Chapter 19: Remo's POV

Remo's POV

I took the can down to the booth myself.

Lucia was upstairs in the shower, and the house was still asleep, and I did not want her to see it first.

I threaded the film through the gate with the hand that worked.

I had done it a thousand times, in this chair, with my own hands.

I turned off the work lights and pressed the switch.

The screen lit up with a hotel conference room.

A woman in a gray suit sat across from a man in a windbreaker.

The woman had Lucia's face.

It was good.

It was better than mine.

The seams were softer, and the eyes moved with the mouth, and whoever had made it had spent real money.

"I'll tell you everything," said the speaker, in Lucia's voice, low and shaky.

"My father keeps a ledger. He has judges in it. I can bring it to you."

"And in return?" the man in the windbreaker said.

"Protection. For me. I don't care what happens to the family."

I stopped breathing at that sentence.

I knew that sentence.

Memo 91 was a Tuesday in March, when she stood at the kitchen counter and said to nobody:

"I don't care what happens to the family, I just want a Sunday without a fight."

I had listened to it many times on a headset in the dark.

It was the only recording of her that did not mention a man.

I had never cut it into anything.

It was in my notebook, in my block capitals, on page six.

I turned off the projector and sat in the dark.

The computer man had sold Silvio more than one minute of tape.

He had sold him her memos, and Silvio had hired someone to do to her what I had done to five men.

I sat there for what felt like a long time.

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