Chapter 4 - THE MEN WHO NEVER MISSED
Nobody moved.
Elena’s recorded voice continued through the static.
“The Carusos are violent, but they weren’t behind the threats. I checked the license plates. Dante checked the routes. The surveillance I found came from our own security network.”
Rico looked slowly at Dante.
Dante raised both hands.
“I never saw this recording.”
Elena continued.
“I don’t know who Salvatore is using. I only know he believes I have something Margaret hid before she died.”
Clara felt the room tilt.
Margaret had not died in violence.
At least that was what Clara had always believed.
Cancer.
A brutal eighteen months.
Hospital beds.
Morphine.
A funeral in Queens.
“What did my mother hide?”
The tape played on.
“Clara may have it without knowing. Margaret trusted ordinary objects because powerful men search for extraordinary ones.”
Clara looked instinctively at her bracelet.
Rico noticed.
“Take it off.”
“No.”
“I’m not stealing it.”
“It’s all I have left from her.”
“Then we examine it together.”
Clara reluctantly unclasped the silver chain.
Rico studied each charm.
Moon.
Star.
Bird.
Nothing obvious.
Dante examined the repaired clasp.
“This section isn’t original.”
“My mother repaired it.”
“With what?”
Clara shrugged.
“Silver?”
Dante pressed his thumbnail into the bird charm.
It shifted.
He stopped.
Rico took it.
The bird opened along a seam so fine Clara had never noticed.
Inside was a tiny rolled strip of photographic film.
Clara stared.
“My mother gave me that bracelet twelve years ago.”
Which meant she had carried the secret through high school.
College.
Bad apartments.
Failed jobs.
Her brother’s illness.
Her mother’s funeral.
All without knowing.
Rico looked at the film.
“We need to develop it.”
“Not at one of your places,” Clara said.
Rico frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Elena said someone used your security system against her.”
Dante nodded reluctantly.
“She’s right.”
Rico hated that he was outnumbered.
Clara knew an old photo lab in Queens, owned by Mr. Rosen, who had once developed pictures for her mother.
They arrived after midnight.
Rosen was nearly eighty and unimpressed by armed bodyguards.
“I close at nine.”
Clara lifted the strip of film.
“My mother left this.”
Rosen’s expression changed immediately.
“Margaret?”
“You knew her?”
“I knew both girls.”
Rico stepped forward.
“You knew Elena Moretti?”
Rosen looked at him for a long moment.
“You have Salvatore’s eyes.”
“People keep telling me that tonight.”
Rosen let them inside.
While he worked in the back, Clara sat with Leo on a faded red bench.
The child had become sleepy.
Rico remained standing.
“You don’t sit?”
“Not when I can’t see exits.”
Clara glanced at him.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It keeps people alive.”
“Didn’t keep Elena alive.”
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Rico’s expression hardened.
Clara immediately regretted it.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
He looked through the glass toward the dark street.
“You’re right.”
That surprised her.
After a moment, Rico sat.
Not beside her.
Across from her.
“I spent six months blaming the Carusos.”
“What did you do?”
His eyes met hers.
Clara already knew the answer would be ugly.
“I punished people.”
“Did you kill them?”
Leo shifted against her shoulder.
Rico looked at his son.
“Yes.”
Clara swallowed.
“Were they innocent?”
“Not of everything.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
His voice was rougher.
“They may have been innocent of Elena’s murder.”
Clara expected excuses.
None came.
“I can’t undo that.”
“No.”
“I can stop pretending it didn’t happen.”
For the first time, Clara saw what made Rico dangerous.
It was not lack of conscience.
It was the ability to act while carrying one.
Rosen emerged holding three wet photographs with tongs.
His face looked troubled.
“These were taken from a microfilm copy,” he said. “Your mother came here years ago asking how small I could make photographs.”
He placed the images beneath a lamp.
The first showed Salvatore Moretti entering an apartment building with a much younger woman.
The second showed him leaving forty minutes later.
The third showed police carrying that woman’s body out on a stretcher.
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“Who is she?”
Rosen stared at the photograph.
“Your grandmother.”
Clara sat down.
Rico leaned closer.
“My father killed her?”
Rosen shook his head.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Margaret’s letter did.”
“No. Margaret said one daughter saw what happened.”
Rosen opened an old drawer.
“She came here afterward.”
“After what?” Clara asked.
“After Elena’s eighteenth birthday. Margaret believed Elena finally remembered something she had buried as a child.”
Rico looked at the dates.
“The photograph is thirty years old.”
“Elena would’ve been two.”
Rosen nodded.
“Too young to explain it. Old enough to remember pieces.”
Clara studied the photographs.
In the third image, something caught her eye.
A man stood behind the police line.
Not Salvatore.
Another young man.
She tapped it.
“Who is that?”
Rico looked.
His face changed.
“Uncle Anthony.”
Anthony Moretti.
Salvatore’s younger brother.
Dead for twenty-two years.
Officially killed in a construction accident.
Dante leaned in.
“Anthony was there?”
Rico flipped the photograph.
On the back, Margaret had written:
ASK WHO OWNED THE CAMERA.
Rosen went pale.
Clara noticed.
“You know.”
He removed his glasses.
“I was young.”
Rico stepped toward him.
“Who took these pictures?”
Rosen looked at Clara.
“Margaret did not.”
“Then who?”
Rosen stared at the image of Anthony Moretti.
“He did.”
Rico looked back at the photograph.
“My uncle photographed his own brother?”
“To protect the girls.”
Clara’s mind raced.
“Then why was Anthony killed?”
Rosen said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
But Rico was no longer staring at Anthony.
He had found something else.
At the edge of the photograph, behind the ambulance, stood a black sedan.
The license plate was visible.
Dante copied it onto his phone.
Seconds later, one of Rico’s men responded.
Dante read the message twice.
“What?”
Rico demanded.
“That plate stayed registered to Moretti Holdings for sixteen years.”
“Assigned to whom?”
Dante’s eyes lifted.
“Your mother.”
Rico froze.
“My mother never knew Elena’s family.”
Rosen gave him a sad look.
“That is not true.”
Clara stared at Rico.
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Lucia.”
Rosen slowly sat down.
“Lucia was there the night your grandmother died.”
Rico stepped closer.
“Doing what?”
Rosen hesitated.
Then answered.
“Helping Salvatore.”
Rico’s voice became almost inaudible.
“My mother died when I was fourteen.”
“Yes.”
“In a house fire.”
Rosen closed his eyes.
“That’s what Salvatore told everyone.”
Rico’s stare sharpened.
“What are you saying?”
Rosen opened another drawer.
From beneath a stack of envelopes, he removed one photograph.
It showed Lucia Moretti standing at a train station.
Alive.
Older.
And holding that day’s newspaper.
May you like
The date printed clearly across the front page was only nine years ago.
Long after her supposed death.
