Chapter 5 - The Ledger of Chicago
For three days, the green door remained sealed.
The city outside moved according to the news reports that Eliti listened to on the shortwave radio every six hours: Sodor Kresnik, sixty-two, prominent real estate developer and philanthropist, has suffered a severe medical emergency and remains in critical condition at an undisclosed private facility. His younger brother, Dritton Kresnik, has been named temporary manager of the Kresnik Group’s domestic operations.
On the fourth morning, the rain stopped, replaced by a bitter, sharp frost that froze the puddles in the alley into sheets of gray ice.
Inside the garage, the iron stove was red around its middle, radiating a heavy, dry heat that smelled of pine wood and iron.
Sodor was standing.
He was wearing a black wool sweater and heavy trousers he had taken from a wooden locker behind the work table. He looked thinner—his cheeks sunken, his collarbones visible above the neckline of his shirt—but his back was straight, his chin lifted, his dark eyes clear as cold oil.
He stood beside the wooden table, looking down at the canvas bag he had brought from the Lincoln's trunk.
Eliti sat across from him, eating a bowl of boiled rice mixed with olive oil and canned sardines.
"The bag," Sodor said, setting a brass key on the table between them. "Open it."
Eliti did not reach for the key. "That is your business."
"It is our business now," Sodor corrected. His voice had recovered its full timbre—a quiet, velvet baritone that filled the small space without effort. "In three days, Dritton will hold the quarterly meeting of the territory captains at the restaurant on Taylor Street. If he shows them the signed paper from the court, they will swear allegiance to him. If they swear to him, I cannot take the city back without killing thirty men I raised from boys."
He picked up the key, unlocked the lead padlock himself, and tipped the canvas bag onto the wood.
It was not cash.
It was forty thick, leather-bound notebooks—each small enough to fit into an inside coat pocket, each marked with a year and a name.
Sodor picked up one bound in faded dark blue pigskin. He opened it to the first page.
The handwriting was neat, small, and written in iron-gall ink that had turned brown with age. It was a record of every transaction made in the city of Chicago between 1994 and the present month: Names of judges, police precinct commanders, building inspectors, union local presidents, shipping coordinators, and aldermen. Dates. Amounts. Locations. Witnesses.
"This is not money," Eliti said, looking at the rows of numbers and initials.
"Money is grass," Sodor said flatly. "It grows in the spring, it turns yellow in August, and the cows eat it in September. This is stone."
He set his hand down heavy on the blue book.
"This city is built on forty years of men thinking they were clever," he continued. "Dritton thinks he owns the business because he has the keys to the penthouse and the signature of a judge who owes three million dollars to a gambling den in Windsor. He does not know that the judge’s third wife has a trust fund in Zurich that was opened by my hand in 2008."
He looked at Eliti.
"Can you read Italian?"
"I read French, Arabic, and English," she replied.
"Then you will learn Italian by tomorrow night," Sodor said, pushing three of the smaller black notebooks across the table toward her. "Because you are going to call these four men. You will use the public telephone behind the gas station on Grand Avenue. You will read them three lines from these pages. Nothing more. Nothing less."
Eliti looked at the black books. Her hand hovered over the leather cover for a moment before her fingers closed around them.
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"And what will they do when I read them these lines?"
"They will stop answering Dritton’s phone calls," Sodor said, his mouth twitching into the ghost of a cold, hard smile. "And then they will wait for the ghost to return."
