Chapter 15: The Ledger

Santo's POV

At six in the morning my wife put a dead man's phone on my desk and walked out without a word.

I looked at the number on its screen for a long time.

I had known that number since I was nine years old.

I did not call it.

I unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk, where Ottavio had kept the household books since my father's day, and took out every ledger in it.

I had never read them.

That is not an excuse.

For twenty-seven years I had signed what he put in front of me, because he never once put anything in front of me that I needed to read twice.

By nine I had found the flat on Federal Hill.

I had paid for it, and I had paid on time.

But the money had never gone from my account to Nadia's landlord.

It went from my account to a freight company called Costa Marine, and Costa Marine paid the landlord.

I put a finger on that name and followed it down the page.

Costa Marine had other payments.

A truck lease, a warehouse on Dyer Street, a salary for a man whose name I did not know.

And seven months after the funeral Mass for my wife, a payment of forty thousand dollars to a boat-repair yard in Warren.

I sat very still.

The next entry was dated the Wednesday after Mauro Tedesco was shot on the dock in Warren.

Forty thousand dollars again, to the same man at the same yard.

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