Chapter 2 - The Dead Man’s Daughter
Harriet did not remember agreeing to get into Dominic Valenti’s SUV.
One moment she stood beside the employee elevator staring at the photograph of her open apartment door.
The next she was in the back seat of a bullet-resistant vehicle while two black SUVs surrounded them.
Dominic sat opposite her.
His white shirt had been replaced with a black T-shirt someone had brought from another vehicle. A physician had bandaged his side before they left the garage, but Dominic had refused the hospital.
Harriet watched the city lights pass outside.
“Tell me everything.”
Dominic looked at her.
“No.”
Harriet leaned forward.
“You showed me a picture of a man who looks exactly like my dead father.”
“Yes.”
“You said you’ve been looking for him.”
“Yes.”
“Someone just broke into my apartment.”
“Yes.”
“And your answer is no?”
“My answer is that you are angry.”
“Brilliant observation.”
“And angry people hear what confirms their fear.”
Harriet stared at him.
“You always talk like a fortune cookie with anger issues?”
One of Dominic’s men in the front seat coughed.
Possibly hiding a laugh.
Dominic’s eyes remained on Harriet.
“You’re not afraid of me.”
“I have bills.”
He frowned.
Harriet shrugged.
“Fear requires spare energy.”
For the first time since the garage, Dominic laughed.
Briefly.
Then he winced and pressed a hand against his bandaged side.
Harriet noticed.
“You need a hospital.”
“I have doctors.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
Dominic leaned back.
“Your father worked for my father.”
Harriet went still.
There it was.
The first real answer.
Dominic continued.
“Henry Lawson was not a gangster.”
Harriet looked out the window.
“I know.”
“He was an accountant.”
“I know that too.”
“He was also very good at finding money people wanted hidden.”
That she did not know.
Harriet turned back.
Dominic studied her reaction.
“My father trusted him.”
“My father worked at a shipping company.”
“He worked through a shipping company.”
Harriet shook her head.
“No.”
“You asked for the truth.”
“I asked for facts.”
“Fine. Fact. In 2004, Henry Lawson discovered someone inside my father’s organization was stealing from shipments passing through Pier Nine.”
Harriet remembered 2004.
She had been twenty.
Home from community college.
Living with her parents in a narrow brick house on the South Side.
Her father had spent his final months nervous.
Checking windows twice.
Driving different routes.
Refusing to explain.
Then one night, police came to the door.
Car accident.
Vehicle burned.
Body identified through dental records.
Her mother had collapsed in the hallway.
Harriet had stopped believing in normal life that night.
“What happened at Pier Nine?” she asked.
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“No one knows.”
“Rafe does.”
“Yes.”
“He told me to ask my father.”
“Yes.”
“So Victor knows too.”
Dominic’s expression shifted slightly.
Harriet caught it.
“You know Victor.”
Dominic looked toward the window.
“Victor Marano.”
The name landed heavily.
Even Harriet knew it.
A real estate developer.
Donor.
Restaurant owner.
Occasional guest at Marlowe’s.
Harriet had served him twice.
He had tipped forty percent and never once looked at her face.
“Victor Marano is behind tonight?”
“I believe so.”
“Believe?”
“I don’t accuse people without proof.”
Harriet gave him a dry look.
“You’re a very ethical alleged crime lord.”
Dominic almost smiled.
“Alleged?”
“I don’t watch enough local news.”
The SUV slowed.
Harriet looked outside.
They were not heading toward her apartment.
“Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“No.”
“We cannot go to your apartment.”
“My things are there.”
“So are whoever sent that message.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“You saved my life. That makes your safety my problem until I understand why six men trying to kill me recognized your family name.”
“They were trying to kill you?”
“They were debating it.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
Harriet folded her arms.
“I am not staying at your house.”
Twenty minutes later, Harriet stood in Dominic Valenti’s kitchen.
It was irritating.
The house itself was even more irritating.
She expected marble lions and gold furniture.
Instead, Dominic lived in a renovated warehouse near the river with exposed brick, steel beams, warm wooden floors, and almost no decoration.
The kitchen was enormous.
Harriet hated how much she liked it.
Dominic’s doctor stitched the cut at his side while Harriet sat at the island drinking coffee.
“You should rest,” the doctor said.
Dominic ignored him.
Harriet pointed at Dominic.
“See? Doctor.”
The doctor glanced at Harriet.
“Please stay. He never listens to me.”
Dominic gave him a look.
Harriet sipped coffee.
“I charge hourly.”
The doctor smiled.
Dominic did not.
When they were finally alone, Dominic placed a folder on the kitchen island.
Harriet did not touch it.
“What is that?”
“Your father’s file.”
“You carry twenty-two-year-old personnel files around?”
“No.”
“Then how did it get here?”
“My people brought it.”
Harriet opened the folder.
The first page contained a photograph.
Henry Lawson.
Age forty-eight.
Brown hair beginning to gray.
Glasses.
Tired eyes.
Her father.
Harriet touched the edge of the page.
“What did he do for your father?”
“He reviewed manifests, invoices, customs records.”
“Why?”
“Because shipments were disappearing.”
“What shipments?”
Dominic paused.
Harriet looked up.
“Say it.”
“Cash.”
“How much?”
“About thirty million over two years.”
Harriet whistled softly.
“That’s a lot of missing envelopes.”
“It wasn’t being carried in envelopes.”
“You know what I meant.”
Dominic pulled another document from the folder.
A handwritten ledger page.
Harriet recognized the writing instantly.
Her father’s.
Columns.
Dates.
Container numbers.
Initials.
Beside several entries were letters.
V.M.
Victor Marano.
Harriet’s mouth dried.
“My father knew.”
“Yes.”
“Did your father kill him?”
Dominic answered immediately.
“No.”
“You didn’t hesitate.”
“Because my father spent the rest of his life looking for Henry.”
Harriet turned another page.
A police photograph of the burned car.
She looked away.
Dominic’s voice softened.
“The body in the vehicle was not your father.”
Harriet closed the folder.
“You don’t know that.”
“We exhumed it.”
Her eyes snapped back to him.
“You what?”
“Three years ago.”
“You dug up the man I buried?”
“The man buried under your father’s name.”
Harriet stood.
“That grave belonged to my family.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
She walked away from the island.
Her hands shook again.
Dominic followed slowly.
“My father believed Henry survived.”
“So you violated his grave?”
“I wanted the truth.”
“And did you find it?”
“The remains belonged to another man.”
Harriet stopped.
“How certain?”
“DNA.”
The kitchen became too quiet.
Harriet remembered her mother standing at that grave every Sunday for twelve years.
Fresh flowers.
A thermos of coffee.
Talking to Henry as if he might answer.
Her mother had died believing her husband was beneath that stone.
Harriet felt suddenly furious at the dead.
“If he survived,” she said, “why didn’t he come home?”
Dominic did not answer.
Harriet looked at him.
“Why didn’t he come home?”
“I don’t know.”
She laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“My mother waited for him.”
“I know.”
“She died waiting.”
Dominic said nothing.
That was the first intelligent thing he had done all night.
Harriet returned to the file.
Near the back, she found another photograph.
This one showed Pier Nine.
A warehouse.
Three men.
Henry stood beside Dominic’s father.
A third man faced partly away from the camera.
Harriet recognized him.
Victor Marano.
On the back someone had written:
September 14, 2004.
11:40 p.m.
Thirty minutes before the fire.
Harriet looked at Dominic.
“Who took this?”
“We don’t know.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“My father.”
“And where did he get it?”
“He refused to say.”
Harriet flipped through the remaining pages.
One photograph stopped her.
A younger Dominic.
Maybe eighteen.
Standing beside his father.
Harriet looked between the photo and the man across from her.
“You were there.”
Dominic’s face closed.
“Where?”
“Pier Nine.”
Silence.
Harriet held up the photograph.
“There’s a timestamp. Same night.”
Dominic looked at the picture.
“Yes.”
“You told me no one knows what happened.”
“No one knows everything.”
“What do you know?”
Dominic walked toward the window.
“At 11:52 that night, my father sent me home.”
“Why?”
“He was arguing with Henry.”
“About what?”
“Henry wanted to go to the police.”
Harriet’s throat tightened.
“Your father didn’t?”
“He believed the police were compromised.”
“Were they?”
“Yes.”
“And Victor?”
“He arrived twelve minutes later.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him.”
Harriet stared.
“You were still there.”
“I hadn’t left yet.”
“What happened?”
Dominic’s jaw flexed.
“Gunshots.”
Harriet’s fingers went cold.
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Who fired?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“I was outside.”
“You saw Victor.”
“Yes.”
“You saw my father.”
“Yes.”
“You saw your father.”
“Yes.”
“Then somebody fired three times, my father disappeared, a different man was burned in his car, and everybody lied for twenty-two years?”
Dominic turned.
“Yes.”
Harriet wanted to throw the coffee mug.
Instead, she set it down carefully.
“What happened after the shots?”
“I went inside.”
“And?”
“My father was on the floor.”
Harriet stopped breathing.
“Dead?”
“No.”
“Victor?”
“Gone.”
“My father?”
“Gone.”
“You searched?”
“For years.”
“Not hard enough.”
Dominic accepted the accusation without reacting.
Harriet opened the folder again.
There was one more page she had missed.
A photocopy of an envelope.
Addressed to her mother.
Never sent.
Her name was written beneath her mother’s.
To Margaret and Harriet.
The handwriting was Henry’s.
Harriet touched the photocopy.
“Where is the letter?”
Dominic didn’t answer.
She looked up.
“Where is it?”
“My father kept it.”
“Why?”
“He said Henry made him promise not to deliver it unless Victor Marano was dead.”
Harriet’s voice dropped.
“Where is it now?”
Dominic turned toward a locked cabinet across the room.
“My father died two years ago.”
“And the letter?”
Dominic walked to the cabinet.
He entered a code.
The lock clicked.
Inside was a small fireproof box.
He placed it on the island.
Harriet could hear her heartbeat.
Dominic opened the box.
An old envelope lay inside.
Yellowed edges.
Her mother’s name.
Her own.
Harriet reached for it.
Dominic stopped her.
“Before you read this, you need to understand something.”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“Henry didn’t disappear because he was afraid for himself.”
Harriet pulled her hand away from Dominic’s.
“Then who was he afraid for?”
Dominic’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What?”
Harriet watched him.
Dominic turned toward one of the security monitors.
A camera showed the front gate.
A black sedan sat outside.
Its driver-side door opened.
An elderly man stepped out.
Gray hair.
Thin frame.
A scar beneath his right ear.
Harriet stood so quickly the stool fell behind her.
Dominic whispered one name.
“Henry.”
May you like
The man at the gate lifted his face toward the camera.
Then the screen went black.
