Pipe Burst Guest novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Safe House
Nico's POV
The house stood at the end of a row in Fishtown, three floors of brick with a steel door.
A light was on in the kitchen.
I had been watching it since four o'clock from a parked van on the next street.
My driver sat beside me with a thermos of coffee and did not talk, which was why I paid him.
At half past six a yellow cab stopped, and Ines Orsatti got out in her cream coat.
She did not look around.
She went up the steps with a key in her hand.
A man in a grey overcoat arrived twenty minutes later with a leather case, and left forty minutes after that without it.
"Lawyer," my driver said.
"Yes."
"We go in?"
"Not through the door."
I went over the back wall of the neighbor's yard in the dark.
I kept low along the fence until I stood under the kitchen window.
It was open two inches, for the smell of the stove.
"She found the photograph," Cesare said inside.
I had never heard his voice without an audience.
It was flatter than at the Sunday table, and tired.
"Tullio called me from the clinic," he said. "His hand is in a cast. He told her to ask about the picture, in front of everyone."
"I know what he said," Ines said.
I had expected tears.
She had cried well for Marisa, on the wet grass, and I had admired it as a craftsman.
Her voice in that kitchen was dry and clear, and she did not hurry a single word.
"Then she knows who you are," Cesare said.
"She knows who my father was. She has a lot to feel sorry about now."
"Ines."
"Don't."
A chair scraped.
"Sunday," Ines said. "Say it again, so I know you have it."
"Nine captains by the time she arrives, if the Delaware doctor holds. The lawyer files the petition and puts the trustee form on the table. She signed it with a name she made up, and that is a crime."
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