Chapter 20 - The Dedication at Twilight
Six months later, the Chicago spring had washed the soot from the limestone facades of the Loop.
The Julian Montgomery Arts Pavilion gleamed under the late afternoon sun, its restored copper cornices catching the golden light, its newly carved limestone friezes showing the history of the city rising from the ashes of 1871.
The sidewalk on State Street was packed with patrons in evening attire, waiting beneath the restored marquee that blazed with three thousand incandescent bulbs.
Roman Carter had been indicted on seventy-four counts of racketeering, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit murder; he was currently sitting in the Metropolitan Correctional Center without bail, his empire liquidated by court-appointed trustees.
Ethan Carter was gone.
He had surrendered himself to the Department of Justice the morning after the blizzard, delivering a four-hundred-page deposition that corroborated every line of my father’s ledgers.
Because of his cooperation, he had been permitted to plead down to a single count of misprision of a felony, his sentence suspended under four years of federal monitoring far away from Illinois.
He hadn't written.
He hadn't called.
He had honored the final promise he made on the floor of the theater: he had vanished into the light of his own penance.
I stood in the center of the grand foyer, wearing a dark emerald dress, my hair pinned back, holding a flute of untouched champagne as the mayor, the city council members, and the cultural elite of Chicago applauded the unveiling of the memorial wall.
Marcus Diaz stood beside me in a stiff, unfamiliar black tuxedo, his eyes shining with unshed tears as he pulled the gold velvet cord.
The curtain parted.
Set into the polished white marble was a massive bronze plaque bearing my father’s profile, flanked by his compass and drafting pen, with the inscription:
*JULIAN MONTGOMERY — ARCHITECT OF THE CITY'S TRUTH.*
The applause washed over the marble hall like the roar of the lake.
I smiled, shaking hands, accepting the bouquets of white lilies and the congratulations of men who had spent twenty years ignoring my father when he was alive.
At eight o'clock, the chimes sounded, signaling the audience to take their seats in the restored auditorium for the inaugural symphony performance.
As the crowd filtered through the brass doors, an usher in a maroon uniform approached me, holding a small silver tray.
"Miss Montgomery?" the boy said nervously. "A gentleman left this at the will-call desk for you ten minutes ago. He said it was critical that you open it before the performance begins."
On the tray was an unsealed envelope of heavy, vintage cotton vellum.
My heart slammed against my ribs as I took it.
Inside was not a note from Ethan.
It was a faded black-and-white photograph taken thirty years ago on the construction site of the very theater where I stood.
In the photograph, three men stood with their arms around each other's shoulders, laughing over a blueprint laid across a steel beam.
On the left was Harrison Carter.
In the center was my father, Julian Montgomery.
And on the right, looking down into the camera with cold, piercing eyes, was Judge Callahan—the man who had just overseen the federal grand jury that imprisoned Roman, cleared Ethan, and granted me the deed to the city’s crown jewel.
Flipped over, the back of the photograph had a single line written in fresh, wet black ink:
*You think the Carters were the ones who killed your father on Lake Shore Drive, Claire? Ask Callahan why Julian’s brake lines were cut before Harrison ever made the call.*
May you like
Before I could breathe, the lights in the grand foyer flickered twice and died.
From deep within the subterranean darkness beneath the orchestra pit, the hydraulic pistons of the forgotten foundation began to turn.
