Chương 4
Lorenzo looked at Lily.
She lifted her head. “Because nobody was holding it.”
The room became very still.
Nora sat on the edge of the second bed.
Lorenzo opened the thick envelope. Inside was a letter in Vincent’s handwriting, four pages on plain paper. The script deteriorated as it continued, the lines tilting downward.
Lorenzo,
If Nora has given you this, then I failed to finish what should have been finished while I was alive. Do not confuse death with absolution. Mine least of all.
Lorenzo stopped reading.
The hotel air conditioner came on with a metallic rattle. Lily tore open another packet.
He began again.
Mara Carter brought me proof that Anthony had been stealing from projects we were paid to complete and leaving families in unsafe buildings. I confronted him before securing Mara. I did it because I believed he still feared me more than he feared exposure. That belief was vanity.
Mara died. I cannot prove Anthony ordered it, but I know what he is capable of because I rewarded those capabilities for thirty years.
The records on the drive will damage him. They will also damage you, Marco, Daniel, and me. Some matters you knew. Others you did not. You will be tempted to separate them according to what can be hidden. That is what I would have done before Mara.
Do not do what I would have done.
Lorenzo lowered the pages.
Nora waited.
“What is on the drive about Danny?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“You told me not to bring him.”
“Vincent believed Danny had been passing scheduling information to Vale.”
“Believed based on what?”
“Three meetings with Mara were compromised. Each time, only Vincent, Danny, and I knew the location in advance. I did not tell Vale.”
“That leaves you.”
“Yes.”
Her answer came without defensiveness.
Lorenzo studied her. “Why should I believe you?”
“You shouldn’t. Not yet.”
It was the first sensible thing anyone had said to him all day.
He returned to the letter.
You may think the proper answer is to kill Anthony. It will feel like justice because anger is good at wearing justice’s clothes. If you kill him, the buildings remain poisoned, Mara remains blamed by people who profited from her silence, and Lily grows up protected by men she has every reason to fear.
I made you capable of surviving the world I built. I did not make you capable of leaving it. That is my second failure.
Do not protect my name.
Protect what is left.
At the bottom, Vincent had signed only Dad.
Lorenzo folded the letter along its existing creases.
“When did he write this?”
“Four days before he died.”
“Was he lucid?”
“Painfully.”
“Who has copies?”
“I do. The attorney has sealed materials. The accountant retained work papers. Your father designed it so no single person could make everything disappear.”
“And yet you brought me the drive.”
“It’s encrypted.”
“Password?”
“I don’t have it.”
Lorenzo looked at the appointment book. “Then who does?”
“Vincent told me you would know.”
He opened the book. Most pages contained terse entries in Nora’s handwriting. Initials, times, restaurants, medical appointments, names of contractors. Several pages had been torn out. Tucked inside the rear cover was a photograph of Lorenzo at eleven years old standing beside his mother on a dock in Winthrop. He wore a Red Sox cap too large for him and held a striped bass against his chest with both arms.
On the back, Vincent had written a date and three words: He would not.
Lorenzo stared at the photograph.
He remembered the fish thrashing against his ribs, his mother laughing as he shouted for someone to take it. Vincent had wanted him to kill and clean it himself. Lorenzo had refused. He had cried—not because he pitied the fish, though he had claimed that later, but because its mouth kept opening soundlessly and he could feel its heart beating through the wet scales.
Vincent had called him soft.
His mother had said, Not everything alive needs to prove itself by killing something else.
Lorenzo turned the photograph over again.
He would not.
Eight characters, perhaps. The password had to be longer.
“What was the fish called?” Lily asked.
Lorenzo had forgotten she was watching.
“It didn’t have a name.”
“Everything has a name.”
“Not a fish you catch.”
“Did you eat it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He looked at the photograph. “I dropped it.”
“On the floor?”
“In the water.”
“On purpose?”
Nora said, “Lily, give him some quiet.”
Lily frowned. “He already has a lot.”
Lorenzo almost smiled, which irritated him.
He handed Nora the appointment book. “The drive stays with you tonight.”
Her eyebrows rose. “I thought you’d take it.”
“So did I.”
“What happens now?”
“I verify what you’ve told me.”
“And Anthony Vale?”
“He learns nothing from me.”
Nora stood. “Vincent said you might say that.”
“What else did he say?”
“That you would want time. He said time would be the most dangerous thing you asked for.”
Lorenzo put on his raincoat.
At the door, Lily called to him.
He turned.
She held up the remaining sugar packets. “You forgot your house.”
“I have one.”
“This one is smaller.”
“I’ll manage.”
She selected a yellow packet and carried it to him. He allowed her to place it in his palm.
Nora said, “Lily.”
“It’s for later.”
Lorenzo put it beside the blue packet in his pocket.
On the sidewalk outside, the rain had weakened to a thin cold mist. He walked three blocks before calling anyone.
He chose Marco.
“Bring Danny to the office on Atlantic Avenue,” Lorenzo said.
“When?”
“Now.”
“Everything okay?”
“No.”
May you like
The Atlantic Avenue office occupied the second floor above a seafood distributor the Calder family had owned since the 1970s. At night the building smelled of bleach, old wood, and the harbor. Lorenzo arrived first and spent twelve minutes examining the office safe, desk drawers, and the rear stairwell.
When Marco and Danny entered, both looked annoyed.
