Chapter 15: Early August

I watched it four times on the floor of the shop.

My sister's laugh had no sound, and I could still hear it.

At the fifth time I got up and went to the stairs.

"Connie. Get dressed."

She came to the top step with a flashcard stuck to her sock.

"Is somebody dead?"

"Not yet. Get your coat. We're going to your brother's."

She looked at my face, and she didn't ask anything else.

It was ten past midnight when I rang the buzzer at the gate in Dyker Heights.

The security man let us in himself.

He didn't say good evening. He walked us straight down to the basement.

The security room was a narrow closet beside my workbench, with six monitors and a chair that had molded to his back.

Cesare was already in it.

He was in a gray T-shirt and track pants, barefoot on the concrete, his hair wet from a shower.

He'd been asleep, or trying.

He looked at me, at Connie, at the security man.

"You called her before you called me," he said to him.

"She called me, Don Lanza."

"What is it?" Cesare asked me.

I took the two things out of my coat and put them on the desk under the monitors.

Nonna's key.

The tin of impression wax.

"Before I show you anything," I said, "you're going to sit down."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he sat on the stool from my workbench.

I told him.

I started with Ricky and the wax and ended with my mother's handwriting in the ledger.

I didn't leave anything out.

He didn't interrupt once.

When I said Ricky's name, his hands closed on his knees.

When I said my mother's, he looked at the floor.

"You've known for a month," he said.

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me."

"No."

"Why?"

"You know why," Connie said from the doorway.

He didn't look at her.

He looked at me, and he knew why.

"Play them," I told the security man.

He'd lined them up on the center screen.

August 1, 1:04 a.m. Ricky at the door, the key sticking, Valentina pulling him in by his chain.

August 1, 4:40 a.m. Ricky leaving across the lawn with his shirt over his shoulder.

August 8, a Saturday. The same.

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