Chương 3
“Three nights after the fire. Matteo came to my apartment. He said the child needed someone who knew how to hold her, how to make formula, how to notice if she was sick. He said a nurse would attract attention.”
“Where did he take you?”
“To a building in Red Hook. An old parish daycare. St. Agatha’s. The church sold it years ago. The front is boarded, but there’s an alley entrance behind the kitchen.”
“How often?”
“Every night at first. Then every other night.”
“You left Emma alone?”
“With Mrs. Alvarez.”
“Except once,” Emma said.
Sophia turned sharply.
Emma hugged the rabbit. “Mrs. Alvarez was sleeping. I went with you.”
“You were supposed to stay in the car.”
“I got scared.”
Sophia reached for her, but Emma stepped back.
“Is Lucia there now?” Lorenzo asked.
“I don’t know. Last night she was.”
“Who guards her?”
“Usually two men. They change. A woman named Nina comes during the day. She used to work at a pediatric office. I think she has a drug problem. Her hands shake until she takes something.”
“And the necklace?”
“It was tied around the rail of the crib.”
“Why?”
Sophia looked at the silver swallow. “Proof.”
“Proof for whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Lorenzo studied her face. She was withholding something, but fear had made every answer look incomplete.
Marco entered without knocking. Water shone on his shaved cheeks.
“Paulie’s phone received three calls during the last ten minutes,” he said. “All from a prepaid number. He claims he doesn’t know it.”
“He knows it,” Lorenzo said.
“I agree.”
“Send men to St. Agatha’s.”
Sophia caught his sleeve.
The chapel went still.
Few people touched Lorenzo without invitation. Sophia seemed to realize what she had done only after her fingers were already closed around the charcoal fabric.
“No,” she said. “Not your men.”
Lorenzo looked at her hand until she released him.
“If they see cars, they’ll move her. Matteo said there are instructions. If anything happens to him, if I miss a visit, if anyone comes through the front, they move the baby.”
“Where?”
“He never told me.”
Marco’s expression remained disciplined, but his jaw had hardened. “We can enter from the roofs.”
“They watch the roofs.”
“From the water side.”
“They have a camera over the alley and another on the back lot.”
“You’ve seen the monitors?”
“Yes.”
“How many rooms?”
“I don’t know. They keep me in the nursery and kitchen.”
Marco asked, “What time is your next visit?”
“Ten tonight.”
It was not yet noon.
Lorenzo looked at the rain on the stained glass. Every instinct he had cultivated since adolescence demanded motion. Seize Matteo. Break Paulie. Flood Red Hook with enough men that no one could move a child unseen.
Those instincts had built his power.
They had also built the world in which someone could threaten a three-year-old to control her mother.
“We do nothing visible,” he said.
Marco nodded, though not immediately.
Lorenzo noticed.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You disagreed before you agreed.”
Marco glanced at Sophia and Emma. “We should speak alone.”
“We will.”
Sophia put both hands around Emma’s shoulders. “What happens to us?”
Lorenzo looked at the child who had given him back the possibility of a daughter.
“You stay where I can protect you.”
Sophia gave a short, humorless breath. “Your house burned with your wife inside it.”
Lorenzo had no answer that would not be a lie.
Marco arranged for Sophia and Emma to leave the chapel through a side door. They were taken not to Lorenzo’s Staten Island estate but to a small rectory apartment used by the cemetery chaplain. The building had one entrance, barred ground-floor windows, and no connection to the DeLuca organization that Paulie would recognize. Two women from Isabella’s extended family stayed with Emma while Sophia remained under Marco’s supervision.
The funeral guests were released in groups after their phones had been copied, photographed, or examined. Several objected loudly enough to preserve their dignity. None objected long enough to miss lunch.
The coffin remained beneath the green canopy.
The priest approached Lorenzo as the last group departed.
“What should I tell the funeral home?” he asked.
“Tell them not to touch it.”
“They will need instructions eventually.”
“Those are the instructions.”
The priest glanced toward Isabella’s portrait. “And the service?”
“It was for my daughter.”
“It was also for your wife.”
Lorenzo’s gaze settled on the photograph.
Isabella had been buried four weeks earlier in a private ceremony because her body had been recovered first. He had postponed Lucia’s burial while investigators examined material from the nursery. The delay had been condemned by his older relatives as denial. Matteo had pushed hardest for closure.
The word now made Lorenzo feel ill.
“Leave the flowers,” he said.
The priest nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
The priest waited, perhaps expecting more.
Lorenzo walked away.
Marco joined him beside a black sedan. Paulie sat in the rear of another vehicle with two men on either side. His face had the gray look of someone discovering that ordinary weather could be precious.
“Where is Matteo?” Lorenzo asked.
“His wife says he left home at seven. His driver says Matteo canceled the car and went out alone.”
“He knew before Paulie sent the message.”
“Possibly.”
“Or Paulie was not the only one watching.”
Marco opened the sedan door, but Lorenzo did not get in.
“You knew something was wrong with the fire,” Lorenzo said.
Marco’s hand remained on the door.
“I knew the reports did not agree.”
“How?”
“The fire marshal said the nursery damage was too severe to identify an ignition point. The private investigator said the accelerant pattern began at the hallway threshold. Matteo brought us a third report claiming an overloaded bottle warmer caused it.”
“And you accepted that?”
“No.”
“You said nothing.”
“I asked questions.”
May you like
“Not to me.”
“You had not slept in six days. You threatened a surgeon because he could not tell you exactly how long Isabella was conscious after the smoke reached her lungs.”
