Chapter 33 - The Godfather

Chapter 33: Chapter 33 - The Godfather

Dean leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the desk.

"I have accounts," he said. "Several of them. Offshore. Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg. All legitimate. All fully declared. All audited every single year by three separate firms." He said it with quiet pride, like a man describing a garden he’d tended for years. "The FBI has examined every one of them more times than I can count. They’ve never found anything, because there’s never been anything to find."

Jesse frowned. "Okay..."

"I’ll move your money into one of them," Dean said simply. "It will look like it’s been sitting there for years, earning interest. Then I’ll give you full access. Your name on the account. Your signature. Your authority. Anyone who ever asks where your money came from, you point them there."

Jesse stared at him.

"You’d do that?"

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

Jesse shook his head slowly. "Uncle Dean, I can’t ask you to do that. Your accounts are clean. If you start moving money around for me, won’t that trigger the FBI? You just said they’ve been watching you for thirteen years."

"They have." Dean nodded. "Which is exactly why it will work."

Jesse blinked.

"They’ve already looked at every account I have, hundreds of times," Dean explained patiently, the way he used to explain long division at the kitchen table. "They know my patterns. My investments. My history. If money suddenly appeared in your mother’s dead account, it would be strange. Unexplained. A red flag." He tilted his head. "But if money moves from a man with a perfectly clean thirteen-year record to the young man he’s been responsible for since the day he was born, that isn’t strange at all. It’s expected."

"Responsible for?"

Dean looked at him for a moment. Then, for the first time since Jesse walked in, he looked slightly embarrassed.

"You don’t remember?" He adjusted his glasses. "I’m your godfather, Jesse."

Jesse’s mouth fell open.

"Your mother asked me. At your baptism. You were four months old. You cried through the entire ceremony and spat up on my tie." Dean’s mouth twitched at the corner. "I’ve never believed in any of it. God, the Holy Spirit, original sin. None of it makes sense mathematically." He paused. "But I respect it. Your mother believed in it. And I made her a promise in that chapel. I said I’d look out for you. Sorry, I didn’t live up to that promise all these years."

He folded his hands again, perfectly aligned.

"But now I’ll play the part. A godfather with no children of his own, providing for his godson. A trust fund, set up years ago, finally released after the death of his mother. It’s the simplest story in the world. Nobody will question it."

Jesse sat back in his chair.

He hadn’t known. Or if he had, he’d forgotten it years ago, buried under everything that came after.

His mother had picked Dean. Out of everyone in her life, she’d picked the strange, quiet man who counted floor tiles. Maybe because she knew that once Dean made a promise, he’d never break it.

"Thank you," Jesse said quietly. "Uncle Dean. Really. Thank you."

Dean nodded once, briskly, like a man accepting a receipt.

"Now," he said. "Let’s go over the details."

******

He spent the next forty minutes walking Jesse through it.

Every single step. The account number. The bank. The routing. The date the trust had supposedly been established. The amount Dean had supposedly deposited each year. The interest it had supposedly earned. The legal language in the trust document Dean would draft that night and backdate with an attorney he trusted.

And the story. Most of all, the story.

"You found out about the trust after the funeral," Dean said. "The executor contacted you. You didn’t know it existed. You’re grateful but uncomfortable discussing it, because it reminds you of your mother. Short answers. No details. If anyone presses, give them my number." He leaned forward. "Never embellish. Liars always embellish. The truth is boring. Be boring."

Jesse nodded.

Thanks to his new memory, he didn’t need to write anything down. Every number, every date and every word Dean said slotted into his mind and stayed there, crisp and clear. Halfway through, Dean stopped and stared at him, clearly noticing that Jesse wasn’t taking notes, and then quizzed him on the routing number.

Jesse recited it back perfectly.

Dean’s eyebrows rose slightly. He didn’t comment. But Jesse caught a flicker of something like approval in his pale eyes.

"Have you bought anything yet?" Dean asked. "Anything expensive? Anything visible?"

Jesse hesitated.

"A car."

"What kind of car?"

"A Porsche. Panamera Turbo S."

Dean closed his eyes briefly, like a man who’d just watched someone step on a rake.

"Of course you did."

"In my defense, it was kind of a gift."

"From whom?"

Jesse opened his mouth. Then closed it. "It’s complicated."

Dean studied him for a long moment. Then, to Jesse’s relief, he simply nodded and let it go.

"Do you have the documents? Title, registration, bill of sale?"

Jesse thought about it. When he’d first gotten into the car that morning, he’d opened the glove compartment out of curiosity. There’d been a slim leather folder inside, neatly organized, like someone had left it there for him.

"In the glovebox," he said.

"Give them to Duncan on your way out," Dean said. "I’ll make sure the purchase is tied to the trust account. Dated correctly. Paid correctly. By tomorrow morning, that car will have the cleanest paper trail in New York."

Jesse let out a slow breath. For the first time since Percy Bonham had leaned against that lamppost and asked where’d you get the car, the knot in his chest loosened.

"How much is all this going to cost?" he asked.

Dean looked up from the notepad he’d been writing on, squaring it neatly with the edge of the desk.

He looked genuinely puzzled.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. You’re doing all of this for me. The accounts, the lawyer, the paperwork, the car." Jesse spread his hands. "I want to pay you. Or at least give you something to show I appreciate it."

Dean set down his pen. He placed it perfectly parallel to the notepad.

"Keep your money, Jesse."

"Uncle Dean—"

"No." Dean’s voice was soft but firm. "I couldn’t help your mother. I tried. She wouldn’t let me." He looked down at his folded hands. "This is how I make sure Emma’s son is taken care of. Let me do this."

Jesse looked at him for a long moment.

Then he nodded.

"Okay."

Jesse stood up and buttoned his jacket. Dean stood too, tugging the hem of his suit straight and smoothing his pink pocket square.

Jesse was halfway to the door when he stopped and turned back.

"Uncle Dean. Has my father reached out to you?"

Dean’s expression didn’t change. "No."

"Not at all?"

"We haven’t spoken in a long time." Dean paused. "Ten years."

Jesse frowned. Ten years. His father had been on the run for thirteen.

That meant Dean had spoken to Jamie Byrne at least once after he disappeared.

Jesse filed it away. He’d come back to that.

"He’s back," Jesse said. "In New York."

Dean was quiet for a moment.

"That doesn’t surprise me," he said. "Not one bit."

"Percy Bonham told me he was at Mom’s funeral." Jesse’s jaw tightened. "Watching. From a distance. He didn’t even come up to me."

Dean said nothing.

"So if he ever reaches out to you," Jesse went on, his voice hardening, "tell him I don’t want anything to do with him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to hear from him. Tell him not to try to contact me." He swallowed. "He’s a selfish, horrible person, and he left us to rot. Mom spent thirteen years paying for what he did. She died paying for it."

He turned his back on Dean and walked toward the steel door.

He had his hand raised, inches from the handle, when Dean spoke again.

"Your father isn’t the bad man you think he is."

Jesse stopped.

He didn’t turn around. He just stood there, hand frozen in the air, staring at the cold metal of the door.

"He just got too caught up with the real horrible people," Dean said quietly behind him. "And he couldn’t get himself out."

Jesse slowly turned around.

Dean was still standing behind his perfectly symmetrical desk, hands at his sides, pale blue eyes steady and unreadable.

"What does that mean?" Jesse asked. "What real horrible people? What are you talking about?"

Dean held his gaze for a long time.

Then he gave a small, careful shake of his head.

"You’ll have to wait and see, Jesse," he said. "Not everything is exactly how it looks."