Chapter 4 - Seventeen Years of Salt
In the driveway outside East Eighty-Second Street, the rain fell in steady, gray sheets, bouncing off the polished hood of the black Cadillac Escalade.
Marco Bellini stood by the rear passenger door, an umbrella held in his left hand, his right hand resting comfortably inside the pocket of his tailored overcoat. He was fifty-two years old, with silvered hair brushed neatly back from a broad, genial face that had comforted two generations of the Marlo family. He looked like an uncle who managed a high-end vineyard, not a man whose offshore accounts held seven million dollars derived from stolen cargo manifests.
The front door of the townhouse opened.
Vincent stepped out onto the granite steps. He wore his charcoal jacket now, though his umbrella remained in the brass stand inside the foyer. He carried his leather airport bag in his right hand.
"You're running ten minutes behind, Vince," Marco said, his voice warm, effortless. He swung the heavy door of the Escalade open. "Traffic on the Van Wyck is already backing up near the bridge. We’ll miss the slot at Teterboro if we don't move."
Vincent stopped on the second step, three feet above Marco. He looked down at the older man.
Seventeen years.
Marco had been the one who picked Vincent up from the precinct house when Vincent was twenty-one and full of foolish rage after their father died. Marco had taught him how to read a bill of lading, how to spot an undercover federal agent in a union hall, how to calculate the exact percentage of loss a port authority official would accept before filing a report.
When Julian was born, Marco had been the godfather who brought a silver cup to the baptism.
"The flight can wait," Vincent said softly. His voice carried clearly over the hiss of rain on asphalt.
Marco frowned slightly, his professional smile adjusting by a fraction of an inch. "The Chicago brokers won't hold the seat past nine o'clock, Vince. The Moretti buyout hinges on you being in that room."
"There is no buyout in Chicago," Vincent said.
He reached into his jacket pocket.
Marco’s body adjusted instantly—a subtle shift of weight toward his back foot, the umbrella shifting two inches to the left to clear his sightline to his shoulder holster. He was a professional; seventeen years of high-level security work did not evaporate because he was wearing a cashmere coat.
Vincent didn't pull a gun.
He pulled out the small, silver Pressman cassette recorder with the cracked glass window.
The rain beat against the plastic casing.
Marco’s eyes locked onto the device. For two seconds, the street was entirely still. A yellow taxi splashed through a puddle at the corner of Madison Avenue, its headlights cutting through the gray gloom, casting long shadows across the granite steps.
"Where did you find that?" Marco asked. His voice did not tremble, but the warmth vanished completely, replaced by a flat, dry cadence that had nothing to do with the man who brought stuffed bears to three-year-old girls.
"In Julian's room," Vincent said. "Sophie found the key."
Marco let out a long, quiet breath through his nose. He lowered the umbrella slightly, letting the rain fall directly onto his silver hair.
"I told him not to go through those ledgers," Marco said softly. "I told him three times, Vince. 'Julian, you play the piano. You stay on the third floor. Leave the Newark docks to men who know how to bleed.' He wouldn't listen. He had his father's romantic idea about clean money."
"Clean money?" Vincent repeated, taking one step down the granite stairs. "You killed my brother for four percent of a shipping line."
"I killed your brother because he was going to destroy seventeen years of work!" Marco snapped, his voice rising for the first time, a sharp, ugly sound against the quiet morning. "You were twenty-one when your father dropped dead of a stroke! Who kept the Moretti family off your throat? Who cleared the port authorities in Jersey? Who made sure you had a clean suit to wear when you went to Wall Street? Me! I built this house, Vincent! Not Julian!"
"And now you're going to take the rest of it?" Vincent asked quietly.
Marco didn't answer. He didn't need to.
From the front passenger seat of the Escalade, the door opened. A broad-shouldered man in a dark rain slicker stepped out, his hand already hidden beneath his coat. From the chase car parked thirty feet behind them, two more men stepped into the rain, their movements deliberate, closing off the driveway.
"You should have gotten on the plane, Vince," Marco said softly, stepping back toward the street. "Chicago was going to be clean. An accident on the freeway near O'Hare. A tragic end to a tragic family. You would have been buried next to Julian by Sunday."
Vincent looked at the three men surrounding the driveway. He did not look afraid. He looked like a man who had finally found the bottom of a very long, very dark well.
"You forgot one thing, Marco," Vincent whispered.
Marco paused, his hand reaching inside his overcoat. "What's that?"
"Julian wasn't the only one who kept records."
May you like
Vincent raised his left hand.
From the second-floor windows of the townhouse—the windows of the library that had remained dark all morning—three red laser dots appeared through the rain, settling precisely over the center of Marco Bellini’s chest.
