Chapter 3: Fire From the Inside — Dante

Wednesday, 7:00 a.m. — Doyle's Garage, Brooklyn Avenue, East Side.

Marc's garage smells like motor oil and burnt coffee. It's the only place in this city where nobody watches us. That's why he wouldn't talk on the phone. "Not over the phone," he'd said. "Come to the garage."

Marc Doyle has been my right hand since we were seventeen. Buzz cut, flannel shirt, forearms like steel cable. Today he looks like a man who didn't sleep — and like the thing he found kept him up.

Under the work light sits what's left of Truck 12. A black shell. Melted tires. The paint burned down to bare metal. I look at it for one second too long, and I'm back in a hospital hallway fourteen months ago, looking at photographs of another wreck.

"Alonzo's okay," Marc says. "Shook. He quit on the spot."

"Show me."

He turns an old laptop around on the workbench. "Corner store on Sixth Street. There's a camera behind the beer sign in the window. Nobody knows it's there. Not even the O'Fallons."

The video is gray and grainy. In the corner, a clock reads 2:12 a.m.

A black car with tinted windows rolls into the alley behind the truck and parks nose-out, ready to run. A man gets out. Dark hoodie. Gloves. A red gas can that looks empty in his hand.

He walks one slow circle around the whole truck and pours gas the way a man waters plants. No hurry. Calm.

Then he strikes a match.

The fire jumps up fast and orange, and for one single second the light fills the alley and turns on his face like a lamp.

Then the hood goes up, and the car is gone.

"Plate?" I ask.

"Taped over. He knew about the street camera." Marc taps the screen. "He didn't know about the beer sign."

"Rewind it. The face."

One second of firelight. A long thin face. A pointy chin. A chipped front tooth.

"Know him?"

"No."

"I did." Marc rubs his jaw. "Took me half the night to believe it. Dante. That's Tommy Ferrano."

Tommy Ferrano. Skinny. Chipped tooth. Pietro Cortese's personal driver for six years. Sleeps in the apartment over Pietro's garage. Cracks sunflower seeds all day and calls the Don's son "boss" — which is a funny habit, because Pietro isn't the boss. Pietro's father is.

"Look at the car," Marc says.

"Black Camaro. So?"

"So I've seen that Camaro before. It parks in the private spots at the Vandiver. It's one of Pietro's."

The coffee in my cup goes cold in my hand.

"Say it out loud," Marc says.

I say it slow, like I'm teaching it to a room full of captains. "Everybody will blame the O'Fallons. I hit them back. We get a war. And a week before the vote, thirty captains ask one question — who dragged us into a war? The answer is me." I put the cup down. "Pietro didn't burn a truck. He built me a trap."

"Or Tommy did it for pocket money and Pietro doesn't know."

"Tommy doesn't buy gum without asking Pietro."

"Why not just kill you, then?"

"Because he can't. Kill an underboss and every gun in the family turns on him. He needs the captains to fire me. Politely. With a vote." I look at the burned shell one more time. "So he lights a match and lets me do the rest."

"Who else has seen this video?"

"You. Me. Now you."

"It stays that way. Not even the Don."

Marc frowns. "He'd want to know."

"With one face in a fire? If I say Pietro's name and I'm wrong, I start the war Pietro wants — with my own mouth. And if I'm right, the Don has to choose between his son and his underboss." I shake my head. "I've seen what fathers choose. I'm not betting my daughter's life on it."

"So we do nothing?"

"We smile. We shake hands. We let everyone believe it was the O'Fallons — and we make sure nobody touches the O'Fallons. Pietro wants a war." I stand. "He gets a wedding instead."

"One more thing," I say at the door. "Somebody follows Edmund Hale. Starting today. Everywhere he goes."

Marc's eyebrows climb. "Your future father-in-law?"

"Three weeks ago my driver saw Edmund's car parked across from the federal courthouse. Eight at night. Engine off. Two hours."

"And Friday?"

"I don't know what Friday is yet." I pull on my jacket. "That's why I want eyes on him."

*   *   *

7:40 a.m. — the back steps.

Marc follows me out to the back steps behind the garage. He lights a cigarette, takes one drag, kills it. Bad sign. Marc smokes slowly when everything is fine.

"Dante. The Camaro bothered me all night. So this morning I pulled the file."

The file. He doesn't have to say which one.

After the crash, I made Marc knock on every door within a mile of the Gladstone Bridge. Gas stations. Toll cameras. A bus depot. We collected every picture from that night. Ninety percent of them were useless. We never closed the folder.

"Route 9 Gas & Go," he says. "It sits on the hill above the bridge. Camera faces the water."

He lays a photograph on the step between us.

A black Camaro. Tinted windows. Plate taped over. Parked facing the bridge.

"Isabel died at 10:05," Marc says quietly. "Twenty-four minutes earlier, that car was sitting there. Watching the bridge."

The wind moves the trees. I don't.

"It could be a thousand Camaros in this city," I say.

"With the plate taped over?"

I look at the photo until my eyes burn.

Fourteen months I've asked one question: who put my wife on that bridge?

Tonight — this morning — for the first time, I have a shape for the answer. Skinny. Pointy chin. Chipped tooth.

Or the man he calls boss.

And in six weeks, at my own wedding, I'm supposed to shake that man's hand.