THE LISTENER IN MY POCKET

The second wire was still blinking red, and I understood that it had been listening to me longer than I had been listening to myself.

Dante saw it a heartbeat after I did,he did not rush but he let go of my hand and crouched beside the small black button on the floor of the community center. He lifted it between two fingers and turned it toward the light,his face did not change,but something happened in his eyes they went dark and flat like water at the bottom of a well.

Behind him stood the guard I recognized from the hospital. He was tall and broad through the shoulders with a scar that ran from his left eyebrow down to his cheek, his name was Enzo. I knew that because Sofia had mentioned it once on the phone when she called to welcome me. I had not met her yet she had only told me that Enzo never smiled and never slept.

Dante lifted his hands and signed to him. He signed that nobody was to use the main entrance,he signed that every vehicle outside was to be searched,he signed that he wanted to know who had placed the device and how long it had been blinking.

Enzo nodded once and left.

Then Dante turned to me he did not sign right away but stood there with the wire in his palm and looked at me the way he had looked at me in the back room of the club on the first night like I was a contract he had not finished reading.

I wanted to speak also wanted to explain that I did not know it was there but my voice was tangled somewhere behind my ribs so I signed instead. I signed that I had not taken it also signed that the first wire was the only one she gave me. I signed that I would never lie to him with my hands.

He studied my fingers while I spoke. That was the strange thing about Dante. He never watched my face when I signed he watched my hands the way a doctor watches a pulse. He wanted to see if they trembled in the places where a lie would make them tremble.

When I finished he signed one sentence,

I believe you that is what frightens me.

I did not understand i signed a question, I asked why belief would frighten him.

He signed that if I was telling the truth then Agent Hayes had planned something bigger than a single wire. He signed that a woman who leaves a device behind on purpose wants it found he signed that the question was not what the device recorded. The question was what it was meant to make him think.

A cold feeling crawled up my spine. I thought about everything I had said and signed in that room. I had told Dante that I came because of a message. I had told him I was afraid. I had cried in his arms while the thing sat on the floor and listened. If someone played that recording without the context it would sound like a woman who met with the FBI in secret and then confessed to her employer after she was caught.

It would sound like betrayal.

Dante slipped the wire into a small plastic bag that Enzo had left on the table. He sealed it carefully. Then he took my elbow and guided me out of the community center through the back door where the alley smelled like wet cardboard and old rain.

A black car was waiting with its engine running. Dante opened the door and I climbed in. My legs felt like paper. He slid in beside me and the door closed with a heavy sound that made the world outside disappear.

The driver did not speak. Dante did not sign. The city slid by the windows in grey streaks. I watched the buildings of Pilsen shrink behind us and I felt a pang I did not expect. My apartment was small and cold and full of bills. But it was mine. And I had just left it behind with one suitcase still sitting by the door.

I signed to Dante that I had left my bag. I signed that my brother's photo was inside.

He did not answer immediately. He took out his phone and typed a message with his thumb. A moment later he showed me the screen. It said the bag would be at the estate before we were. It said the photo would be placed in my room exactly as I had packed it.

I looked at the screen for a long time. Then I looked at him. I signed thank you. It was a small sign. A hand lifted from the chin and moved outward. I had made it ten thousand times in my life and never felt it so heavily.

He nodded. Then he signed something that I almost missed because his hands were low in his lap.

I am sorry you were frightened today.

I stared at him. In ten years of interpreting I had heard powerful men say many things. I had never heard one of them apologize. I did not know what to do with it. It felt like being handed a gift that might also be a trap.

I signed that it was not his fault. He signed that it was. He said that his world was the reason a federal agent could corner me in a place I loved. He said that the community center had been the one safe room in my life and that he had let it be taken.

I turned my face to the window so he would not see my eyes fill again.

We drove for almost an hour. The road widened. The buildings thinned. Trees began to appear on both sides in long dark rows. Somewhere near Lake Forest the car slowed and turned between two stone pillars. A gate opened without a sound. Beyond it a long drive curved through winter grass toward a house that looked like it had been built to hold secrets.

The Moretti Estate was bigger than any building I had ever stood in front of. It was made of pale stone with tall windows and a roof that vanished into the grey sky. Lights glowed in a few of the windows. Men in dark coats stood at corners of the lawn with their hands folded. None of them looked at me directly. All of them knew exactly where I was.

Dante stepped out first and held the door for me. Cold air bit my cheeks. I stood on the gravel and looked up at the house and felt very small and very far from home.

The front door opened before we reached it. A man stood there in a charcoal suit with silver hair swept back from a hard forehead. He was in his sixties with a face like a closed fist. His eyes moved from Dante to me and I felt them weigh me and find me light.

Dante signed his name to me slowly so that I could learn it. Victor Moretti. His uncle. His advisor. The man who had held the family together after Dante became Don at twenty two.

Victor did not offer a hand. He did not offer a greeting. He spoke in Italian because he assumed I would not understand his tone if he spoke in English. He said that the girl was too soft for this house. He said that she had already been seen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He said that a woman who has been seen is a woman who will talk.

I answered him in Italian. I told him that I understood him perfectly. I told him I had been in this house for less than a minute and had already been insulted twice. I said that if he wanted me gone he could say so to my face rather than to the air above my head.

The silence on the porch was enormous.

Victor stared at me. A muscle moved in his jaw. Behind me I felt rather than saw Dante go very still. When I glanced back the corner of his mouth had lifted by perhaps one millimeter. It was the smallest smile I had ever seen on a human face. It was gone before I could be sure.

Victor stepped aside. He did not apologize. He said that the east wing had been prepared. He said that dinner would be served at eight. He said that if I intended to survive in this house I should learn to keep my Italian quieter.

I walked past him with my chin high and my knees trembling.

Inside the entrance hall was a floor of black and white marble and a staircase that curved up into shadow. A woman in a grey uniform appeared and bowed her head to me. She led me up the stairs and down a long hall lined with paintings of men who looked like they had never once been told no.

My room was at the end of the east wing. It had a canopy bed and a fireplace and a window that overlooked a frozen garden. On the dresser stood a small framed photograph of a smiling boy with wide dark eyes. Marco. Someone had placed him exactly where the morning light would find him.

I sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the frame. My thumb traced the glass over his face. I told him quietly that I did not know what I was doing. I told him that I had made a deal with a man who ordered a hand broken and then held mine like it was made of glass. I told him I was afraid I was starting to care.

A knock sounded at the door.

I wiped my cheeks and opened it. Dante stood in the hall with his hands in his pockets. He was alone. His coat was gone and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow and he looked less like a Don and more like a man who had not slept in two days.

He did not come in. He signed that Enzo had finished searching the car and the building. He signed that the device in the plastic bag was not an ordinary recorder. It carried a small transmitter. It had been sending a signal to someone the entire time.

My stomach dropped. I signed a question. I asked who had been receiving it.

Dante lifted the plastic bag from his jacket pocket. The little button inside was no longer blinking red. It was glowing a steady soft green. And as I stared at it a thin crackling sound came out of it like a breath drawn through static.

Then a woman voice spoke from inside the bag. It was calm and amused and unmistakable.

She said good evening Dante. Please tell Elena that I am very glad she made it home safely.

I felt the blood leave my face. Dante did not move. He only lifted his eyes from the bag to me and I saw a question in them that I did not know how to answer.

Because the voice had said home.

And I had not told anyone that I was going to live here.