CHAPTER EIGHT
GABE
Mina arrives at the port archive wearing a wool coat, funeral-black trousers, and shoes that were not designed for a bonded warehouse.
She looks at my boots. “I was told we were reviewing records.”
“The records are behind six thousand pounds of retired office furniture.”
“A detail you might have mentioned before I chose footwear.”
“I thought you assessed feet.”
“Dead ones do less walking.”
Felix turns away to hide a smile.
Warehouse Twelve holds everything Corso Maritime was legally required to retain and no longer wanted to see. Paper bills of lading, customs forms, labor reports, insurance photographs, and boxes marked with employee names belonging to people who died before digitization.
The repatriation ledgers occupy aisle G.
I keep Mina between Felix and me as we cross the warehouse. She notices. Her shoulders rise.
“If I wanted to run,” she says, “I would not choose a building with one staffed exit and no windows.”
“Good.”
“That was criticism.”
“Still good.”
We find the R7 files beneath a broken conference table. Felix and two warehouse men move it. Mina crouches beside the boxes and reads the labels.
“These are organized by receiving funeral home, not container.”
“Old system,” I say.
“Bad system.”
“Paolo said the same thing.”
She glances at me. “Did he change it?”
“Tried. Sal argued families should control their own records.”
“And then somebody could duplicate a container across funeral homes without the port seeing it.”
“If they had both sets.”
We open the Vassallo box.
The smell of old paper rises, dry and mineral. Mina takes off her gloves, changes her mind, and puts them back on.
“These aren’t hazardous,” I say.
“Paper cuts are how bureaucracy defends itself.”
She sorts quickly. The forms are color-coded: white for port, yellow for receiving home, pink for customs broker. Vassallo carbon copies should be yellow. Half the stack is pink.
“Wrong copy,” she says.
“Meaning?”
“Either Sal kept the broker copy or someone rebuilt the file from another office.”
Felix photographs the sequence.
We spend forty minutes reconstructing a process no one has used since 2020.
Mina creates three piles on the concrete floor and labels them with sticky notes from Felix’s bag: BODY, MONEY, DOESN’T EXIST.
“The third is not an accepted accounting category,” I say.
“It has the clearest definition.”
The body pile contains complete identity packets, consular certificates, flight numbers, and receiving authorizations.
The money pile contains freight charges without corresponding preparation invoices.
The final pile contains receiving homes that have no state license, no address beyond a postal box, or a name one letter away from a legitimate funeral home.
“Vassallo and Daughter,” Mina reads. “Singular. Someone removed the s.”
“Enough to route payment separately.”
“Not enough for a busy clerk to notice.”
Felix scans the form. “Bank account belonged to a dissolved floral wholesaler.”
“Flowers again,” she says.
“Common funeral expense,” I answer.
“And perishable. No one questions why old inventory vanished.”
She understands the laundering structure before I finish seeing it. Not because she knows organized crime. Because she knows which expenses grieving families accept without examining.
“How much through this one?” she asks.
Felix totals the attached charges. “Two hundred eighty thousand over six months.”
“Enough to look ordinary to a port. Too high for one funeral home.”
“Bianca would have seen it.”
Mina does not respond. She turns another page.
On the back of a customs form, a red pencil mark curves beside a container number. Faded, incomplete. She touches the air above it without touching paper.
“Her pencil,” she says.
“You can identify a pencil?”
“She used red grease pencil because it wrote through carbon dust. Jo hated it. The marks stained her fingers.”
I remember Bianca at a Corso Christmas party, a red line along the side of her hand as she argued with Paolo about donation receipts. A fact I had stored without purpose.
“She was at my mother’s house three weeks before the fire,” I say.
Mina looks up. “Why?”
“Paolo brought her. He said they were reviewing charitable freight.”
“You never told me they worked together that closely.”
“I did not know they did.”
“You saw her.”
“At dinner. They argued in the office. Victor joined them.”
Mina sits back on her heels. “About what?”
I search memory stripped of its old assumptions. Paolo accusing someone of rounding. Bianca saying You don’t lose the same box twice. Victor closing the door.
“Duplicate inventory,” I say.
“R7?”
“Maybe.”
“You remember late.”
“I did not know it mattered.”
“Everything matters after somebody dies.”
There is no accusation in her voice. Only the occupational truth.
At ten twenty, we find R7-441C.
The document identifies a transfer from Palermo to Port Mercy carrying the remains of a man named Antonio Greco. Receiving home: Vassallo certified scans go to an offline drive Felix carries.
By the time we leave the warehouse, Mina’s shoes have collected gray dust and one torn heel tip.
“I warned you,” I say.
“After I arrived.”
“Still warning.”
“Retroactive concern is not a virtue.”
She limps once, corrects it, and keeps walking.
I stop.
“What?” she asks.
“Your heel is broken.”
“I noticed.”
“Take them off.”
“On a warehouse road?”
I turn to Felix. “Car.”
“It’s two hundred yards.”
“Bring it.”
Felix looks between us, decides his survival remains important, and walks away.
Mina crosses her arms. “I can walk two hundred yards.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why—”
“Because you don’t have to.”
Her expression changes. It is not softness. It is the discomfort of receiving care without a debt attached.
The car arrives.
At a diner near the east gate, Mina orders eggs, toast, and coffee. She eats because I look at the menu instead of watching her.
“Paolo approved that container,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Bianca worked the Vassallo books.”
“Yes.”
“Three days later she died.”
“Yes.”
“And five years later Paolo is killed with the suffix hidden under his watch.”
I set down my cup. “He wanted us in that file.”
“Or wanted whoever prepared him to find it.”
“He knew where we would take him.”
She tears her toast into two uneven pieces. “Everyone in Port Mercy knows the Corsos use us.”
“He knew you would look.”
Mina’s fingers stop.
The waitress passes, refills coffee, and asks if we want pie. Mina says no. I say yes.
When the pie arrives, she looks at it. “You don’t eat dessert.”
“You’ve known me four days.”
“Jo said.”
“Jo has been selling information.”
“Six dollars at a time.”
I slide the plate between us.
Mina takes the first bite.
There are questions I should ask about Sal, the fire, and why her sister’s ring is against her skin instead of on her hand. Instead, I ask, “What did Bianca do when she found a bad number?”
Mina looks out at the trucks passing beyond the window.
“She circled it in red,” she says. “Then she made the person responsible explain it until they regretted learning arithmetic.”
“We find her copy.”
“If it didn’t burn.”
“When,” I say.
She looks at me and understands the word this time.
“When,” she agrees.