“She does,” Booth admitted.
“Where is my boy now? I want to see him.”
“No, sir,” Brennan said. “You don’t.”
Gianelli stared at her, his eyes dark marbles, his face a mask of pain and anger. “I want to see him for myself.”
“It’s your right,” Booth said.
Raymond Gianelli rode with them, no bodyguards, no gunmen, no lawyer, just the three of them.
They drove to the Cook County morgue, to which Vincent’s remains had been transferred.
In the basement, in a cold, green hallway with one bench and two windows at the corridor’s end, they waited.
Soon they were standing on either side of the father, facing a window behind which a blank-faced worker in hospital greens rolled in a sheet-covered cart.
Brennan wondered if Gianelli noticed the abnormally large lump where the head was. While the rest of the body lay flat, the head stood upright and the sheet rose a good six inches more than normal.
With the cart next to the window, the worker on the other side withdrew the sheet to reveal Vincent’s head.
A hand shot to Raymond Gianelli’s mouth and a horrified murmur escaped his lips. Surely Gianelli had seen almost everything in his long and illegal life; but this was too much, even for him.
The sheet was drawn a little farther back, and Brennan followed Gianelli’s eyes to the skeleton.
Then his eyes closed, tears fell, and Raymond Gianelli — who had mercilessly murdered and ordered God only knew how many more — wobbled as though he might drop.
Automatically, Brennan and Booth each grabbed an arm and steered him away from the window to the long, wooden bench. He sagged and sat, weeping shamelessly.
Softly Booth said, “We are sorry for your loss.”
Gianelli glared up at the FBI agent. “Really? Tell the truth like your lady friend here — don’t you love that my son is dead, and there’s one less Gianelli in the world?”
Booth kept his voice even. “No parent should have to bury a child.”
Brennan could tell that Gianelli was eager for a fight, perhaps intent on picking one so rage could blot out sorrow; but Booth’s words, his obvious sincerity, stopped the man cold.
His face fell into his hands.
They drove him home in silence, Gianelli in the back, lost in his thoughts, Brennan thinking about how everything up until now seemed like a warm-up for the Old School gangster bloodbath that would surely follow.
As they turned into Gianelli’s driveway, he said, “I want to make a deal.”
Booth shook his head. “All due respect to your situation, Mr. Gianelli, nothing has changed. I told you before, sir, no more deals. I offered you one in the deposition room, and you turned it down.”
Brennan could hardly believe what she was hearing, and started to speak, but Booth’s eyes shut her down.
He was up to something.
She swiveled slightly to see Gianelli in the backseat. He rubbed his forehead wearily.
“I’ll tell you all of it, anyway,” he said. “Not just our family, but the others. I know everything everyone’s ever done in this town.”
“You can’t fight them all,” Booth said. “You want to use me as your weapon of revenge. I’m not playing.”
Gianelli’s eyes and nostrils flared. “You think this is a fucking game, you FBI prick?”
Booth said nothing.
They were parked in front of Gianelli’s house; one of Gianelli’s men had a hand on the vehicle’s rear door, but something had kept the guard from opening it. A gesture or look from Gianelli had maintained their privacy.
Whatever it had been, Brennan missed it.
Finally Booth spoke: “I’m the only way you have to get at the others now. Agreed?”
“…Agreed.”
“Problem for you, Mr. Gianelli, is I can put them away now without your help. And put you away, too, no deals…. Unless, of course, you have something to trade that hasn’t occurred to me. Otherwise, we have nothing more to talk about.”
Gianelli sat for a long time without saying anything. When he did, his voice was soft and Brennan had to strain to hear.
“I know what you want, Booth.”
“Do you?”
“You want the guy who gave us Musetti. You want the rat.”
“I’m listening.”
Gianelli hunched over. “I give you that guy, we’ll cut a deal?”
Still facing front, Booth said, “You’ll get hard time, Raymond, but we’ll protect you. White-collar country club with no other mob guys. Nobody to cut you in the shower, unless it’s a fallen congressman or Enron exec needing a buck.”
“You’re funny.”
“Give me the federal leak, and we will take the others out. Those responsible for the atrocity perpetrated upon your son will go down. Give us enough, we’ll bust them down to the root.”
Gianelli’s sigh had gravel and regret in it. “Hardest thing I ever did, havin’ Stewie whacked. Musetti and me, we grew up together, our papas were pals, we were best buddies, compadres. Woulda been for our whole lives, too, only somebody started talkin’ to him, fillin’ his head with shit that we was gonna whack him. Which was bull — I loved that guy. But he threatened my family… threatened Vincent. And my boy wasn’t perfect, but I loved him. And I couldn’t allow that.”
“I understand,” Booth said.
“Finally, when we couldn’t convince Stewie we weren’t after his ass, I had to have Stewie taken out… to save my son. And the son of a bitch, the very bastard who filled Stewie with all that nonsense about us wanting him gone? Well, he’s the very same bastard who sold him out to us. I will give him to you gladly, Agent Booth.”
Brennan’s eyes were on Booth now. His breathing seemed rapid and shallow, but he said nothing, sitting, staring through the windshield, not even looking in the rearview.
At last Gianelli said, “Special Agent in Charge Robert Dillon.”
Booth nodded, as if this were old news.
Brennan, however, almost fell off the seat.
Dillon?
She eyed Booth — was he believing this? Where was the proof?
As if in reply to her thoughts, Gianelli said, “I have evidence for you in a safe-deposit box — audiotapes of the bastard that he don’t know about. You want them?”
“Yes.” Booth turned to look at the man he’d been talking to. “I’ll have a man accompany you to the bank, Mr. Gianelli, to collect that evidence. You go on in and I’ll arrange that.”
Gianelli nodded.
Booth said, “Let me clear the rat out of our nest, and then we’ll meet you back here.”
Gianelli made a slight gesture with his hand, his man opened the door and he climbed out, no wobble in his step now.
As the elder statesman of organized crime headed into his mansion, Booth and Brennan rolled slowly away from and back around the circular drive.
“You believe him?” she asked.
Booth glanced at her. “What’s his motivation to lie?”
“He’s a liar. With a dead son to avenge.”
“The latter is true, Bones, but the former? Gianelli is a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them. Within his world, he plays by the rules. His word is gold. Matter of honor.”
“Then you do believe him?”
“Hard not to. Despite everything he’s done over the years, Gianelli is on the federal side now.”
She frowned. “That’s hard to picture.”
“Do you think his enemies will be satisfied with just killing Vincent?”
“Oh. Well, no. Of course not.”
“Raymond’s motives are twofold. As you said, he wants revenge.”