Chapter 6 - The Shadow on the Wall
The passage beneath Eighty-Second Street was narrow, built of red arch brick that had turned dark with a century of moisture. Water dripped from the ceiling at regular intervals, plinking against the shallow iron drainage trough running down the center of the floor.
I carried Sophie in my arms, my shoes slipping on the wet brick as I moved quickly through the dark.
Ten yards in, the tunnel split. To the right, a rusty iron ladder led upward toward a sidewalk vault cover that opened into the alley. To the left, the tunnel continued deeper into the bedrock, curving toward the basement level of an old residential building on Eighty-First Street.
Standing at the base of the iron ladder was a man.
He wore a heavy oilskin coat, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a dark wool cap pulled low over his face. A thin beam of light from a pocket flashlight sat on a brick ledge beside him, pointing toward the floor.
In the dim glow, I saw his face.
The left side was crisscrossed with deep, jagged silver scars that pulled the corner of his eye downward in a permanent squint. His left arm hung slightly stiff against his side, supported by a subtle leather brace under his sleeve.
It was Julian Marlo.
He did not look like the elegant, soft-spoken pianist who used to sit in the third-floor music room playing minor thirds until three in the morning. He looked like a man who had been dragged through hell and had learned to like the climate.
"Clara," he said. His voice was rougher than it had been on the tape—raspy, damaged by smoke or trauma, but undeniably his.
I stopped four feet from him, my chest heaving, holding Sophie so tight she let out a soft whimpering sound.
"You're dead," I whispered, the words tasting like copper in my mouth. "We buried you. Vincent spent two hundred thousand dollars on the marble vault in Queens."
"You buried a car filled with fifty pounds of dental wax and an iron engine block," Julian said quietly. He didn't step closer. He kept his distance, as if aware that his sudden appearance was a threat to my sanity. "If Marco knew I lived through that night on the Taconic, he wouldn't have waited four years to take Vincent down. He would have burned the townhouse the next morning."
"Why?" I demanded, anger suddenly surging past my fear. "Why did you leave him alone in that house? Do you know what he became? Do you know what he turned into after you died? He became a monster, Julian! He spent four years hunting shadows!"
Julian looked down at his ruined left hand, flexing the stiff fingers slowly.
"I couldn't play the piano anymore, Clara," he said softly. "The nerve damage in my arm was total. If I came back, Marco would have finished the job, and Vincent would have thrown himself into a war he wasn't ready to win. I needed Marco to think he had succeeded. I needed him to grow comfortable, to start moving his offshore money through channels we could trace."
"And the tape?" I asked. "The key?"
"I gave you that key because you were the only person in that house who didn't work for the family," Julian said, his eyes shifting to Sophie. The hard lines of his scarred face softened by a fraction as he looked at my daughter. "And because I knew one day, Vincent would need to remember that someone in that house loved him without a contract."
Sophie pulled her thumb from her mouth and looked at Julian’s scarred cheek. She didn't scream. She didn't hide her face.
She held out Walter the rabbit toward him.
"His ear is broken," she said simply.
Julian stared at the small stuffed toy, then let out a low, dry laugh that turned into a quiet cough. He reached out with his good right hand and gently touched the rabbit’s ear.
May you like
"We can fix that later, little one," he murmured.
Above us, through the iron sidewalk grate at the top of the ladder, came the dull, heavy sound of automatic gunfire from Eighty-Second Street.
