He wasn’t in Florida, but didn’t want to volunteer that information. As far as he was aware, Lutz knew next to nothing about him and he wanted to keep it that way. He had actually returned to his home in Ohio that was about an hour away from where he had grown up. Of course, not even his parents knew he lived there. No one did. There was nothing special looking about his house and no one would have ever guessed about the interior “home improvements.” The house was on a lot that was almost two-thirds of an acre, allowing Ivan privacy from his neighbors.

  “This is a secure line,” Lutz told him.

  “There is no such thing as a secure line,” said Ivan.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” said Lutz.

  “You still owe me for the job.”

  Lutz had paid half in advance; he still owed the other half for the work that had been done. “That’s not happening, Ivanhoe. Our agreement was based on no loose ends. You left loose ends.”

  Ivan knew Lutz was talking about Gina Romano. He had planned carefully and decided not to abort the attack when she unexpectedly turned up in Angus Moore’s car.

  “I thought that particular loose end would only make things look that much more copacetic.”

  “Is copacetic another word for making matters a lot shittier than they were?”

  When Lutz had approached Ivan about doing “wet work,” he’d jumped at the opportunity. Ivan had always imagined going gangster. In fact, Ivan had collected quite an arsenal of weapons. His favorite pastime was playing violent video games. If there wasn’t a lot of blood, along with shootings and explosions, Ivan didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

  He’d been proud of figuring out a way of killing the lawyer without anyone knowing it was a hit. Ivan had spent hundreds of hours planning everything out to make it look like an accident. It was pure luck that Gina Romano had lived, even though he was sort of glad she had. The woman was his kind of sexy. She’d caught his eye right away among all the Bergman-Deketomis legal eagles.

  “All right,” said Ivan. “Let’s forget what you owe me.”

  “What we owe you?” said Lutz. “I am afraid you owe us, Ivanhoe.”

  “It’s too bad you have buyer’s remorse.”

  “You’re the one who’s going to have remorse unless we come to a new understanding.”

  “You don’t think I walked into the job blind, do you, Lutz? I always make it a point to know who I’m doing business with. You think I didn’t know who Strahan was in bed with? I have some great conversations between the two of you.”

  “Talk is cheap, Ivanhoe. It can be interpreted so many different ways. I like something more tangible. I’ve got something I think you’d like too. It’s a picture. How about giving me an email address where I can send it?”

  Ivan gave him the address. It was only a few seconds later that his server told him something was in his mail box. He opened the file and saw the picture of Toffey. It was clearly an “after” photo. You could see that Toffey’s brains had been blown out.

  “We knew there was no way we could get near a smart guy like you, Ivanhoe,” said Lutz. “But your little helper was another matter. All we had to do was plant a tracking device on him. You sure kept that meth head busy. Listen carefully, and see if I got this right. Dressed up, he didn’t look as much like a junkie. And you had him looking like he worked for alarm companies and fumigators. He was always scouting out locations and systems for you. That was smart of you. He was the one in the public eye while you remained concealed. He planted your bugs and cameras. And when he wasn’t doing your bidding the two of you liked playing cards and video games. But you couldn’t have a witness to what you did, could you Ivanhoe?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “We need to meet face-to-face, Ivanhoe. We need to restructure our agreement. I’d like you to come visit me in Chicago.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “We’re in business. I’m talking about a business deal. I know you have conversations and evidence that put my hand in a cookie jar, and worse. Now I’ve got something on you.”

  “If I hang, you hang,” said Ivan. “I’ve set up some fail-safe measures. If something happens to me, the dirt I have on you will surface. That’s a promise.”

  “I expected as much,” said Lutz. “We’re like the US and Russia. Each side has mutually assured destruction. That’s why it’s to our benefit to keep our relationship going, and that’s why I’d like you to come to Chicago tomorrow.”

  “Not Chicago,” said Ivan. “That’s your home field.”

  “Where then?”

&nb
sp; Ivan thought about it. “We’ll meet at Fort Wayne. Be in that city at two o’clock. That’s when you’ll hear from me. I’ll call you with where we’ll meet.”

  “Call me at this number,” said Lutz, and recited the number.

  “Got it,” said Ivanhoe.

  Lutz clicked off, and Ivan found himself staring at the picture of Toffey. He’d found Toffey early on during his surveillance of the law firm. Ivan was skateboarding around Spanish Trace, getting a lay of the land. People never gave him a second look. To all appearances, he was just another high school kid with a skateboard. No one would ever have guessed he was almost twenty-five. In fact, if it wasn’t for Ivan’s hair he probably wouldn’t have been noticed at all. Old people liked to say his white man’s ‘fro was like Peter Frampton’s when he was a rocker. Ivan wasn’t really a vain sort, but he did like his hair. There was something Samson-like about it. He felt it gave him strength.

  Ivan knew he needed a helper for his work and had been looking for the right person. Not far from his rundown motel was a 7-Eleven where Ivan got his groceries, which always included lots of candy. At least twice a day he also went for his Big Gulp fix. He’d been leaving the convenience store when Toffey called out, “Got any spare change?”

  Toffey was a tweaker. Ivan knew that with one glance. But that didn’t rule him out of Ivan’s employment pool. Ivan fronted him the change and then some, handing over a five dollar bill. As they sucked on their Big Gulps, Ivan got to hear about Toffey’s life. Ivan looked young for his years, whereas Toffey looked old. As it turned out, both were the same age. Toffey was definitely looking for work, or more to the point, was looking for money to pay for product.

  Ivan started Toffey out slow, but bit by bit he proved himself. The best way to get Toffey to do the job right was by supplying him with product after the completion of the task. He could stay on task when he knew a reward was imminent.

  Ivan knew the guy wasn’t like so-called normal people. He didn’t think like they did, or feel like they did. Ivan was aware enough to know there was something missing in him, something that made it impossible to relate to others. That made him similar to a meth-head, he thought. The desire to use meth blurred any notions of right and wrong. That’s why Toffey was fine with being the driver, even as Ivan had commandeered the big lawyer’s Lincoln and driven him to his death. Ivan promised the junkie some very special product when they were done. That’s what the guy was fixated on.