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bedlamsbardI am going to Disneyland for a week with the band. Yes, you may tremble in fear: forty-five high school band geeks unleashed upon poor unsuspecting Anaheim. Don't worry, we don't bite. Much. Anyway, I should be back by Friday; we get locked up in the high school tonight before leaving for Sea-Tac at four in the morning. Just when you think you've left school for the summer, it drags you right back.
“Danny, I want to see you in my office,” Mac said, standing in the doorway of the lab.
“Yeah,” Danny muttered, adjusting the focus on the microscope. “Yeah, just a sec.” To the microscope, “Come on, you bitch, come on – gotcha!”
Aiden glanced over. “You got something, Danny?”
“Dirt?”
“Huh?”
“Dirt,” Danny said, twisting away from the microscope. “We can trace it, right? Give us a clue where someone who was in that elevator was. And since that elevator was outta order – only people shoulda been in there were the janitors and the perp.”
“Now, Danny,” Mac snapped.
Abashed, Danny glanced back down at the microscope, then up at him. “Ya’ want me to –”
“Leave it. It’ll still be here when we get done.”
“Yeah, Mac.” He gave Aiden a frantic look, and she shrugged. Whatcha gonna do about it, Danny?
He hadn’t realized Michael Giovinazzo was still in the lobby, curled up in one of the ratty chairs they used for victims’ families members to wait in with a book in his hands. He glanced up as Danny came in and offered a little half-wave, which Danny returned instinctively then glanced away. Mac gave him an expressionless look. Fuck.
Once in Mac’s office – and God, how Danny hated this, like being called into the principal’s office except with the principal’s office on live stage (who the hell had designed the boss’s office with glass walls?) – he shifted nervously from foot to foot in front of Mac’s desk, looking away and at anything but Mac. Studied the piles of recent and current and the odd old case files on his desk, the puzzle, the pictures. There was a sharp flare of surprise, as always, when he looked at them: Mac was a kid once? Mac was young?
Mac settled behind his desk, leaned forward with his eyes narrowed. “Did you ever plan to tell me about your Mafia connections, Danny?”
“It never came up,” Danny said, his voice cracking a little on the last syllable. He tried again. “If you’d asked –”
“Would you have told me the truth?” Sharp demand, and disdain.
Danny thought about it, about the blind terror he’d felt when he first sent in his application, sure that he was going to get rejected because of his blood and the ink tracing fine letters on his back. “I…don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “Mac, but God, I swear, I wasn’t going to – like, fuck with a case or something. Tamper with evidence. It’s my blood, but it’s not who I am.”
Something on Mac’s face changed minutely, eyes widening a little, then he looked down. When he glanced back up again his face was carefully blank. “Nevertheless, Danny –”
“I didn’t do anything,” Danny whispered. Remembered, sick to his stomach, the way Sonny had touched his back after he got his tat, ran his tongue over the fresh ink and muttered low and steady, That’s my boy. That’s my Dannyboy. Looks like the rumors are right about you damn Constantines, huh?
Not a Constantine. Messer. Danny Messer. Not Danny Constantine.
He could have been. Val had offered – had wanted it, wanted it badly, and Danny still wasn’t sure why he’d refused. If I’d said yes I woulda been one of those guys out there in the lobby with Val a couple hours ago.
Or in jail, like Joey, or prison, like Sonny Sassone and his grandfather Luciano Constantine.
Danny swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Mac, you know – you gotta know – any time we worked a Mob case, I never fucked with the evidence. Never. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not a goddamned spy or somethin’. Like with Tanglewood, I never –”
“Tanglewood,” Mac said flatly. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
Let’s not, Danny wanted to say. The thought of Tanglewood – of Sonny and Curly Sassone, of Vinnie Patriso and Phil DiCarlo and the crack of a gun, of Flack bloody and unconscious, screaming terrified and blind five nights a week – made him sick. Flack. Jesus. You tried to kill my partner, Curly. “There’s not much to talk about,” Danny said, trying to will his voice to stillness. “I got in when I was fourteen, got out four years later. My tat’s got two dates on it – you’ve seen that. Didn’t see most’a those guys again till a couple months ago.”
Mac pulled out a thin file from under a stack and reached across the desk to drop it in front of Danny. “What about this?” he said.
Danny reached for it with shaking hands and flipped it open. Then he put one hand to his mouth, the dinner he’d shared with Flack threatening to come up all over Mac’s desk. “Oh Jesus,” he muttered through tightly clenched teeth. “Oh Jesus Christ.” Andrew O’Malley. Officer Andrew O’Malley and his murder, and Vinnie Patriso’s trial. “Oh Jesus,” Danny said again.
“You want to explain that, Danny?” Mac asked.
Danny dropped his head down onto Mac’s desk, felt the paper – computer printouts, the smell of ink still lingering faintly – cool against his forehead. “Oh Jesus,” he said again. “I thought – I thought –” I thought that was fucking behind me.
“You thought what?”
Danny lifted his head and stared at Mac, then took his glasses off. He looked at a suddenly blurry picture behidn Mac’s head the whole time he spoke. “I was eighteen. We were drunk. Vinnie Patriso was driving. We got pulled over. He shot the cop. I jumped out of the car. He shot me, left me for dead. I woke up in the hospital, and I testified against him. He got not guilty. I left Tanglewood after that.” He glanced down at the court records. “That’s all there is. I swear to God, Mac, that’s all that happened.”
“They called you an unreliable witness, Danny,” Mac said.
“I was eighteen, and barely that. Drunk and underage, and the son of a decorated NYPD officer hanging out with a bunch of Mafia punks. One outta five kids speaks out, and it’s the one all the cops are calling a goddamned traitor behind our backs? There wasn’t any evidence, except that the bullet in my shoulder came from the same gun as the one in O’Malley. The car was gone. So was the gun. There were witnesses that said Vinnie and the rest’a the guys had been at a party on the other side’a the city. I was the only thing the prosecution had goin’ for them, and they didn’t trust me. What would you have done?”
“You’re one of my CSIs,” Mac said. “Why didn’t I know about this?”
Danny gnawed on his lip. “Because they tried me as a minor,” he said finally. “On account’a the fact my birthday was the day after O’Malley got killed. Accessory to murder, ‘cept they dropped the charges because I testified. It’s sealed up in my juvenile record still.” He slid his glasses back on and met Mac’s eyes. “That and the fact I got a lotta family in the NYPD, and a couple lawyers and FBI agents thrown in. I may be half criminal, but the other half’a my blood’s pure blue.”
“Valentine Constantine,” Mac said evenly.
Danny glanced down. I can’t tell on Val, he thought fleetingly, then the realization anchored itself in his brainstem. I can’t. He’s family. And there’s omerta.
But you’re not Mafia, his cop brain argued. So omerta doesn’t apply to you.
It’s in my blood. Loyalty. Silence. Don’t talk. Don’t be a rat.
“He’s my uncle,” Danny said, staring fixedly at a display case full of medals. “On my mom’s side. She was his older sister, by a lot.”
“And he’s a Mafia don.”
“Technically he’s acting boss.” He thought of the discussions Val had held with Carmine and Joey and Neil Sforza, when Joey’s father had still been alive, late into the night, about this and that family, about this and that racket, about the rumored hit out on the Lancione underboss and the Rocchegiani War. “Until Luciano Constantine gets outta prison.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“Val’s dad. The Constantine boss.” Danny licked at his dry lips. “I think he’s up for parole sometime in the next year. He’s been in prison since I was born.”
“And?”
“And what?” Mac cut a glare at him, and Danny protested, “There’s nothin’ really else to say, Mac. I haven’t been involved in the Mafia for more than a decade.”
“Then what about the hit Carmine d’Alessandro said was out on you?”
Danny jerked. “What?”
Mac repeated himself, eyes on Danny’s face.
Danny put his head in his hands. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Patriso’s still – Christ, Carmine and Val both warned me.”
“Warned you of what?”
“Patriso,” Danny said after a moment, rubbing at his eyes. “One’a the Five Families, right? Tanglewood’s mainly Patriso recruiting ground, and they speak for most of the Tanglewood Boys. Patriso’s been blamin’ me because Curly Sassone killed Vinnie Patriso, and because Curly’s dead and Phil’s in jail. Probably because Johnnie Boy Marcatti’s dead and the Lark’s kin jail, too. Probably because Nicky Pagliuca’s capo di tutti capi now too, just for kicks. Gotta blame me for everythin’ else, huh?”
“What?” For the first time, Mac looked surprised and a little worried. “Pagliuca?”
“Yeah, one’a the Families. Most powerful of ‘em right now, specially after all that shit with the Rocchegiani’s gone down – Mac?” Danny paused. Family feuds, he remembered Neil Sforza saying. Stay out of that shit, Val, if you can help it. Nothing there but blood and regret. We may be Mafia, but we ain’t the Families, and we can’t afford that. Danny licked his lips again. “I ain’t – I ain’t fired, am I?”
Mac shook his head absently. “Tell Stella to come in here if you see her, Danny. And you’re dismissed.”
Danny left, blinking in surprise. For a moment – just a moment – he’d sworn Mac wanted to kill him, somewhere in between Tanglewood and Andrew O’Malley. Then the feeling of doom laid on his head and passed, to be replaced with sharp anger at Val – fuck, Val, your blood left me with this – and the Patrisos. What the fucking hell did I do to you that you didn’t try to do to me first?
Pagliuca.
Mac had stopped at the mention of Nicky Pagliuca, surprise and dismay flaring briefly in his eyes. Pagliuca was a family that tended to fly low under the radar of the feds, one born not so much of blood and murder as of crime and old Sicilian loyalty. No surprise that Nicky Pagliuca had become boss of bosses, not after the Rocchegiani War and the scandals and flash that had propelled them to the front page of the papers. It would be a long time before the Commission turned its ponderous head toward someone as camera-happy as John Valachi, the last Rocchegiani boss, had been and he’d thought it would have been longer still before two families – or one – went to war. But Constantine wasn’t one of the Five Families, and they’d never followed the Mafia Commission’s rules if they didn’t feel like it. And Fat Freddy Patriso was notoriously unstable. What had he and Val come up with together? Open war between the two families? And what about Nicky Pagliuca’s name had gotten Mac’s attention?
It wasn’t that Nicky Pagliuca was well known in the papers, not like John Valachi or Val Constantine was. Danny guessed that Mac knew only the most cursory of information about the Mafia, only that which he could find in the newspapers or old case files. Enough to threaten suspects with in the box, but not enough that he could call himself an expert on the subject. Not like Danny could, if he wanted.
His eyes flickered toward Michael Giovinazzo, who was studiously ignoring him with his nose in his book. Danny hesitated a moment, then crossed to the other side of the lobby. “Hey, Michael.”
Michael glanced up. “Hey, Danny. Carmine and Val didn’t get you into any trouble, did they?” He jerked his head toward Mac’s glass office.
Danny shrugged. “’Bout the same as usual,” he said. “What’s up with the Patrisos, Mike?” he asked, dropping into another chair.
Michael closed his book and frowned at him. “Blue Eyes is pissed because of Vinnie kicking the bucket,” he said. “And you know Fat Freddy; he’s been chomping at the bit for a chance to go to war with Val. None’a the Families like Val and Constantine all that much, Patriso least of all.”
“War?”
“Yeah. Declared about four months ago, the day after Johnnie Boy Marcatti died and Carmine ended up in the hospital.”
“A formal declaration?”
Michael shrugged. “S’far as I know. I dunno whether it went up in front of the Commission or not, but Fat Freddy’s got no problem trying to whack made guys right and left. Ace has been in the hospital twice, but it’s nothin’ serious – just a couple stitches. The only guys we’ve lost are Frankie Conneglia and one of the Scarpettas – Angelo, I think. Maybe Lou. They all kinda blend together, ya’ know?”
Danny gnawed on his lip. War. Jesus. “What about me?”
Michael looked speculative. “Look, Danny – I don’t know if Val wants me telling you this, but – Patriso’s got an open hit out on you and your partner. An open hit. The guy wants you bad. Carmine said somethin’ about carte blanche? That’s what Fat Freddy gave his capos when it comes to you and Flack. He wants you dead or alive, Danny. And cop or not, blue blood or red – sooner or later, he’s gonna get you. He almost did already.”
“Johnnie Boy and the Lark,” Danny said, throat suddenly dry.
Michael nodded. “You’re damned lucky you got Val, Danny. Without him you wouldn’t’a lasted this long.”
“An open hit,” Danny whispered. “Jesus. Fucking – Christ, an open hit. What the hell did I ever do to the old bastard?”
“Killed his grandson,” Michael said. “And got another one sent to prison for life.”
“Danny, I want to see you in my office,” Mac said, standing in the doorway of the lab.
“Yeah,” Danny muttered, adjusting the focus on the microscope. “Yeah, just a sec.” To the microscope, “Come on, you bitch, come on – gotcha!”
Aiden glanced over. “You got something, Danny?”
“Dirt?”
“Huh?”
“Dirt,” Danny said, twisting away from the microscope. “We can trace it, right? Give us a clue where someone who was in that elevator was. And since that elevator was outta order – only people shoulda been in there were the janitors and the perp.”
“Now, Danny,” Mac snapped.
Abashed, Danny glanced back down at the microscope, then up at him. “Ya’ want me to –”
“Leave it. It’ll still be here when we get done.”
“Yeah, Mac.” He gave Aiden a frantic look, and she shrugged. Whatcha gonna do about it, Danny?
He hadn’t realized Michael Giovinazzo was still in the lobby, curled up in one of the ratty chairs they used for victims’ families members to wait in with a book in his hands. He glanced up as Danny came in and offered a little half-wave, which Danny returned instinctively then glanced away. Mac gave him an expressionless look. Fuck.
Once in Mac’s office – and God, how Danny hated this, like being called into the principal’s office except with the principal’s office on live stage (who the hell had designed the boss’s office with glass walls?) – he shifted nervously from foot to foot in front of Mac’s desk, looking away and at anything but Mac. Studied the piles of recent and current and the odd old case files on his desk, the puzzle, the pictures. There was a sharp flare of surprise, as always, when he looked at them: Mac was a kid once? Mac was young?
Mac settled behind his desk, leaned forward with his eyes narrowed. “Did you ever plan to tell me about your Mafia connections, Danny?”
“It never came up,” Danny said, his voice cracking a little on the last syllable. He tried again. “If you’d asked –”
“Would you have told me the truth?” Sharp demand, and disdain.
Danny thought about it, about the blind terror he’d felt when he first sent in his application, sure that he was going to get rejected because of his blood and the ink tracing fine letters on his back. “I…don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “Mac, but God, I swear, I wasn’t going to – like, fuck with a case or something. Tamper with evidence. It’s my blood, but it’s not who I am.”
Something on Mac’s face changed minutely, eyes widening a little, then he looked down. When he glanced back up again his face was carefully blank. “Nevertheless, Danny –”
“I didn’t do anything,” Danny whispered. Remembered, sick to his stomach, the way Sonny had touched his back after he got his tat, ran his tongue over the fresh ink and muttered low and steady, That’s my boy. That’s my Dannyboy. Looks like the rumors are right about you damn Constantines, huh?
Not a Constantine. Messer. Danny Messer. Not Danny Constantine.
He could have been. Val had offered – had wanted it, wanted it badly, and Danny still wasn’t sure why he’d refused. If I’d said yes I woulda been one of those guys out there in the lobby with Val a couple hours ago.
Or in jail, like Joey, or prison, like Sonny Sassone and his grandfather Luciano Constantine.
Danny swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Mac, you know – you gotta know – any time we worked a Mob case, I never fucked with the evidence. Never. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not a goddamned spy or somethin’. Like with Tanglewood, I never –”
“Tanglewood,” Mac said flatly. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
Let’s not, Danny wanted to say. The thought of Tanglewood – of Sonny and Curly Sassone, of Vinnie Patriso and Phil DiCarlo and the crack of a gun, of Flack bloody and unconscious, screaming terrified and blind five nights a week – made him sick. Flack. Jesus. You tried to kill my partner, Curly. “There’s not much to talk about,” Danny said, trying to will his voice to stillness. “I got in when I was fourteen, got out four years later. My tat’s got two dates on it – you’ve seen that. Didn’t see most’a those guys again till a couple months ago.”
Mac pulled out a thin file from under a stack and reached across the desk to drop it in front of Danny. “What about this?” he said.
Danny reached for it with shaking hands and flipped it open. Then he put one hand to his mouth, the dinner he’d shared with Flack threatening to come up all over Mac’s desk. “Oh Jesus,” he muttered through tightly clenched teeth. “Oh Jesus Christ.” Andrew O’Malley. Officer Andrew O’Malley and his murder, and Vinnie Patriso’s trial. “Oh Jesus,” Danny said again.
“You want to explain that, Danny?” Mac asked.
Danny dropped his head down onto Mac’s desk, felt the paper – computer printouts, the smell of ink still lingering faintly – cool against his forehead. “Oh Jesus,” he said again. “I thought – I thought –” I thought that was fucking behind me.
“You thought what?”
Danny lifted his head and stared at Mac, then took his glasses off. He looked at a suddenly blurry picture behidn Mac’s head the whole time he spoke. “I was eighteen. We were drunk. Vinnie Patriso was driving. We got pulled over. He shot the cop. I jumped out of the car. He shot me, left me for dead. I woke up in the hospital, and I testified against him. He got not guilty. I left Tanglewood after that.” He glanced down at the court records. “That’s all there is. I swear to God, Mac, that’s all that happened.”
“They called you an unreliable witness, Danny,” Mac said.
“I was eighteen, and barely that. Drunk and underage, and the son of a decorated NYPD officer hanging out with a bunch of Mafia punks. One outta five kids speaks out, and it’s the one all the cops are calling a goddamned traitor behind our backs? There wasn’t any evidence, except that the bullet in my shoulder came from the same gun as the one in O’Malley. The car was gone. So was the gun. There were witnesses that said Vinnie and the rest’a the guys had been at a party on the other side’a the city. I was the only thing the prosecution had goin’ for them, and they didn’t trust me. What would you have done?”
“You’re one of my CSIs,” Mac said. “Why didn’t I know about this?”
Danny gnawed on his lip. “Because they tried me as a minor,” he said finally. “On account’a the fact my birthday was the day after O’Malley got killed. Accessory to murder, ‘cept they dropped the charges because I testified. It’s sealed up in my juvenile record still.” He slid his glasses back on and met Mac’s eyes. “That and the fact I got a lotta family in the NYPD, and a couple lawyers and FBI agents thrown in. I may be half criminal, but the other half’a my blood’s pure blue.”
“Valentine Constantine,” Mac said evenly.
Danny glanced down. I can’t tell on Val, he thought fleetingly, then the realization anchored itself in his brainstem. I can’t. He’s family. And there’s omerta.
But you’re not Mafia, his cop brain argued. So omerta doesn’t apply to you.
It’s in my blood. Loyalty. Silence. Don’t talk. Don’t be a rat.
“He’s my uncle,” Danny said, staring fixedly at a display case full of medals. “On my mom’s side. She was his older sister, by a lot.”
“And he’s a Mafia don.”
“Technically he’s acting boss.” He thought of the discussions Val had held with Carmine and Joey and Neil Sforza, when Joey’s father had still been alive, late into the night, about this and that family, about this and that racket, about the rumored hit out on the Lancione underboss and the Rocchegiani War. “Until Luciano Constantine gets outta prison.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“Val’s dad. The Constantine boss.” Danny licked at his dry lips. “I think he’s up for parole sometime in the next year. He’s been in prison since I was born.”
“And?”
“And what?” Mac cut a glare at him, and Danny protested, “There’s nothin’ really else to say, Mac. I haven’t been involved in the Mafia for more than a decade.”
“Then what about the hit Carmine d’Alessandro said was out on you?”
Danny jerked. “What?”
Mac repeated himself, eyes on Danny’s face.
Danny put his head in his hands. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Patriso’s still – Christ, Carmine and Val both warned me.”
“Warned you of what?”
“Patriso,” Danny said after a moment, rubbing at his eyes. “One’a the Five Families, right? Tanglewood’s mainly Patriso recruiting ground, and they speak for most of the Tanglewood Boys. Patriso’s been blamin’ me because Curly Sassone killed Vinnie Patriso, and because Curly’s dead and Phil’s in jail. Probably because Johnnie Boy Marcatti’s dead and the Lark’s kin jail, too. Probably because Nicky Pagliuca’s capo di tutti capi now too, just for kicks. Gotta blame me for everythin’ else, huh?”
“What?” For the first time, Mac looked surprised and a little worried. “Pagliuca?”
“Yeah, one’a the Families. Most powerful of ‘em right now, specially after all that shit with the Rocchegiani’s gone down – Mac?” Danny paused. Family feuds, he remembered Neil Sforza saying. Stay out of that shit, Val, if you can help it. Nothing there but blood and regret. We may be Mafia, but we ain’t the Families, and we can’t afford that. Danny licked his lips again. “I ain’t – I ain’t fired, am I?”
Mac shook his head absently. “Tell Stella to come in here if you see her, Danny. And you’re dismissed.”
Danny left, blinking in surprise. For a moment – just a moment – he’d sworn Mac wanted to kill him, somewhere in between Tanglewood and Andrew O’Malley. Then the feeling of doom laid on his head and passed, to be replaced with sharp anger at Val – fuck, Val, your blood left me with this – and the Patrisos. What the fucking hell did I do to you that you didn’t try to do to me first?
Pagliuca.
Mac had stopped at the mention of Nicky Pagliuca, surprise and dismay flaring briefly in his eyes. Pagliuca was a family that tended to fly low under the radar of the feds, one born not so much of blood and murder as of crime and old Sicilian loyalty. No surprise that Nicky Pagliuca had become boss of bosses, not after the Rocchegiani War and the scandals and flash that had propelled them to the front page of the papers. It would be a long time before the Commission turned its ponderous head toward someone as camera-happy as John Valachi, the last Rocchegiani boss, had been and he’d thought it would have been longer still before two families – or one – went to war. But Constantine wasn’t one of the Five Families, and they’d never followed the Mafia Commission’s rules if they didn’t feel like it. And Fat Freddy Patriso was notoriously unstable. What had he and Val come up with together? Open war between the two families? And what about Nicky Pagliuca’s name had gotten Mac’s attention?
It wasn’t that Nicky Pagliuca was well known in the papers, not like John Valachi or Val Constantine was. Danny guessed that Mac knew only the most cursory of information about the Mafia, only that which he could find in the newspapers or old case files. Enough to threaten suspects with in the box, but not enough that he could call himself an expert on the subject. Not like Danny could, if he wanted.
His eyes flickered toward Michael Giovinazzo, who was studiously ignoring him with his nose in his book. Danny hesitated a moment, then crossed to the other side of the lobby. “Hey, Michael.”
Michael glanced up. “Hey, Danny. Carmine and Val didn’t get you into any trouble, did they?” He jerked his head toward Mac’s glass office.
Danny shrugged. “’Bout the same as usual,” he said. “What’s up with the Patrisos, Mike?” he asked, dropping into another chair.
Michael closed his book and frowned at him. “Blue Eyes is pissed because of Vinnie kicking the bucket,” he said. “And you know Fat Freddy; he’s been chomping at the bit for a chance to go to war with Val. None’a the Families like Val and Constantine all that much, Patriso least of all.”
“War?”
“Yeah. Declared about four months ago, the day after Johnnie Boy Marcatti died and Carmine ended up in the hospital.”
“A formal declaration?”
Michael shrugged. “S’far as I know. I dunno whether it went up in front of the Commission or not, but Fat Freddy’s got no problem trying to whack made guys right and left. Ace has been in the hospital twice, but it’s nothin’ serious – just a couple stitches. The only guys we’ve lost are Frankie Conneglia and one of the Scarpettas – Angelo, I think. Maybe Lou. They all kinda blend together, ya’ know?”
Danny gnawed on his lip. War. Jesus. “What about me?”
Michael looked speculative. “Look, Danny – I don’t know if Val wants me telling you this, but – Patriso’s got an open hit out on you and your partner. An open hit. The guy wants you bad. Carmine said somethin’ about carte blanche? That’s what Fat Freddy gave his capos when it comes to you and Flack. He wants you dead or alive, Danny. And cop or not, blue blood or red – sooner or later, he’s gonna get you. He almost did already.”
“Johnnie Boy and the Lark,” Danny said, throat suddenly dry.
Michael nodded. “You’re damned lucky you got Val, Danny. Without him you wouldn’t’a lasted this long.”
“An open hit,” Danny whispered. “Jesus. Fucking – Christ, an open hit. What the hell did I ever do to the old bastard?”
“Killed his grandson,” Michael said. “And got another one sent to prison for life.”