Chapter 5: The Drawer That Sticks

The house was dark at two in the morning, and I went down the east hall in my socks with the brass key in my fist.

The cousin's office was at the end, behind a door with a glass panel.

The key turned on the first try.

Somebody had oiled the lock.

I shut the door behind me and used my phone for light.

The room smelled of cigars and lemon polish.

The bottom drawer of the desk stuck, exactly as Luca had said, and I had to pull it twice before it gave.

Inside lay a stack of bank slips held with a rubber band.

I fanned them under the phone light.

They were transfer receipts, one for each month since March, when the cousin had started skimming.

But they did not go to the bank on Brickell.

They went to an account in Brooklyn, and the name on it was a holding company I knew.

I had seen it once in my first life, on a shipping contract Nunzio Tessari's father signed in the middle of the ceasefire.

The cousin had been selling the Amadori freight schedules to the Tessaris.

Every truck, every dock time, every route.

I stood in the dark, holding it, and felt my pulse in my ears.

Behind me the door opened.

I turned so fast that the slips scattered across the floor.

Luca stood in the doorway in a white undershirt and dark trousers, with his hair rumpled.

He did not cough.

He was looking at the receipts on the carpet, and his face was still and cold, a face I had never seen on him.

Then he saw me watching and it was gone.

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