Chương 3
Vincent waited.
“He said she should’ve taken the money.”
“What did your mother say?”
“That I was home.”
Tony cursed under his breath.
Sophie looked toward the front.
“Then what?” Vincent asked.
“He got mad because she said my name.”
“What did he do?”
Sophie’s eyes closed.
Vincent saw the movement beneath her eyelids, quick and frightened.
“He hit her.”
The tires hummed over wet pavement.
“With what?”
“His hand. Then the other man held her.”
“Sophie.”
She opened her eyes.
“How did you get out?”
“Mama told him I was at my aunt’s.”
“But you were in the apartment.”
“In the bathtub.”
Vincent pictured the narrow bathroom found in those old Bridgeport buildings, the porcelain tub, the curtain, the child sitting without moving while men spoke a few feet away.
“She came in and locked the door,” Sophie said. “She put me out the window.”
“What floor?”
“Second.”
Tony looked in the mirror.
“There’s probably a porch roof,” he said.
“There was.”
“Did your mother climb out?”
“She said she had to stop them.”
The last word broke.
Sophie turned her face toward the window.
Vincent watched her shoulders move beneath his jacket. She did not sob. She breathed as if each breath had to pass through something sharp.
He took out his phone and called the Archer Avenue office manager.
A sleepy voice answered.
“Mr. Torino?”
“Where’s Elena Martinez’s desk?”
“Second floor, east side.”
“Lock the building. Nobody enters.”
“What happened?”
“Do it now.”
Vincent ended the call and dialed a second number.
Tony glanced at him.
“Who?”
“Dr. Shah.”
“At one in the morning?”
“He’ll answer.”
He did.
Vincent told the doctor there might be an injured woman at the address they were approaching.
“Call an ambulance,” Dr. Shah said.
“I need you there.”
“If she’s been assaulted, she needs a trauma center, not your private physician.”
“I know what she needs.”
“Then call 911.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
Sophie turned from the window.
“My mama needs a hospital.”
Vincent looked at the phone in his hand.
For years, calling emergency services had been something other people did. His world depended on private doctors, private cars, private entrances, private solutions. Police reports created questions. Questions created records. Records created leverage.
He pressed three numbers.
The dispatcher answered.
Vincent gave Elena’s address and said a woman had been violently assaulted. He used his real name when asked.
Tony looked back at him for half a second.
Vincent ended the call.
Sophie’s shoulders lowered slightly.
“Are they coming?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“I already called.”
“That’s not a promise.”
Vincent studied her.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
She waited.
“I promise they’re coming.”
They reached the apartment six minutes before the ambulance.
The front door of the building stood open. One pane of glass beside the lock had been broken from the inside. A neighbor in slippers watched from the upstairs landing, holding a baseball bat with both hands.
Tony parked at the curb.
“Stay in the car,” Vincent told Sophie.
“No.”
“Sophie.”
“She’s my mama.”
“We don’t know who’s inside.”
“I do.”
Vincent looked at Tony.
Tony drew his pistol low against his leg, keeping it hidden from the neighbor.
Vincent disliked the feeling gathering beneath his ribs. It was not fear in the usual sense. Fear had edges. This was older and less manageable, a pressure connected to hospital corridors and unanswered phones.
He touched Sophie’s shoulder.
“You stay behind Tony. You do exactly what he says.”
She nodded.
“Say it.”
“I’ll do exactly what he says.”
They entered the building.
The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage, dust, and the cold night blowing through broken glass. A baby cried behind one apartment door. The neighbor with the bat looked from Vincent to Sophie and lowered the weapon.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered.
Sophie did not answer.
The door to Elena’s apartment was half open.
Tony went in first.
Vincent kept Sophie behind him.
The living room had been turned over without looking ransacked in the theatrical way amateurs imagined. Couch cushions had been removed and cut along the seams. Drawers stood open. A laptop lay on the floor with its casing cracked. Papers had been pulled from a small desk and scattered, then stepped on.
A lamp burned beside the couch.
Elena Martinez lay near the kitchen doorway.
Sophie made a sound Vincent would hear later in his sleep.
She pushed past him.
Tony caught her around the waist before she reached the blood.
“No, sweetheart.”
“Mama!”
Elena moved.
It was barely visible, a tightening of her fingers against the floor.
Sophie fought Tony with sudden strength.
“She’s alive!”
Vincent crossed the room and knelt. Blood darkened the side of Elena’s head and the collar of her blouse. One eye was swollen shut. Her breathing came shallow and uneven.
He put two fingers against her neck.
A pulse.
“Get towels,” he said.
Tony kept one arm around Sophie and pulled a dish towel from the counter with his free hand.
“Clean ones,” Vincent said.
“They’re all clean until you use them.”
“Tony.”
“All right.”
The neighbor appeared in the doorway.
“I have towels.”
She returned with a stack while Vincent stayed beside Elena. He did not touch the wound. Dr. Shah had once told him that untrained men loved pressing on the wrong injuries because it made them feel useful.
The ambulance siren grew louder.
Sophie dropped to her knees beside Tony.
“Mama, I found him,” she said. “I found Mr. Torino.”
Elena’s good eye opened.
It moved without focus, then found Vincent.
Her lips parted.
He leaned closer.
“The invoices,” she whispered.
“What invoices?”
Her hand twitched toward the kitchen.
“Green.”
Sophie bent forward.
“Mama?”
Elena’s eye moved toward her daughter.
The fear in it changed. For one instant it became recognition, relief, and apology at once.
Then her eye closed.
May you like
Sophie stopped breathing.
The paramedics arrived in a rush of equipment and clipped commands. They forced everyone back. A police officer entered behind them, then another. Tony slipped his pistol into the back of his waistband before either officer saw it.
