Chapter 5 - Dinner With a Traitor
Angelo Russo was found forty-three minutes before midnight.
Not because Dominic obeyed the threat.
Because Beatrice noticed the wall behind him.
The photograph had been taken in a concrete room. Most people saw gray blocks, a chair, blood, and a frightened man.
Beatrice saw numbers.
She enlarged the image.
“There.”
Dominic leaned over her laptop.
“What?”
“That marking.”
A faded yellow stencil appeared behind Angelo’s shoulder.
18-C.
Dominic stared.
“So?”
“Municipal buildings use that format differently. Warehouses too. But Chicago freight terminals mark loading bays with letter-number combinations.”
“You know that how?”
“I audited a logistics company.”
Dominic called Matteo Vieri.
“How many abandoned Russo freight properties have a Bay 18-C?”
Matteo answered five minutes later.
“One. South Canal.”
Dominic arrived with six men.
Angelo was alive.
Barely.
His captors had vanished.
But they had left something behind.
A blue ledger.
Or what appeared to be one.
Beatrice looked at it at Dominic’s safe house the following morning.
“That isn’t my father’s.”
Dominic frowned.
“It was under Angelo’s chair.”
“They want us to believe it’s the one from the shop.”
“How can you tell?”
“My father numbered his pages by hand.”
She opened it.
“These are printed.”
Dominic examined the entries.
Thousands of transactions stretched across fifteen years.
Names.
Dates.
Amounts.
Many implicated men in the Russo organization.
Including Angelo.
Including Vittorio.
Including Dominic.
“It’s a setup,” Beatrice said.
“Or your father’s ledger was fake.”
She looked at him sharply.
“You think that?”
“I think whoever is doing this wants me uncertain about everybody.”
“Then it’s working.”
Dominic looked at her.
She was exhausted.
Smoke still lingered faintly in her hair despite having showered at Lucia’s apartment.
He had offered a hotel suite.
She refused.
He offered armed guards.
She refused that too.
Finally Lucia had solved the argument by pointing a wooden spoon at Dominic and declaring that Beatrice would stay with her.
Dominic had not realized eighty-pound Italian grandmothers outranked mafia bosses.
Apparently they did.
Beatrice rubbed her eyes.
“We need my father’s original records.”
“The shop is sealed.”
“There may be another copy.”
“Where?”
“My mother’s house.”
Dominic frowned.
“You still own it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you check before?”
“Because I didn’t know my father had been murdered until yesterday.”
That shut him up.
Two hours later, they stood inside a modest brick bungalow in Bridgeport.
Dust covered the furniture.
Beatrice had inherited the house after her mother died but never sold it.
Her childhood bedroom remained upstairs.
A faded purple wall.
Bookshelves.
A Northwestern pennant.
A photograph of teenage Beatrice beside Daniel Hayes.
Dominic stopped in front of it.
Daniel was a round-faced man with glasses and a mustache that should never have survived the nineties.
“You look like him.”
Beatrice glanced over.
“People usually say my mother.”
“The eyes.”
She looked away.
They searched for three hours.
Nothing.
Then Beatrice sat on the basement stairs.
“My father loved puzzles.”
Dominic leaned against the wall.
“What kind?”
“Crosswords. Number games. He hid my birthday gifts and made me solve clues.”
“That sounds annoying.”
“It was.”
She smiled.
“For my twelfth birthday I spent two hours finding roller skates.”
Dominic smiled too.
Then Beatrice’s expression changed.
“The furnace.”
“What?”
“My sixteenth birthday.”
She stood.
“He hid concert tickets behind the furnace panel.”
They moved downstairs.
Dominic removed the metal cover.
Nothing.
Beatrice crouched.
“No. Not that panel.”
She reached behind a pipe.
Her fingers found a small latch.
A narrow section of wall opened.
Inside was a metal box.
Beatrice stared.
Dominic did not touch it.
“You open it.”
Her hands shook slightly as she lifted the box onto a table.
Inside were documents.
Photographs.
Bank records.
And a cassette tape.
Dominic looked at it.
“You have a cassette player?”
Beatrice gave him a look.
“In this house? Probably seventeen.”
They found one in a closet.
The tape hissed.
Then Daniel Hayes’s voice filled the basement.
“If Bea is hearing this, then I failed to keep you away from all of it.”
Beatrice’s breath caught.
Dominic looked at her.
She sat down slowly.
Daniel continued.
“You’re probably angry. You should be. Your mother will be angrier.”
A faint laugh.
Beatrice covered her mouth.
Dominic turned away, giving her privacy without leaving.
“I discovered accounts connected to Vittorio Russo. At first I believed he was stealing from his own businesses. He wasn’t. Someone else was.”
Paper rustled on the tape.
“The person has access to Russo passwords, schedules, vendors, and captains. Salvatore Moretti helped move the money through the harbor, but Sal isn’t in charge.”
Dominic turned back.
Beatrice stared at the tape player.
Daniel named three shell companies.
Alder Shore was one of them.
Dominic felt cold.
Then came the part that changed everything.
“I met Vittorio tonight. He believes me now.”
Beatrice looked sharply at Dominic.
“Vittorio wants to expose whoever is behind it, but he’s frightened about what happens if the organization fractures. I told him that is his problem, not mine.”
Dominic almost smiled.
Daniel sounded like his daughter.
The tape continued.
“I have one name. I’m not putting it on this recording because if they find it, Bea could become a target. The name is encoded in my ledger. Page forty-seven. Use the first transaction of every month.”
Beatrice stood.
“The ledger.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Burned or stolen.”
“No.”
She searched the metal box.
Nothing.
Then she found a small key.
A bank logo was engraved on it.
Lake Federal.
“Safe-deposit box,” she whispered.
Dominic checked the number.
“214.”
They drove downtown.
The bank manager nearly refused access because the box was registered to Daniel Hayes.
Beatrice produced estate paperwork.
Twenty minutes later, Box 214 sat in a private viewing room.
Inside was one object.
The real blue ledger.
Beatrice laughed once.
Then cried.
Not dramatically.
Tears simply fell as she held the book her father had died protecting.
Dominic sat across from her.
“I’m sorry.”
She wiped her cheeks.
“For what?”
“For what my family did.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“My father covered it up.”
“Yes.”
“He let everyone call Daniel a thief.”
“Yes.”
Dominic looked down.
Beatrice studied him.
“You don’t have to defend Vittorio to me.”
“I’m not.”
“That seems difficult for you.”
“He was my father.”
“I know.”
“He was also wrong.”
Beatrice nodded.
“That can be true at the same time.”
Dominic looked at her.
Nobody in his world spoke like that.
People were loyal or disloyal.
Family or enemy.
Strong or weak.
His father had built an empire on simple categories.
Beatrice kept ruining them.
They opened the ledger to page forty-seven.
Each month had dozens of transactions.
“First transaction of every month,” she said.
They copied twelve names.
Most looked meaningless.
Cargo vendors.
Maintenance companies.
Insurance providers.
Beatrice wrote the first letter of each company.
S.
E.
B.
A.
S.
T.
I.
A.
N.
R.
U.
S.
Dominic stopped.
They had only eleven useful letters.
Beatrice flipped to the next month.
S.
SEBASTIAN RUSS.
Dominic stared.
“That’s incomplete.”
Beatrice turned the page.
The following month began with an O.
SEBASTIAN RUSSO.
Neither spoke.
Dominic finally said, “Impossible.”
Beatrice looked at him.
“Who is Sebastian?”
“My grandfather’s brother.”
“Alive?”
Dominic nodded slowly.
“Eighty-two.”
“Still involved?”
“No. He retired twenty years ago.”
“Where?”
“Lake Forest.”
Beatrice closed the ledger.
“Your father’s uncle.”
“My godfather.”
Dominic stood.
Sebastian Russo had taught Dominic to ride a bicycle.
Taken him fishing.
Given him his first watch.
At Vittorio’s funeral, Sebastian had embraced Dominic and whispered, Make the family proud.
Dominic felt sick.
“You sure Daniel’s code means he was the person behind it?”
“No.”
Beatrice tapped the ledger.
“It means my father wanted us to investigate him.”
Dominic called Eddie.
“Find everything you can on Sebastian Russo.”
He hung up.
Beatrice packed the records.
Dominic watched her.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
She looked up.
“What?”
“The message about the missing relief money.”
“Yes?”
“It didn’t go to every captain.”
“I thought it did.”
“No. Peter showed me his phone. Only six got it.”
“Why those six?”
“That’s what bothered me.”
Dominic leaned against the table.
“All six were appointed after my father got sick.”
“By you?”
“No.”
“By who?”
Dominic looked at her.
“Sebastian recommended every one.”
The room became silent.
Beatrice’s phone buzzed.
She read the message.
Her face changed.
“What?”
She turned the screen.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
It contained a photograph.
Lucia Bellandi stood outside her apartment building carrying grocery bags.
Taken ten minutes earlier.
Beneath it:
YOU FOUND THE LEDGER.
BRING IT TO THE OLD RUSSO ESTATE AT 8 PM.
COME WITH DOMINIC.
NO GUARDS.
OR THE OLD WOMAN PAYS FOR DANIEL’S MISTAKE.
Dominic read it twice.
Then took out his phone.
Beatrice grabbed his wrist.
“No guards.”
“They threatened Lucia.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not walking you into a trap alone.”
“You’re not walking me anywhere.”
He looked at her.
Her eyes were afraid.
But steady.
“Lucia is my family.”
Dominic understood that language.
May you like
He lowered the phone.
“Then we go together.”
