Sempre: Redemption

13

While Dia was on her way to Durante to visit her parents, Haven awaited a visitor of her own. She sat in the living room of the quiet apartment, the notebook from the federal agent laying on her lap. She had flipped through it countless times, rereading passages as she hoped the words would somehow change.

They weren’t, though. Every time she looked at them, they seemed to get worse. It was all there in black-and-white, everything she had promised to never tell spelled out with utter simplicity.

She felt like she was going to be sick.

There was a knock after a while, firm and determined. Haven set the notebook down and opened the door, her heart hammering against her rib cage. Dr. DeMarco walked in without a word and she closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry to bother you . . .”

“You’re not bothering me,” he said, pausing in the living room. His eyes lingered on the wall splattered with art and photos before he turned to her. “I’m glad you called. Where is it?”

She pointed to the table where the notebook lay. “I had no idea they had it.”

Dr. DeMarco picked it up and sighed. “I did.”

She gaped at him. “You knew?”

“Agent Cerone showed it to me. He thought I would crack if I knew what you’d written.”

Her stomach dropped so hard it was like she had taken a ten-story fall, stopping just shy of slamming into the concrete. She swayed, needing to sit down. “You read it?”

“He read a few passages to me, but I couldn’t help that.”

Her head swam as she ran through possibilities of what he might have heard. “I’m sorry. I really am. I was upset when I wrote some of it and—”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, shaking his head. “You have every right to feel how you feel.”

“But they know the truth,” she said. “The government knows about me now.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing they can do about it. You have an expectation of privacy with your diary. They can’t use any of it without your cooperation.”

Those words sent waves of relief through her. “They can’t?”

“No, but it doesn’t mean they’ll forget about it either. The journal may be inadmissible legally, but there are other ways for them to utilize it. And trust me when I say they will. They already are.”

“How?” she asked. “What can they do?”

“Exactly what they’ve done.” He held up the notebook. “He didn’t drop this off out of the kindness of his heart. He did it to get to me . . . to prove a point.”

“What point?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s between me and him.”

His voice was quiet, his tone clipped. She didn’t ask any more questions. She knew she wouldn’t get any more information from him.

“Do you have any more notebooks?” he asked. “Any more diaries?”

She nodded hesitantly. “A few.”

“Get them for me.”

A few turned out to be closer to a dozen. She lugged them out from her room and set them on the small table in front of Dr. DeMarco. He eyed them thoughtfully, surveying the covers, but he didn’t open a single one. “These will need to be destroyed. They’re too dangerous to keep laying around.”

“But you said they can’t use them,” she said.

“You’re right, but it’s not just the police you have to worry about. Some of this information, if it falls into the wrong hands, would be like handing an atomic missile to a deranged man.” He paused, shaking his head. “Completely catastrophic.”

She didn’t argue. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

Dr. DeMarco turned away from the journals after a moment and strolled over to the window. He looked out at the street below, the early evening sunshine bright on his face. “They know where you’re living now, so I suspect this is just the beginning.”

“I don’t know how they found my address,” she said. “I tried to lay low like Corrado told me to do.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Vincent assured her. “It was all me.”

“You?”

Vincent pointed at his foot. “I forgot they were monitoring me.”

Haven’s gaze drifted toward the GPS monitor around his ankle, the small scar on her back weirdly itching as she thought of the chip she used to have under her skin. “They tracked you.”

“Yes.”

“So they know you’re here now.”

“Yes,” he replied. “They’ll be keeping an eye on this place now that they know for certain you live here. Dia confirmed it when they dropped off the box.”

“But . . . why? Why can’t they leave me alone? I haven’t done anything.”

“True, but I have.”

His explanation made little sense to her.

“We should think about moving you,” he continued. “The choice is yours, obviously, but I think Corrado will agree with me when I say you’ll be in much better shape if you drop far off their radar until all of this blows over.”

“If I don’t move?” she asked. “What then?”

He waved her over to him. Slowly, she stepped in his direction, hesitating beside him at the window. He motioned across the street at a man lingering near a tree, a cell phone to his ear as he casually kicked some acorns on the sidewalk. It was nothing out of the ordinary to her. The guy was vaguely familiar, a neighbor she assumed—the one with the hat who held the elevator for her.

“Meet Agent Cerone,” he said quietly. “And if you don’t move, expect to see a lot more of him.”

The vast RICO indictment was neatly arranged on the desk, the small bold typeface spelling out more than twenty years of criminal conspiracy. There were thirty-two counts total, hinting at involvement in dozens of crimes. Murder, assault, kidnapping, extortion, gambling, loansharking, theft . . . the list formally and apathetically detailed the violence and mayhem that had ruled the windy Chicago streets for decades, as if they were outlining something as simple as a shopping list.

On or about March 20, 1988, in Chicago, the defendant, Corrado A. Moretti, together with others, intentionally caused the death of Marlon J. Grasso. On or about April 13, 1991, in Chicago, the defendant, Corrado A. Moretti, together with others, intentionally caused the death of . . .

On and on it went for forty-eight pages.

Corrado had spent the good part of the past hour silently reading through the charges, reliving the moments he could easily remember and a few he wished he could forget. He took it all in, absorbing the summarized case, and felt nothing even close to distress except for a simple phrase on the first page that troubled him:

Trafficking in persons for servitude . . .

“This is wrong,” he said, glaring at the words. “I never did that.”

“Which part?”

Looking up from the pile of papers, Corrado eyed his lawyer across the room. Rocco Borza sat at a small round table, studying the hundreds of documents and photographs sprawled out in front of him. Three others worked alongside him, silently and studiously sifting through the stacks. Mountains of evidence surrounded them like thick fortress walls, threatening and mocking, the only thing standing between Corrado and his future.

Somewhere in their midst, tucked into the boxes or hidden in the audiotapes, lay the final nail that could be pounded into his coffin, taking his life away. Their job was to find it and make it disappear.

Exasperated, Corrado stood and strolled to the window, peering down at the street below. The office was located on the fifteenth floor of a newly remodeled skyscraper in the heart of downtown Chicago. People appeared to be little more than flecks of colored dust at this distance, tiny pests doing their best to not be squished as they went about their days.

“All of it,” Corrado muttered. “Every bit of it is wrong.”

A sharp, sudden laugh echoed through the room, cutting off as quickly as it had sounded. Corrado didn’t turn around or try to figure out which man it had come from. It wasn’t worth it. He would only want to kill them for mocking him, and the last thing he needed was another death on his hands.

Besides, if his life hadn’t been on the line, he would have likely laughed, too.

Corrado had little hope of finding help anywhere in that room. The indictment, while vexing, mostly rang true. The government had done their homework. His only saving grace would be sabotaging their case.

“Do you want to take these audio recordings home to listen to them?” Mr. Borza asked after a moment.

“Depends,” Corrado said. “How many are there?”

His question was met with silence. Corrado turned around, glancing at his lawyer, and saw the man peering into a massive box. “Two hundred and twenty CDs, I believe.”

Corrado blinked rapidly as he took that in. Two hundred and twenty, each one eighty minutes long. “That’s almost three hundred hours of recordings.”

“That it is,” Mr. Borza said. “Had they included Vincent’s, it would be double that.”

The prosecution had been granted its request to separate Vincent’s and Corrado’s cases under the assumption they had a better chance of a conviction that way. Mr. Borza opted to defend Corrado, likely because he was terrified of rejecting the man. And while Corrado sympathized with his brother-in-law, having to start over on a defense with his life on the line, he certainly wasn’t upset about the new development.

For Corrado suspected Vincent was a man who had already given up hope.

Corrado let out a deep sigh as his cell phone started ringing. He pulled it from his pocket, shaking his head when he saw it was his brother-in-law. Speak of the devil . . . “Yes?”

“We have a bit of a predicament with the girl,” Vincent said, pausing before adding, “again.”

Frustrated, Corrado rubbed his hand down his face. She had turned out to be more of a problem than he originally thought she would be. “I’ll be there as soon as possible. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. Keep her out of trouble until then.”

He hung up, turning back to his lawyer. “Get them to throw out the recordings. There’s too many for me to go through.”

Mr. Borza shook his head. “It won’t be easy.”

“I didn’t say it would be,” Corrado replied. “But do it anyway.”

Drops of rain trickled from the overcast sky, just enough moisture to annoy Vincent. He sat behind the wheel of his car, listening to the rubber of his wipers scraping against the mostly dry windshield. Wincing, he turned them off, only to turn them right back on again. Back and forth he went—on and off, on and off, until he finally said the hell with it and turned them off for good.

His car idled in a vacant section of the park in Charlotte, tucked in along some trees that led to a jogging path. Even with his headlights off, Vincent could see the rugged dirt trail weaving past, disappearing into a dark section of woods.

Perfect place to hide a body, he thought.

After a few minutes, a bright glow turned the corner nearby, a car slowly driving straight toward him. He cringed as the headlights shone right through his windshield, blinding him temporarily until they turned off. Vincent blinked a few times, trying to clear the sudden colored splotches from his vision, as the car came to a stop a few feet in front of him.

Vincent didn’t hesitate, anger and frustration fueling the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He climbed out of the driver’s seat, the evidence bag containing Haven’s notebook gripped tightly in his hand. His feet carried him briskly toward the other vehicle as the door opened, a man stepping out. The guy started to speak, a single syllable barely escaping his lips before Vincent was upon him, shoving him back against his car. He thrust the notebook against his chest so hard he nearly knocked the wind from the man. “You have some nerve, Agent Cerone.”

“Ah, Vincent, I don’t think—”

“Doctor,” he spat, cutting him off immediately. “I’ve told you before—it’s Doctor DeMarco.”

“Vincent,” he said again. There was no humor in his eyes, no yielding in his expression. “I don’t think assaulting a government official is in your best interest.”

“Oh, now you want to play by the rules?” Vincent asked. “You never seemed very concerned about that before.”

“Nonsense.” Agent Cerone pushed Vincent’s hands away, shoving the notebook into his chest in return. “Let us act like real men, shall we? Use our words and not our hands? Or is that too difficult for the likes of you?”

Vincent glared at him in the darkness as he took a step back, putting necessary space between them. “Leave my family alone.”

“Family?” Agent Cerone let out a bitter laugh. “Strange choice of word given the circumstances, isn’t it?”

“She’s a part of my family—always has been and always will be,” Vincent said. “Just because you can’t comprehend that, because you can’t get it through your thick skull that we actually care about her, doesn’t mean we’re wrong.”

Agent Cerone scoffed. “The fact that you actually think you’re right—that you think this situation is okay—astounds me.”

“Don’t talk about things you know nothing about.”

“Oh, I know plenty. I read the journal, remember?”

“You invaded her privacy! You stole her thoughts!”

“So?” he replied. “It doesn’t make any of it less true.”

“Maybe,” Vincent countered, “but tell me something, Agent Cerone. Do you have any deep, dark secrets that you’d do anything to keep the world from finding out? Even kill to keep it from being exposed?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No,” Vincent said. “I’m just trying to make you understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That you have to leave her alone,” Vincent said, taking a step forward again, getting right in the special agent’s face. “You won’t get her. You can’t have her.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . .” Vincent’s eyes instinctively darted toward the dirt path. “. . . Because if you do, she’ll die.”

Agent Cerone stared at him blankly. “Now that’s a threat.”

“No, it’s not.” Vincent shook his head as he turned away from the man, wiping the stray raindrops from his face. “But it is a guarantee.”

“You really want to do this?”

Haven stood beside the Mazda later that week, staring down at the faded lines of the parking lot. She could feel Corrado’s piercing eyes from the other side of the car, stabbing through her with his doubt. He looked exhausted, but judgment was clear in his tone. He didn’t believe she could do it.

“Yes,” she replied. “I do.”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I can make alternate plans if you’re not sure about this. I have the resources to keep you hidden away.”

“No, I’m sure.” She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to drop out of civilization again. There was no point going forward if she couldn’t live. “I want to go. It’s my choice, right?”

“Right,” he said, still staring at her with skeptical eyes. “I guess we’ll be leaving then.”

Haven avoided his gaze as she climbed into the passenger side of the car. All of her belongings were in boxes stacked along the back seat, her entire life once again packed up in the car. She had left a note on the kitchen table for Dia whenever she got home, saying her good-byes. She didn’t say where she was going, no other explanation except she thought it was time for her to set out on her own. She promised to stay in touch but as Corrado pulled the car out on the road, heading toward the highway to leave Charlotte, she wondered just how plausible their friendship could be.

“You might want to get comfortable,” Corrado said. “It’s a long drive.”

“How long?”

“Twelve hours, maybe.”

She settled back into the seat and turned her head to gaze out of the window. “The trip to California last year took three days.”