Page 23 of Tommy Gabrini: All Fall Down
Amelia knew when he wasn’t playing. “Yes. You’re clear. But may I ask you a question?”
“A question? Are you hearing me, Amelia?”
“May I ask you a question?”
Nobody frustrated him like she did either. Not even their children. “Sure, why not? I’m telling you I’ll shut this shit down, and you want to ask a question. Ask away!”
“How did you find out?”
“How do you think?”
“You said you wasn’t going to be spying on me, Hammer.”
“I didn’t have to spy on your ass. The very loyal men that I command know everybody in that murky world of mobsters.Everybody. And they let me know when you’re out of line. I don’t have to spy. I don’t have to do anything. They keep me informed.”
“Excuse me, Boss?”
Amelia looked beyond Hammer and saw her office manager at her door. She looked terrified. “What is it?”
“It’s all over the news.”
“What’s all over the news?”
“Your nephew’s son.”
Amelia was puzzled. “Which nephew’s son?”
“Tommy Gabrini’s son.”
When he heard that name, Hammer turned and looked at the manager too. “What about his son?” he asked.
“They’re saying he’s shooting up his school. A lot of students have been shot. It’s all over the news.”
Amelia, her heart pounding, quickly grabbed her remote and turned on the television. It wasn’t on the local channels in Baltimore where they were, so she turned to CNN. And there it was. A picture of TJ’s beautiful face was on one screen while the best private school in Seattle, surrounded by flashing lights and children running out of various buildings as if they were victims of a domestic terror attack, were on another screen. And Wolf Blitzer was insisting that TJ, thatherTJ, was the terrorist?
She stumbled in shock. Hammer had to rush around the desk and grab her lest she fall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Police cars from all across the city were flying to Bryce Academy like toy cars on a race track as the patrol car Grace was in arrived at the command center sat up at the Starbucks across the street.
She looked back at the school as the officers rushed her across the sidewalk to the command center entrance doors. She could hardly believe that she, and that her son, would ever be caught up in something this wild. There were police cars and state troopers and ambulances everywhere she looked, and every one of them had their sirens blaring. She’d seen it on television a hundred times before.BREAKING NEWS! ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING! But she never would have ever imagined in a zillion years that her son would be the person they claim was shooting up that school. It was like a nightmare!
As soon as she got into the restaurant where cops had dismissed the staff and taken over, one of the men in charge hurried over to her. “Mrs. Gabrini?”
“Where’s my son?”
The deputy chief could see the devastation all over her anguished face. “I’m Deputy Chief Steve O’Malley, ma’am. Your son is still inside the school.”
“Doing what? What’s he doing inside the school? And don’t tell me he’s shooting people because he wouldn’t do that!”
O’Malley exhaled. If he had a penny for every parent that saidnot my childeven in the face of insurmountable evidence,he’d be a millionaire. “He’s barricaded himself, along with twenty-three student hostages, inside one of the classrooms. We can’t go in because he says he’ll kill every single one of them if he hears the first bang on that door. We’re at his mercy right now.”
Grace gripped O’Malley’s suitcoat lapel. “Let me go in,” she pleaded with him. “He’ll listen to me.”
“Not happening, ma’am. That’s not possible.”
“But I’m his mother. He’ll listen to me!”
