Forgive Me(101)

Tears came to Angie’s eyes. She stood and opened her arms. Bao rose to his feet and embraced her. Then he started to cry, shoulders heaving sort of cry. He cried for his lost childhood, for the hard times, and the good ones that included his adoptive parents. Soon Angie couldn’t control her own waterworks. They hugged and cried together, and she stroked Bao’s long hair and told him how much she loved him.

When they broke apart, both dabbed at their watery eyes, laughing a little awkwardly.

“Sorry about that,” Bao said. “It’s just, you mean so much to me. I don’t know what I’d do without you, but I do know where’d I be if I hadn’t met you. And that’s nowhere.”

Angie tried to imagine life without her dad who meant so much to her, and the notion of cutting him off completely as punishment didn’t sit well at all. The question was how to find a new equilibrium with her father. It took Bao to make her see the path forward more clearly.

Still, her investigative instincts continued to ping. While she had promised not to search for the Conti connection, she’d made no such offers in regards to investigating her genealogy.

“All right, you’ve got an Ohio girl mystery to solve, and I’ve got to get some work done on my own,” Angie said.

“You want to be alone,” Bao said.

“Ya know, I like how you just get me, Bao. I really do.”

He gave her another hug, gathered up his things, and rolled away on his skateboard.





Over the course of several hours, Angie scoured the Web and various databases. She would have liked Bao’s help—he was good at that sort of thing—but there was only so much information she felt safe sharing. On her own, she managed to construct a rudimentary family tree with some pretty bare branches. She scrounged up a few names, some pertinent dates, but nothing close to the photographic treasure trove she sought.

Her grandparents might very well be dead. If they did have social media profiles, none were coming up in any of their searches. Maybe because of the things William Harrington—aka Gabriel DeRose, aka Angie’s dad—had done, they intentionally kept a low profile. The same could be said of her uncles, aunts, and various cousins.

Without more information to go on, Angie switched tactics and started to look into William Harrington’s past. She wanted to know everything she could about her father’s former life, and what had led him to the choices he had made.

On one database, Angie found documents incorporating her father’s financial business. An address was on file in New York City, but it wasn’t located near where Antonio Conti once resided. Still, Angie’s mom and Conti could have crossed paths at some point, given the clientele her father serviced.

Bigger questions loomed. Why weren’t there any articles about William Harrington? Why weren’t there news reports detailing her father’s Ponzi scheme? Why wasn’t the trial of the mobsters he gave up to the DA covered in the local press? Maybe the deals were done secretly. Perhaps for her father’s safety, arrangements were made to bury the truth. It would explain why details of his Ponzi scheme were kept out of the press.

One thing was certain. Instead of getting any answers, what Angie had were more questions for her father.





CHAPTER 55



Angie endured a fitful night’s sleep before finally surrendering to her anxiety-induced insomnia. She rose from bed before the sun came out. Her father had called a number of times, but she’d let his calls go to voice mail, same as she did calls from Mike and Maddy. Angie needed to be alone with her thoughts, painful and frustrating as they were. She showered just after sunrise, put on her favorite pink robe, and made a pot of Trader Joe’s coffee. The first cup of the day was life-affirming and trumped her lack of sleep and all the nagging questions about her past.

She had left her office late, only to come home and resume her hunt for information about William Harrington. Her search was going nowhere. As Friday had turned into Saturday, she knew come morning she would have to make the call she had hoped not to make. It wasn’t an impetuous decision, nor was it one she came to lightly. But after wrestling with her options, getting answers trumped Angie’s other concerns. Bryce was a good man, and she regretted putting him in any sort of compromising position, but he was best-equipped to help.

Angie waited until eight o’clock Saturday morning, though her restraint didn’t come easy. She occupied herself with the local news. The lead story was about a house fire in McLean, not about Ivan Markovich. He wasn’t the first criminal to skip bail, and the story didn’t have legs. To the public, Markovich was a pimp who’d gone on the lam. They didn’t understand the implications of human trafficking and why that story should have trumped a fire. Stinger being MIA meant Bryce had probably pulled an all-nighter trying to find him.

Angie was going to add to his misery.

Bryce answered her call after two rings. “Hey there. I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Good thoughts, I hope.”

“Always. I’ve been meaning to call, but we keep running into brick walls here and we’re not getting very far with our hunt. This Stinger guy, man, I dunno. He’s like a phantom or something.”

“Where are you?”

“DC.”

“That close? Can we meet up?”

“I would if I could. Believe me, I’d like to. How are things on your end?”