Chương 6
Silence.
“Did you listen to Mara’s message?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How much did you know about Harbor Meridian?”
“Enough to sign papers.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It’s what I’m willing to answer on the phone.”
He heard a faucet running, then Lily’s voice asking where her socks were.
Nora lowered her voice. “What are you going to do?”
“I need the attorney’s name.”
“Vincent said I shouldn’t give it until you made a decision.”
“My father is no longer directing this.”
“No. He just designed every choice you’re standing inside.”
Lorenzo looked at the photographs of peeling paint and missing fire doors.
“I can find the attorney without you.”
“I know.”
“Then save us both the effort.”
Nora hesitated. “Elaine Porter. Her office is in the Seaport.”
“I’ll contact her.”
“She won’t speak to you without me.”
“She will if she wants to keep practicing law.”
“That sentence is exactly why your father didn’t trust you with this.”
The line went quiet.
Lorenzo had frightened hundreds of people. Most hid it. Nora’s fear appeared in the small breaks between her words, and she continued anyway.
“Bring Lily to the Calder house,” he said.
“No.”
“You’re in a hotel registered under your name.”
“How do you know that?”
“I paid the clerk.”
“That was fast.”
“It wasn’t difficult.”
“You think saying that helps?”
“No. I think it explains why the hotel is unsafe.”
She exhaled. “Unsafe from whom?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then I’m not bringing a five-year-old into a house full of men who carry guns.”
“The men are gone.”
“You carry one.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to trust you.”
“No. I expect you to understand relative risk.”
Lily’s voice came closer to the phone. “Is that Mr. Quiet?”
Nora covered the receiver badly. “Go brush your teeth.”
“I did.”
“With toothpaste.”
A pause.
Then Lily said, farther away, “You didn’t say that before.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes for a moment.
Nora returned. “I’ll meet you at Porter’s office. Lily stays with a friend.”
“Not the friend who lost her at the funeral.”
“That was one mistake.”
“One was enough.”
“So I should leave her with your armed guards?”
“No. Bring her.”
Elaine Porter occupied a glass-walled office overlooking the harbor. She was fifty-eight, silver-haired, and dressed in a navy suit that made everyone else in the room look unprepared. She greeted Nora warmly, Lily carefully, and Lorenzo without offering her hand.
“I represented your father for estate planning,” Porter said. “I did not represent his criminal organization, and I do not represent you.”
“Understood.”
“I’m going to repeat that because men in your position often hear limits as openings for negotiation. I do not represent you.”
“I heard you.”
Lily sat at a side table drawing with markers Porter’s receptionist had found in a supply cabinet. She had given Lorenzo a purple one and told him he could draw while the adults talked. He held it between two fingers.
Nora placed the drive on the conference table.
Porter did not touch it. “Did you access the material?”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said.
“Did you copy it?”
“No.”
“Did you destroy, alter, transmit, or remove anything?”
“No.”
“Did you confront anyone named in it?”
“Daniel Rosetti.”
Nora turned sharply. “You did what?”
“I asked him a question.”
Porter removed her glasses. “What question?”
“Whether he gave Vale meeting locations.”
“And?”
“He denied it.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“No.”
Nora stared at Lorenzo. “What does that word mean to you?”
“It means I did not threaten him.”
Porter put her glasses back on. “Mr. Calder, your father created a limited opportunity to disclose evidence through counsel. If anyone believes you are intimidating witnesses or coordinating stories, that opportunity narrows considerably.”
“What opportunity?”
“A voluntary proffer, potentially followed by a cooperation agreement.”
Lorenzo set down the purple marker. “You’re discussing surrender.”
“I’m discussing options. One of which is to do nothing and wait for the people harmed by these records to continue being harmed.”
“Another is to give prosecutors everything and let them choose who goes to prison.”
“That is broadly how prosecution works.”
Nora leaned forward. “Elaine.”
Porter softened her tone by a fraction. “Vincent understood the evidence implicated him. He also understood it implicated Lorenzo.”
Lily raised her drawing. “This is a whale in a house.”
Nobody responded.
She looked at Lorenzo. “Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t breathe in there.”
“Then put water in the house.”
Lily considered the suggestion and returned to drawing.
Porter folded her hands. “Your father intended to disclose the evidence within forty-eight hours. His hospitalization delayed the meeting. His death delayed it again. I am not willing to delay indefinitely.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“I transmit the materials I hold.”
“You don’t have the drive.”
“I have enough.”
Lorenzo looked at Nora. “Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Why bring me anything?”
“Because Vincent wanted you to choose.”
“Between prison and letting you destroy the organization.”
“Between consequences and more bodies.”
Nora’s voice remained controlled, but her hand had tightened around the strap of her purse.
Lorenzo disliked her certainty. More than that, he disliked the part of himself that recognized it as earned.
“Vale will move if he learns the records exist,” he said.
Porter nodded. “Which is why secrecy matters.”
“Danny may tell him I asked.”
“Then secrecy may already be gone.”
Nora stood abruptly and crossed to Lily. She knelt beside the child under the pretense of examining the drawing. Lorenzo watched her whisper something, then kiss Lily’s hair.
When she returned, her face was composed.
“I received three calls last night from blocked numbers,” she said. “No one spoke. At four this morning, someone tried the handle of our hotel room.”
Lorenzo stood. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wasn’t sure it was real.”
“You are now?”
“I saw a man from the funeral in the lobby when we left.”
“Which man?”
May you like
“I don’t know his name. Tall. Broken nose. Gray at the temples.”
Lorenzo knew him. Paul Dacey, a driver attached to Vale.
