Chapter 8 - FIRE IN THE RAIN AND THE SIRENS OF OAK PARK
A wall of orange flame erupted upward from the storm grate beneath the middle Suburban as three hundred gallons of atomized heating oil ignited against the red-hot catalytic converters of the Rossi trucks.
The shockwave didn't blow the armored Maybach off its tires—it blew the hood of Vincenzo Rossi's middle Suburban straight into the air in a roaring curtain of black diesel smoke and blinding fire, knocking the RPG gunner flat onto his back in the mud.
Instantly, Enzo came out of the front seat of the Maybach with a submachine gun blazing, pinning the disoriented Rossi gunmen behind the burning wreckage at the alley mouth—while Dante moved faster than I had ever seen a human being move.
Before Marco could raise his chrome Beretta through the wall of black smoke, Dante crossed the ten feet of burning rainwater, knocked the pistol spinning out of Marco's grip with a brutal forearm strike, and drove his fist straight into Marco's jaw.
Marco hit the wet asphalt like a felled tree.
Twenty feet away, Don Vincenzo Rossi was scrambling backward toward the rear Suburban, his cashmere coat scorched with burning oil—until four unmarked black Ford Explorers with flashing blue federal police strobes smashed through the front cedar fence from the Elm Street side, followed by six Oak Park squad cars sealing off the cul-de-sac.
Loudspeakers boomed through the smoke and rain: "FBI ORGANIZED CRIME TASK FORCE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! YOU ARE SURROUNDED!"
Camilla Rossi screamed as two federal agents tackled her into the wet hydrangea bushes before she could climb into the fleeing rear truck, slapping steel handcuffs over the wrists that had worn Dante's six-carat diamond three hours ago.
Behind the garage door, I stood frozen with my canvas medical bag clutched to my chest.
"How did the FBI get here so fast?" I gasped as my mother stepped out onto the porch behind Carmela.
"I called Special Agent Vance from the landline in the pantry the moment Marco's voice came over that loudspeaker," my mother said calmly, wrapping a dry wool blanket around nine-year-old Elena, who had her face buried safely against Enzo’s chest. "Your father didn't keep those homicide evidence tags in the ammo box for blackmail, Clara. Agent Vance was your father's handler in the Witness Protection division back in two thousand and seven—the only non-corrupt federal agent in Chicago."
Out in the floodlit driveway, dozens of tactical officers swarmed the smoking Suburbans, disarming Don Vincenzo’s men and hauling the coughing seventy-year-old crime boss to his feet in handcuffs.
Dante stood over Marco in the rain, his chest heaving, his white dress shirt soaked with soot and water.
Agent Vance—a tall, grey-haired federal prosecutor in a windbreaker—walked over with two marshals, looking down at Marco on the pavement and then up at Dante.
"Mr. DeLuca," Agent Vance said, holstering his sidearm. "Your mother's housekeeper handed my people the digital audio stream from your Lake Forest security office twenty minutes ago—right before Rossi's men blew your front gate. Between Camilla Rossi's confession inside your laundry room and the 2007 wiretap Artie Miller recorded, we have Vincenzo, Camilla, and Marco on federal racketeering and the 2016 murder-for-hire of Sofia DeLuca."
Dante didn't look at Vance. He looked down at Marco, who was groaning on the wet concrete, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as two federal marshals hauled him to his knees and cuffed his hands behind his back.
Marco looked up through the rain at Carmela, who stood beside the Maybach wrapped in her faded blue quilt.
"Ma," Marco choked out, his voice breaking into the terrified cry of a ten-year-old boy who had just realized no one was ever coming to save him again. "Ma, tell them! Tell them what Camilla made me do! Don't let them put me in federal supermax! Rossi's people will kill me inside in a week!"
Carmela looked down at the man she had rocked to sleep when he had childhood fevers, the son whose lies she had forgiven a hundred times—until he tried to throw her away like trash and sell his brother's child.
Slowly, Carmela reached into the pocket of Dante’s suit jacket still draped over her shoulders. She pulled out the faded blue U-Haul box label Marco had taped to her wedding china yesterday morning—printed in Marco's own handwriting: SHADY PINES MEMORY CARE — NO VISITORS PERMITTED.
She dropped the wet paper label into the puddle beside Marco's knees.
"You told me on Wednesday that after Friday morning, I wasn't going to have an address anymore, Marco," Carmela said, her voice steady and quiet above the wailing police sirens. "Now you have one. May God forgive you, because I am done carrying you."
She turned her back on him and let Dante walk her gently back to the warm porch of the Elm Street cottage.
As the federal vans loaded Marco, Camilla, and Don Vincenzo into the back cages, Agent Vance walked up the porch steps toward Dante and me.
I opened my canvas medical bag and handed him the olive-drab ammunition box containing my father's original microcassette and the green mechanic's logbook.
Vance took the box carefully, looking at me with deep respect. "Your father was the bravest man I ever worked with, Miss Miller. For sixteen years he stayed in that back garage with a bad heart so this little girl and your mother wouldn't end up in a witness protection motel in Nebraska. And because the DeLuca shipping companies have been completely severed from the Rossi crime syndicate tonight, my office has no remaining federal interest in Dante DeLuca's legitimate real estate holdings."
Dante turned from the porch railing, where nine-year-old Elena was holding onto his belt loop with one hand while clutching her red velvet coat with the other.
"Agent Vance," Dante said quietly. "Before you take that box downtown... there was one piece of paper at the bottom of the ammo tin that isn't federal evidence."
May you like
Vance paused, opening the lid and pulling out a sealed white envelope addressed in my father's neat, blocky print: FOR MY DAUGHTER CLARA — WHEN THE DOORS ARE FINALLY UNLOCKED.
Vance handed the envelope to me and tipped his hat before walking back out into the rain.
