CHAPTER SIX
GABE
At nine thirty, Mina locks me out of her bedroom.
At nine thirty-two, she discovers I changed the lock.
“You cannot be serious.”
She stands in the upstairs hall holding a brass key that no longer turns. Her wedding dress is gone, replaced by loose black pants and a cream sweater. The ring remains beneath the fabric at her throat.
I point to the keypad above the knob. “Your code is your old code.”
“My old code was a key.”
“Then choose six numbers.”
“I choose the number of seconds you have to restore my door.”
“The frame wouldn’t resist a shoulder.”
“Neither would you if I chose the right instrument.”
“Section eight.”
“I wrote it. I know where the margins are.”
Felix passes behind me carrying a camera hub. “I’m going downstairs.”
“Coward,” Mina tells him.
“Survivor.”
He disappears.
The apartment occupies the oldest part of the building, above the arrangement rooms. Two bedrooms, a narrow sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, and too many doors.
The floors tilt toward the center. Pipes announce every use.
From the hall window, I can see the service drive and the black roof of the hearse garage.
Mina enters six numbers on the keypad.
“Not your birthday,” I say.
“It isn’t.”
“Your sister’s?”
Her hand stops.
I should not have asked. The realization arrives after the words, which is a problem I do not usually have.
“No,” she says.
The lock accepts the code. She opens the door, tests it twice, then closes it in my face.
I remain in the hall.
Felix calls from the stairs. “She alive?”
“For contractual reasons.”
The door opens three inches.
“I heard that.”
“The walls are thin.”
“Good. You’ll hear me planning.”
The door shuts again.
I set my suitcase in the guest room. The bed is narrow, the dresser older than the building’s security, and a framed print above the headboard reads What we keep keeps us. I turn it face down.
Downstairs, the funeral home is under controlled lockdown.
Exterior doors sealed. Families with scheduled evening viewings escorted through the front.
No weapons visible in public areas. Two men in the garage, two in the kitchen entrance, Felix monitoring the feeds from Jo’s office while she complains that he has displaced her adding machine.
The shooter knew the camera turn at the club. The brake line was cut during a sixteen-minute window when three staff doors were open for catering.
Victor calls twice. I do not answer.
At ten, Mina emerges wearing socks and carrying her laptop.
“The guest Wi-Fi is out.”
“We replaced the router.”
“Why?”
“It used factory encryption.”
“It used a password.”
“Vassallo1978 is not a password. It’s a historical marker.”
“Jo chose it.”
“Jo wrote it on a label under the router.”
Mina closes her eyes.
“New network is VDF-Staff. Password is on your phone.”
She looks at the message, then at me. “Fourteen characters and a symbol.”
“Correct.”
“I hope marriage is less exhausting than your cybersecurity.”
“It has not been.”
That small almost-laugh appears again. She turns before it fully exists.
We work at opposite ends of the kitchen table. I review the club feeds. Mina reviews Paolo’s intake photographs. Neither of us mentions the fact that we are doing it together.
At ten forty, Jo brings up a plate of ziti and drops it between us.
“Eat,” she says.
“I’m not hungry,” Mina answers.
Jo looks at me. “You?”
“Nothing.”
“Fine. I’ll tell the men downstairs the new head of the family died because he was too dramatic for pasta.”
She leaves.
Mina takes a forkful. “She’ll do it.”
I eat.
The plate is gone in seven minutes. Mina carries it to the sink and begins washing it despite the dishwasher six inches to her left.
“It works,” I say.
“What?”
“The dishwasher.”
“You mentioned it.”
“Then why are you doing that?”
She rinses the plate. “Because the dishwasher takes two hours and the plate takes twenty seconds.”
“You own more than one plate.”
“This one belonged to my mother.”
There is no photograph of a mother in the apartment. Jo. Bianca. A younger Mina in a graduation gown. Sal behind the ribbon-cutting podium. No mother.
“When did she die?”
Mina puts the plate in the rack. “I was eighteen. Cancer. Not suspicious, unless you have an argument with cellular biology.”
“I prefer opponents with names.”
“That explains the marriage.”
She dries her hands, then checks the hallway camera feed. A family is leaving the downstairs visitation room. Their oldest son carries a framed photograph. One of my security men holds the door without looking at the frame.
“He is standing too close,” Mina says.
“To the door?”
“To the family. Move him behind the arrangement-room wall when visitors exit. People should not pass a weapon on their way to the parking lot.”
I text the adjustment.
“You do that quickly,” she says.
“What?”
“Change instructions when the reason is good.”
“I change bad instructions.”
“You changed my bedroom lock.”
“That was a good instruction.”
She points the dish towel at me. “Growth postponed.”
The family’s taillights leave the drive. Below us, staff begin resetting the visitation room for morning. A vacuum starts, stops, then starts again.
“Do you ever close?” I ask.
“The office closes. Death has poor respect for business hours.”
“How many people work here?”
“Seven. Jo and me, two funeral assistants, one apprentice, two part-time attendants. Our embalmer retired three years ago, so I took over most preparation.”
“You do everything.”
“No. I know how everything is done. That is different.”
“Is it?”
“Ask the head of a logistics company.”
I hear the question beneath the question. Paolo handled routes I did not review. Victor mediated accounts I approved by habit. Knowing the result is not knowing the work.
“I should have known the mortuary program,” I say.
Mina folds the towel. “Should you?”
“My company moved it.”
“Your company moves eight hundred kinds of cargo.”
“My brother signed.”
“And my father signed. Bianca was the one who looked.”
She sits again, nearer this time because the laptop has moved to my side of the table.
“Tomorrow,” she says, “Elena will approve clothing and cosmetic choices. Sunday, every person who loved Paolo will look for a version of him that proves they knew him. Your job is not to control which version wins.”
“What is my job?”
“Stand beside your mother. Answer the question she asks instead of the one you can solve.”
“That sounds inefficient.”
“Grief is.”
The advice irritates me because I need it.
At eleven twenty, Felix sends the shooter’s partial route. He exited the alley on a motorcycle, crossed under the old viaduct, and vanished near a freight access road controlled by three companies. One is Corso Maritime. One belongs to Ruggiero. The third is a shell with no active office.
Mina leans toward my screen. “Zoom in.”
I do.
The rider’s helmet is black. Jacket unmarked. The motorcycle has no plate.
“The left foot,” she says.
“What about it?”
“He doesn’t put weight on it when he turns. Old injury or fresh.”
I replay the footage.
She is right.
“You assess gait?”
“Families ask whether the body can wear certain shoes. I notice feet.”
“That sounded less strange before you explained it.”
“Most funeral work does.”
My phone vibrates. Victor again.
Mina sees the name. “Your godfather is persistent.”
“He wants me to move you.”
“Where?”
“My waterfront residence.”
“Fortified glass mausoleum.”
“It has brick.”
“Luxury.”
I decline the call.
“Why?” she asks.
“Why what?”
“Why aren’t you moving me?”
“You made it a condition.”
“You have already replaced a door.”
“The door remains yours.”
Her gaze stays on me, looking for the coercion behind compliance.
“Also,” I say, “the shooter knew my route and my security plan. My residence is only safer if my house is clean.”
“And it isn’t.”
“Not yet.”
She sits back. “Thank you for the almost-trust.”
“It wasn’t trust.”
“Of course not.”
The lights flicker.
Once.
Then the feed from the chapel goes black.
I stand. Mina is already moving.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
“Mina.”
“That is my chapel.”
I reach the stairs first. She follows close enough that I can hear her socks on the wood.
Felix meets us in the lower corridor with his weapon drawn. “Power cut on chapel circuit only. Side sensor tripped.”
“Exterior?”
“No breach on camera.”
The chapel doors are open.
Mina stops beside me. She had locked them after the last viewing.
The room beyond is dark except for emergency lights along the floor. Rows of empty chairs face the restored arch where the altar used to stand. Rain taps the stained-glass windows.
The air smells faintly of burned paper.
Mina enters before I can stop her. Not reckless. Familiar. She touches the wall switch, checks the control panel, then looks at the door behind the lectern.
“That goes to the old preparation corridor,” she whispers.
“Locked?”
“From this side.”
The brass key at her waist is gone.
I see the empty ring on her key chain at the same moment she does.
Felix moves toward the side door.
A hinge whispers in the dark.
I catch a shadow crossing the old corridor and run.
The door slams before I reach it. Felix hits the exterior route. I force the lock, but the passage beyond is empty, ending at a service door open to the rain.
No person. No vehicle.
On the floor beneath the emergency light lies a silver oval.
Saint Christopher carrying a child across a river.
Paolo’s medal.
Behind me, Mina says nothing.
She does not need to.
Someone entered her locked chapel without appearing on my cameras and placed my brother’s missing medal where only we would find it.
My house does not leak.
It is already occupied.