Chương 4
Celia stared when she recognized him.
“No,” she said.
Elias stopped a few feet from them.
“Hello, Celia.”
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She looked at Daniel. “You called him?”
Daniel said nothing.
Celia took a step back. “Dad wanted this.”
“What?” Daniel asked.
“You calling people like him. He wanted you angry.”
Elias glanced toward the nearby officer.
“Maybe we should have this conversation somewhere less public.”
Daniel led them into an empty family consultation room. The room contained a round table, six chairs, a box of tissues, and a framed print of sailboats that looked as though no one had ever examined it closely.
Elias closed the door.
Celia remained standing.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked him.
“Age.”
“You were thirty-eight the last time I saw you.”
“Bad age.”
She looked away.
Daniel rested both hands on the table.
“Tell me about Victor.”
Elias removed his raincoat and draped it over a chair. Beneath it, the gray suit fit too well to be ordinary and too poorly to be new.
“Three months ago,” he said, “two federal agents visited a shipping broker named Arthur Penn. Penn handled customs paperwork for your father in the nineties. A week later, Penn disappeared.”
“Dead?”
“No body.”
“Running?”
“Maybe.”
“Why would federal agents care about paperwork from thirty years ago?”
“Because one of Victor’s former companies has been moving money through a charitable foundation. Medical equipment, disaster relief, school construction. Clean labels on dirty freight.”
Daniel frowned. “Victor retired.”
“Victor announced that he retired. Those are different things.”
“What kind of freight?”
“Cash. Stolen pharmaceuticals. Occasionally weapons parts. Nothing glamorous. Glamour attracts attention.”
Celia sat down slowly.
Daniel asked, “Where does the ledger fit?”
“Penn kept copies of older manifests. Someone told the agents that a paper ledger once existed linking the freight companies to judges, customs inspectors, union officials, and three men who are now in Congress.”
Celia gave a small, disbelieving laugh.
Elias looked at her. “Not everything sounds less true because it sounds like a movie.”
Daniel leaned over the table.
“The book burned.”
“I saw you throw something into a furnace,” Elias said. “I never saw the pages.”
“It was the ledger.”
“Then Victor has spent seven years destroying his own operation over ashes.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know.”
“He knows you better than anyone.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
Elias continued. “Victor closed two offices. Moved cash out of the country. Sent men to search a property in Delaware that belonged to Nora’s uncle. Last week, someone broke into a storage facility in Laurel.”
Celia looked at Daniel.
“The storage unit,” she said.
Daniel ignored her.
“What was taken?” he asked.
“Nothing obvious. Whoever went in photographed every box and put most of it back.”
“How do you know?”
“I own the security company that monitors the building.”
Daniel stared at him.
“You own half the things you claim not to know about.”
“It saves time.”
“Did you see who entered?”
“Hats, masks, stolen plates. Professionals trying to look like amateurs.”
“And you didn’t warn me?”
“You made your preference clear when you broke my nose in a church parking lot.”
“You told Victor where Nora was staying.”
“I was trying to keep him from killing you.”
“You gave him her address.”
“I gave him an empty address. Nora had already moved.”
Daniel straightened.
Celia looked between them. “What ledger?”
Neither man answered.
She struck the table with the flat of her hand.
“My nephew is upstairs with a concussion. Our father is asking about dead people’s belongings. You two are talking like this is some business meeting. What ledger?”
Daniel sat across from her.
“When I worked for Victor, I kept records.”
“You worked at the dealerships.”
“I worked wherever he sent me.”
Her face changed slowly.
“He told me you stole cars.”
“I did.”
“He said you ran away because the police were looking for you.”
“They were.”
“What else did you do?”
Daniel looked at the tissue box.
Elias pulled out a chair but did not sit.
Daniel said, “I collected debts. I moved money. I carried messages between people who didn’t trust phones. Sometimes I frightened people.”
“Frightened?”
“Sometimes I hurt them.”
Celia’s eyes filled, not with sorrow but with anger.
“You spent years telling me Dad was dangerous while pretending you were better.”
“I never said I was better.”
“You acted like it.”
“I left.”
“That doesn’t erase what you did.”
“No.”
The answer stopped her.
Elias looked at Daniel, and for once there was no amusement in his expression.
Daniel said, “The ledger was insurance. Victor made me keep it because he trusted my memory and didn’t trust computers. Dates, payments, names. Enough to ruin him.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because it would have ruined me too.”
“And Nora knew?”
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
Daniel thought of his wife sitting at their kitchen table at three in the morning, wearing one of his shirts, the sleeves rolled above her elbows. He remembered the smell of burnt coffee and the calm way she had asked whether the blood on his cuff belonged to him.
Enough, he almost said.
Instead he answered, “More than I wanted her to.”
Celia turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To sit with Toby.”
“Celia.”
She paused.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said.
She looked at him over her shoulder.
“For which part?”
He had no answer that would not sound selective.
She left.
Elias waited until the door closed.
“You shouldn’t have called me.”
Daniel looked at him.
“You came.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elias buttoned his suit jacket, then unbuttoned it again.
“Because there are very few people left who remember what you were capable of before you started carrying cartoon lunch boxes.”
“You’ve been watching me.”
“From a respectful distance.”
“There is no respectful way to watch someone without their knowledge.”
“That sounds like something Nora would say.”
May you like
Daniel’s gaze hardened.
Elias lifted one hand. “I’m not trying to provoke you.”
