Chapter 5: Two Watchers — Dante

Friday, 9:20 p.m. — Loose Park house, kitchen.

The baby monitor sits on my kitchen counter, glowing green. Millie is asleep. Three good nights in a row now. I'd trade every truck in the fleet to keep it that way.

Marc spreads a folder across my kitchen table like he's dealing cards.

"Three days on Edmund Hale," he says. "Wednesday, office to lunch to home. Thursday, same. Boring. Today, not boring."

He lays the photos out in a row.

Sam Colton drives my gray pickup. Best mechanic I have and a better shadow. He sat across from the plaza in front of the federal courthouse all morning with a camera under a moving blanket.

"Nine fifty-five, a man sits on the bench by the fountain," Marc says. "Silver hair. Charcoal suit. Edmund arrives at nine fifty-eight. They talk for nine minutes. Then Edmund walks into the courthouse and comes out at twelve forty, alone, and the briefcase looks heavier than it did going in."

I pick up the third photo.

The silver-haired man is standing, buttoning his coat. His jacket is open, and Sam's camera caught what's hanging on his belt.

A badge. Gold, in a black leather fold. And a gun behind it.

"That's not a city cop," I say.

"No. That's the other kind. Federal."

I put the photo down, and my kitchen gets very quiet.

Three weeks ago, my driver saw Edmund's Lincoln parked across from this same courthouse. Eight at night. Engine off. Two hours. I filed it under strange. Now I know what it was.

A rehearsal.

"Say it out loud," Marc says. I make him say things out loud. It keeps us honest.

"Edmund Hale is working with the government."

Marc nods slowly. "A rat. In the Don's own kitchen."

"No." I tap the photo of the bench. "Rats run when the pressure comes. He's not running. He's shopping. He sat down with a fed at ten o'clock in the morning, signed something inside by noon, and drove home for dinner. That's not panic. That's a man who made a deal and believes the deal protects him."

"From who?"

"That's the question." I look at the window. Rain again. It always rains when the world turns. "And here's what keeps me up, Marc. How long? Because fourteen months ago my wife died on a bridge, and now I find out my consigliere had a federal handler. If Edmund was already flipped back then—"

I stop. The monitor crackles. Millie murmurs something in her sleep and goes quiet again.

I breathe until my hands are still.

"If he was," Marc says quietly, "then the crash and the courthouse might be the same story."

"Then that's the story I'm going to read. Page by page." I gather the photos. "Nobody tells the Don."

"You said that about Pietro. Now this. The old man's getting blind in both eyes and we're the only ones who see."

"I told you why. Pietro's son. Hale's daughter. If I bring the Don a traitor, he has to choose, and I've seen what fathers choose." I slide the folder back to him. "So we don't accuse. We feed. From today, Edmund Hale hears only what we want him to hear. One true thing and three lies, every time. If a lie ever comes back to us, we know which door it walked out of."

"A canary cage."

"A cage with a wedding in it." I almost smile. It isn't a good smile. "In six weeks the man sits at my table every night. He'll hear everything I choose. And he'll carry it straight to his new friend."

"And Pietro?"

"Still smiling. Sent a fruit basket to the engagement. Card says To the happy couple." I pour the last of the coffee. "The O'Fallons haven't fired a shot, and Pietro's still waiting for his war. Good. Let him wait. His driver burns trucks. Mine burn time."

Marc laughs once, without humor. Then he stops, and his thumb taps the bottom photo like he's been saving it.

"One more thing. This one's strange."

I look down.

It's the plaza, wider shot. The fountain. The bench. And on the fountain's stone rim, twenty feet from the meeting, sits a girl. Gray cap. Gray backpack. Phone in her hands.

"Student waiting out the meter?" I ask.

"That's what Sam thought. Then he watched the tape twice. She sat down before Edmund got there. She left two minutes after the silver-hair walked off. And the whole time—" Marc taps the girl's face, "—she never once looked at that phone. Dead screen. She was watching the bench."

"Face?"

He zooms. The camera softens the edges, but the jaw is young and sharp. A smudge of blue paint sits on her right thumb.

College age. Barely.

"College girl sitting alone at a federal meet like she's got money on it," Marc says. "That's not a student killing time."

"Sam follow her?"

"To the Oak Street garage. She got into a silver Honda. Sam ran the plate an hour ago." Marc pulls a page from his pocket and lays it flat on the table between us. "Want to hear something funny?"

"Nothing about today is funny."

"It's registered to E. Hale. Ward Parkway."

The kitchen clock ticks twice.

I look at the girl in the gray cap, and my memory does what memory does when it's finally given the missing piece. Four ballrooms. Bright dresses. A quiet girl in the corner with a notebook, drawing while the city traded lies over champagne. Edmund's shadow, standing behind his chair.

"I've seen her before," I say. "Four times. Across a room."

"Yeah? Who is she?"

I turn the photo toward the light, and the blue paint smudge on her thumb looks back at me like a signature.

"That's my bride."

Marc sits back slowly. "Aubrey Hale was at the meeting."

"My future wife sat twenty feet from her father's sins, wearing a cap and a dead phone." I stand, because sitting still has become impossible. "So either Edmund brought his daughter into a federal meeting, which makes him a bigger fool than I thought — or she followed him there on her own, which makes her the only Hale alive with a mind of her own."

"Which one's worse?"

"That's not the question." I look at the monitor's green light. "The question is what she saw. Because she left before the badge man finished buttoning his coat, but not before the badge. And there's a third question, the one I actually don't like."

"Say it."

"The man with the gold shield is a professional. Professionals photograph rooms." I pull on my jacket. "If he has cameras on that plaza — and men like him always do — then somewhere in a government building tonight, there is a picture of a girl in a gray cap."

"And?"

"And she's the daughter of their rat and the fiancée of an underboss. Right now she's nobody. The second this marriage is announced at the Vandiver—" I snap the folder shut, "—she becomes the loose end both families will want to tie down. Including mine."

The monitor crackles. My daughter whispers in her sleep, something small about a door.

Somewhere across town, a girl who paints in the corners of ballrooms is holding a secret that can hang her father, burn my family, and start a war — and she doesn't even know she's carrying it.

Or she knows exactly what she's carrying.

And one of those two girls I'm marrying.