Honor Thy Mother & Thy Father Ch. 07

Note: This is a work of Fiction. Although the areas this story takes place in are real; the landscapes depicted, the people described, and everything else this story uses to make it enjoyable reading for you are NOT REAL. As you read this story, try to remember:

THIS IS A NOVEL!

20. Prelude

When Susan's cell phone rang, she recognized Sergeant's number immediately. She decided to be flippant with him when she answered.

"Hello, you bastard, what did you do with my husband's hair?"

"I glued it to his behind, to remind him that he is a horse's ass."

"Very funny, cousin, how are things there?"

"Everything is good now, Susan. All the bad guys are either dead or in jail. We lost a lot of good people. They killed eight officers before we were able to stop them. They almost got Alan, too."

"What do you mean they almost got Alan; I saw the pictures you sent to me. He looked fine."

"It happened after those pictures were taken, Susan. He would not stay in bed. He wanted to help end this thing. There were six men in the hospital. I was pinned down outside the hospital, and Elmore was guarding the emergency room. He took down all six of them, without getting a scratch. A woman, who was being held hostage, was so happy to be free, she ran to him, and tackled him to the ground and he started bleeding. They rushed him to the emergency room. That was when they found out he had another bullet in him. It was close to his heart, but had not entered it until that woman hit him. They had to do open heart surgery on him but they saved him. They saved him Susan, but it was much too close. Do not let that son of a bitch out of your site. I will kill him the next time he does that to me."

"You are not telling me everything, I can tell. What are you, not telling me, Sergeant? Tell me it all so I can handle it when I get there."

"He is eight hours out of the anesthesia and he is causing havoc in his room. They had to threaten to sedate him, if he did calm down. He wanted to talk to you, himself, but no phones are allowed in the cardiac intensive care unit, because it interferes with all the machines. He threatened to get out of bed and walk out the room to call you. What did you do to that boy?"

"If you mean besides fucking him to death, I fell in love with him, and I am having his baby."

"Well, you better be nice to him, or you will have to answer to me."

"Now I know something happened there that you are not telling me. I will make my pot roast when I get home, and that we will get it out of you."

"Come on, Susan, that is not fighting fair. You know I love your pot roast."

"Sergeant, you love anything that you do not have to cook yourself."

"I wonder if it is too late to get Cassandra to cook me dinner on Sunday."

"After what went on today, in Sedona, Cottonwood, and Prescott, I do not think a police officer will have to buy a meal for a month."

"It was much too high a price to pay, Susan, much too high."

"I agree. Now I have to find a way to get back there so I can be with Alan. I will be in touch with you as soon as I know the details."

"Goodbye baby girl, I will talk to you soon."

Bruno Valentino was taking his morning walk, when a limousine stopped at the end of his street. Two men got out of the car. One man opened the rear door, while the other approached him and said, "Don Bruno, several friends would like to discuss events that occurred in Arizona with you. Would you please come with us, sir?"

Don Bruno's guard was reaching into his waistband for his gun, when the Don stopped him.

He said, "Everything will be fine. I will be back for dinner." The Don got into the back seat and was taken away."

The guard rushed back to the house and told everyone what had happened. There was a silence that came over the entire home, wondering if they would ever see the patriarch again.

The Don did not say a word in the car, nor did any of the men. He was not taken to the Federal Building, but to one of the most secure locations, the FBI had on the Isle of Manhattan. It was an atomic bomb shelter, dating back to the Eisenhower Administration that had been continuously upgraded throughout the years. Less than 200 current employees, of the FBI, knew of its existence. There were only two ways in, and two ways out. Most of the men inside only knew of the main one; by train.

After driving for ten minutes, the man in the back seat, said, "Please tilt your head back, I am going to put drops into your eyes that will blind you for ten minutes or so. It is better than putting a blindfold on you for appearances sake."

The Don did as he was told, and a few moments later, he could not see a thing. The change of air pressure in the car indicated they were driving into a basement. He got out of the car and heard a large steel door being drawn open. A rush of air blew by him. The next sound scared him to death. The roar of a subway train made him think that he was going to go under the next one.

The agent holding his arm said, "Hold my arm tightly, I do not want you to slip and fall."

Bruno thought those were the most comforting words he had ever heard. The steel door was closed behind him, and they walked along a slim ribbon of concrete for twenty yards. He was turned to his right and told, "Step up. Step up, again, and again."

Bruno could again feel a change in the atmosphere he was in. It was no longer the cold, clammy feeling of being in a tunnel. He was now in some type of an enclosed space. A metal door was closed behind him, and the object started to move slowly, forward and down. It was quite disconcerting. Somehow he also felt it was dark in the enclosed space. He felt his ears popping as they descended. He wondered how deep they were going. His mind jolted to a stop, when the object he was riding in did."

He was taken out of the side exit of the train onto a platform that could accommodate no more than four people. This was a safety precaution in case of attack from the outside. You would feel bad for the people on the platform if you looked up. Any attempt to breach this steel door, by force, would bring a 6 ton, steel reinforced concrete beam sliding down its rails landing on top of that platform. That was the one way in or out most of the 200 knew about. The other was so secret the Attorney General did not even know of its existence.

"Flush his eyes out with the antidote and give him something to drink. Did anybody talk to him while he was in the car?"

"I just talked to him about the drops, sir."

"Turn the recorders and videos on. No one says a word, but me."

"The time now is 10:47 AM Eastern Standard Time. My name is Fred Fielding; I am the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. I am about to start the interrogation of a witness at his own request. He has no lawyer present, again, at his request. I am about to read him his Miranda rights, so there will be no questions asked afterwards.

"Mister Valentino, can you see me?"

"Yes I can see you, Mister Fielding. We are well acquainted with one another."

"Mister Valentino, have we spoken before this moment?"

"No, Mister Fielding, we have not."

"Mister Bruno Valentino, you have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right...."

"Yes, Mister Fielding, I understand. I wish to proceed."

"Are you under any duress at this moment? Do you wish to proceed with this interrogation?"

"No, I am not under any duress. I am doing this of my own free will. Yes, I am willing to proceed."

"Has anyone in the United States government promised you any leniency or special favor for this testimony?"

"No, they have not."

"If you get tired, hungry, or feel ill, at any time during this interrogation, please notify me immediately and we will stop and take care of you, accordingly. We have a medical staff standing by, with full knowledge of your medical history. If you have any food allergies please let us know. You do not have to sit down during this time. You can walk around the room and answer these questions; however, you would feel most comfortable. Now I would like to begin. What was your connection in the killings of eight police officers in Sedona, Arizona?"

"I did not order the killings of any police officers in those areas. I sent men out there looking for my son. What they did, while they were there, was out of my control. They did not have instructions from me to harm anyone. They were to look for my son and that was all."

"You told the district attorney for New York County that your son was in Switzerland climbing and out of touch for several months. How do you explain him being in Arizona at the same time?"

"I received information from an enemy of mine that he had my son. That is why I sent those men to Arizona. It had nothing to do with the police."

"What is this man's name?"

"His name is William Zabo."

"Why do you consider him your enemy?"

"He informed on my father. The men he told killed my father."

"What men are we talking about?"

"The heads of the other four New York families had my father killed."

"I will ask you for their names later, but I want to continue on this line of questioning first."

"Mister Zabo did not kill your father, but he was your enemy. What did you do to get even with him, that he held your son captive?"

"I had a woman killed that he loved. I tried to kill his daughter. I tried to kill him."

"Is that all? You killed one woman, and missed killing his daughter and him?"

"No. My men killed forty college students, in Massachusetts, while trying to kill his daughter. Now, Mister Fielding I need a favor from you."

"I am not in the favor giving business, Mister Valentino."

"I have given you me, if you want the four others, you had better do, what I ask you, or I will clam up right now."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to announce immediately that I am in your custody. I have acknowledged my crimes. I want you to announce I am forgoing a jury trial, and that I am incriminating the other four families in my testimony. I am asking William Zabo to let my son live. That is all I am asking, but you must do it now."

"Richard, put it on the computer, print out ten copies, and I want him to sign all ten of them. I want his fingerprints all over the papers. I am going to call the Attorney General and have him make the announcement himself."

Fred Fielding's cell phone rang and he started saying a series of, "Yes, Sir's, for thirty seconds, and then handed the phone to Bruno Valentino.

"Hello, Bruno, this is William, how are you this morning?"

"How is my son?"

"He is in Boston. I let him go yesterday. I could not kill an innocent man. I could not be like his father. The worst part is he is in love with my daughter, and my daughter is in love with him. We have made a mess, not only of our lives, but theirs also. She will not marry him, because of what you did to her mother. She hates me because I did not do enough to protect her mother. We are opposite sides of the same coin Bruno. We could have been friends all this time. We should drink a toast to one another, congratulating ourselves on our failures."

"Is it true William, he is in Boston?"

"Yes, he is with my daughter, in Boston. They are at her school, in Amherst. If you ask one of the people from the FBI, I am sure they will let you talk to him, and he will tell you he is okay."

"Thank you for sparing my son William.

Your Mister Zabo has friends in very high places. I do not normally get ordered around like that."

"Do you think someone could get my son on the phone, so I can speak to him?"

"It is already in the works, Bruno. Shall we continue?"

21. Stealing from Thieves

Patty stood in front of the graduate students in the lecture hall and told them what happened to their peers on the graduation day. There were tears in the audience for every one of their lost friends, but more than that, there was anger. Many minds were changed on career choices that day. Most students were looking for high-paying jobs in the private sector, however, many are now thinking about public sector jobs that would pay less, but would help governments bring criminals to justice.

Stephano was not prepared when she introduced him to the audience and asked him to speak about his father's criminal empire. He was ashamed and embarrassed to stand before the students. He could not claim ignorance, so he told the truth. He told about how at a very early age he knew something was different about his father. Men always deferred to his opinion, and came to him rather than him going to them. His father never seemed to have a job, but they were very wealthy just the same. When his father got angry at someone, you never saw that person again. His father always had men with guns around him, but his father never carried a gun. He always went to the best of schools, had the best tutors, and received the best of grades because of it. If he said to his dad, I do not like this teacher, the next day he had a new teacher.

When he said that, the professors turned around to look at their students, but the students laughed anyhow.

"I lived a privileged life because of my father, and until my late teenage years," he said, "but he did not put it all together, until one of his friends told him what his father told him at dinner."

His father said, "Michael, do not you ever fight with him again. Stephano is the Don's son. If you hurt him, the Don could have you or I killed because of it."

My friend did not know what a Don was, so he asked his dad to explain it to him. After that, Michael would not play with me anymore, and I could not understand why, until he told me."

"There is a long list of things my father does through his network of crime: money laundering, murder, drugs, child and adult prostitution, pornography, gambling, and most recently the slave trade. You young women should take note of this because you are in peril. You could be walking along your college campus at night, unescorted, and disappear forever. Arabs love blonde-haired women, but any girl of exquisite beauty will do. If they see a female they want, they will put a price on your head. $500,000 is nothing to them. You will get injected with a drug, and be unconscious in a second. They will throw you into the back of the van, put you into a large suitcase, bring you to an airport, and mark the package as a diplomatic case. No one can scan it or search it. You are out of the country in a matter of hours and no one will ever know what happened to you. You are a sex slave to anyone and everyone the Sheik desires. If you are lucky, in twenty or thirty years, you will be released, and find your way home. If not, your bones will be found in the desert.

I found out all of this over the last ten years, and kept my mouth closed, because of the privileged life, I led. There were two things that changed my mind. First, I fell in love with a very beautiful woman, Patricia Garrett-Parent. Second, she told me about the abomination that my father brought about at this school, to her friend Sandi, and to her mother. When I learned about these things, I decided to testify against him, his friends, and their criminal enterprises, in court.

There is only one thing that has to happen now, I have to live long enough to testify. There are people so high up in the U.S. Government; they know every move that is going to be made in the criminal justice system, before the U.S. Marshal Service does. If you think I am lying, look to the most recent Mafia trial. If you think it was a fluke it was thrown out of court, because one agent went over the edge, you are wrong. How could a woman, living on a government salary, afford a lawyer as expensive, and as good as she had, get an FBI agent fall so heavily into a bottle of booze, when he was barely a social drinker? The woman did not even have to pay for his firms services.

You may wonder why I am telling you this today, when I am putting my life in danger by doing so. My father, Bruno Valentino, has just agreed to testify against the other four families in New York, also. There are several other people that will testify against the mob. Hopefully, they will not be able to kill us all, before the trials begin. I will be going into hiding, soon. Hopefully, someone very important to me will be coming with me. If not, I will do my best to make sure that the people that I know are guilty of these crimes are brought to justice."

The audience stood up and applauded as Stephano left the stage. An FBI agent took him by the arm, and led him up the aisle to an enclosed room off the side of the auditorium. He handed him a phone and told him that his father wished to speak to him.

"Hello, dad, are you there?"

"Hello, my son, it is so good to hear your voice. Are you okay?"

"Yes, dad, I am fine. I was treated very well, and I was never harmed."

"What do you mean you are never harmed?"

"We had to make you see all the things you had done in your life were wrong. We had to make you know that killing people, either by drugs or prostitution or at the point of a gun was wrong. Making you think that it was me was the only way to get you to move in that direction. Initially, it was for real. When Patricia took me, they had all intentions of doing to me what they told you. Something changed and they could not do it. They kept me hostage, but they never harmed me, never. Did they tell you that I am in love with Patricia?"

"Yes they did. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

"She will not marry me, dad. There is nothing I can do about it. I have asked her, and she will not say yes, because of what you did to her mother, and her friends."

"If I could take it back, I would, but I cannot. William and I discussed it earlier. If I were not so hardheaded all those many years ago, things would have been so much different today. He said to me, 'We should have been lifelong friends, instead of enemies.' Try to change her mind, Stephano, but do not promise her anything you cannot be to her."

"I do not know when we will be talking again, dad. I will be going into hiding, so your friends cannot find me. I would suspect they are going to be doing the same thing with you. Please be careful, I will talk to you whenever we can. Goodbye."

Goodbye, my son, my prayers are with you."

There was a knock at the door and the FBI agent, opened it and let Patricia in. She asked if they could have a few minutes alone, and the agents left the room.

"That was a very brave speech you gave in there, Stephano. I am very proud of you."

"All I did was tell the truth, Patricia, even though some of it hurt."

"What part hurt?"

"The part where I said, 'Hopefully, someone important to me will be coming with me, when I knew she would not be.'"

"When will you be leaving?"

"I am not going with the men and from the FBI. It is not that I do not trust them, but as I said there are people above them that know more than they do. I will strike out on my own the day after tomorrow at the latest. My dads' friends will know I am here by then, and I do not want anybody else hurt, because for me."

"Okay, stay with the professors and my group, until we get the computer downloads we need. You can help us get into the right frame of reference with the Times crossword puzzles."

"I will help you with anything you need, until I leave."

They opened the door to find Steve standing there waiting for them. He said, "Patty, let's go, we have to get working, with the satellite people, it is almost time for the next transmission."

She grabbed Stephano's hand and said, "Come on college boy, move your ass."

They sprinted across campus to the building that controlled the satellite antennas, and tuned in the frequencies that were used by the mobs facility in Miami. When Miami started to transmit to the satellite that was passing within range, every byte of information it transmitted was picked off the satellite at the same instant. Now, Stephano had to do the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. Then all he had to do was find the four-word sentence, and use the one time pad to decipher every line of information transmitted to the alternate sites.