Chương 4
The refrigerator compressor in the kitchen shut off. In the sudden quiet, rain seemed to fill the building.
Damiano did not raise his voice. “Take Elena upstairs.”
“No,” Elena said.
Sofia Rossetti arrived twenty minutes later in navy hospital scrubs beneath a tan raincoat. She entered the café carrying a drugstore bag, a folded child’s blanket, and the expression she usually reserved for relatives who had ignored medical advice.
She was three years younger than Damiano and had spent most of those years refusing to be impressed by him.
“You said there was a child,” she said. “You did not say the child might be yours.”
“I said we didn’t know.”
“You said, ‘Bring dry clothes for a girl around seven.’ That is not how normal people announce possible parenthood.”
Elena watched from a booth near the front window. Nate had found hot chocolate, though she had not touched it. Bruno slept in the crook of her arm.
Sofia softened when she saw her.
She approached without reaching for the child. “Hi, Elena. I’m Sofia.”
“Are you with him?”
“I’m his sister.”
Elena studied her face. “You don’t have his eyes.”
“Thank God.”
Damiano almost smiled. The impulse felt inappropriate, but Elena’s mouth twitched before she caught it.
Sofia sat across from her. “I brought you clothes. I guessed the size, so they’ll probably be wrong. I am very bad at guessing sizes.”
“I need to find Mommy.”
“I know.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
Sofia nodded. “It must sound useless.”
“It is.”
“That’s fair.”
Elena looked at the drugstore bag. “Are there socks?”
“Three pairs.”
“Why three?”
“They sold them that way.”
“That’s too many.”
“You can keep the extras until the sock police come.”
Elena gave her a suspicious look, uncertain whether adults were permitted to be foolish during emergencies.
Damiano left them and returned to the back room.
Enzo stood alone beside the table. The other men had gone to search Vittorio’s house, apartment, clubs, and usual meeting places. Nate was making calls upstairs, notifying employees not to come in the next morning.
Damiano closed the door.
“Tell me.”
Enzo stared at the blurred line in the ledger. “Your father found out Maeve had been asking about a man who disappeared from the docks.”
“Which man?”
“Tommy Vale.”
Damiano remembered. A union clerk who had taken money from two crews and vanished in the summer of 2017. Damiano’s father claimed Tommy had fled to Florida. No body had ever been found.
“Maeve was working for the union’s attorney,” Enzo said. “She saw payroll records that didn’t fit. She asked you about them.”
“She asked whether my father controlled the pension board. I told her no.”
“You believed that.”
“I was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“What did my father do?”
“He told me to visit her.”
Damiano looked at Enzo’s hands. The older man had kept them folded in front of himself since the conversation began.
“What kind of visit?”
“I told her to leave New Jersey.”
“Did you threaten her?”
Enzo’s eyes lifted. “Yes.”
The answer came too cleanly to be softened.
“With what?”
“You.”
Damiano did not move.
“I said if she stayed, your father would make you choose between her and the family. I told her he would ruin you before he let her take you away. I said if she loved you, she would go.”
“She was pregnant.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Did she tell you?”
“Not then.”
“When did you know?”
Enzo glanced toward the ceiling, where Elena’s small footsteps crossed above them.
“Last week.”
Damiano walked to the far wall. The concrete was cool beneath his palm.
Maeve had left without a fight. No note. No call after the first week. Her apartment emptied. Her number disconnected. For years he had treated her disappearance as a verdict on his insufficiency. Then, gradually, as proof that anyone could be replaced.
He had become very good at replacing people.
“You saw Elena?” he asked.
“No. Maeve showed me a photograph.”
“And you said nothing.”
“She told me if I told you before she had protection, she would disappear again. This time with the girl. She said Vittorio had men following her.”
“You could have come to me.”
“I was trying to confirm it.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew what it would do.”
Damiano turned. “To me?”
“To everything.”
Enzo’s voice roughened. “You think this stays between you and a woman you loved? You have a daughter. Vittorio knows. Other crews find out, she becomes leverage. Your enemies know where you bleed. The government learns Maeve has records, she becomes a witness. Your own men wonder whether you will burn them to protect her. There was no version that ended with the three of you eating dinner.”
“There still isn’t.”
“No.”
Damiano walked back to the table. “Did you tell Vittorio Maeve had Book B?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone she came to you?”
“No.”
“Then how did he know?”
Enzo’s face tightened. “Maybe he followed her.”
“Or he followed you.”
They stood with that possibility.
From upstairs came Elena’s voice: “Bruno hates the dryer.”
Sofia answered, “Bruno has excellent instincts.”
The ordinary sound made the room below seem more corrupt.
Damiano opened the ledger. Vittorio’s handwriting appeared on several pages, neat columns with small hooks on the sevens. Beside cash amounts were initials and addresses. The records were incomplete, perhaps deliberately.
“Four-seven,” Enzo said.
“What?”
“The marks Maeve scratched under the chair.”
Damiano found page forty-seven.
Three entries had been circled in pale pencil. They were easy to miss beneath the darker ink. Each payment came from a company called East Ferry Restoration. The listed address belonged to an empty warehouse district near the river.
A fourth entry showed a weekly payment to L. Mercer, listed as consulting.
Enzo read over his shoulder. “Leon Mercer works code enforcement.”
“Retired two years ago.”
“Not that Leon. His son.”
May you like
Damiano knew the son. A city building inspector with expensive tastes and a habit of making violations disappear.
The last amount was dated that morning.
