Chapter 5 - The Ledger of the Dead
Saint Jude’s Mercy had an aroma of floor wax and institutional despair that never changed. I sat in the hard plastic chair outside the intensive care unit, my father’s notebooks pressed flat against my stomach beneath my heavy coat.
It was 4:40 AM. Clara was behind glass, hooked to an artificial lung that sighed with mechanical indifference every four seconds. The doctor, a young resident with bags like bruises under his eyes, had told me she had suffered severe anoxia. If she survived the next twenty-four hours, the extent of her brain function was anyone’s guess.
The heavy fire doors at the end of the corridor clicked open.
Alessandro Romano didn't look like a man who had slept. He wore a fresh shirt, dark charcoal without a tie, and an Italian trench coat that hung straight to his calves. Victor Russo followed two paces behind, carrying a large cardboard coffee tray holding three tall paper cups.
The two county sheriff’s deputies stationed at the nurse's station stood up immediately, their hands dropping toward their duty belts.
Alessandro didn't even glance at them. He stopped in front of my chair.
“How is she?” he asked. His voice was completely devoid of the dramatic menace from the diner; it was flat, professional, and deadly serious.
“She’s breathing because a machine is pumping air into her ribs,” I said without looking up. “Vance’s people broke her door. They took the trunk.”
Victor set a coffee cup on the plastic chair next to me. “They took garbage, then. Vance just called the district attorney’s night duty officer claiming he had the conclusive cargo manifests. He thinks he won.”
I reached inside my coat, pulled out the butcher-paper parcel, and held it out.
Alessandro didn't take it immediately. He looked at the wax paper, stained with twelve years of kitchen grease, then down at my face. “You kept it hidden.”
“My mother kept it hidden. My father knew what Vance was before anyone else did.” I pulled back the paper. The blue-lined pages were filled with thousands of rows: vessel names, register tonnages, customs clearance stamps, and then, written in red pencil in the margins, the real weights.
“Look at page forty,” I said.
Alessandro took the notebook, his fingers brushing mine. They were warm, dry, and rock-steady. He flipped the page.
Victor leaned over his shoulder, his breath hissing through his teeth. “Sweet Mother of God.”
On page forty, my father had pasted three original pink carbon copies of bill-of-lading receipts from the SS Corinthian. Each slip bore the official blue stamp of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and beneath each stamp was the signature of the authorizing customs inspector: Julian M. Vance, Special Maritime Counsel.
“He wasn't just skimming,” Alessandro murmured, his eyes scanning the columns. “He was the principal receiver. My father wasn't running those containers. He was just leasing the dock space to Vance’s shell company.”
“My father wrote down the license plates of the escort trucks,” I added. “And the names of the four dockworkers who were on the gantry when the container ‘slipped’ and crushed the warehouse office where the night supervisor was working.”
Alessandro closed the book with a soft, decisive slap.
“This isn't an indictment against me,” he said. “This is a twenty-year racketeering conspiracy that names half the municipal bench, three former port commissioners, and the entire executive committee of the North Ward Democratic Club.”
“I don't care about the North Ward Democratic Club,” I said, rising from the chair until I was standing inches from his chest. “I care about the man who stood over my mother and pulled her oxygen line out of the wall.”
Alessandro looked down at me. For the first time, the cold, calculating mask of the Romano heir cracked, revealing something ancient and predatory beneath.
“His name is Martin Coyle,” Alessandro said softly. “He does Vance’s collection work when Vance wants to keep his own hands smelling of lavender. He is currently at a private social club on Grand Avenue, waiting for the banks to open so Vance can wire him seventy-five thousand dollars for retrieving that empty trunk.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going to deliver those notebooks to Federal District Judge Margaret Hallowell at her residence in Bronxville,” Alessandro said. “She is the only judge on the federal bench who didn't take campaign contributions from Vance’s father in 1994.”
“And Coyle?”
Alessandro turned to Victor. “Victor, take two men. Go to Grand Avenue. Make sure Mr. Coyle understands that his contract with Mr. Vance has suffered a cancellation.”
“Wait,” I snapped.
Alessandro paused, his dark brows drawing together.
“You don't get to kill him in an alley,” I said, my voice trembling with an anger that surprised even me. “You kill him, Vance calls it a gangland hit. He claims the witnesses are being intimidated by the Romano family. He gets a protective order, he suppresses the documents, and my mother dies as collateral damage in a mob war.”
Alessandro stared at me. “Then what do you propose, Miss Miller? A polite conversation over diner pie?”
“No,” I said, stepping toward the glass partition where Clara lay motionless. “We use the law against them. The real law. The one my father believed in before you and Vance turned this city into your private abattoir.”
May you like
Alessandro let out a short, incredulous breath that sounded remarkably like a laugh. “The courts belong to them, Elena.”
“Not all of them,” I said. “My mother worked records for thirty years. I know where the state transcripts are filed before the clerks can alter them. If you want to survive nine o'clock, you do this my way.”
