Chapter Thirty-Five
There’s a knock on the door.
“Door’s open,” Matthew calls on his way to the kitchen.
Louis strides in, sure of himself. He acknowledges me, then sits across the table. “Good morning, Miss Kelly.”
“Bridget, please. Good morning to you, Louis.”
He glances up, a perpetual frown on his face, as Matthew returns with coffee for Louis and me.
Louis takes his black as I do, which doesn’t surprise me.
He drinks immediately and doesn’t flinch, which is pretty impressive.
That’s boiling water right there. Matthew disappears back into the kitchen, then comes out with his own steaming, cream-diluted mug.
“I have some interesting findings to share,” Louis reports, diving right in. He extracts a thick file from his bag and places it in front of us. It’s a much thicker file than I could have expected after only a day.
“That was quick,” I note.
“Pulled in a few favours,” Louis tells us. He leans forward and taps a piece of paper. “We’ll start here.”
It’s a bank statement. I read the top line. “This is Claudia’s,” I marvel, wondering how legal any of this is, on either side.
“Sometimes perps are just plain lazy,” he mutters, disapproval clear in his tone. “Didn’t even try to hide this.”
I see columns of numbers, but I don’t understand. Matthew is reading them beside me, and from the way he’s concentrating, I can tell he does.
“Somebody care to explain?” I ask.
Matthew’s finger skims down the page. “See all these basic withdrawals and deposits? There are a few here and there that don’t fit.”
He’s right. There are far too many zeros in those spots, and I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t see that before.
“Your boss has been taking bribes,” Louis says flatly. “And if you look back, she’s been doing it for years.” He slides the statements to the side and places a new stack of pages in their place. “Now, these are some of Claudia Vale’s incriminating texts and messages—”
“Wait. How did you get her private texts and messages?” I ask, alarmed. “Is that legal?”
Louis taps his temple. “I have my sources.” He does not address the legality question, just points at the words on the page. “Feast your eyes.”
There are a half dozen or so communications between various contractors and Claudia, I see right away.
I don’t recognize all the contractors, but her responses are pure Claudia.
They’re similar in tone to what she sends me, except mine never hint at anything illegal.
These ones are more than a little frightening.
CV: Make sure it clears. No more delays.
GD: Done.
JS: Raising 6 floors this fast with MSI might be a strain.
CV: Keep things moving.
JS: Understood.
JS: Flag on MSI boxes.
CV: Bring in a second set of eyes. Or change the view. Also, too much talking. Enforce NDAs.
JS: Handled.
“It explains the NDAs, doesn’t it?” Louis says.
“JS,” I muse. “I wonder if that’s Jack Samson.”
Louis’s upper lip tightens. “I got one more to show you. It’s new.” He turns the page.
JS: New inspector nervous.
CV: I got this.
All the blood in my head drops to my gut. “That’s me.”
Matthew’s hand rests over mine. I’m so grateful he’s with me.
Louis hesitates, watching me closely. He’s trying to read me, but right now, all he’s gonna see is terror.
“Listen, Bridget. You need to prepare yourself. This is bigger than we thought, and I already knew it would be big. I got photos of cracked concrete and busted pipes, as well as fudged safety reports that document injuries and near-misses. But when I checked, none of those had been reported. If they were, those reports disappeared. Same with—get this—two collapses that never made the news. Vale’s signatures and notes are all over them. ”
He sets the papers aside and exhales through puffed cheeks. “Now let’s get personal. Called a friend who got some pretty good, fairly recent shots of your boss with a couple of key players. See this?”
I nod. “That guy is Jack Samson. Who’s that?”
“Leandro Mazza,” Louis replies slowly. He places another photo on top with a snap. “And here she is with Frank Benedetti.”
His tone suggests this is not a good thing. “Am I supposed to know who that is?” I ask.
Matthew shifts in his chair. He looks uncomfortable. “Mob.”
“What?!”
“Yep.” Louis is picking up steam. “And I got more. I thought you’d be interested in this, though. All the skinny on that building you’re getting framed for.” He pauses, waits. “Get it? Framed?”
“Move along,” Matthew sighs.
The playful glint drops from Louis’s expression.
“I studied those other, unreported structural failures and compared them to this one. They’re almost identical.
Same Montey materials, same signatures. Contractor records are almost carbon-copied.
Your buddy Paul was on a couple of those.
Moonlighting from the Dominion to pay down a gambling debt.
Makes sense he would have gotten evidence while working. ”
I feel so badly for Paul. Such a nice guy. “He must have been overwhelmed with guilt, working this way. He was a family man. He’d have known it was wrong all along.”
“I went through all the records,” Louis continues, not missing a beat, “looking for your name, too. It appears in a couple, but it’s obvious it was added later on. And here…” He hands me a page. “That’s not your signature, is it?”
“Not even close.”
A chill shivers down my spine as I realize how deeply I have been planted into this situation.
Again, my thoughts go to the man in black on the sidewalk.
Had he been watching me? Waiting for me to come out of the building, maybe?
I’m not ready to suggest that possibility yet, though.
I might just be losing my mind. It’s hard to tell these days.
“I had no idea about any of this.” To me, the next step is clear, but I feel a little juvenile asking it. “Should we go to the police?”
Louis shakes his head. “You already tried that, and it might have done more harm than good. You gave me the detective’s name…
” He glances at a different page of notes and runs his finger down the neat printing.
“Jones, right? Too bad it’s not something uncommon, but I’ll take this.
There’s a connection here that I don’t like.
You mentioned the balcony collapse. Turns out the lead detective in that case went to school with Jones.
Jones married the other guy’s sister, and now their kids go to school together.
We ain’t gonna pull those two apart. So we gotta come up with our own approach. Trap Vale red-handed.”
I frown at Matthew, and I’m relieved to see I’m not the only uncertain one.
“Did we just become undercover cops?” he asks. “If we were to somehow trap Miss Vale into confessing, we’ll have to take her to the police anyway. Why not go to them right away? We’ll make sure to talk with someone different.”
“I agree that we’ll have to go to the police eventually, but not yet.” Louis has seemingly given this some thought, and he’s not budging. “Based on my findings, the police have either been under her thumb for years or she’s under theirs.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They’re possibly using her to snag a bigger fish.”
Beside me, Matthew drops his chin to his chest. “Mazza,” he murmurs.
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. “And you think we can trap her?”
Louis’s expression is blank. He is trying not to scare me. Too late.
“I think you might be the only one who can,” he says. “She thinks she’s got you over a barrel. Thinks she can get you to go along with her, based on the false story she will no doubt give to the papers. If she hasn’t already.”
That’s a sharp reminder of what this is all about. I haven’t heard anything from Claudia since her lying text about the building collapse being my fault, and that disturbs me most of all. I don’t have any idea where she is or what she’s doing.
“The most dangerous part of this is Vale’s connection to Mazza.
He’s big in the underworld. Untouchable big.
” Louis grins, which looks forced on his straight-lined face.
“Interestingly, it looks like Mazza comes from the same downtown Toronto crime family that has been in charge for the past hundred years.”
Matthew and I exchange a glance. “You’re not talking about Marco Carboni, are you?” he asks.
“The very same,” Louis says, unusually confused. “How’d you know?”
I see it as a minor victory, knowing something that Louis doesn’t. Matthew taps his temple, looking mysterious. “I’ve got my sources, too.”
As interesting as that connection to Carboni might be, we have a more urgent matter to solve first.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
Louis sits back and scowls with frustration. He gives the papers a push. “We’re not gonna catch Mazza with this,” he admits unhappily. “Too small for him. Plus, he’d throw her under the bus just for entertain-ment.”
“I see what you’re saying.” Matthew’s a little more confident now. “We can’t nail Mazza, but Bridget can maybe snare Claudia. And if she can get Claudia… What do they say? Maybe she’ll roll over on Mazza.”
Louis nods. “Exactly. First step is for her—”
“Hold on, boys,” I say, catching up. “I might have missed something, but are you suggesting I be the bait?”
Matthew catches my tone and his eagerness fades. “No, no,” he assures me. “Not really bait.”
“Yes, she is,” Louis exclaims. “That’s exactly what she is.”
“I’m not getting crushed by crates,” I mutter.
“I don’t foresee any crates in this plan.”
“There’s a plan?” I demand.
Louis gives a vague shrug, but his jaw is tight. He’s thinking hard. “Working on it.”
Hold on. I get that things need to happen fast. If they don’t, I’ll find myself in jail—or worse, now that we know about Claudia’s connection to Leandro Mazza.
I don’t imagine someone that dangerous would hesitate to get rid of me, like they did with Paul.
I’m worth a lot less to them than their construction contract, but…
“You won’t be alone,” Matthew assures me. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
Louis makes a face. “Well, maybe not the whole time.”
Louis might be a great investigator, but he can’t read a room. It sounds like he has already decided on a strategy that has not been revealed to me. The feeling that I am missing something important makes me more than a touch nervous. What choice do I have, though?
I exhale. “All right. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
It starts right away. Step one is to text Claudia.
I’m supposed to tell her what I know, or at least some of it.
Scare her enough that she is forced to meet with me.
It’s difficult to imagine intimidating that woman.
After she hired me, it took a couple of months before I got over my fear of her. Now I’m supposed to turn that around?
“I can’t do this.”
Louis has left, saying he has business to attend. Matthew stands behind me for support, his strong hands kneading my shoulders. They’ve risen almost to my ears from stress. I need a few minutes to feel a little calmer. A tiny bit prepared.
“You don’t have to. We can try to come up with something else.”
We both know this is the only way. “I’m scared,” I admit.
After a second, Matthew presses his lips to the side of my neck, shooting goose bumps all over my body. I go limp.
“That’s not fair. Now I can’t move,” I murmur.
“That was me giving you moral support.”
“I need more.”
“You can do this,” he says, standing straight again.
“I liked your other method better.”
“Yes, but you actually have to be able to move in order to do this.” He hesitates, then he leans down again so that his breath tickles my ear. “How about I promise more when it’s all over?”
“That’s almost enough,” I say with a sigh, but I’m still afraid. I pick up my phone and stare at the screen. “I don’t know how to start.”
“Yes you do. You can do this. She’s a terrible person, and you are standing up for all the people she’s stepped on. Including Paul.”
I sit a little taller, knowing he’s right. I also know I have no choice. I pull up her number, wishing I was anywhere but here. But if I have to do this, I’m going all in. I grit my teeth, type my message, and press send. Let’s make this personal.
BK: Why are you doing this to me?
CV: No idea what you’re talking about.
BK: I thought we were friends. I had nothing to do with that collapse and you know it.
CV: Business is business.
She really is a viper. “She’s horrible,” I tell Matthew.
“Go get her,” he growls.
Normally, I’m neither mean nor vindictive. But if it was you, would you hold back? As Matthew suggests, she deserves a dose of her own medicine.
BK: You’re right. Business is business. I’ve learned lots about you and your business recently, Claudia. Things you don’t want people to know. I’ve got a very thick file courtesy of PB. Remember him? Invoices, photos, texts, etc. I don’t think your boss LM wants those public.
CV:…
I can’t express how good it feels to see those little dots bubbling across the screen. She doesn’t know how to respond. I can’t resist.
BK: Something wrong?
CV: You don’t want to do that.
BK: Oh but I do.
CV: What do you want?
BK: An honest, lawyer-certified statement signed by you, clearing me of all this mess. And I want it tonight.
CV: That’s too soon.
BK: Sounds like a you problem. Subbasement by the elevator, the Sixes. 9:00 p.m.
I press my fist to my mouth, holding in a shriek of victory. “I got her,” I whisper to Matthew, as if she can hear. “I’ll just add a little more drama…”
BK: Come alone.
“Nice,” Matthew says, reading over my shoulder. “I’ll tell Louis the meeting place. He’ll want to get there early and scope it out.”
I let out a long, shaky breath, and he squeezes my shoulders. “You did it. You’re like Bessie Starkman.”
“Who?”
“Rocco Perri’s wife, remember? Toughest female gangster in Canada in the 1930s.”
I’m all knotted up with fear and nervous energy, as well as anxiety about what happens next, but that gets me laughing, and I can’t stop. It’s not even funny, honestly. But with the laughter, my apprehension weakens for now. Better than tears. When I finally stop, Matthew and I stare at each other.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Well, it’s only seven o’clock,” he says. “Let’s eat.”