Hearing no answer, Angelo turned the knob, grateful the door was unlocked. Smoky vapors hit both men like a sandstorm, swirling and enveloping them. Joe peered through the smoke to locate Ben, propped up on the bed, puffing away happily on a joint.
Angelo turned to Mario and quietly instructed, “Call his mom back and tell her we got him. But don’t mention anything about the weed.”
As Mario hurried down the hallway, Joe looked angrily at Angelo. “Don’t tell his mom he’s been smoking pot? A sixteen year old? His mother deserves to know her son is using an illegal substance!”
“It’s no big deal. Lo smoked all the time at his age.”
“And look where that got him,” Joe sneered. “Six feet under.”
Their argument was interrupted by Ben, who finally realized he had guests in his room. “Hey, the military dude is back,” he said slowly, sending Joe a relaxed smile. Noticing Angelo, he amended his statement. “Oh, actually both my great uncles are here. Bitchin. I got both, uh … gruncles her wit me, yo.”
“Gruncles?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, military dude. Great uncle takes too long to say. I’ll call you my Gruncle. You down with that?”
“I’d be more down with taking you to rehab,” Joe muttered.
“You want some of this?” Ben invited, holding out his joint. “It’s great stuff. I sell only the best.”
Joe wondered if he was getting a contact high from the secondhand smoke. So, not only was Ben using drugs, he was dealing too? Angelo was allowing this to happen? Had he learned nothing from Logan’s experience in juvenile detention? From Logan’s lifelong struggles with addiction?
Watching Angelo just stand there, Joe marched over to Ben’s bed and extended his hand. “Sure, I’ll try some.”
“You’re cooler than I thought, military dude,” Ben smiled woozily and reached into the backpack next to the bed, extracting a large plastic bag. “Let me just roll you a toke.”
Joe swiftly swooped in to grab the bag of pot.
“Heyyy,” Ben protested, his grin fading.
“Did you honestly think I was going to light up a doobie with a sixteen year old, Ben?” Joe hid the bag behind his back with one hand while ripping the lit joint out of Ben’s grasp with the other.
“Give it back,” Ben whined.
Joe fought the urge to order the boy to drop and give him twenty. He glanced at Angelo standing uncomfortably by the door. “You knew about this too, didn’t you?” Joe asked. “You let a teenage boy use drugs—deal drugs? Out of your house?”
“Hey, he’s cool with it,” Ben said. “Why do you gotta be such a jerk?”
“Because I care about you and your future, Ben,” Joe responded gruffly. “And your father had a lot of wonderful things about him, but getting busted for selling pot as a teenager was not one of them.”
At the mention of Logan, Ben immediately felt tears. He clenched his jaw, attempting to hold them in, but his bloodshot eyes glistened.
Noticing the boy’s emotional torment, Joe sighed and sat down in a chair next to the bed. Ben drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his skinny arms around his legs. Grant had sat on his bed that very same way as a teenager, trying not to cry on his deceased mother’s birthday. Joe sighed again. “It was a long, difficult day yesterday.”
Ben nodded and angrily swiped away the tears that had begun to cascade down his cheeks.
“Why did you leave your mother’s house?”
Looking down, the teenager mumbled, “’Cause my stash was here.”
“Getting stoned will not help anything.”
“Who c-c-cares?” Ben sputtered angrily. “No one cares anyway.” He looked angrily at Angelo in the doorway. “You don’t care.”
“What do you mean, kid?” Angelo asked.
“You don’t care that your son killed my dad!”
Angelo drew in a sharp breath, too stunned to speak.
“I was here!” Ben said, his tears falling in earnest now, “I was here when those detectives showed up. I heard the whole thing. Carlo k-k-killed my dad, and then my Uncle Grant killed Carlo.”
Ben crumpled onto himself and sobbed. Joe ached for him. No wonder the boy had smoked himself into oblivion. It was more than anyone should have to bear—to find out his father was murdered, then discover his idol was the one who killed him.
Realizing Angelo was still too floored to speak, Joe took action, attempting to gather the weeping teenager into a hug. Ben resisted, then gradually melted into the man’s firm embrace, continuing to sob. “I’m so sorry you lost your dad,” Joe murmured, patting Ben’s back. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll get through this.”
They held each other for several minutes while Angelo looked on, appearing uncomfortable. He knew how to run a business by cheating, stealing, and killing, but comforting a crying teenager was not in his repertoire.
“How about I take you home to your mother’s?” Joe suggested.
He was surprised when the boy readily nodded. Joe could only hope that learning of Carlo’s evil might make this compound less appealing. Hiding the bag of pot behind his chair, Joe picked up Ben’s backpack, and they walked out of the room.
“You’re welcome anytime, ragazzo,” Angelo told Ben as he headed down the hall.
“Okay, godfather,” Ben responded.
Once the boy was out of earshot, Joe said, “Get those drugs out of here.”
Angelo bristled. “This ain’t over between us, Madsen.”
“You bet it’s not,” Joe agreed. He’d successfully extricated Grant from the family’s clutches, and that was a good start, but he wasn’t done yet. He had to free Ben as well, if the boy was to have any chance of becoming a good man. Joe knew Angelo wasn’t going to let Logan’s son go easily. The battle for Ben was just beginning.
39. Bonnie and Clyde
Suppressing a yawn, Grant smoothed his hands across his chest, feeling the rough black T-shirt provided to him by a police officer. The cotton was coarse and heavy. He much preferred the soft, supple feel of a well-worn shirt, but he might as well get used to scratchy clothes issued by the state. The prison blues bestowed upon him at Gurnee would be even more uncomfortable, if memory served.
He’d been puzzled when the guard gave him the shirt but told him to continue wearing his own jeans after his shower earlier that morning. This was his third day of captivity, and he thought surely he’d be dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit by now, awaiting his hearing. He wondered if they didn’t quite know what to do with a parolee-turned-murderer.
The click of heels on the concrete caused him to push his body off the bed. Just then Detective Marilyn Fox rounded the corner.
“Mr. Madsen,” she nodded, taking in his lean arms and freshly scrubbed appearance.
“Good morning, ma’am.” He smiled shyly. “Is there any word on my hearing?”
“Actually, I’m here to escort you to your attorney, and she will tell you the deal.”
Grant nodded and immediately stuck his hands through the small opening to be cuffed. He was dismayed to find submitting to restraint becoming routine once again.