Chapter 3 - The Yellow Ledger
The south bedroom on the second floor had tall French windows overlooking the rear garden, but the brass handles had been removed, leaving only square iron rods that no human fingers could turn without pliers. Elena spent the first forty-five minutes inspecting the baseboards, the fireplace flue, and the heavy linen curtains before concluding that Ciro Ferrante built prisons with better wallpaper than the state government did.
At midnight, the heavy latch on the outer door clicked.
Elena did not pretend to be asleep. She sat upright in the wingback chair by the dark hearth, her legs tucked beneath her skirt, holding a brass fire poker she had pried loose from its stand.
Ciro walked in alone, carrying a cardboard file box bound with yellowed hemp twine. He wore no jacket now, his cuffs rolled back over forearms marked by old burn scars. He kicked the door shut behind him and tossed the box onto the quilt of the four-poster bed.
""The manifest wasn't smeared,"" he said, pulling a second chair toward the hearth without looking at the poker in her lap.
Elena didn't lower the brass rod. ""So I was right.""
""You were right about the hand,"" Ciro admitted, sitting down with the heavy grace of a man who had not slept in three days. ""The ink was dried with blotter paper from the east office. Only three men have keys to that drawer. Sal, my cousin Paolo, and old man DeLuca.""
""Old man DeLuca has gout and hasn't climbed a dock crane since 2018,"" Elena said. ""And Sal is too stupid to use blotter paper; he would have used his sleeve. That leaves Paolo.""
Ciro tilted his head back against the leather cushion, watching her through half-closed eyelids. ""Paolo has been my cousin since we were boys in the North End alleys stealing coal off the railroad carts. You accuse him in two minutes based on an ink smudge.""
""I accuse him because he bought a townhouse in Brookline three weeks ago under a holding corporation called 'Tremont Investments,'"" Elena said coldly. ""He used Theresa’s notary stamp to certify the deed without her knowing. I saw the filing at the county clerk’s office when I was doing title searches for my school’s land lease. I told Theresa to stay away from him. She thought he was taking her to dinner in the North End; Paolo was building an alibi with her name attached to it.""
Ciro sat up slowly. The lazy heaviness vanished from his shoulders, replaced by the coiled precision that had kept him alive through two city gang wars. ""You knew about the Brookline deed before tonight?""
""Of course I knew. I have Theresa's mail forwarded to my apartment because she forgets to pay her electric bill every third month,"" Elena said, setting the fire poker on the floor with a dull thud. ""I kept the tax assessment in my bedside drawer. If your men hadn't kicked my door off its hinges, I could have handed it to you at nine this morning.""
Ciro reached into the cardboard box and pulled out a small, water-damaged notebook bound in black oilcloth. ""Is this hers?""
Elena looked at the warped pages. ""No. That belongs to your father. Theresa wouldn't know an oilcloth binding if it hit her in the face. Where did you get that?""
""In the car with the menthol cigarettes,"" Ciro said. ""Dropped beneath the floor mat. Whoever took your sister didn't want the money from the dock, Elena. The money was the decoy. They wanted the names inside this book. Names of customs officials who took payoffs twenty-five years ago—officials whose sons are now running for state senate and federal judgeships.""
Elena stood up, walking toward the bed to look at the little black book under the lamp. ""If Paolo has those names, he isn't running to New York. He’s going to the federal courthouse in Boston to trade them for immunity before you put him in the harbor.""
""He won't make the courthouse,"" Ciro said, his voice dropping into an icy whisper. ""Because he doesn't know the last four pages are written in cipher. And there is only one person left alive who knows my father’s substitution code.""
May you like
Elena looked down at him, her eyes hardening into steel. ""You.""
""No,"" Ciro said, rising until he stood so close she could smell the cold iron and winter rain on his skin. ""My father didn't trust his sons with words. He trusted his bookkeeper. And his bookkeeper was your father, Arthur Vance.""
