“The day you hit that winning homerun was one of the best days of my life,” Joseph said.
Thomas glanced up. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
Thomas shook his head, his brow wrinkled perplexedly. “It had to be one of the worst days of Ricky’s,” he mumbled, recalling how Rick had completely fallen apart in the outfield during the Little League championship game.
“The kid was a mess when it came to sports.”
“Yeah. He was,” Thomas said quietly. “And was brilliant at a lot of things that really counted.”
He set the trophy on his father’s desk carelessly. Stupid, useless fucking thing. Maybe it was the jolt of anger that went through him that gave him the will to proceed, despite Joseph’s vulnerable state and the subtle allusions to his mother’s condition, as well.
“You should have cut Rick more slack.”
“We all should have done a lot of things,” Joseph countered, his brusque tone belying his wasted appearance. “It’s easy to second-guess our actions when someone close to us passes.”
“Second-guessing yourself is a waste of time, right?” Thomas mused. “‘Regrets will only weigh you down?’ ‘You’ve gotta move on, never look back,’” he quoted a few of Joseph’s parental mantras.
Joseph shrugged. “Some of the best advice I ever gave my boys.”
Thomas just shook his head grimly.
“What’s wrong with you?” Joseph demanded.
Well, here it was. Best to just get it over with.
“Rick
had been investigating the Chicago Outfit just before he died,” Thomas began. “He planned to write a book on the topic.”
Joseph’s face looked gray in the dim light . . . waxy, like he wore a mask. “And you’re bringing this up . . . Why? Because you know these FBI sons of bitches are nosing around, asking me stupid questions about my trucking company, about gambling operations and illegal bookkeeping . . . insinuating I’m a criminal. Those assholes are turning your mother into a walking zombie—”
“I’m just stating a fact,” Thomas interrupted, although he tried to keep his voice even. “And Mom’s in the state she’s in because her son and grandson are dead.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Joseph fired at him.
“I’m trying to talk to you about Rick’s investigations.”
“What has that got to do with me?”
Thomas met his father’s stare. His fierce eyes used to have the ability to make him quell in his Nikes, not that he’d let Joseph ever know that. At the moment, Joseph’s blue eyes looked watery and . . . washed out. Still, Thomas sensed the fight and toughness of an old bulldog in him.
“It’s got everything to do with you,” Thomas replied. “Rick found an informant, a man who had done small deals with the Outfit since he was practically a kid, who was willing to talk to Rick about what he knew—to detail operations. To name names.”
The silence that followed felt so thick that Thomas swore it pressed like a weight on his chest. He studied the face of the man that he’d known and trusted since he was a ten-year-old boy.
“I guess you already know who Rick’s informant fingered as the head man of the Outfit,” Thomas said.
Joseph’s indifferent shrug jarred through his consciousness.
“Me, right?”
Thomas nodded, his entire awareness . . . his entire world narrowing down into a surreally sharp focus on the man who sat behind the desk.
“Are you telling me that Ricky believed that liar?” Joseph barked.
“He didn’t, at first. I told him that this man—his source—must have known Rick’s real name. He must have been trying to con Rick, implicate you as a criminal so that he could later blackmail Rick for money.”