Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  Ian looked pointedly over his own shoulder, and said, “Tell me the truth. Does this car make my glowing ass look fat?”

  She’d naturally followed the direction of his gaze, but now she looked up, hard, into his eyes. And she smiled back at him despite herself. She even laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

  “When things get too serious, I get a rash.”

  She pointedly looked back down at his nether regions, despite the fact that doing so made her blush. Still, she spoke coolly, dryly. “Not on your ass.”

  If Ian believed in love, that would’ve been it for him. Instantly. Enthrallingly. Eternally. Instead, he just laughed. “Thank God for that. See if there’s anything remotely clothinglike in the backseat or the trunk.” He popped it open. “ETD’s in about thirty.”

  “Minutes?” she asked.

  “Seconds.”

  “Seriously?”

  He glanced up at her. “Now she’s impressed. Note to self: Steal more cars.”

  “Borrow,” she reminded him. “These people are much too tidy. There’s nothing in the trunk. At all. Or on the backseat.”

  Of course there wasn’t. It had been that kind of day. As Phoebe closed the trunk—remembering to do it quietly, which now impressed Ian in return—he started the car with a sputter that he nursed into a smooth purr. He climbed in behind the wheel—the seats were vinyl and his still-damp skin stuck, oh joy—as she got in on the passenger side. She was still holding her cushion, and she’d grabbed the one he’d dropped as well.

  “In case we need it,” she said.

  Ian took it from her. Put it on his lap. And pulled out of the driveway.

  * * *

  When Shelly came out of the safe house bathroom, Berto was puttering around in the kitchen, opening cabinets and clinking various dishware, looking for God knows what.

  He’d turned the TV on in the living room, and a sports newscast was blaring.

  Shel found the remote and hit mute—to make things easier for whoever was watching and listening in. He sat down on the ancient La-Z-Boy sofa right in front of the main camera, which was hidden in a dusty fake pony palm tree. Whoever had planted it there without disturbing any of the dust was a true artist. He hoped he’d get a chance to meet him or her. But not even half as much as he hoped he’d soon be back with Aaron and Rory.

  Berto came out of the kitchen with a bowl of pretzels tucked into his elbow, and a beer in each hand. In cans. Because in the thuggery business, you never gave a bottle—a potential weapon made from broken glass—to an adversary. Even if that adversary was your half brother.

  “Thanks,” Shel said as he reached for one of the beers.

  Berto put the bowl on the coffee table, and complied by sitting in an easy chair that was safely in the frame of any reputable wide-angle lens.

  Shel grabbed some pretzels and pretended to drink his beer, while Berto didn’t. Pretend, that is. To drink.

  “They gonna call you soon?” Berto made it half question, half not.

  It was safe to assume that Ian or Francine had the number of the landline here. And yes, Sheldon expected them to make contact sooner or later. “If you’re expecting Aaron to show up so that you can kill him, you’re going to be disappointed,” he said.

  Berto exhaled, part laughter, part frustration. “I don’t want to kill Aaron.”

  “Could’ve fooled me,” Shel countered.

  “That was Davio who sent that guy to kill him,” Berto said. “Not me. I was at peace with the whole gay thing by then.”

  Shel put down his beer. “Wait. Are you saying that wasn’t about Aaron being a witness—”

  “To what?” Berto asked.

  “You know exactly to what,” Shelly countered. It was actually kind of amazing how quickly they’d slipped back into their teenaged-brother speech patterns. It had been years since they’d seen each other. A full decade.

  “Aaron didn’t see shit that night,” Berto said.

  The night that their lives changed. The night that Francine told their father that she was in that video, having sex with Aaron. The night that Berto had believed her, and gone after Aaron with a loaded gun—and killed someone else.

  Aaron had told Shel that he hadn’t seen what happened. He’d been locked in the trunk of Berto’s car, parked outside of a supposedly deserted warehouse, when Berto had fired his weapon—twice—and killed a homeless man. Whether the shooting was intentional—in a spasm of murderous rage—or accidental, Sheldon still didn’t know.

  It didn’t really matter, because instead of taking responsibility, Berto had called his father for help. And Davio had made the body and all of the evidence disappear.

  “Does Davio know,” Shel asked, “that Aaron was in the trunk of your car?”

  “The body’s long gone,” Berto said dismissively, putting his feet up on the coffee table. Thunk and thunk. “Trust me when I say that Davio hasn’t thought about that shit in years.”

  But Berto clearly had.

  Shel didn’t want to argue about why his half brother had made the choices that he had, so he changed the subject. “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it, that we call him Davio. Instead of Dad.”

  “Not really,” Berto said. “I mean, biologically, yeah, sure, he’s our father but … He’s my boss. My owner. My lord and master.” He laughed, but it was devoid of humor, then took another long slug of his beer, before toasting Shelly with the can. “Worst choice of my life—doing what I did that night. Taking my handgun out of the lockbox before going after Aaron. You know, I’ve thought about turning myself in. Full confession, guilty plea. If only to get Davio off your back. Because he’d go to jail, too. Aiding and abetting, coverup of a murder, conspiracy … I’m sure there’s something I’m leaving out.” He laughed then. “But sorry, I’m not going to jail for the rest of my pathetic life. It’d be different if I knew for a fact that I’d get the death penalty, because the needles would make it all finally fucking end.”

  Sheldon had to laugh his disbelief. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Not all the time.” Berto finished off his beer. “But sometimes … I kinda do.” He gestured with his chin toward Shel’s can. “You ready for another?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m almost done,” Shelly lied. “Thanks.” He tried to hold the can as if it were lighter instead of still nearly full. “So are you saying that Davio tried to kill Aaron only because of …?”

  “The gay thing,” Berto confirmed. “After you got out of the Marines, and you didn’t have to hide it anymore, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know, so …” He shrugged.

  Shelly realized that the timing was right. He and Aaron had just left the military. They’d just gotten back to the States when Francine called to warn them that Davio had put a price on Aaron’s head.

  Berto got up and went into the kitchen, raising his voice to say, “His latest thing is that you couldn’t possibly be his kid. No son of mine blah blah blah. Your mother must’ve screwed around on him.”

  Shel could barely remember his mother, who’d died when he was little. When he closed his eyes, he got a flash of someone blond and beautiful. Like Francie, only more outwardly feminine, and less emotionally stable. Always wearing dresses and high heels. Always smelling good. Almost always crying. “I wish,” he said as he set his can on the back of an end table, behind a framed picture of a palm tree.

  “I feel you. You know, you might want to fake a paternity test that proves that, I don’t know, Bruce Springsteen is your real father, send a copy to D. Prove his delusions.” Berto laughed, coming back with two more cans, and handing one to Shel before flopping back into his seat.

  It was crazy. Davio Dellarosa had two sons. One was gay; the other was a murderer. And the gay one was the embarrassment.

  Sheldon cleared his throat, and took another pretend sip of his new can of beer.

  “So you and Aaron actually got married, huh? What’s it been, five years now?”

  “Almost six,” Shel said, and he couldn’
t help but smile.

  “What’d you do, go up to Massachusetts to do it?” Berto asked.

  “Canada,” Shel said. “I was in Iraq, Aaron was in Afghanistan. We met in London and flew to Montreal. Ian couldn’t make it, but Francine was there. It was nice.”

  And that was an understatement. Sheldon could still picture Aaron, resplendent in his tux, smiling into Shel’s eyes as they held hands and promised to love one another forever. Love, honor, respect, trust, be honest with, always …

  “You didn’t invite me,” Berto said.

  “Nope.” Shel took a larger sip of his beer, wishing he could wash the taste of dread from his mouth, knowing that Aaron was going to be angry and hurt when he found out the truth—that Shelly had known, for months now, that Francine had been in contact with Ian, who was in prison.

  Shel had known, but not told Aaron.

  “Hurt my feelings when I heard,” Berto said.

  That was bullshit and they both knew it, so Sheldon didn’t respond. He just pretended to drink more, hoping that seeing that beer can at his mouth would prompt Berto to do the same.

  But Berto just sat there, looking at Shel.

  “I’m glad you’re happy,” he finally said. “You and Aaron. What you have is really special. I envy you, bro. And now, with the baby? Rory? I meant to say congratulations about that, so … congratufucking-lations.”

  Sheldon felt himself go very, very still. “How do you know his name?”

  Berto toasted him again with his beer. “Oops. I guess I might as well tell you that I know where you work, too, Junior—and that the company just moved. I know they pay you under the table, which is convenient when you’re living under an assumed name, isn’t it? I know your address, your home phone, and your cell. I haven’t managed to hack your current email. I don’t think that’s gonna happen, your security’s too tight. But I do know you sometimes go to church at the touchy-feely UCC with that rainbow flag, over by the YMCA; that a guy named Robert, from Hamilton-Ladieu on Main Street, cuts your hair—”

  “Enough,” Shel said. His head was spinning. “Jesus Christ, B., all this time, Davio’s actually been—”

  “Not Davio,” Berto said. “No, no. Up until today, he thought you and Aaron split up about six months ago. That you’re in California. Silicon Valley, working for some dot-com. And that Aaron, at last sighting, was in Manchester, New Hampshire. Working at a Radio Shack. I thought that was a nice embellishment. Radio Shack, right?”

  “Why does he think …” Shelly couldn’t finish his question because he suspected the answer, and it was too unbelievable. But then he remembered the way Berto had punched him in the stomach, pulling the blow so that he wasn’t really hurt.

  Berto, meanwhile, said it anyway. “Because that’s what I told him. I take an extra three thousand dollars from petty cash each month to pay”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“some fictional detective agency to track you guys down. But you always fucking elude us, you crazy gay bastards. Turns out you were paying off the detective to give us that cockamamie madeup bullshit while, holy shit, you were in Sarasota the entire time. Good thing the guy’s fictional, or I’d have to kill him.” Berto leaned forward. “I’m your fucking guardian angel, Sheldon. Who do you think tipped off Francine all those years ago, when Davio set up that hit on Aaron, huh?”

  * * *

  Francine couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Aaron obviously couldn’t either. He’d managed to get the baby to fall asleep, and he now stood behind Francie, along with Martell and FBI Deb, watching the conversation between Sheldon and Berto playing out on the computer screen. They’d enlarged the picture from that one camera—the one in the living room—so that it dominated the screen. The quality was unbelievably good. They could see every scrape and bruise on Shel’s face.

  As for Berto …

  The past decade hadn’t been kind to him. While he was still powerfully built, his bulk wasn’t all muscle. He needed to be more careful with his diet. Maybe not drink quite as much.

  Maybe not drink, period.

  “Is that true?” Aaron asked, lightly touching Francie’s shoulder as Berto claimed to be behind the anonymous email that had warned her about the hit.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I never knew who sent it, but …”

  “But what?”

  She said it. “I thought it might’ve been. Him.”

  At first, Francine had thought it was an attempt to get her to emerge from the woodwork where she’d been hiding, which was near Chicago at that time. Make her take a trip over to Boston where Shel and Aaron were living after being discharged from the Marines, where Berto would be waiting so that he could … what? Apologize? Kill her? Kidnap her and bring her back to his fuck-wad of a father …?

  Any of it was possible.

  But she’d dug deeper, getting in touch with an old family friend, and she’d come up with some very convincing evidence that Davio had ordered a hit on Aaron. At which point she’d taken the warning seriously.

  “And who do you think,” Berto said, after waiting a good long time for Shel to answer his first question, and getting no response, “sent that email to Francie, just last year, letting her know where to find Pauline?” He turned his head then, and looked directly into the hidden camera.

  And Francie realized that he’d known, all along, that the surveillance equipment was there, and that she was probably watching.

  “Who the hell is Pauline?” Martell murmured, and Aaron quickly and quietly gave both him and the FBI girl a bullet-point list of basics:

  1) Pauline was Francie’s much-older sister, also adopted by Davio when he’d married their mother.

  2) Decades earlier, she’d run away from private school, where she’d been sent for bad behavior, and Francine had been searching for her for years, hoping to reconnect.

  3) A year ago, Francine found her sister, eight months pregnant and addicted to heroin. Pauline gave birth to Rory, then died.

  Back in the safe house, Berto still looked right at the lens—looked right at Francie, into her eyes, and said, “It was me, France. Pauline came to see Davio, hoping for some get-the-fuck-outta-here money, or maybe some genuine help, I don’t really know. But he wasn’t home—I was. I got her out of there, fast, because I knew he’d kill her if he could—he hated her that much. And it was me who told you where she was, that she was pregnant, and that she was using again.”

  “Is that true?” Francine heard Aaron murmur from behind her, as back in the safe house, Berto looked at Sheldon.

  She’d never told Shel and Airie exactly how she’d found her long-missing and troubled older sister. “It is,” she told Aaron now. “I got an anonymous email, just like he said.”

  Francine had, at great risk, followed the email’s instructions and had finally found her sister. With Shel and Aaron’s help, and with Ian’s connections, they got her to a facility where she went on methadone for the remainder of her pregnancy. But getting that kind of medical care meant that Pauline’s whereabouts were made public. Davio would be able to find her. And, like Francine, he’d been searching for her for years.

  Berto was right about that—Davio hated Pauline with a passion. He blamed her for everything that had gone wrong with his life, including—irrationally—the untimely death of Francie, Pauline, and Shelly’s mother.

  “Rory was born addicted to methadone?” Martell asked Aaron quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got Rory thanks to me,” Berto told Sheldon now. “So yeah, I know his name. You’re welcome.” He finished off his second beer. “All kidding aside, at the time I didn’t know you wanted a kid. All I knew was that France always talked about finding her sister. And here I was with info that could make that happen. So …”

  He put his feet back on the floor and his beer can down on the coffee table with a thunk before pushing himself up and out of his cha
ir. Still, he was careful to stand so that the camera caught most of his face, even as he spoke to Sheldon.

  “These are the keys to the car.” He tossed a set over, and Shelly fumbled before catching them. “I know you probably think otherwise”—a glance to the camera—“but there’s no tracking device, no GPS on the vehicle. It’s clean. You are, too. Nothing on your clothes, nothing, well, whatever. I know you’re going to take that info with a mountain of salt. So be it. Do whatever you have to do, bro. But here’s the truth: I’m walking out of here. I’m not going to follow you, and no one else is gonna, either. There’s no one watching this place—no one knows about it. Like I told you before, I didn’t say anything to Davio, and the two men who found you were mine. They won’t talk.

  “I’m gonna walk over to that bar by the harbor—the Pelican Deck—where they have that stupid website ‘fun-cam,’ and I’m going to sit my ass down in front of it.” He looked at the camera again, steadily this time. “So you know where I am. So you know you can meet Shel or pick him up or whatever you want to do without any interference from me.”

  He stepped closer, looked right into the lens, right into Francine’s soul. “I know we’re not close to even. I know we’ll never be. But maybe this helps. Maybe just a little bit.”

  And with that, he walked away.

  Francine activated the keyboard and the mouse, tripping over herself to bring the other cameras back to the computer screen and, yes, there was Shelly on his feet in the living room as Berto walked through the kitchen and out the back door.

  “Lock this bolt behind me,” Berto called.

  Sheldon followed him into the kitchen to do just that, as a camera outside of the house picked up Berto, now a shadowy shape walking around the side of the house and down the driveway to the street.

  Sheldon looked into the camera that was hidden there in the kitchen. “I think he was serious. I think he’s really gone,” he said.

  Aaron looked down at Francine, disbelief on his face. “What the hell just happened?” he asked. “Is this real?”

  His questions were echoed in both Martell and FBI-Debbie’s eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Francie had to admit. “God, I don’t trust him.”