The Wicked End

There was a different atmosphere between Frank and Ray since the two had last met.
A full day had passed, the death toll at the compound had been twenty two with only Claire seemingly taken and unaccounted for. Mikey had been sedated by force, neither Frank or Gerard wanted to be responsible for a massacre which had been likely from the younger Way. It had taken everything Frank had in him to stop Mikey from seeing the shattered body that had been his boy. There would have been no coming back from that.
Frank had left Gerard assisting the police and talking to the press. He always loved the man but now more so than ever, Gerard had shouldered all the responsibility for dealing with the multitude people that swarmed over the compound like locusts. He handled it with grace despite the pain of their loss and his overriding worry for his little brother. Frank had been sorry to leave, the anguish mirrored in Gerard’s eyes but they both needed an answer to the riddle.
Ray had been angry on the phone which surprised Frank a little. He had kept the truth quiet to try some damage limitation and knowing how badly Ray had been affected by Angel and the whole episode.
“You should have fucking told me.”
“Told you what ? That someone knew about her ? Plenty of people knew what happened.”
Ray had sworn again and tersely informed Frank that he’d cleared his diary for the morning. Frank had been on the first plane out, only the fact that Gerard was in so much control allowing him to go at all. He kept his phone in his pocket, the minutes passing too slowly and the pain in his head growing too fast. Someone should have contacted him by now for a ransom.
Now they were back in the Oval Office, all calls diverted and one of Frank’s own men guarding the door. Both men held glasses of fine whiskey as they had before but both showed the signs of little sleep and a large amount of worry.
“I can’t believe this. I thought we left this shit buried a decade ago and now James is dead and Claire could be. I don’t even have a clue where to start.”
Frank’s face was a picture of rage, the boyish features twisted to resemble a devil. Ray took a breath and tried to think around the fear in his heart. Being President, being anybody, was thanks to the man in front of him and yet a simple decision made as an idiot in love was now going to possibly come between them.
“You think it’s her ?”
“It can’t be her, she’s fucking dead. The messages are certainly the same style and she was fearless enough to try this but she’s still fucking dead. Which means someone is coming after us. Reardon was taken out too so that line is not going to help but there is a link to this address in Cali. Turns out to be a bar, I have someone looking into it.”
Ray took another sip of his drink and turned to look out the window.
“Which bring us to you Ray.”
“The message.”
Frank watched his friend carefully, the body language was now screaming at him and he could always tell when someone was hiding something from him. The bible verse had referred to deceit and he wanted to know just what he was dealing with before he went looking for blood. There was little he could hear now that would actually surprise him to any great extent.
“What did it mean ? Are you hiding something from me cos shit Ray, right now I don’t know who I can trust anymore. Mikey is out of it, Gerard is coping but fuck knows for how long and James is….gone. I have to find Claire and if you know something, fucking tell me.”
Ray turned, the pain etched on his face adding another ten years on his age.
“She’s not dead. I don’t know where she is, I don’t know why she’s coming after us now but I have some ideas about what happened.”
Frank rubbed his eyes, the breath frozen in his lungs.
“She was dead, we shot her six or seven times. What the fuck ?”
“I went back. After we left and you and Mikes went to the old man. The ground was disturbed and I was so fucking scared. When I unearthed her wrist there was a pulse.”
Ray sat heavily in the chair, avoiding Frank’s eyes as his mind drifted back to the horror of that woodland glade. He had been sick at what he’d done, that he had forced himself on her despite her pleading and the pain in her eyes. He had loved her but it had never been a choice between what his Don and his friends wanted, only after had the guilt crept in. He had been drawn back to that spot and the horror had merely continued.
“I….I pulled her out. She wasn’t conscious but she was alive. I called Don Deforio and we got her picked up.”
Frank shook his head, a surging anger breaking into his voice.
“HE ORDERED IT !! HE WANTED HER DEAD !!”
Ray winced, somewhat glad that the desk was between them and that there was an army of heavily armed men close by. He had no doubt that under different circumstances there would be a gun aimed at his head by now.
“She was still his daughter. Justice had been served in the eyes of the family, he had proved his point. Could hardly blame him for allowing a fluke to save her too.”
Frank felt sick. There had been no doubt in his mind that you couldn’t walk away from what they had done and yet he knew all about the fluke of survival. Gerard should be a vegetable or dead after taking a bullet in his head and all of them had been young, drunk and inexperienced. Now he would never have allowed an execution without a double tap to the head.
“Go on.”
“She was in a coma for years. Long after you killed the old man and took over the family. I kept the bills paid and expected to bury her quietly and without fuss. Call it a way of assuaging my guilt and putting right what I felt was a wrong. Only after four years, she woke up.”
“You should have told me.”
Ray nodded, relieved to recognise that Frank was going into thinking mode. There would now be a debt to pay but it would not be collected until this threat had been extinguished and all was back how Frank wanted it. Either that or they would all die.
“Yes. I should have. Angel was like a child, we taught her everything from walking to eating to talking and I thought that again I would atone. Until she vanished about a year ago. The staff thought she’d wandered off during a thunderstorm and we all waited for a body to appear given that she still seemed to have the mental capacity of no more than a five year old. I never expected this.”
“And the leads ?”
Ray reached into a drawer and pulled out a file. There were pictures and various notes on medical care. Frank felt his hands start to shake as he looked at the woman lying in the bed and then at various shots from consecutive years. Another head shot he didn’t recognise.
“That’s Matt Sanders. He was the doctor in charge of her case and quit three weeks after she went missing. Returned to Cali to practise medicine but there was something about him I didn’t trust and we did some digging. Major links to gangland crime in that area, she may well have headed there but I had no time to look.”
“Another link to Cali ?”
Frank was able to feel some relief that he now at least had something to focus on but the thought that Claire was in the hands of Angel Deforio with a serious fucking grudge was worse than any copycat. He had worked with some of the best and none better than Mikey but he had learned at her feet and passed it all to James. There were some who were close but a battle between the two would be messy and there would be fallout. Again he wondered why no-one had contacted him for a ransom.
“We need to go hunting for him and whoever he’s linked to. Angel wants something from me that’s more than revenge or she would have killed Claire too.”
“She wants us to know it’s her. The messages are seeking acknowledgement.”
Frank felt a smile lift his face. This would need to be explained carefully to Mikey and Gerard so as not to cause an eruption but love for his friend, his loyal friend, overrode the initial anger. There would be time to discuss the why’s after but at least he now had something to go on.
“Then we need to give it to her. Any thoughts on how ?”
“You have Gerard working the press. Leak a name maybe, something that she will pick up on. At least something to draw her out.”
Ray poured another drink and watched as Frank retrieved his phone from a pocket and checked the messages before calling up the encrypted line that led to Gerard. He could think of nothing but the war to come and the fact that he could do nothing much to help, this was so far from him now and Ray felt he had become cut off from the people that mattered most.
“Gee ?”
“Hey Frankie. It’s chaos here and Mikey is gonna come around soon.”
Frank nodded and checked his watch.
“I have a couple of leads and I’ll explain when I get back. Set up a press conference for ten am tomorrow with all the press you can find. I’m gonna draw the bitch out. She wants to play with us and now it’s game on.”

Notes