The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 04

●●●

"You can't take my daughter anywhere near that monster," Callie Jones sobbed. "She's my only child and I won't allow it."

Rance stood at Gia's side. They eyed each other nervously.

"You can guarantee that he won't be able to get to her?" Rance asked. "Explain to us how she would be protected from him."

There is essentially a firing squad of police officers, including sharpshooters with automatic rifles, in place right now to put dozens of bullets in Geno Millions's head if he made any move resembling a threat to Gia, and he would have to expose himself to all those gun barrels to do it, Captain Blanding explained. His only hope of surviving this would be releasing his hostage, tossing his knife into the hallway out of his reach, and then lying flat of his belly with his hands behind his head to surrender.

Gia would be on her knees on the floor giving the officers a clear line of fire well over her head should they need to shoot, he explained. "It's entirely possible, Miss Jones, that if things don't go to perfection, you might just witness something that will be very difficult for you to forget."

"And if she doesn't do this?" Rance asked.

"We can't make you, Miss Jones. But another young woman is very likely to die down by the vending machines if you don't talk to him," Blanding said. "I wish I could put it more gently, but..."

Gia put her head in her hands and trembled as Rance held her.

"I support you whatever you decide, Gia. I will be there beside you if you want," Rance said.

Blanding interjected, "Um, Rance, I don't think that would be a very good idea. That might trigger this guy all by itself."

Rance stood his ground. "If that's what Gia wants, then that's your only choice, sir. If I can make this easier on her, I will. Geno need not even know I am there," he said.

Blanding's jaw flexed and he grudgingly nodded. "OK. But we have to get down there now. Do we have a deal?"

Gia looked up at Rance. He nodded. "This is going to be hard, baby, but letting another woman die would haunt you worse than watching this guy get shot if it comes to it. And I will be there if you want."

Gia summoned her immense discipline and instantly calmed herself. The trembling ceased and she was unnervingly calm, even a bit cocky, as though she were an actress about to walk in front of an audience for the performance of her life. She nodded at Blanding. "Let's go."

●●●

"Geno? This is agent Sandrine Corder. How we doing over there?"

"I'm getting pissed off. Where's GiGi Jones?"

"She's on her way down. We've held up our end of the bargain, can you let us hear from the young lady to make sure she's OK?"

Classic hostage negotiation. It wasn't agent Corder's wheelhouse, but she wasn't inexperienced either. She also had the benefit of Quinton DeVore's advice being channeled directly into her earpiece.

"I'm alive," a terrified girl's voice said.

"OK, you got what you wanted, cop. Next goddamn voice I better hear best be GiGi Jones."

"I'm here, Geno," Gia's voice called out as she squeezed through the phalanx of officers, their weapons still trained on the corner beyond which Geno and his captive were crouched.

"GiGi. Bet you never thought you'd hear from your old boyfriend after you sent my ass to Pemberton did ya? Well, guess the fuck what," he hissed.

"You're not my boyfriend, Gennaro. Never were," Gia said sharply, the defiant, wise-ass New Jersey girl in her accent resurfacing after years of being leavened by South Carolina's gentle drawl. "And you don't get to call me GiGi, ya punk bitch."

Sandrine Corder's face blanched and she silently gasped, apoplectic at what Gia Jones had just told the volatile murderer, Geno Millions.

"What did she say?" the tinny voice of Quinton DeVore said in Corder's earpiece. Another officer, speaking in panicked tones, moved outside earshot of the tense standoff and told DeVore how Gia "had just called the subject a 'punk bitch,' sir."

"OK," DeVore said slowly. "Let this play out. Wouldn't have been my first play but she knows this guy from the old neighborhood. Maybe she can push the right buttons."

Gia, on her knees, slightly crouched back on her haunches, could hear Geno breathing loudly. It was what he had done since he was a small boy when he was put in an embarrassing position - breathing heavily and rapidly through his flared nostrils, almost like a bull ready to charge.

"You were mine, GiGi! That's the way it was supposed to be! We were homies from the neighborhood, but you decided you was better'n me, better'n our neighborhood and you fuckin' betrayed me, you cunt," Geno Millions said, almost spitting the words, his pain and fury building.

"I'm sorry you ever thought that, Gennaro, but that was never true 'cept maybe in your sick dreams," she said calmly, as though she were tossing out asides as she painted her nails. "And you betrayed yourself... and kept on betraying yourself because you wanted to be a made guy but you were never more than a two-bit street hood."

"Besides, Gennaro, I got a real boyfriend here - a football player. You mighta seen him on TV...," she said, now deliberately baiting him enough to hopefully forget the stranger he held hostage and, in his rage, make a move toward her and expose himself to the waiting rifle barrels and his own certain death. By now, Gia had concluded, Geno Millions had dug his own grave and the sooner he was in it, the better.

A roar full of rage came from around the corner mingled with a high shriek of agonized terror from the young woman. The officers steadied their weapons.

Over Sandrine Corder's earpiece, Quinton DeVore was saying something: "This is progressing far faster than I thought. Do we know the hostage's condition? Do we have eyes on the subject yet?"

"Negative," Corder responded in a whisper.

Without being privy to the conversation DeVore was having with agent Corder and the officers in charge on scene, Gia knew what she had to do.

"Geno, listen - what the fuck ya doin', huh? Whaddya think you're gonna accomplish coming down here and threatening to hurt that poor girl who's never seen you before, never done nothing to you, got no idea who the fuck you are or why a cheesy loser like you got a knife to her head. You even know her name?" Gia said. "What's your name, sister? This is Jock Jones."

"It... it's Susan," the girl said in a quavering voice. "Susan Morton."

"So Geno, why you gotta scare the actual piss outta Susan here when it's me you got a beef with?" Gia said. "What, you think that's the only way you'll feel like a man?"

On agent Corder's earpiece: "Get ready to fire. This could happen any second," DeVore was saying. Corder turned to the officers and gave the sign and, quietly, they disengaged the safeties on their weapons.

"Maybe you let Susan go, drop the knife and drop a set of fuckin' balls, then you can take it up with me, one-on-one, and we all get out of this in one piece," Gia said.

"Goddamn youuuuu!" Geno Millions bellowed. Then he grunted and Susan Morton let loose a blood-curdling scream. There was a commotion and a rustling and she was pushed from behind the hidden corner, slamming her into the opposite wall of the corridor where she slumped to the floor and lay face down, screaming. Her head turned upward and looked pleadingly toward Gia and the phalanx of firearms above her head, all pointed toward the corner from which she was just expelled. Beneath her shoulder a dark pool of crimson began to form.

Gia began to reach toward Susan before Sandrine Corder, crouched behind her, seized her shoulder. Gia looked back toward the agent who shook her head silently and vigorously.

"I can't let Susan bleed out over there," Gia said, "I've got to help her."

She shook her shoulder free of Agent Corder's grasp and began to crawl toward Susan Morton. By the time Gia's hand, reaching toward Susan, became visible from Geno's perch behind the corner, he readied himself, his switchblade in his right hand poised to plunge into Gia. He had fantasized about the moment thousands of times, since his trial, during his years in Pemberton and particularly on his bloody odyssey south to hunt down Giacomo Jones and settle the score with her once and for all.

He saw Gia's hand stretching out, then the top of her head. When he saw her shoulders, he decided she was well in his grasp and he lunged toward her, raising his blade to plunge into her neck.

The instant his head cleared the corner, a deafening volley of gunfire exploded from the cramped area behind Gia in the same instant, almost indistinguishable from one another. Gia lunged toward Susan and covered her head and her bleeding chest. Behind her, she heard the ring of spent, brass shell casings clattering off the concrete walls and onto tile floor. She felt a limp weight across her legs. A sticky pink mist settled onto the floor, her hair, her clothing, her arms. The sharp smell of cordite mixed with blood and death filled the narrow corridor. In her ears, a high-pitched ringing from the close-range rifle muzzle blasts gave the whole scene a dissociated, ethereal feel. A soft-drink machine in the distant corner that had been in the line of fire after Geno's head instantly disintegrated was buzzing and a brown, effervescent liquid bubbled forth from several dime-sized holes.

Behind them a flurry of running, footsteps, shouting and shoving.

"Subject is down! Repeat subject is down," an officer in black fatigues with a military-style assault rifle barked into the mouthpiece of his headset.

Finally, Gia opened her eyes to a sight far bloodier than anything she could have imagined. The torso of Geno Millions' nearly headless corpse pinned her thighs and calves to the tile floor. The viscera of what seconds before was Geno's brain, skull, scalp and eyes littered the floor, the drink machines and walls of the hallway. Susan screamed in uncomprehending horror. Gia lay there, trembling with eyes wide, in speechless shock.

"Sir, this is a crime scene," an officer protested lamely in the midst of a minor commotion a few feet behind Gia.

"I'm going in to see about Gia, either around you or over you," Rance Martin said as he brushed aside a man half his size in an EMT outfit.

He looked into Gia's eyes and saw a nameless terror. She looked at him pleadingly and he knelt beside her and took her blood-smattered face in his hands and assured her that it's all over, that she's safe and uninjured.

People in badges and uniforms quickly surrounded the scene to extract Susan and Gia, take them to newly arrived ambulances and to the hospital for medical treatment.

"Rance? Rance, is this real?" Gia pleaded as her gurney was wheeled toward the ambulance, tears flooding down her face, dissolving fresh flecks of Geno Millions's blood on her cheeks. The tough Jersey girl was gone. Even the brilliant honors student who, at 19, was about to receive her Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from an elite university was gone. In her place was a traumatized girl.

"It's OK. And you just saved an innocent life, Gia. You saved a life!" Rance assured her as he held her tightly. "I love you and will be with you no matter what's next, OK?"

"Please get me out of here," she sobbed. "Get me out of here."

●●●

Gia stared out the window of her hospital room. The parking lot in front of Fulbright Medical Center was jammed with large trucks jammed with telecommunications gear and large, elliptical KU band dishes pointed to the same point in the southwestern sky at a satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,236 miles out in space that would beam the news of Gia and Rance and Geno Millions and Susan Morton to the world.

It was a story that had everything: crime, politics, sports and a romantic twist - the ultimate high for talking-head cable channels to feast upon for days, perhaps weeks for the tawdry tabloid shows..

"It's amazing how they can take something as impossibly complex and devastating as this - something so complicated that even I don't grasp it - and shoehorn it into a cliché story line that bears only a topical resemblance to the truth," Gia said.

"At least you're the hero in this story," Calvita Jones told her daughter in a comforting voice.

"A hero? That's what they're saying? This isn't a Marvel comic book. This is real. I'm not a hero. There is no hero. Just victims and survivors. What I did got a guy killed, and I did it knowing -- hoping -- it would get him killed. I knew his rage would take over and he'd show himself and when he did that the cops would waste him. I got him mad enough that he stabbed an innocent girl and she'd be dead now if that knife didn't glance off one of her ribs and miss her lungs, heart and arteries. Do I feel like a hero?"

"Ma, I gotta live with that the rest of my life," she said, tears streaking her face again, as they had on almost an hourly basis for the past two days since the Geno Millions saga came to its bloody denouement in a hallway in the Fulbright Honors College residence hall.

"Baby, if it hadn't been for you, Susan Morton and who knows how many other people in that dorm would be dead. Yes, Geno's dead, but he was a murdering monster who needed to be dead. He's in hell now and for that we can all thank God. It's hard for you to see, but if you're defining success in that situation as one where everyone walked away and lived happily ever after, you can never find peace," Callie Jones told her daughter as she held her gently.

Susan Morton underwent emergency surgery to repair some damaged muscles and a tear to her pleura, the membrane encasing her lungs. She was due for release from a room a few doors down the hall from Gia at Fulbright Medical Center the next day.

Gia had been kept for mental health observation for the psychological and physical trauma she had undergone from what she had experienced in the ordeal that finally ended Geno Millions, a narcissistic sociopath who had killed five people and tried to kill two more in a deluded, rage-driven and suicidal quest for vengeance. She was also held, at the university's and her mother's request, to keep her secure from the cluster of cameras and reporters who would swarm her had tried to return directly to her life on campus.

It was Rance who was thrust into the spotlight. His phone rang incessantly with numbers he did not recognize from networks and producers and sportswriters. There was a voicemail from network anchors Lester Holt at NBC and Norah O'Donnell at CBS. Scott Van Pelt wanted to lead a segment of "SportsCenter" on ESPN with him, and College Gameday wanted to do a taped sitdown with him for the following Saturday morning's telecast. He didn't respond to any of them. He found himself having to clear out his voice mail file every two or three hours, but eventually gave up, letting his voicemail folder fill up and leaving callers no way to leave him a message. He blocked their numbers.

Perry Hemphill persuaded the university to provide Rance with a security detail to keep the media throng a safe distance from Rance and enable him to move about campus beginning Tuesday night, hours after the lethal standoff in the Honors College vending area as national media parachuted in force onto Fulbright's campus and Fallstrom. Going anywhere was an ordeal for him, particularly his visits each morning and evening to the hospital to see Gia.

By now, it was Thursday, and Rance had missed an entire week of practice. He would not be able to play Saturday against visiting LSU. Even if he had been able to rejoin the team, the level of focus and determination he brought to the game would have been impossible given what he had experienced. He wasn't sure he could ever return to football.

"Rance, you know you're not going to be able to just wait these vultures out, right?" said Mitchell Glazer, the sports information director at Fulbright. "They will continue hounding you. Eventually, you'll have to talk to someone."

"Why? Why do I have to talk to anybody," Rance asked. "What are they going to do, threaten to kill Gia or me?"

Glazer, a former senior writer for Sports Illustrated before he came home to his alma mater to lead its historically underachieving publicity and sports marketing efforts, smiled and nodded sympathetically.

"Rance, it's been three days. Imagine this for three months. Imagine we're in a New Year's bowl game and this is all these people want to ask you or your teammates about, to talk about instead of what this team - and hopefully you - achieved on the field," Glazer said. "It's too fresh now, but you're going to want to put this behind you and you do that by an interview in a venue that has respect, that has some depth and where we can negotiate ground rules and have them respected once the cameras come on."

"I know this world, Rance. It was my life for 20 years, and I was damn good at it. I can't make you talk if you don't want to, but I know how to make your life, Gia's life and the lives of everyone close to either of you a lot more livable if you trust me," Glazer said.

Rance sat across the desk from Mitch Glazer, his head bowed in thought. His feet tapped nervously. He clenched and unclenched his fists, a way to burn off the stress that was upending his world.

"I'll think about it, Mitch. But if I consider it, I would have to talk it over with Gia. I am not doing this if she doesn't want it," he said.

"Understood, Rance," Glazer said. "How's your counseling going? Is there anything else we can do?"

Fulbright had already assigned him a room at the Graduate Hotel in downtown Fallstrom to temporarily shake the media and give Gene Hurley, his roommate, some relief from the media pack encamped in the parking lot outside their apartment until pissed-off residents persuaded the property manager to have some of the interlopers' trucks towed. The university had managed to cloak his hotel accommodations in a request from the district attorney investigating the case to get around possible NCAA sanctions for impermissible benefits. He would have to vacate his room by the next day, however, so the hotel could honor its weekend reservations for the LSU game.

"They're helping. But it's hard. I'm particularly worried about Gia, though," he said.

"Yeah, we're going to have to figure out security and privacy protections for her when she's released. Captain Blanding at SCSP says they have some experience with witness protection and can help, but..." Glazer said.

"I think I am going to head home to Tennessee this weekend. Just sort of drop out of sight, and I am going to take Gia and her mom with me. Can the school help me pull that off?"

Glazer nodded. "Give me a couple of hours."

●●●

A rented 2020 Dodge Ram crew cab pickup sped past a sign on Interstate 85 that informed Rance Martin that Atlanta was 52 miles ahead. He had just passed the exit to Athens, meaning he and Gia had about another 21/2 hours of driving barring the usual Atlanta traffic slowdowns.

The plan Mitch Glazer and Captain Robert Blanding had hatched worked well.

Gia had been released from the hospital just before 6 a.m. Friday. An ambulance that had inauspiciously pulled to the Emergency Room sally port and delivered a patient from a nursing home waited for Gia and her mom to secretly climb in the rear and took them to a Holiday Inn Express on the north side of Fallstrom where her mother had checked in days earlier. Most of the press throng was still sleeping off the Thursday night liquor they had consumed before the LSU crowd took over the town's favored watering holes, and the few media sentries on duty at dawn focused on the hospital's main discharge portal, taking no note of the solo ambulance nonchalantly pulling away from the ER to quietly go back in service.