Mob Princess - Tess DiRosa's Story
Copyright© 2025 by Argon
Chapter 13: Under Cover
Their involvement with the bread-and-butter cases continued for another three months until one morning, when before they could leave the office, Tess was summoned to McCann’s office. When she entered, she found her boss and a wiry female agent, who was well into her forties.
“Agent DiRosa, this is SAC Denham, of the VP’s PD,” he introduced his visitor. Tess knew of course that the PD stood for Protective Detail, not Police Department.
“A pleasure to meet you, Ma’am,” Tess said.
“And you, Agent. Lenny Gorman speaks highly of you, calls you the best probie he’d ever had.”
“He is an excellent supervisor, Ma’am, and I owe him.”
“The reason for my call is that we need you for a longer assignment.”
“With the VP’s protective detail, Ma’am?”
“Yes and no. You see, we have a prickly situation with one of the VP’s family members. To be more specific, his son from his first marriage, Kenneth Wilder. He’ll be attending law school at UPenn in the fall, and he’s a pain in our collective asses. He’s constantly slipping away from his details.”
“That’s a bit stupid, Ma’am, isn’t it?”
“I told you, she is a sharp cookie,” McCann chuckled.
“Yes, it is, Agent. He’s going to be a first-year at Penn Law, after graduating from Georgetown this summer. The Dean is having the jitters about us placing agents in his hallowed lecture halls. What’s more, young Wilder is likely to continue with his disappearing acts. So we talked to the VP and he agreed to put his son on a longer leash, posting agents outside the lecture halls. Young Mister Wilder is agreeable to that. I’m not, so I talked some more to the Dean. He’s allowing us to insert an agent into his first-year classes, provided, we find one qualified. You see where I’m going?”
“You want me to pursue a JD at Penn Law?”
“Got it in one. Under the agreement, you’ll not be able to carry. They have metal detectors, and it would blow your cover if those things went off every morning.”
“That wouldn’t mean I have to go naked,” Tess mused.
“No, we can find you some stuff that won’t trigger the detectors, especially with your martial arts background, but it would have to be fully concealed, or our deal with the Dean is off. You will just attend classes, perhaps even be in study groups with the mark — his handle is Romeo by the way — and give the alarm if you see something queer. If all goes well, you’ll come out of this assignment as a JD. Think you can do that?”
“Romeo?”
“He thinks of himself as irresistible,” Denham shrugged. “He goes clubbing a lot, too. Tries to pick up chicks, unsuccessfully for the most. Got popped on the nose by a young Metro PD cop when he tried to touch her boobs in a Georgetown club. Demanded she be dismissed and got laughed out of the precinct.”
“Lovely! A Neanderthal pup. Did his detail get involved?”
“They couldn’t. They were ROTFL. Anyway, we’d like to have you on board.”
“What’s my affiliation going to be?”
“The Philadelphia field office. Officially, you’ll be on paid leave to pursue a JD at Carey. That’s been done before. They may call you in on weekends as Agent on Call, but I’ll ask them to take it easy.”
“Who will know of this?”
“Pretty much the people you see in this room. The protective detail will know of you, but only by voice. The Deputy Director is also in the know.”
“I better pack my stuff then,” Tess concluded with a shrug. At least she was going home.
“Will you need assistance with finding accommodations?”
“No, Ma’am, I was born and raised in Philly, and I own a house there, together with my older brother. I’m covered.”
Saying good-bye to her fellow agents, especially to Lisa, but also to Lydia, was not easy. Shauna took over Tess’s lease, sick of the small, overpriced studio which she occupied. It took Tess three days to make all the arrangements, but on a Friday in mid-August, she climbed into her X3, gave Lisa a long kiss, and then tore out of the drive way.
Figuring nobody would give a shit anymore, Lisa and Tess had subjected the queen-size bed in her room to a rigorous mechanical stress-test. Knowing each other much better than two years before, the sex had been better, more intimate, even transcending into lovemaking, leaving them both confused and a little sad when they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Even now, pointing the hood of her car eastward, Tess felt a loss like she had never experienced when ending a relationship, and she had to wipe her eyes and blow her nose when she stopped at a traffic light.
“Damn it, Tess! Get a grip!” she swore. “Get over it, you sentimental girlie!”
On an impulse, she searched her cell phone’s memory and found the number of Holly Murdoch, her one-time one-night stand, and ten minutes later, she knew that she could cancel the motel booking in Sioux Falls.
After driving for two uneventful days, Tess exited the interstate in Sioux Falls and found her way to the address Holly had sent. It was a nice little one-level house in an older development, mid-seventies likely, and Holly received her with a huge smile and a hug. Holding her arms, she looked Tess over.
“Damn, you’re not a girl anymore, Girl. You look every bit the hard ass agent now.”
“Comes with the job, I guess. You haven’t changed, though.”
“Clean living,” Holly smiled. “Damn, I have my work cut out for me, to send you off with a smile. You look so sad. What happened?”
The question came out of the blue, and so did the answer.
“I ... I think I’ve fallen in love, and I had to leave her behind,” Tess whispered.
“She must have a great behind then,” Holly smiled. “You’re on a new posting?”
“Philly. They’re making me attend law school in Philly, even on their dime.”
“What school?”
“Carey, UPenn.”
“Wow! What did you do? Solve the Kennedy murders after all? Who was it?”
“Can’t tell. It’s one of those whiskey-tango-foxtrot assignments. I’ll get a JD out of it, but it sucks being away from the real work, even from the piddly stuff.”
“Have you told her how you feel?”
“What could it have helped?”
“You could’ve learned if she feels the same. If she doesn’t, it’s better to find out now. If she does, you can find ways to be with her, and she with you. Think she’s at home by now?”
Tess shrugged.
“Tell you what, Tess: I’ll fix us a dinner, and you go and call the girl. Tell her how you feel. Ask her if she feels the same. If yes, tell her you want to make a go of it, and if she agrees, make plans.”
“Holly, I’m sorry. I’m sure you had some expectation, and...”
“Whoa! Easy there! A girl is allowed to say ‘no’ if she’s not in the mood. I’m not some testosterone bag you picked up in a bar. Okay, I’ll be in the kitchen. Call her!”
She left Tess behind, and soon, chopping sounds came from the kitchen. For five more minutes, Tess stared at her smartphone before she found the courage to tap the quick dial for Lisa. She only got voice mail. Once determined, Tess did not budge, and she called Lydia’s landline. She answered at the third ring.
“Hey, is that you, Tess? What the hell happened?”
“Huh?”
“I’ve got a crying wreck on my hands for the last two days!”
“L-lisa?”
“For sure not Shauna! Did you do a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am act on Lisa?”
“C ... can I just talk to her, Lydia? Please? I’m not doing so well either.”
Obviously, Lydia heard something in Tess’s voice. “I’ll try. Hang on!”
Over the connection, Tess heard some knocking, followed by some real door banging, and then Lydia shouting, “Get your mopey ass out here! Now! Tess is on the phone, and she’s crying!”
Not five seconds later, Lisa’s voice assaulted Tess’s ear.
“What is it, Tess? What happened? Did something happen to you? Talk to me, darling!”
“I ... I’m okay, physically. I’ve been like this since yesterday. Lisa, I ... shit, it hurts so much leaving you!”
That was when the floodgates burst open on both sides of the connection.
“You, too? Tess, do you know what you’re saying?”
“Pretty fucking sure! Why’d you think I’m bawling my eyes out?”
“Tess, baby, I feel it too! I’m in love with you. When you drove off, I finally realized it. I need you in my life, darling.”
“That’s ... I guess that’s okay, ‘cos I wanna be in your life. Damn!”
“Yeah, damn! You’ll be in Philly, and I collect fuckin’ Monopoly money and chase dimwits with verbal diarrhea, thousands of miles away from you.”
“Yeah, but now we know, Lisa! We’ll work things out some way. When all else fails, I can resign. I have my trust fund. I can resign and follow you wherever they post you.”
“You’d do that? F ... for me?”
“If the alternative is not seeing you, yes.”
“I don’t want you to do that, Tess. I’ve seen you work. You’re really good, and you love the job. What say we talk whenever possible and maybe meet when there’s a chance? They’ve got to have provisions for agents in relationships. You said your brother got a Vegas wedding? I’m game if you are.”
“And then?”
“Then, they’ll have to accommodate us. Assign us to the same field office. We can’t work together, but we can live together and have a life together.”
“You think that’ll happen?”
“I’ll find out. Hell, even if we’re both posted on the same coast, it’ll be fine. I’d rather have you on weekends only than be apart from you.”
For the next twenty minutes, they kept talking, discussing scenarios, only discussing the ‘how’ and way beyond the ‘if’ already. Tess felt something grow inside, a feeling of happiness and bliss. At some point, Holly came into the living room, a great big smile on her face, a smug smile that said ‘told you so’.
“Dinner’s ready, Tess. Are you guys sorted out?”
“Who’s that?” Lisa asked.
“My best woman for the wedding,” Tess answered. “You remember me telling you of Sergeant Holly Murdoch, of the Sioux Falls PD? I’m bunking with her tonight, and she saw the shape I was in. She told me to call you, insisted on it.”
“Hey, Lisa?” Holly spoke into Tess’s phone.
“Hey, Holly. Sorry for being panicky, and thank you!”
“It’s all in a day’s work for the TRT,” Holly laughed. “Don’t worry about us. I realize when I’m relegated to being the crisis hotline. Are you guys square?”
“No, we’re queer,” Lisa laughed back, “and proud of it!”
“That’s the spirit! Think you can let go of Tess for maybe ten minutes? I have the dinner ready, and she can call you back afterwards?”
“Sure, sorry for...”
“Don’t! You guys needed the time. I can see that Tess’s phone is also running on fumes.”
“Okay, you two. Lydia is making noises about supper, too. How about you call Lydia and I’ll call Tess, and you can compare notes. I think Lydia will win.”
“Yeah, why not? Is she...?”
“Nope, she’s just a lovely young woman, and Tess and I love her to bits.”
“Okay deal. Sioux Falls signing off!”
Holly looked at Tess. “I’m really happy for you. Lisa sounds like a great person.”
“She is. You know I’m not exactly a pure-bred lesbian, right? Lisa could be a guy, and I’d still love her.”
“Just give me a few days’ warning before you get hitched in Vegas. That’s a wedding I wanna see!”
If Tess was able to drive at all in the next morning, that was owed to Holly who had confiscated Tess’s smartphone at around eleven and locked it into her gun safe, together with her own land line phone. Not surprisingly, Tess had fallen asleep immediately after, and when she woke at seven in the morning, the smell of eggs and bacon pulled her to Holly’s kitchen. Her first official act there was to crush Holly against her and to give her a three-alarm kiss.
“Sorry, but the rest is for my fiancée,” she told the surprised woman. “Thank you, Holly! You’re a great, great friend!”
Ten minutes later, freshly showered and basically floating into the kitchen again, she sat down with her hostess and attacked the cooked breakfast while Holly looked at her with an almost motherly smile.
“You know, I’m gonna call Lisa and tell her how lucky she is.”
“Don’t say that, Holly. I’m damaged goods and the lucky one.”
“The murder of your parents?”
Tess nodded. “I never let myself grow attached to a person. I couldn’t, except for my brother, but he’s got a wife and kids now. His wife was an even worse basket case than me before they got back together, so I’m figuring that being with Lisa may also make me human again, you know, lose the aggression that ate me up for ten years.”
“I found some references on the ‘net about her. She’s really okay again?”
“Yeah. The funny thing is, it was a cold-blooded murder that saved her. Her abductors were killed and sloppily buried when trying to cross into Mexico, and seeing their corpses freed her somehow. So whoever killed those two subhumans, unwittingly gave her back her life.”
“She was afraid they’d come back, right?”
Tess nodded. “She took a plane down to Val Verde and viewed the mummies in the local morgue to make sure it was them. She spit on them and laughed at them. The poor coroner was most distressed.”
“So they were not iced by your family?”
Tess made herself shrug. “Don’t know, don’t care. I think my cousin just let everybody know about two heavily inked hulks being on the lam with two-hundred grand in cash. Some freelancer must’ve found them and then retired, is my guess. That’s what the feds believe, too.”
“Scary stuff, but if the victim is okay again, it’s a happy ending in my book.”
“Amen, sister!”
As it happened, Lisa was on the road, too, with Shauna driving them to some place where new fakes had surfaced, and this gave them almost two hours to talk, with Lisa using earphones and Tess using her hands-free system. There was no dirty talk, only endearments but also things they felt the other should know. Talking to Lisa also made the time fly on her last leg. She had decided to drive straight through, and the almost 700 miles took over eleven hours, with three short pit stops thrown in. Her butt was seriously sore when she stopped the car in front of her childhood home.
As soon as she climbed out of her car, she was in a group hug. Joey was leading the assault, but Deirdre, with little Giancarlo, was a close second, before Carla claimed her left leg. Tess was moved to tears by the obvious joy they showed over seeing her. Finding her old room decorated with a large poster that read ‘Welcome Home, Aunt Tess’, obviously crafted by Carla, complete broke her composure and for minutes she hugged her niece closely while her tears flowed freely.
“Why are you crying, Tessa?” Carla asked. Are you sad?”
“No, Sweetie, actually I’m very, very happy,” Tess answered, still under tears. Looking up, she saw Joey’s knowing grin and Deirdre’s beaming face. “I ... I found somebody who makes me so happy.”
“Might that be somebody called Lisa?” Deirdre asked. “She’s been calling every twenty minutes all evening.”
“Oh, shit! I must call her back! Will you guys give me a few minutes?”
“Sure thing, Tess. Carla, let’s give Aunt Tessa a few minutes alone. She’s calling her sweetheart.”
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