Mob Princess - Tess DiRosa's Story
Copyright© 2025 by Argon
Chapter 18: House Call
Jennifer Wilder was in a more relaxed mood in the next morning when they picked her up at the VP’s residence. She even wished them a good morning.
“I’m sorry for being such a wuss yesterday,” she added.
“Miss Wilder, you had every right to be distraught,” Tess answered. “We’ll have a second team again today for added security. Agents Gojcic and Priestley will cover our rear and run interference.”
“Why does it have to be such a hassle? I mean, what does that guy gain by this sh ... crap?”
“A few dozen more clicks for his sad little blog,” Tess shrugged. “He’s a douche bag with nothing else to show in life.”
“So he’s leeching off me to boost his ego? What is he doing for a living?”
“He’s a mail office clerk at an insurance agency living in his aunt’s basement. Really cliché.”
The bright giggle of Jennifer Wilder made Tess smile, too.
“OMG! Do you mind if I spread that around a little?”
“Sir?” Tess asked Jefferson.
“Be our guest, Miss Wilder. His name is Andrew Curran, 28, of Silver Spring, Maryland.”
“Thanks, Agents. I won’t let him rattle me again.”
“That’s the spirit, Miss Wilder.”
During the morning classes, Jennifer Wilder must have spread the word among her clique, for there was a lot of giggling going on, with more of it after lunch in the quad. Tess and Talia Priestley still watched over Wilder from up close, and they frequently heard the name ‘Curran’ in connection with derogatory epithets.
Still, when Santos picked them up for the ride back to the Observatory, they could spot the same VW Beetle following them. This was easily solved when Gordan and Talia, driving behind them, stopped their sedan in a narrow street, blocking Curran until the Suburban carrying Wilder was beyond pursuit. According to Gordan, the man cussed up a storm when they warned him off, spouting some nonsense about his right to observe and report about the government. According to Gordan and Talia, he was a wack job, but would bear scrutiny.
This was enough for Denham to involve a US Attorney and ask for a federal protection order against Curran. While this was being processed, they still had to contend with the man. They expected him to alter his approach the next day and changed things a bit. Indeed, he cut them off at a four way stop sign at the end of the small street where the academy was located, blocking them in. It was his bad luck that the Suburban carried only Gordan and Talia, who promptly detained him until Metro Police arrived and cited him for willful obstruction of traffic. They also found two tires on the Beetle too worn for safety and impounded the car, making him find his way back to Silver Spring by foot and Metro. Meanwhile, the sedan with Wilder and her protective detail had driven unhindered along a parallel street and dropped their charge off safely at the Observatory.
The latest attempt prompted the Federal Judge to issue a protective court order barring Curran from approaching Jennifer Wilder closer than 200 yards and following her on the way to and from school. By 4:30, the court order arrived at HQ, and since Jefferson had quit early for a doctor’s appointment, Gordan and Tess got the job to serve it to the suspect.
“Oh, joy! Overtime!” Tess bitched to her friend, who shrugged.
“Let’s wear tactical vests. The mutt gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Tess had come to trust her partner’s gut feelings, and not having met the man yet, she just nodded and took along her protective gear. They also phoned to have a Maryland State Police officer meet them at Curran’s address, reasoning that the presence of a Statie might deescalate things.
Arriving at the address in Silver Spring, they parked fifty yards away and donned their tac vests. Thinking about it, they decided against taking along the riot gun, but the State Police officer, grizzled Master Trooper Perry, who arrived a minute later, had no such compunctions. Nodding, Gordan took their own riot gun and jacked a cartridge into the breech.
“Better safe than sorry,” he shrugged. “Will you do the serving?”
“Sure thing, partner,” Tess nodded, getting a little apprehensive as well.
The three of them cautiously approached the 1960s, one-story brick rambler which sat on a semi-subterranean basement. Gordan took a flanking position to the left, MT Perry stood back a few paces, and Tess took the court order from her breast pocket and walked up the four steps to the door. She rang the doorbell and stood back. It took a moment, but then the door opened and a woman in her forties, wearing a dressing gown and with curlers in her thinning hair, opened the door.
“Yes?” she asked, looking at Tess with barely masked distaste.
“Ma’am. I’m Special Agent DiRosa, United States Secret Service. Does Mister Andrew Curran live here?”
“Yes. What do you want of my nephew?”
“Is Mister Curran at home, Ma’am?”
“What do you want of him?”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I must speak to Mister Curran and ... GUN!”
Behind the woman, Tess saw the twin barrels of a gun appear and she dived to the right, just as the man holding the gun discharged it from beside the woman. Tess landed hard on the gravel of the path, and before she could get halfway up, let alone unholster her gun, the shotgun was cocked and raised again.
“Get away, Tess!” Gordan screamed. He could not fire at the suspect with the woman still in the way and shielding him, and he just jumped in front of the discharging gun, taking a full load into his upper body and falling backwards. Tess heard the man breaking the gun open to reload. Trooper Perry could not shoot because of the woman shielding Curran, and so Tess dove in front of her and yanked her down. Perry must have waited for that, because a split second later, the Remington boomed, and Curran stumbled backwards.
He must have worn protection, too, because he wheezed and cursed and still tried to insert a cartridge into the second barrel. Yet, the two seconds of him stumbling backwards had given Tess the time to bring up her Sig. Aiming carefully, she waited until he raised his head again, and then fired twice and high. Two holes opened in his throat and where his left eye had been, and he dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
“Andy!” the woman lying next to Tess screeched and half crawling, lunged at Tess, who barely had the time to counter with a left-handed palm strike to the woman’s nose, stunning her. Now Perry was at her side, still covering the dead Curran with his shotgun, but then, seeing the fatal head wound, helped Tess up.
Her first thought was Gordan of course, who was lying on his back moaning, and she knelt at his side to check his vitals.
“Gordy, can you answer me?”
Relief washed over her when he cracked open his eyes, grimacing with pain.
“Shit! This hurts!” he squeezed out.
Meanwhile, Perry was already calling in for ambulances and his sergeant, and Tess realized that she had to act, too.
“Hold still, you hear. Perry already called it in. I gotta call this in, too!” She punched the speed dial for their dispatch. “This is Special Agent Teresa DiRosa. I am calling in an agent-involved shooting at 1800 Banning Drive, Silver Spring. Suspects are down, one agent is also down, but responsive. I need a supervisory agent on site, a tactical team to clear the suspects’ house, and for you to pass on the information to SAC Denham.”
“I copy you, Agent DiRosa. What is the status of the suspects?”
“The male suspect sustained at least two gunshot wounds and is unconscious and unresponsive; the female suspect is unconscious and breathing after sustaining facial trauma.”
“I copy that, Special Agent. Any other information to convey.”
“Nothing I can think of, maybe make sure that the EMTs have been alerted. My partner was hurt.”
“I can confirm that MCFRS was alerted.”
“Thanks! DiRosa out!”
Tess then made sure that Gordan was lying as comfortably as any man with heavily bruised ribs could do. He could only breathe shallowly, but Tess had checked all around the tac vest looking for wounds in the unprotected parts of his body. There were none, bleeding that was, and Tess saw the tight grouping of the shotgun pellets in the center of his chest. Still, broken ribs were nothing to ignore, and so she sat with him, trying to calm him so as not to exacerbate his shortness of breath.
Not two minutes later, the first State Police Cruisers came screaming down the narrow residential street, one of them with a sergeant who assumed control. Next, first one and then two more ambulances arrived, and Tess resolutely made the first EMT to emerge tend to her partner. Andrew Curran was declared DOS after a quick examination, and his aunt, who was slowly coming to with her face a mess of blood and snot, was given oxygen and loaded onto one of the ambulances, with one of the troopers accompanying her after cuffing her to the stretcher.
The third EMT team, after finding Curran beyond any medical needs, then insisted on examining Tess, who sported a torn suit leg and bleeding abrasions on her hip and thigh from the rough gravel on which she had landed. They had to do a field dressing since Tess roundly refused to be taken to a hospital until a supervisory agent appeared on the scene.
That happened ten minutes later when four Secret Service wagons arrived at the scene, with SAC Denham assessing the damage to her agents first. Meanwhile four agents in heavy protective gear entered the house for a thorough search, exiting fifteen minutes later, producing two semi-automatic long guns, an old revolver handgun, and an old Army carbine.
Meanwhile, Tess gave a first statement to SAC Denham, and a State Police lieutenant, only interrupted when Gordan was carefully loaded onto a gurney and readied for transport to Holy Cross Hospital, with Tess seeing him off. Then they continued the debriefing. Tess handed over her sidearm, which was bagged and tagged, but also her badge. This was standard procedure, and Tess did not worry about herself. She was also expressly barred from visiting Gordan before he had been debriefed; again, standard procedure.
Then, finally, after shaking Perry’s hand, she sat in the third ambulance and was driven to Holy Cross Hospital, too, where her wounds were properly cleaned and bandaged. She was also given antibiotics and tetanus shots before being released. With the adrenaline that had sustained her in the previous 90 minutes leaving her system, she was dead on her feet, and she wanted to groan when she saw who was waiting outside the treatment room.
“Hi, Ma’am. You waiting for me?”
“Yes, I guess,” a sheepish-looking Special Agent Sondra McNeill answered. “I was told to give you a lift home and to make sure you have everything you need.”
“Uh-huh! Well, I’m pliable today. Give it to me,” Tess sighed.
“Listen, DiRosa, that raving bitch Monday, that wasn’t me. I’m on psych leave, but Denham suggested that making goody-goody with you would help me and you. So, I’m sorry for being such an asshole.”
Tess nodded, feeling only relief. “Forgotten. I was a bit snippy, too. My brother’s always on my case to keep my big mouth in check.”
“Yeah, well, I was jealous, too,” McNeill admitted.
“The young whippersnapper with the gold medal?”
“Yeah. Then Denham gave me a copy of your file. Shit! You faced down a suicide bomber! So again, sorry. Now let me get you home.”
Climbing into the sedan was a bitch with her abrasions acting up, now that she was in the adrenalin dump, but she managed and settled in the passenger seat, giving McNeill her address. Not ten minutes later, McNeill even helped her into the building and into her apartment.
It was half past ten by now, and Tess wanted a bite to eat, a beer and a bed, but the thought of preparing food was daunting. McNeill solved that by calling a pizza service. While they were waiting, there was a soft knock on the door and McNeill opened. It was Denise Hollis, who had seen the news and wanted to look after Tess. They invited her to join them, but Denise made a quick detour to her apartment, returning with a six-pack of Sam Adams before the pizzas arrived.
It was a really comforting evening for Tess, but it drove her a bit nuts that nobody could give her the scoop about Gordan. She knew that he was not seriously injured, but he had taken a shotgun blast for her, and she needed to know if he would be all right. Her two companions figured that out, and McNeill called Denham, asking her for news, but not telling her that she was on speaker.
“Why would you want to know, McNeill?” Denham asked.
“I have his partner here, and she’s fretting, Ma’am.”
“Oh. You two made up?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I meant what I said yesterday. Agent Hollis is here, too, and they’re both friends of Gojcic.”
“Well, tell them he’s got one hell of a bruise, that’s he’s under painkillers to ease his breathing, but that he will be back in a week or two, as good as new. And make sure DiRosa doesn’t drink too much. She’ll have a formal debriefing tomorrow, with me, Deputy Secretary Warren, and a US Attorney. Tell her not to worry. Master Trooper Perry already testified, and he fully backed her version of the events. I just don’t want a hung over agent giving the impression that we celebrate a kill.”
“We had a beer each, Ma’am, but that’s all. I’ll tell them,” McNeill answered. “Thanks, Ma’am.”
“Get some sleep, too, McNeill.”
“Will do, Ma’am. McNeill out.” She looked at Tess and Denise. “You got that?”
“Yeah, thanks, Sondra,” Tess answered. “I guess I’m okay around sharp objects now, and I better get some sleep. I’ve got to call my great uncle and my brother, too.”
“That would be Vince DiRosa, right?” McNeill asked softly.
“Yeah. He’s always worried about me, and my brother is just ... well, my big brother. We’re close.”
“Yeah, I understand. I’ve got a big brother, too. Make those calls and then try to find some sleep,” McNeill agreed. “Thanks for the beer, Hollis.”
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