At twenty minutes to three a man in surgical scrubs and a mask pushed a wheelchair into my room and told me I'd been moved up for imaging. I said nobody had told me. He said it would only take a minute. Over his shoulder I could see the hallway chair where Pete Genaro had been. It was empty, and his folded newspaper still sat on the seat.
A second man appeared in the doorway behind him, wearing a gray overcoat, one hand in the pocket, the shape of it plain against the wool. “Ms. Reyes,” he said, quietly, like a man ordering coffee. “We can do this with your daughter walking, or we can do it with your daughter carried.” Lucy was awake. I felt her fingers lock into mine. I have never been so calm in my life, and I have never been so frightened, and I learned that night that those can be the same thing.
I walked. I took the robe and I took Lucy's hand and I counted exits, nurses, cameras, and found nobody. A fire door alarm was ringing at the far end of the east wing, and it had pulled everyone I might have screamed at toward the sound. The service elevator went to the loading dock. A white van waited with its side door open. Lucy whispered, “Mama, I'm sorry,” and I said she had nothing to be sorry for, that she had done everything right twice in one night, and that I would fight anyone who said different.
Here is what I learned afterward about those five minutes. Pete Genaro was found in the stairwell with a concussion, alive. Someone had hit him from behind. A third man had pulled the east-wing alarm, and Agent Whitcomb later showed me the hospital's report. Denise went to check my room at ten to three, found it empty, and called the number Nick had left at the desk. That call reached him, he told me, less than five minutes after we were gone. He said he had been seven blocks away, rereading a dead man's confession after making copies and calling his lawyer, telling himself we were safe. He never asked me to forgive him for leaving my daughter with one guard and a nurse. I never offered. We both knew it was a debt, and neither of us pretended otherwise.
Before anyone came to our hospital room, Nick and Joey had already opened locker 317 and taken its contents to the Silver Anchor office. What follows happened between roughly one-thirty and two-thirty that morning, while Lucy slept beside me. I have heard this story from Nick, from Joey, and from Agent Whitcomb, and I'll set it down here because it was the thing everybody in that warehouse was fighting over. Joey drove. The locker was in the rental bank at the old Lakeshore Terminal, number engraved on my brother's key. Inside was an ordinary black backpack holding a flash drive, an envelope and a photograph.
The photograph was of Carla Bruno. She was twenty-five, standing outside the Silver Anchor thirty-one years ago, smiling, with Nick on one side of her and Gino Ferrante on the other. On the back, in block letters, someone had written ASK WHO SOLD HER. The envelope held a copy of a wire confirmation for a large payment to an offshore account, two days before Carla died. The authorizing signature belonged to Albert Rinaldi Sr., Joey's father.
The drive held scanned records, and what I understand of how it came to exist comes from Mateo, who told it to Agent Whitcomb and then to me. The sealed room at Harbor Row pre-dated Nick's ownership. His company had held the building for only a few years, seventeen years ago, and Nick says he never knew the room was there. Mateo spent a weekend photographing and scanning pages at a library copy room, then hid the paper originals in the metal case, which he kept with him. The drive stayed in the locker. The recent transfer, from Ferrante to Costa, was not from the archive at all. Mateo said he'd gotten a photo of it from Costa's bookkeeper, Paulette Reese, and when I pressed him on how, he never answered to my satisfaction. Agent Whitcomb said it evenly, the way I imagine she says everything: paper was paper until somebody proved where it came from. Bank records would be subpoenaed, handwriting examined, witnesses found. Nothing on that drive was proof yet. It was a map of where to dig.
The most startling item on the drive was Albert Rinaldi's own handwritten statement. Joey believes his father wrote it the year after Carla died, as insurance against Ferrante, and tucked it into a ledger. The statement said that Carla had discovered Ferrante and Albert diverting money, that she'd threatened to tell Nick, that Ferrante ordered her frightened into silence, and that Albert arranged a car to cut her off on the road. It said it went further than either man intended and that she died. Nick read it standing up. It was the confession of a dead man writing to protect himself, which is exactly why Agent Whitcomb would later tell us not to treat it as gospel. It was also the first time in thirty years Nick had an answer.
Joey is the only person who ever told me anything of what was said in that office, so I will repeat only what he chose to share. He said he stood against the wall and his legs felt like paper, and he said, “My father would never,” and Nick said, “Don't.” He said that when he asked if Nick thought he'd known, Nick looked at him a long time and said no. Joey had been sixteen when Carla died. Nick told him they would protect Lucy and me, and then they would take everything to the authorities, even the parts that would hurt Nick. Joey said he asked who Nick was. Nick said he was trying to find out. Joey told me they copied the drive in that office before Nick called Ruth Abelman, his lawyer. Ruth reached Agent Whitcomb with a description of the files before the hospital called to say we were missing.
The warehouse was a closed printing plant on the river, in the Flats. I was taken from the van into a block-walled room off the main floor, with a card table, two folding chairs and a bare bulb. I only know about the photograph because I watched Costa raise his phone and take it. Lucy clung to me and I held my face still for the lens. I learned later what the caption said: BRING THE DRIVE. COME ALONE, NICKY.
It was nearly dawn when the older man came in. His hair was silver and a scar ran down one cheek, and he had the manners of a host. He said I must be tired. He said my brother had stolen from the wrong dead man. He said Mr. Valenti was going to bring him something, and when he did, Lucy and I would go home. I did not believe one word of it, and he saw that, and smiled as if it were a point in my favor. He needed us alive. That was the whole of his kindness.
Lucy sat on my lap with my chin on her head. “Is Mr. Valenti coming?” she asked. I said I didn't know. “He promised,” she said. I wanted to scream. My seven-year-old's faith rested on a stranger's word, and I had put her in that position by choosing a key and a necklace. I held her and said nothing, because I could not lie to her and I could not bear to say what I feared.
Costa went to the window and stood a long moment. “Valenti,” he said. “Alone.” The older man did not turn around. “I told you,” he said. Lucy lifted her head and I felt her whole body decide something. “I told you,” she whispered. I closed my eyes and prayed to be wrong about what I'd been trying not to hope.