Chapter 17 #2
During the break, Dominic remained onstage with the librarian and the principal trumpet. Eamon stepped into the lobby to take a call. Thiago crossed to stage left to speak with the house manager about closing one of the side corridors earlier on concert night.
I stood and went to find Bridget.
She was in the green room with her violin case open on the sofa beside her and a paper cup of coffee untouched on the side table. She looked up when I entered and at the door when I closed it behind me.
“Luca,” she said. “Something must be serious.”
“Yes.”
“Is something wrong with Dominic?”
“No.”
I pulled a chair up, sat, and reached into the folder I’d brought to remove a photocopy of the letter. I didn’t slide it to her immediately, but I let her see what it was.
Color drained from her face.
“So,” I whispered. “Let’s not waste time.”
She looked at the page and then at me. “Where did you get that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I set the copy on the low table between us.
She stared at it.
“That’s a photocopy. He showed me the original,” she said at last.
I kept my voice level. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” She laughed, short and joyless. “You know the letter exists. You do not know what it is to stand in a man’s study and watch him reveal reasons for stagnation in your career.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
She looked down at the paper again. “Dominic intended to retire as a myth. This concert would be a farewell concert, and he would use it for narrative control. He told me the story everyone tells about Jackson Square is false, incomplete, and built on selective memory.”
“Did he say he intended to kill Dominic?”
She looked up at me. “No.”
“Did he mention a gun?”
“No.”
“Blood?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
A silence. Then, quietly, “He would interrupt it.”
I nodded.
“He said the farewell as planned was dishonest,” she said. “He said the truth deserved a stage.”
“And you believed him.”
“I did when he showed me that letter.”
Anger flashed in her eyes.
“He didn’t have to invent anything,” she said.
“The letter is genuine. Dominic sabotaged my application. Market viability.” She spat the last two words between her teeth.
“I had to learn from Henri Fontenot that the man I’d spent fifteen years trusting thought I had a ceiling and simply neglected to mention it to me. ”
I leaned back.
“Yes,” I said. “The letter is genuine. What Dominic did was wrong. You deserved to hear it from him. Not from a man using it to justify violence.”
My words hit hard. She shifted in her seat.
“He said he was planning exposure,” Bridget said. “Not murder.”
“And you believed him more than Dominic.”
“I thought...” She stopped, then started again. “I thought something public made sense. It was the only way to adequately disrupt the collective memory. A scene. It would force everyone to look at what had been edited out.”
“And what information did you give him?”
Her jaw tightened. “Not everything.”
“That’s not the question.”
She took a deep breath. “I told him where Dominic stands in the last movement. That he steps half a pace toward first violin when the brass take the upper phrase. I mentioned that rehearsal blocks usually run late and which musicians would notice if someone crossed too near the podium and which wouldn’t. ”
I looked at her for a long moment.
“You understood that your information was operational.”
“I understood it provided access.” After a moment, she added, “Henri listened. Do you understand that part? He listened to the harm Dominic caused me.”
“I understand why that would matter.”
“He never asked me to hate Dominic.”
“No, that would have been clumsy.”
She looked away toward the mirror lights, her own reflection dim in the glass.
“I still admire Dominic,” she said, almost to herself.
“I know.”
“That’s the obscene part.”
“No,” I breathed. “The obscene part is that Henri used that against you.”
She looked back at me. I leaned forward, forearms on my knees.
“You deserved a conversation,” I said. “A real one. Years ago. You deserved the chance to tell Dominic exactly what it cost you, and you deserved not to have that injury converted into a plot.”
She stared at me.
“A plot,” I repeated. “To end someone’s life.”
A crack appeared in her expression. No tears or visible collapse. A weakening of her vigilance.
“I didn’t think...” she said, and stopped.
“No, you didn’t think.”
“That’s not fair,” she insisted. “I didn’t think he could want blood.”
“I think he told himself he wanted a witness,” I said. “Men like Henri prefer language that lets them believe they’re still elegant.”
“Elegant. Yes. He likes that.”
I took a card from my folder, wrote my number on the back, and set it on the table beside the letter copy.
“If he contacts you again,” I said, “you call me immediately. Not after you’ve considered whether it’s important. Immediately.”
She looked at the number. “Why you?”
“Because I’m asking.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face.
I stood. She remained seated. At the door, I paused and looked back.
“I am not protecting Dominic from the truth of what he did,” I said. “But I am protecting him from a man who decided the right expression of a grievance was assassination.”
A shudder spread through Bridget’s body as she nodded.
When I opened the door, rehearsal noise rolled back in around us. I stepped into the corridor and closed it quietly behind me.
I found Thiago near the stage-right crossover speaking with one of the house security supervisors. He looked at me, reading something in my face.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“Not remotely.”
He waved the supervisor off and walked with me as far as the edge of the house, where the shadows thickened under the balcony.
“You spoke with her.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I looked toward the stage. Dominic was conferring with the principal trumpet, one hand resting on the score stand.
“She thought it would be exposure,” I said. “A public correction. She gave Henri staging habits and timing. Not because she wanted Dominic dead. Because she wanted the mythmaking interrupted.”
“Did she admit direct operational coordination?”
“Yes.”
“Will she let us know if she’s approached again?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“You think so.”
“Yes. That’s the best I can do.”
He studied me for a second longer. “Did you tell her what we know about the likely mechanics?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I looked at him. “I hate it when you use the word ‘good’ like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve confirmed that a bridge will hold three tons but not the four we need it to.”
“It usually means I’m trying not to say something worse.”
“Such as?”
“That you shouldn’t have gone in there alone.”
I crossed my arms. “I was not in danger from Bridget Marchand.”
“She isn’t the only danger in that situation.”
I was too tired to ask him to explain. Instead, I said, “She was more broken than hostile.”
“And you?”
I almost gave him an easy answer, but I was honest instead. “Ask me later.”
He nodded once and didn’t pressure me with more questions. His steadiness prevailed.
Rehearsal resumed. Dominic took them through the last movement twice without interruption.
Bridget played flawlessly. The choir director wiped sweat from the back of her neck with a folded tissue.
A horn player cracked the top note of a phrase and swore loudly enough that most of the musicians heard it.
Dominic ignored the profanity and corrected the breath.
By the time we left, Eamon already had the SUV idling at the curb. Dominic got in first. Thiago slid into the far side of the third row and left me the seat beside him.
The doors shut. The air conditioning pushed against my face.
For the first minute of the drive, no one spoke. Thiago sat angled slightly toward the center aisle, one forearm resting on his thigh, with his eyes moving from the side mirror to the rear glass to Dominic’s reflection and back again.
I watched him instead of the city.
He had a quality I had first mistaken for detachment. It wasn’t that. Detachment withdraws. Thiago never withdrew. He remained fully present in the room. His steadiness wasn’t emptiness. It was discipline practiced long enough to look natural.
At a stoplight, he turned his head slightly and caught me looking.
“What?” he asked quietly.
“You make this look easy.”
A small pause. “It’s mostly repetition.”
“That’s less romantic than I had hoped.”
“I’m working, not operating in a romantic capacity.”
From the second row, without turning around, Dominic said, “A pity. You’d both be better behaved if you were.”
Eamon made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes for two seconds.
“He’s unbearable,” I said.
“Yes,” Thiago replied.
When I opened my eyes again, I found I was calmer than I had been an hour earlier. Not because anything had improved. Henri was still out there. Bridget had handed over too much information, and the concert was coming whether any of us liked it or not.
Thiago was beside me. Dominic was in front of us. Eamon had both hands on the wheel. The three men made all the difference in my world.