Chương 4
“I asked him.”
“You put him against a wall.”
Lorenzo remembered the surgeon’s collar twisted in his hand. He remembered Marco pulling his wrist down and saying, Not here, boss. He did not remember letting go.
Marco continued. “You were looking for someone to blame. Matteo gave you an electrical fault and a dead contractor who had rewired the nursery. You accepted it because a dead man could not lie to your face.”
Lorenzo stepped closer. “You decided what I could handle.”
“I decided not to put a theory in front of a grieving father without proof.”
“My daughter was alive.”
“We did not know that.”
“You suspected.”
“I suspected Matteo was using the confusion around the fire to hide something. Money, maybe. A meeting. A theft. I did not imagine an infant being held in a parish daycare.”
“No. You only imagined the man standing beside me was lying.”
Marco’s eyes did not move. “Yes.”
Rain ran from the sedan’s roof onto his shoulder.
Lorenzo got into the car.
Marco remained outside for a moment before joining him.
They drove toward Manhattan without police lights, escorts, or the usual second vehicle. Lorenzo did not want movement around him that could be tracked. Marco used a clean phone to call two people who owed loyalty to him personally rather than to the organization. One was a retired city building inspector. The other repaired security systems for warehouses along the waterfront.
“Observation only,” Marco told them. “No approach. No photographs with flash. No calls near the property.”
Lorenzo watched Brooklyn slide past the rain-streaked window.
The necklace left a red impression across his palm.
At a stoplight, he opened his hand and looked at the swallow. Isabella had worn it almost every day for nine years. She had taken it off only during pregnancy because the chain irritated her skin. Lorenzo had fastened it around the bedpost the night Lucia was born at home under the supervision of a private midwife and an obstetrician.
He had forgotten it during the fire.
Matteo had not.
“Proof,” Lorenzo said.
Marco looked over.
“Sophia said the necklace was tied to the crib as proof. Whoever is holding Lucia needs to prove she is alive to someone who has not seen her.”
“Leverage.”
“Yes.”
“Against you?”
“Maybe.”
Marco studied the passing traffic. “No demand has come.”
“Then they are not ready.”
“Or the demand is not money.”
Lorenzo closed his fist.
At the DeLuca office on Mulberry Street, the receptionist had replaced the usual flowers with black ribbon. Lorenzo entered through the garage and took a service elevator to the fourth floor. The building housed a real estate company, a restaurant supply business, and several organizations whose paperwork did not match their purpose. On ordinary mornings, men waited outside Lorenzo’s office with envelopes, questions, favors, complaints, and apologies.
Today, Marco cleared the floor.
Lorenzo went into his private bathroom and stood beneath the shower without removing his suit jacket. Rain and cemetery dirt washed from the leather of his shoes and spread in pale streaks across the tile.
Marco found him there ten minutes later.
He leaned against the doorframe. “You are flooding the floor.”
Lorenzo looked down.
He turned off the shower.
“Isabella hated these shoes,” he said.
Marco’s expression changed by almost nothing. “She hated all your shoes.”
“She said they looked like they had opinions.”
“She was not wrong.”
Lorenzo removed the jacket. Water had soaked through the white shirt beneath it. Marco handed him a towel without comment.
For the first time since the chapel, Lorenzo’s hands shook.
He dried the necklace carefully.
Marco watched him. “We found Matteo’s car in a garage near LaGuardia.”
“Airport?”
“No record of him entering a terminal. The car may be a distraction.”
“What about his wife?”
“She has called him eleven times. Either she does not know, or she is performing well.”
“Bring her somewhere safe. Quietly.”
Marco hesitated.
“What now?” Lorenzo asked.
“Safe from whom?”
“Matteo.”
“And if she is involved?”
“Safe from us until we know.”
Marco nodded.
Lorenzo changed into a dark sweater and clean trousers from the wardrobe behind his office. He placed the necklace inside a clear evidence bag, then immediately took it out again. He did not want it treated as evidence. He wanted to feel its weight.
The building inspector called shortly after one.
St. Agatha’s daycare had been converted unofficially into storage space twelve years earlier. Its current owner was a limited liability company registered in Delaware. The managing address belonged to a mailbox service in Queens. Electricity was active despite no certificate of occupancy. Water usage had increased sharply over the previous six weeks.
The security technician called nine minutes later.
Four cameras covered the alley, roof, side lot, and front entrance. Their feeds were transmitted through a cellular router rather than a wired internet connection. The windows had interior blackout panels. A white cargo van had left the property at eleven forty-seven that morning, twenty minutes after Paulie’s phone had been taken.
“Did anyone follow it?” Lorenzo asked.
“No,” Marco said. “Observation only.”
Lorenzo looked at him.
“You told me no visible movement,” Marco added.
“I told you not to approach the building.”
“You told me observation only.”
The distinction was thin. In another life, Lorenzo might have punished him for obeying too literally.
“Can we find the van?” Lorenzo asked.
“The plates were stolen from a plumber’s truck in Newark last week. Traffic cameras may have it, but we would need access.”
“We have access.”
“Not without alerting people. Matteo has friends in traffic enforcement.”
Lorenzo went to the window. Mulberry Street shone black below, crowded with delivery bicycles and umbrellas. A sanitation truck blocked half the intersection while drivers leaned on their horns. Life continued with insulting confidence.
May you like
“Paulie,” Lorenzo said.
They questioned him in a small conference room rather than the basement beneath the restaurant, where older DeLuca men preferred to conduct difficult conversations. Lorenzo sat across from him. Marco stood near the door. No weapons were displayed.
