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“I don’t need to. I’ll call my concierge doc.”
“Good. Tell him you got beat up by your concierge bookie.”
Suddenly we heard traffic on the street, and in the next moment, a gleaming black Tahoe bounced into John’s driveway, its massive engine rumbling. Another Tahoe drove on its bumper, and another one after that, then two black SUVs. They seemed like official vehicles, swarming all over the driveway, jumping its border of Belgian block, and lurching to a stop on the manicured grass.
John gasped. “What the hell?”
The sight sent a bolt of terror through me. The Tahoe doors all flew open at the same time, as if on cue. Men in navy-blue windbreakers and bulletproof vests jumped out of the cars, converging on us with long guns.
This is it. I put my hands up reflexively.
Chapter Fifty
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted, my knees weak.
“FBI! Get on the ground!” the agents yelled. “Down on the ground!”
“Okay!” I hit the deck, my hands still raised. My chin grazed the pebbles of the driveway.
“I’m doing it!” John grunted, lowering himself.
A cadre of FBI agents swarmed us. “Either of you John Devlin?”
“I am,” John answered from his knees.
“We have a warrant for your arrest!” one of the FBI agents shouted. They surged to John and hoisted him to his feet. One agent patted him down, the other wrenched his arms behind his back and handcuffed him.
“What for?” John asked, gasping. “What are the charges?”
My thoughts fled. I felt panicked. I didn’t know what was going on. I’d thought they’d come to arrest me. It hadn’t registered they were FBI, not local. I had no idea why they were arresting John. They couldn’t have known about the billing fraud this fast.
“We have a search warrant for the premises!” shouted another FBI agent, brandishing a flurry of paper. FBI agents thundered past meand streamed into the house. I could hear their heavy footfalls inside, their shouted directions to each other.
“TJ, call Dad!” John yelled as FBI agents pressed him into the back seat of one of the Tahoes.
•••
Still stunned, I stood on John’s front lawn, my phone to my ear, listening to it ring. John had been taken away, and FBI agents were searching his house. I could see them through the windows hustling this way and that, carrying boxes.
“Dad?” I said, when the call connected. “Listen, I have bad news. I’m at John’s. The FBI arrested him and they’re here—”
“They’re there,too?” my father asked, aghast.
•••
FBI agents were swarming all over Devlin & Devlin, searching John’s office, as well as my parents’, Gabby’s, and the file room. They carted in empty cardboard boxes, and I could hear conversation and rustling as they riffled through file drawers and packed documents. They seized the new laptops and my father’s phone, but no one else’s. We still didn’t know the charges against John. I’d filled my parents in about the arrest and the beating he’d taken.
We were confined to the waiting room, and I stood next to my mother, my arm around her shoulders. She had reached Angela, who had sent a lawyer to us and another one to John. Surprisingly, my mother was doing better than my father, who’d gone silent, sitting in a wing chair flanked by Gabby and Martin.
We all watched wordlessly, knowing that we couldn’t talk in frontof the FBI agents. No one had anything to say anyway. We were collectively horrified, and I was worried about my parents, who’d been up all night. Luckily Mango was at the vet’s, so I didn’t have to run home.
I felt everything turning upside down, my own personal bizarro world. John was behind bars, not me. He’d become the Bad Son, and I was the Good Son, or at least the Not-As-Bad Son. My father was quiet, and my mother was in charge. Our offices were being upended, and so were our lives.
I had to believe this was the demise of Devlin & Devlin. It was too much for my father, the reason he’d emotionally imploded. He couldn’t bear to witness the end of the family firm.
I was just hoping it wasn’t the end of the family.
•••
