Chapter 12: The Biltmore

I did not tell Raf about the napkin.

I put it in my pocket, and I told myself I would read it as a number.

Pio kept Raf's personal accounts in a drawer in the back office, in a handwriting that looked like a doctor's.

I had asked for them on my first day.

He had said Raf's mother would do them herself, and I had let it go.

That afternoon I asked again, and Pio coughed, and did not look at me.

"Everything on paper," I said.

He stood a long time at the filing cabinet.

Then he took out a folder with a blue tab and set it on the desk without a word.

The card was a black one, issued in May by a bank in Boston to "P. Benedetti, authorized user."

Raf's name was on the account.

It was the allowance he'd given my sister, the card she'd used for dresses and the lipstick she wore.

I turned the pages.

Boutiques, a jeweler, a spa.

Then the Biltmore.

The Providence Biltmore, a room, one night, three hundred and eighty dollars.

Then again, eight days later.

Then twice in one week.

I laid the pages out across the desk in order, and my hands were steady, because they always are when the numbers are bad.

Fourteen charges between the first of June and the eighth of October.

Every one of them on a Tuesday or a Thursday.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were the nights I stayed late at the firm all summer, closing out audits.

I knew what I was reading.

I'd known it.

"Pio," I said.

He didn't answer.

"Who saw these statements?"

"I did."

"Who else?"

He rubbed his mustache.

"I told him in the third week," Pio said. "June."

"I put the first one in front of him. A hotel, and a cab driver I know on the desk."

"Raf looked at it for a long time."

"What did he say?"

"He said to keep paying it."

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