Chapter 8: The Landlord

Rocco's POV

I found the three partners at the Harbor Club at noon, at a window table over the water.

It was the kind of room where men in quarter-zips ordered the same salad every Friday.

I didn't wait at the host stand.

I walked straight across the carpet while the maître d' said, "Sir, you need a jacket."

I sat down in the empty fourth chair.

The man on my left was the one who had bid five hundred dollars for her week.

His fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

"Mr. Danieli," said the oldest of the three, a man with a silver mustache.

He had read the papers, and he was trying not to show it.

"This is a surprise."

"I'll be brief. I don't want to spoil your lunch."

"Please, have a drink."

"No."

I laid a sheet of paper on the tablecloth between the bread basket and the salt.

It was one page, typed, with a line for each signature.

"What's this?" the bidder said.

"It's an apology," I said. "To Livia Corsetti. It says what you did and who you did it to, in plain words."

"And then?"

"Three signatures. It goes to the hospital, and the hospital prints it in the ward's newsletter."

The man with the mustache read it twice.

"And if we don't?"

I let him wait.

Outside the window, a sailboat was coming in. A boy in a life jacket stood on the bow with a rope.

"Goldsborough Harbor rents its office floor," I said. "The building changed hands on Monday. I'm a very patient landlord. I like to meet my tenants."

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