Page 31 of Tommy Gabrini: All Fall Down
TJ shook his head. “Yes sir.”
“If you for one second let your family or friends or anybody else know what’s happening, we will immediately put a bullet through Destiny’s head. And that will only be the beginning of the carnage. Do you understand me?”
TJ nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Good boy. Smart like your old man. But try to be slick like him and everyone of you will die. And that seeing and hearing device that we will implant inside of you? Guess what? It’ll explode. And that will be the end of you too. And if you don’t believe me watch this.”
The kidnapper pressed a different button on the remote and a different video came on. It had a middled-aged man on a table as what looked like a doctor was placing a device in his lower arm and then sewed it up. The entire procedure took less than ten minutes.
“That’s the device you are soon to get placed in your arm,” the kidnapper said.
Then both kidnappers pulled out their phones. TJ could see the face of the man and his full body on one phone, and then whatever that man was seeing in front of him and around him, from that man’s point of view, could be seen on the other phone.
“You see how it works?” asked the first kidnapper. “We have you covered. There’s no getting away from us until the deed is done. Once it’s done, this will happen.”
Both kidnappers then pressed a button on their phones and everything pertaining to that implanted man was gone. “Look,” the leader said to TJ as he motioned to the TV screen again.
TJ looked and saw the doctor remove the stitches from the man’s arm and pull out the device. Then the doctor stitched him back up. “Anybody can pull it out,” the kidnapper said, “and that’ll be that.”
“But until the job is finished, you’re at our mercy. Nobody can help you. Because if you try anything at all, everybody, beginning with Destiny and that baby and ending with you, will die. Do you fully comprehend everything I’m telling you?”
“Yes sir.”
“There’s no way out of it no matter how hard you try. So you’d better not try. Got it?”
TJ was mortified. “Yes sir.”
The leader grinned. “Such a well-behaved son. I don’t know, Pauley. How in the world could a bastard like Tommy Gabrini produce a good kid? How is that possible?”
“It’s not,” said the other kidnapper. “Not that mean son-of-a-bitch.”
“But here we are. We got us a Mister Manners on our hands.”
The second kidnapper started laughing. “What if he’s a gay kid? Can you imagine the great Tommy Gabrini producing a gay kid?”
The smile of the first kidnapper left. “After what went on? Hell yeah I can imagine it. What are you nuts? Don’t forget what happened.”
“Oh right! How could I forget that?”
“I’ll never forget that shit.” TJ could see bitterness in the leader’s small eyes. “Your old man got a lot to answer for, you hear me?” A sadness came into his eyes. “More than you’ll ever know.”
Then his looked turned hard and cold again. “We aren’t playing with your ass. One false move and you and everybodyyou love are dead. Just like that! Including,” he said as he pressed a button again on his remote control and Destiny’s face reappeared, “that gorgeous sister of yours. Pity to kill such a beautiful face.”
Then he frowned. “But I’ll do it in a New York minute.”
And both men laughed. TJ thought he was going to puke. But he held on. His father taught him to never let them see him sweat. He was crying. Tears were falling from his big, beautiful eyes, but he refused to beg for his life or the life or his sister or anything weak like that. Because his father warned him: You let them see you sweat, then that’ll only give them more power.
If sweating gave them more power, he wondered what his tears were giving them. Because as the SUV and the patrol car that was following it pulled up to what looked like a boarded-up diner, he couldn’t stop himself from shaking and crying, as his Uncle Reno would say, just like a bitch.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Police Chief of Tatem, Washington walked from his office in the back of the one-story building to the front desk. “What y’all ordering for lunch?” he asked his desk sergeant as he lifted the lid and walked behind the counter.
“Hamburger for Sarge,” said the uniformed officer standing beside the sergeant. “Chinese for me.”
“I got a taste for some ribs. Anybody feel like going over to Mary Jay’s?”
“Who’s that?” asked the sergeant, who was looking out of the front window, as a Mercedes Maybach drove up.
