Chapter 33
Maeve
Grand Jury
Lex drives.
The car is an SUV. The route is varied. The third variation Petrov has run this week.
Cormac is behind us in a second vehicle.
Two Marshals are in a third. The escort is excessive by federal standards.
The escort is, by Konstantinos’ standards, what is required when your wife is testifying today against the Bratva.
Today. It is today.
Tuesday, eight forty-seven AM. The light at the window of the SUV is the same flat gray it was yesterday.
The temperature is twenty-six degrees. There is salt on the streets from last night's snow that didn’t amount to much.
Lex's hands are at ten and two. The wedding band on his left hand catches the gray light through the windshield.
Neither of us speaks.
I am in the navy suit Eleni helped me pick at the boutique on Newbury Street the week before.
The suit is severe. The suit is doing the work I need it to do: introducing me to the grand jury as the self who has been the federal prosecutor’s witness for eight months and who doesn’t require any softening to be believed.
Lex is in the charcoal suit. He’s in the silk tie I gave him for his birthday two weeks ago, the dark green one I picked because I knew he wouldn’t choose anything green for himself.
My hands are in my lap.
I have not opened the small leather portfolio with my notes. I am not going to open it. The notes have done their work. The forty-three hours have done their work. The walk-in is the walk-in.
Lex pulls up to the John Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse on Fan Pier at nine-fourteen AM.
The Marshals' vehicle pulls in front. The Konstantinos vehicle pulls behind. The escort wraps the building in the knotted architecture of three different organizations, all deciding, this morning, that nothing is going to happen to me on the way in.
Lex turns off the engine.
He looks at me.
I look back.
I say, "Lex."
He says, "Yes."
"I am ready."
"I know."
"Walk me to the corridor."
? ? ?
The corridor outside the grand jury room is on the third floor.
Marshals at the door. Sarah Klein is already inside with her aides. The court reporter inside. The grand jury inside, twenty-three federal jurors in folding chairs around a long table, the rotating panel that has been hearing federal cases in this district for six weeks now.
Lex walks me to the corridor.
He stops at the line on the floor where security ends and the sealed proceeding begins.
He’s been told he can come this far and no further.
He’s been told the grand jury is closed.
He’s been told the husband of the witness is not allowed in the room with the witness, federal rules of procedure section eighteen, and Lex Konstantinos has been making peace with this rule for six days.
He stops. I keep walking.
The Marshal opens the door.
I stop. I turn back. I look at him.
"Lex."
"Walk in for them," he says.
"Walk in for them."
I walk in.
? ? ?
For two hours and forty minutes, I tell them what I saw.
Sarah Klein leads me. Her voice is calm.
The questions are clean. She walks me through the Tremont Street parking garage on the night of June fourth, the lighting on the third level, the exact position from which I observed what I observed.
She has me name the men. I name them. Three of them are dead now, killed in the months since.
One of them is Aleksei Karpov, who was unconscious on a federal medical floor seven days ago.
The fifth is Reznikov Sr., who is in St. Petersburg and beyond the reach of this room and whose name I say into the federal record, nonetheless.
She has me name the dead.
I name him.
Vincent Marchetti.
Forty-one years old. Federal informant. Father of two.
Worked at a body shop in Quincy. Was on his way to a meeting with his federal handler at the time he was taken.
The men intercepted him three blocks from the meeting point.
They took him to the Tremont Street parking garage.
They put him on the concrete next to a dark blue sedan.
They asked him three questions. He answered two.
She has me describe what was done to him.
I describe it.
Precisely. Without softening. The grand jury is twenty-three federal employees who have been hearing cases for six weeks; they have been prepared for what I am going to tell them.
I tell them anyway, in the controlled register that has been my armor since I walked away from that parking garage on the morning of June fifth and decided I was going to be the woman who would say in a sealed federal proceeding what nine other men in Boston had decided would never be said in any room they could control.
The court reporter takes it all down.
The grand jury listens. Nobody interrupts.
Two of the jurors are crying at the end.
They are not crying because they have been moved by the testimony, although they have.
They are crying because they have just been entrusted with the last words on Vincent Marchetti's life and they have understood the weight.
Sarah Klein finishes at eleven fifty-four AM.
"Counsel has no further questions, Madam Foreperson."
The foreperson nods. She’s in her late fifties, a woman in a green sweater, federal employee identification clipped to the collar.
"Ms. Callahan," the foreperson says. "You may step down. The grand jury thanks you for your testimony."
I step down.
I walk to the door.
The door opens. The corridor light is brighter than the courtroom light. I have been inside for two hours and forty minutes.
I step into the corridor.
? ? ?
Lex is exactly where I left him.
Ten feet from the door. Standing. Charcoal suit.
Dark green tie. Hands at his sides. The wedding band catches the corridor light.
He’s not moved in two hours and forty minutes.
He’s not eaten. He’s not sat down. He’s been standing in the courthouse corridor outside the grand jury room exactly where he said he would be, and the discipline of his not having moved is the love story I am walking back into after work.
I walk to him. I do not speak.
He pulls me in.
Both arms. Tight. The way he held me on the night Nora came home from the kidnapping. The way he held me in our kitchen the night of the attempt. The way he holds me when there are no words available because the words have already been said in another room.
I press my face into the side of his neck.
I am not crying. I am not going to cry. I am going to breathe. The first full breath I have taken since 5:48 AM this morning is in this corridor with my husband's arms around me. The breath is shaky. I keep breathing.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t say ‘I am proud of you.’ He doesn’t say ‘it is over.’ He doesn’t say anything because the saying is not the language; the language is his body still standing exactly where he said he would be standing, and his arms around me, and his mouth at the top of my head.
The corridor is full of federal personnel.
Sarah Klein has come out behind me. Her two aides.
The Marshal at the door. Two Konstantinos soldiers from the lobby detail are visible at the corridor's far end.
Cormac is somewhere on the floor. Nobody comments.
Nobody approaches. The whole corridor has agreed, without conferring, that the two of us are going to have a full minute in the middle of it and the corridor is going to give us the minute.
We stay there for the minute.
When I lift my head, Sarah Klein is six feet away. She’s not looking at us. She’s looking at her phone, with the practiced tact of a federal prosecutor who has been around enough witnesses after testimony to know when to give the witness her thirty more seconds.
I look up at Lex. I say, "I did it."
He says, "You did."
"It is done."
"It is done."
"Take me home."
"Yes."
? ? ?
Sarah Klein walks me to the elevator.
She doesn’t say anything until we are in front of the doors. Then she says, "Maeve. That was the cleanest grand jury testimony I have heard in nine years. There will be an indictment. The case will hold."
"Thank you, Sarah."
"You are going to be a witness in the trial. We are looking at probably eight to twelve months from indictment to trial date."
"I know."
"You are going to be ready."
"I know."
"Get out of this building. Go see your daughter."
"Yes."
The elevator opens. Lex is beside me. We get in. The doors close.
? ? ?
In the SUV, Lex pulls out of the federal parking garage at twelve thirty-one PM.
I am in the passenger seat. I have not put on the seat belt.
I am looking at Boston through the window.
The sky has cleared while I was inside. The sun is out.
The harbor is to my left, gray blue in the cold light, the boats at the marina, the city I have been living in my whole life and have, this morning, finished a piece of work in.
Lex says, "Where am I taking you."
I say, "Eleni's."
"Yes."
"I want to see Nora."
"I know."
"I want to see her right now."
"I know."
He drives.
I look out the window. I do not speak again until we are at the apartment building. Lex parks. Petrov is at the lobby. He doesn’t move when he sees us; he just nods, the way Petrov nods, the small Petrov-acknowledgment that says ‘the work is done.’
Lex takes my hand.
We walk inside. We take the elevator to the fourth floor. Eleni's door is unlocked because Eleni knew we were coming. We walk in.
Nora is on the living room rug with Brontos and a coloring book. The page is a giraffe. The giraffe is purple. The giraffe is always purple.
Nora looks up. "Mama."
She gets up. She runs.
I drop to my knees in Eleni's foyer. My daughter crashes into me with both arms around my neck and Brontos hanging from one fist by the trunk. Her wool dress smells like ‘kourabiedes.’ Her hair smells like the lavender shampoo Eleni keeps for the bathtub. She’s warm. She’s alive. She’s mine.
I hold her.
She says, into my shoulder, "Did you do the thing?"
I say, "I did the thing."
"Was it brave?"
"It was brave."
"Like Brontos?"
"Like Brontos."
She nods, satisfied. She pulls back. She looks at me with the contained, grave seriousness she brings to all important inspections. Then she pats my cheek with her hand.
"Good job, Mama."
I do not cry. I have not cried all day. I have not cried in the corridor or in the elevator or in the car. I am not going to cry now in Eleni's foyer in front of my daughter. I am the woman who does not cry in front of my daughter, and the version is going to hold.
Eleni is in the kitchen doorway.
She’s in the navy dress.
She’s been wearing it since we left this morning.
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t approach. She lets me have my daughter on the foyer rug for as long as I need.
I look up at her.
She nods. Once.
"‘Mitéra,’" I say.
"Maeve, ‘koritsi mou.’ Welcome home."