FIGHT (20 page)

Gabe instantly responded:

“Five at the office and 7 at Little Italy.  Gotcha.  I’ll be there.”

They hung up without another word between them. 

Gabe clutched his cell phone and stared at it like it was ticking bomb glued to his hand.  Right when he wanted out of this mob life so desperately, he was being thrust back into it.  He didn’t want to serve as Victor’s diplomat to the Filippos.  But he couldn’t refuse this order from Victor, not when he needed Family muscle to protect him from the Filippos’ growing forces.  He glanced away from his phone and saw August running around their hotel room pushing a toy car and making loud engine sounds. 

God, what I have done to you?
He reviewed his strange history with the kid.  He’d tried to rescue August from a life in foster care and ensure his adoption with the Hudsons, only to discover that August didn’t want to live with them.  Then, he’d grown so attached to the kid that he’d implicitly agreed to let August live with him, but that was turning out to be a huge problem.  Both of them could’ve been killed when the Filippos had broken into his apartment.  And after his meeting with the Filippos tonight, August would be in constant danger so long as he remained with Gabe.  As soon as the Filippos caught sight of August with him, they’d assume a Family connection, and they’d think August too was the eventual heir of the Adelaides’ business.  His mere presence with August was making the kid dangerous enemies, and the kid had no idea.  He felt pangs of guilt for putting the boy in jeopardy.  He’d never intended to do that.  He slid his phone into his pocket, walked into the hotel room’s kitchen, and poured himself a drink.  He tried to shove aside thoughts about August’s long term interests, because he had a more pressing matter, finding a babysitter.  He couldn’t take August with him to meet the Filippos, and he was worried about August staying by himself.  If the Filippos had been watching him, staged an ambush and broke into his hotel room while he was out tonight… he didn’t allow himself to think of the possibilities.  No, he couldn’t leave August in the hotel.  He had to find someone to watch him.  But who?  The Ringers came to mind, but he wasn’t keen on the idea.  Not after his fight with Bill Ringer.  He feared the fat ass would hurt August in retaliation.  That only left one option.

Gabe circled the room endlessly, as August, oblivious to Gabe’s adult world of worry, continued playing with his car.  Gabe silently rehearsed his end of the conversation.  He only had one shot at this, and he knew he had to get it right.  He drew in a deep breath, retrieved his phone, and dialed Bruce Hudson.

“Hello?” Martha answered.

“I need to speak with Bruce.”

Martha didn’t recognize the voice.

“One moment, I’ll get him.”

Gabe ground his teeth, as he waited for Bruce to pick up.  He knew the consequences of taking August to the Hudsons.  He’d never see him again.  It was illegal for him to have custody of the kid, since he wasn’t a licensed foster parent.  Once he dropped off August at the Hudsons, the police would be involved, social workers would be involved, everyone in the Massachusetts Department of Child Protective Services would be involved, and August would be shuffled off to a witness protection program to hide him from the mob.  He hated this, but there was no other option.  He wouldn’t allow the Filippos to get to August, and if that meant severing his ties with the kid, then he’d do it.  Hopefully, it wasn’t too late. 
Hopefully
,
they haven’t seen August with me yet.

“This is Bruce.”

“Hello, Bruce.”

Bruce froze, knowing the voice and sensing trouble. 

“This is Gabriel Adelaide.”

“I know.  What do you want?”

“I want you to take care of August.”

Bruce felt his heart skip a beat:     

“I don’t understand.”

“I need you and Martha to take care of August.  Listen, I don’t have time to explain much, but here’s a summary.  I have to cut a deal with the Filippos tonight.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Bruce interrupted, recalling his conversation with Victor.

Gabe paused.  He wondered how Bruce knew this, but he didn’t ask.  He went on:

“I’m worried about August.  If they see him with me, they’ll think we’re related and try to kill him.  You have to take him.”

Bruce couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  It made no sense.  What was Gabe’s angle?  Gabe claimed to be paying for his surgery so that he’d be healthy enough to adopt, and now Gabe was dropping August off in his custody… and for the alleged reason of protecting the kid?  It made no damn sense at all.

“You can bring August to us.  That’s fine,” Bruce agreed.

“But you can’t have the police present, or that’ll attract attention and possibly the wrong kind of attention.”

Ah, here it comes!
Bruce reasoned. 
It’s a setup.
 
He’s trying to lure me into an unarmed situation.

“I’ll gladly take August off your hands,” Bruce offered, “but we’re meeting in public on my terms.”

“That’s not happening.  You aren’t seeing the severity of the threat.  If we meet in public, I could be followed."

“Not happening. We meet in public, or we don’t meet at all.”

While Bruce was terrified for August, he didn’t trust Gabe to keep his word, and he feared for Martha’s safety.  For his part, Gabe just needed something to work out soon, as time was quickly passing.

Gabe racked his brain for a backup plan. He opted to play along:

“Fine.  We can meet in public.  Where do we meet?  And can we meet now?  I have to be somewhere at 5.”

Bruce glanced at his watch.  It showed 3:30. 

“Sure, we can meet now.  Boston Common in twenty minutes?”

“Sounds good,” Gabe agreed.

As soon as Gabe hung up, Bruce dialed Richard Dorsey and brought him up to speed.

“Good choice,” Richard said.  “He won’t hurt you at a public park loaded with witnesses.  We’ll have guys disguised in plain clothes ready to grab him for kidnapping August Middleton.”

Richard called the chief of police and arranged for cops to hustle to Boston Common.

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Gabe stood for a few minutes, watching August play for what he knew would be the last time.  He sighed deeply.

“Hey, buddy, we need to talk.”

August heard the strain in Gabe’s voice and pushed his car aside.

“We don’t have much time.  Follow me, and I’ll explain as we drive.”

August abandoned all interest in his toy car and made a mad dash to his hotel bed.  He reached under his bed and grabbed Zoggy.  At five, he’d formed his first official policy: never evacuate without Zoggy.

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August cried.  Riding shotgun in Gabe’s Benz, he clutched Zoggy harder than he ever had, and he cried the tears of someone who was losing his parent, again.

“It won’t work!  I’m sorry, but it won’t work.  Those people who broke into my apartment were trying to kill me!  And they would’ve killed you too, if you’d been there!  You can’t stay with me.  I’m sorry.”

No matter what Gabe said to justify what he was doing, all August heard was, “You can’t stay with me.”  Everything else was irrelevant, and Gabe’s many words were unable to stop August’s torrent of heartbroken sobs. 

“You just have to believe me, August.  It won’t work.  I can’t make it work.  If I could, I would.  I swear to God I would.”

Gabe was upset too.  As he shifted into fifth gear to pick up speed, he realized it was now or never.  It was time to come clean:

“Look, I need to be real with you.  This whole time I’ve been interested in you because of my own past.  I found out about you because I’m a bad person.  I did some bad things, and Bruce Hudson put me on trial for those bad things.  When I was on trial, I sent a spy to gather dirt on Hudson…” (Gabe wasn’t sure how much of this August understood.  Still, he needed to say it, if only to hear the confession himself)  … “and while I was spying on him, I learned he was trying to adopt you.  That’s how I heard about you.  I didn’t know what to think about you at first.  I hated Hudson, and I was mad as hell that he was trying to throw me in prison.  But then I remembered,” (Gabe fought back a lump in his throat)… “I remembered my own adoption, and I found myself growing soft on Hudson for being willing to take care of you.  I always wanted someone to take care of me after… After I was kidnapped.  The more I learned about you, you know with your dad killing your mom and all, I just… I just didn’t have it in me to hurt you or Hudson any longer.  You changed me.  You didn’t mean to, and you didn’t know it, but you did.”

Gabe frantically swerved left to pass a car in front of him and then swerved right to pass yet another one.  He never took his eyes off the road, because it was easier to hear himself say this without looking at August. 

“You reminded me of who I once was, before I became an Adelaide, before all this shit I did, before I started killing.”

This last confession caught August’s attention and temporarily shocked him out of crying.

“You killed?  A person?” August asked through blurry eyes, looking up from Zoggy’s neck and staring intently at Gabe.

“Yes, I killed a person.  Several people. You see, I’m no better than your dad.  I’m no better at all.  You deserve a better family than me, and the Hudsons would be a better family for you.”

August processed the bluntness of Gabe’s confession with the first adult like thoughts he’d ever had:

“Are you sorry for killing?”

“I wasn’t before you came along.  But, yeah, I’m sorry now.  I’m very sorry now, but being sorry doesn’t change what I did.  Get what I’m saying?”

Neither spoke for several minutes, as Gabe continued racing past slower cars.  Knowing he now had August’s rapt attention, he returned to justifying taking him to the Hudsons:

“You don’t belong around me, and I was wrong to ever think otherwise.”

August said nothing. 

“I owe you an apology.  I shouldn’t have lifted you from the Ringers’ home.  That was a mistake.  I just… I just didn’t like the way they treated you.  I knew what it was like not to have real parents and to have a really shitty childhood, and hearing about you… I didn’t want you to go through that. But what I did was illegal.  It was illegal for me take you out of your foster home.  I planned on taking you to the Hudsons, but that was when I thought you wanted to live with them.  After I found out you didn’t wanna be with them, well, I was stuck.  I never meant for you to stay with me for as long as you did.  I didn’t mean to put you in harm’s way, and I feel goddamn awful about that.”

“Are people going to kill me?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Gabe shocked himself with his level of candor.  He probably should’ve answered, “Absolutely not!” when August asked if he was going to be killed, but Gabe was in a strangely honest mood.

“Will they kill you?” August wanted to know.

“Yeah, but probably not anytime soon.  Guys don’t retire from what I do.  They get killed.  That’s how they go out. So, yeah, eventually they’ll kill me. And I don’t want you around when that happens.”

Gabe took in a heavy breath and braced himself:

“I need you to forgive me.  I need you to forgive me for fucking things up for you.  I need you to forgive me for making things complicated for you.”

He waited for a response, but he didn’t get one.

“I need you to forgive me for being no better than your dad.  I need you to forgive me for agreeing to let you live with me and then going back on my word.  I need you to forgive me for everything.”

August still didn’t speak.

“You may not be ready to forgive me now, and that’s okay.  But I need to know that one day you’ll try to forgive me, because I never meant to mess your life up.”

August buried his face in Zoggy again, and Gabe assumed he’d gone back to crying.  Gabe didn’t try to change the subject or lighten the mood.  He figured he deserved the awkwardness of having his plea for forgiveness silently rejected.  But then, August lifted his head off Zoggy’s neck, and Gabe saw he hadn’t been crying:

“Zoggy says God wants me to forgive you, and I do.”

As they sped down the highway, the two swapped roles.  The torrential downpour of tears now came from Gabe.

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Martha busied herself with dirty dishes.  She tried not to think about what was happening, and furiously scrubbing dishes was the only outlet of frantic energy she could find.  Everything was falling through.  Just this morning, she’d stopped by St. Francis’ Assembly to say an extra prayer of thanks for Bruce’s upcoming colectomy.  That was before Gabe had called this afternoon about dropping off August.  That was before her husband, who’d come home early from work because of his colitis, had rushed out the door to meet Gabe at Boston Common.  That was before she’d heard Bruce shouting in his cell to Richard Dorsey that “It’s gotta be a setup! He’s trying to kill me, and I won’t let him meet me here.  I won’t involve Martha.”

She caught her tear soaked expression in a metal cookie sheet and dashed it with sudsy water to avoid seeing her sorrow.  There wasn’t going to be a colectomy for Bruce, if Bruce and Richard were on their way to Boston Common to arrest the guy paying for it.  And that’s
if
they arrested him.  What if they couldn’t arrest him?  What if he had too many goons?  What if the mob got the better of Bruce and Richard?  Familiar thoughts that used to keep up her up at night during Gabe’s trial replayed in her mind.  At the trial’s conclusion, she’d breathed a silent prayer of relief that Bruce had failed to successfully prosecute Gabe, though she never told Bruce that.  She’d believed the Adelaides wouldn’t seek revenge for a failed prosecution.  But they were seeking revenge, she thought.  They’d kidnapped August.  Now, they were trying to kill Bruce and possibly her.  She felt like a fool for telling Bruce to go ahead with the surgery that Gabe had offered to pay for.  She hadn’t accomplished anything other than leading a lamb to the slaughter, by encouraging her husband to undergo an operation paid for by the mob. 
They would’ve killed him in the hospital, just like they might kill him this evening
.  She washed the cookie sheet in the same circular pattern in the same spot for nearly ten minutes, before realizing her repetitive behavior.  When she lifted it out of the sink to rinse it off, she caught another glimpse of her haggard look, of her crinkled watery eyes… and it set her off.

She threw the cookie pan against the side of the fridge and it slapped off of the appliance’s side and landed on the floor with a wobbling metallic sound.  She grabbed her wash cloth from the sink and slammed it on the cookie sheet’s backside and kicked both against the kitchen wall.  She picked the cookie sheet up and beat a kitchen table chair with it, before finally collapsing to her knees, as fear induced adrenaline overtook her ability to stand.  She rocked back and forth, perched on her knees, crying, clutching the cookie sheet and wishing it was her husband. 

She prayed. 

She prayed for Bruce to make it home tonight.  She prayed for Bruce to have courage to live with colitis for the rest of his life.  She prayed for forgiveness, forgiveness for encouraging Bruce to trust the mob to pay for removing his colon.  She prayed with such great concentration that it took several repeated rings of her doorbell before she realized that someone was at her door.  Her first instinct told her that she was in no mood for company, and she tried to ignore it.  But the doorbell continued.  Incessantly.  The doorbell rang so much that she eventually grew worried.
What if it’s news about Bruce?  How long has he been gone? 
She pulled herself off her knees with the arms of the nearest kitchen chair and sprinted to the door.

August stood before a completely stunned Martha, holding Zoggy. 

He didn’t know what to say.  She didn’t know what to say.  They just looked at each other.  An hour before, neither had expected for their worlds to collide again.  In her anguish over Bruce, she’d completely forgotten about August.  She looked up and down the street in front of her home, looking for signs of how he’d arrived, but there were none.

“Gabe says I need to live with you.”

Martha absorbed this news with quiet shock.  Unable to process the fact that August was on her doorstep, while her husband and many cops were on their way to Boston Common to meet Gabe (who’d promised to turn over August to Bruce at Boston Common just to get Bruce and the BPD away from the Hudsons’ home), she silently motioned for August to come in.  She quickly scanned the street again to make sure the mob wasn’t around, and nothing seemed out of place.

“How did you get here?”

“Gabe brought me.”

“Why?”

“He says it’s too dangerous for me to live with him.  He says I need to live with you.”

“Are you hurt?  Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

She repeated this last question many times, in various formations, wanting to make sure he wasn’t harmed.  When she finally concluded that he was alright, she led him to the kitchen table and made him something to eat.  It was the only thing she could think to do, as she waited for Bruce to return. 

Hours later, Bruce returned.

Bruce cursed his luck, as he pulled into his driveway. 
The damn bastard must’ve known I was bringing enforcements.  He got wind of it somehow and backed out
. He assumed that if his team had made it to Boston Common sooner they would’ve had more time to make their sting operation discreet.  As it turned out, or so he thought, all these off duty cops were running around in plain clothes trying to look calm and casual, while they obviously combed the park over with noticeable panic.  He cursed his poor luck again, as he unlocked the front door and let himself in.
We needed more time to get set up, but Adelaide said to meet him ASAP. 
He wondered where Gabe had been watching them from. 
He had to have known the police were there.  That’s the only explanation for why he didn’t show.

As he wiped his feet on the doormat inside his home, he heard laughter.  Two people laughing.  And one of them sounded young.  He walked towards the sound of the laughter coming from the kitchen and was startled to find Martha and August assembling a puzzle on the kitchen table with plates of cookies and milk.  August was trying to fit the wrong puzzle piece into one of the puzzle’s holes, and he and Martha laughed at his many attempts of twisting and turning the piece in different directions. 

“What the hell is going on here?”  Bruce demanded.

“I’ll thank you not to curse in front of a guest,” Martha scolded him.

Bruce and August locked eyes, and Bruce noticed that the kid didn’t look as shy or as timid as he had when they’d first met. 

“We need to talk,” Martha began.  “Pull up a chair.”

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Shortly after dropping August safely off at the Hudsons’ home (and before Bruce, Richard, and many cops had wasted their afternoon in Boston Common waiting for a mobster who’d stood them up like a blind date gone wrong), Gabe called Sara Madison on his way to Victor’s office.

“This is Sara.”

“I don’t believe we’ve ever spoken.  I’m Gabriel Adelaide.”

Sara’s heart nearly slowed to a complete halt, before blasting off at rocket speed.

“How did you get this number?”

“That’s a stupid question to ask a mobster.  You need to know that I just dropped off August Middleton at the Hudsons’ home.  He’s now with them.”

“Dropped him off?”

“Yeah, you know.  Drove him over there.  Opened the door.  Let him out.  That sorta thing.”

Gabe assumed Sara knew that August had been with him for the past several weeks.  He thought that by now Bruce would’ve told her, if one of the shit stain Ringers hadn’t already clued her in. 

“You took August from the Ringers’ home?” Sara asked incredulously.