Chapter 14Caterina
Caterina
I have the drive in the inside pocket of the coat, against my ribs, and a folded sheaf of pages in the outside pocket that is not the drive, that is not anything, that is forty pages of a contract Chiara printed out of her own folder while I watched, because Rocco's men are going to want to see paper and paper is what they will get.
Massimo put it in my hand at the foot of the back stair before he gave me to Pino, the way I told him it would go. My hand on it, last as well as first.
I count exits before I clock faces. Gate. Lane. Service road past the boxwood. Hedge break at the east end. Four.
"You're early," the tall one says.
"You're earlier."
His mouth moves; the rest of his face does not. "Pages."
"One o'clock."
He looks at the short one. The short one doesn't look back.
He's still on my neck. Practiced attention.
Looking for the wire I am not wearing, looking for the lump under the collar that isn't there because the pin is at the buttonhole and the buttonhole is where his eyes will not go because his eyes do not go to where a woman puts a brooch.
"He said noon."
"The burn book needs a second pass." I keep my hand off the outside pocket because a hand on a pocket is the hand of a woman protecting what's in it. "Two of the entries have a closed Amato notation that doesn't reconcile. I'm not handing him pages that get him laughed at."
"He's not in the mood to be laughed at."
"He'll be in less of one if I hand him garbage."
The tall one watches my face for the half-beat that is not there this time. I have had practice. I learned the half-beat yesterday in a blue room and I have spent the night not having it.
He takes out the phone. Steps off two paces along the wall. Turns his shoulder. Does not turn far enough that I can't hear him.
"She's here. Says one. Says the book's got Amato entries flagged closed and she wants the second pass clean."
He listens.
"Yeah."
He listens.
"Yeah, no. Standing right here."
He listens longer this time. His face does the small adjustment of a man receiving instruction he did not want. He walks the two paces back. Holds the phone out to me without looking at it.
"He wants you."
I take it. The plastic is warm from his hand. I do not put it to my ear right away. The short one is still on my neck and I let him be. Looking is free.
"Yeah."
"Caterina."
Rocco's voice. Brooklyn rasp. Tighter than I have heard it. The tight of a man who has scheduled a thing and the thing is running late.
"I'm at the gate."
"You're at the gate at one o'clock with pages, or you're at the gate at noon with a problem."
"The book has."
"I don't care what the book has. The packet to your father's DA contact went out this morning.
6:40. By courier. He has it on his desk by now and he is reading it with his coffee.
If those pages are not in my hand by noon your name appears in a federal filing by Monday under the closed Amato notation, and the notation reads exactly the way your father's reads, which is not metaphor, kid, that is the literal hand of the literal man, and you know what closed means in that hand. "
A beat.
"Do you."
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I know what closed means."
"Good."
The short one is still on my neck. The tall one is watching my hand on the phone for the tremor that is not going to come because the tremor is in my chest, two inches under the camera pin, out of reach of any lens Rocco has.
I look at the gravel. Forty pages of nothing in my outside pocket. A drive in my inside pocket the size of a sugar cube. 6:40 this morning. By courier.
6:40 this morning came after I opened the safe, after the dog with one ear, after all of last night happened.
After the desk shifted on the floorboards.
After he said the name against my temple.
And the packet was already at a desk in lower Manhattan with my father's hand on the cover sheet under glass.
He never meant to walk me out.
I have been running an exfil for nine days and the man on the other end of the call has been running a different one.
His does not have me in the second train out of Hicksville.
His does not have me on any train. His ends at the south gate at noon with a hand on a folder, and after the hand on the folder the gate does what gates do, which is decide who's inside and who isn't.
Useful or gone. The two settings of the dial.
I look up.
The tall one is watching. The short one is on the neck.
"Rocco."
"Twelve minutes."
"You sent the packet before I got here."
The pause on his end is the pause of a man who would rather not have been asked the question and is not going to dignify it by answering. Which is the answer.
"Twelve minutes, kid."
I say nothing.
The hedge break at the east end of the wall is a hundred and forty feet from where I am standing.
The service road past the boxwood is sixty.
The lane is the lane and the lane has a car on it that I hear before I see, because a Valenti engine on the gravel of a Valenti lane sounds like one specific thing: a man who is not in a hurry to be anywhere he is not already going.
Pino at the wheel. The black sedan. Glass tinted on the rear and not on the front because Massimo is in the front, in the passenger seat, and he wants to be seen on the way in.
The car stops ten meters from the gate. The handbrake clicks. Pino does not get out. Massimo does.
He is wearing the jacket that is too light for the wind. He came out of the house without putting on the right coat. He has the chip in his right hand, flat in his palm, thumb across it.
He does not look at me.
He looks at the tall one.
"South gate is closed."
He does not raise his voice. He does not have to. The tall one's mouth opens half an inch and stays open. The short one's hand goes to his hip and stops at his hip, because the hand has thought of a gun and the brain has thought of where it is, which is a Valenti lane.
"Mr. Valenti."
"South gate. Closed."
"We were told."
"I know what you were told. The man who told you is on the phone in her hand. You can give him my regards or you can give him your feet on the road. Which one is faster."
The tall one looks at the phone. The phone is still in my hand. Rocco is still on it. I have not hung up. I have not lifted it back to my ear.
The tall one looks at the short one.
The short one takes his hand off his hip.
They walk. Not fast. Fast would be a thing Massimo would have something to say about. They walk the way men walk when they have been told to leave a room and would rather not have it noted in the ledger of how they left it.
Past the pillar. Past the sedan. Pino watches them in the side mirror without turning his head.
His hand is on the wheel at ten, on the gearshift at four, foot on the brake and not the gas. He has not decided to let them past until they are past.
They pass. The lane swallows them. A car door, somewhere out on the road, the small slam of a man closing it harder than he meant to.
Massimo is at the gate now. Three steps off me. He still has not looked at me. He is looking at the phone in my hand.
"Hang up."
I do not hang up.
I lift the phone to my ear.
"Rocco."
"Where did they go."
"Off the property."
"Why."
I do not answer.
"Caterina. Why."
I look at Massimo. Massimo is looking at the phone.
"Tell him," Massimo says. Quiet. He doesn't move.
I do not tell him.
The speaker is loud enough at this volume that we both hear what comes next.
Rocco does not know he is on speaker. Rocco thinks he is on a private line with his niece at a south gate at 11:53 a.m. of a Saturday he has been planning for nine days, and Rocco is angry, and Rocco when he is angry reaches for the thing in the drawer he has been saving for a different afternoon.
"Ask him."
"Ask him what."
"Ask him what happened to Gemma Fioretti."
The chip goes still in Massimo's palm. His thumb does not move.
"Ask him if he knew before you put the pearls on or after.
Ask him when he last spoke to Cosimo about the canal.
Ask him whose hand was on the back of her neck in the water, kid, because it was not mine and it was not your father's, and you have been sleeping in a house with the answer for nine days. "
The gravel grinds under my heel as I shift my weight. The wind off the Sound gets into the collar of the jacket that is too light for it.
Massimo's eyes come up off the phone and find mine.