Lucky for me there was a budding lawyer among us.
Chapter 47Serena Flores
SARAH LOOKED as though someone was about to push her out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet. She needed help. I’d led Haagen and her sidekick by the nose—I figured I could do the same to Vincent. I took a long gulp of wine, then stood and stared him right in the eyes.
“It’s me you want to talk to,” I said. “I can tell you things about your nephew that not even Anna knows.”
“Oh, really?” he said, looking one part doubtful and two parts amused. “What kinds of things?”
“The kinds of things you might not want to hear. Tony was free and easy around the foreigner. Half the time he forgot I was there, and the other half he figured my English was only good for taking orders. Clean the toilet, scrub the floor, change the sheets. When he talked to me, he ended every sentence with comprende.”
“And yet you seem to speak English very well,” Vincent said.
“Yes, but never in front of him. I thought I’d be safer if he believed I couldn’t understand.”
“You were afraid of my nephew?”
“I was raped by your nephew. Let’s not dance around that word anymore. Tony might have been your blood, but he was an animal. I’m not afraid to say it. He hunted women the way animals hunt in the wild—he looked for the easiest, most vulnerable prey.”
I watched Vincent’s face very carefully. His expression told me I was reading him right. He valued plain speech. Sugarcoating to him was worse than lying.
He turned to Anna.
“Is this true?” he asked.
Anna shut her eyes hard and nodded.
“And did you know about it at the time?”
She nodded again.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “If you’d come to me, I might have set him straight. If reason didn’t work, I would have killed him myself. Some indiscretions I’ll tolerate, but violence against the fairer sex isn’t one of them.”
There was no pity or compassion in his voice. He didn’t care about what had happened to me—he only cared that his nephew had done it.
“What about Sean’s indiscretions?” I asked. “He was the one who cleaned up after Anthony. He was the one who let us know exactly what would happen if we talked.”
I stared straight at Sean when I said this. I wanted him to see just how much I hated him. I wanted Vincent to see, too. Sean gritted his teeth and hissed at me.
“You lying little bitch,” he said. “You’ll be lucky if you—”
Vincent cut him off. He turned to one of his guards and said, “Tommy, the next time Detective Walsh speaks out of turn, kindly see to it that he never speaks again.”
Tommy nodded. Sean bit his lip. His face went red all the way up to the hairline.
“So what is it you know that I don’t?” Vincent asked.
“Sean and your nephew were robbing you blind,” I told him.
“Skimming off the top, were they?”
“Yes, but not only that. They were using your name to extort money.”
“Extort money from whom?”
I looked at Sarah. She nodded for me to keep going. The truth is, most of what I knew, I knew from her. Tony talked in front of me as if I wasn’t there, but it was Sarah who did the snooping, Sarah who opened drawers and looked in filing cabinets and stood in hallways with a hand cupped around her ear. She was the one who wanted to know, who had to know, what kind of business her husband was doing with a man like Tony. But she couldn’t be the one to tell Vincent what she’d learned. She couldn’t say out loud that she’d been spying on a member of the Costello family—not even a disgraced member.
“Anyone with power and a secret,” I said. “Cops on the take. Prosecutors who threw cases. Judges who overruled verdicts. Sean would hear rumors at work. He’d look into slam dunk convictions where the defendant went free on a technicality. He’d investigate drug dealers who were arrested once and then never again. He used his contacts. He used the police database. Once he was sure, once he had proof nobody could deny, he’d pass the intel on to Tony. Tony would use the proof to make threats. He’d say it was you who sent him. He’d demand a percentage: Pay up or go to jail. And while they were in jail, their families would be taken care of.”
“And not in the good way, I presume,” Vincent said.
Sean was struggling to control himself. Blood trickled from his bottom lip, and his right knee kept banging the table. Vincent, on the other hand, remained perfectly still, his expression neutral.
“Sean, is this true?” he asked.
“Not a word.”
“I can prove it,” I said.
“How?” Vincent asked.
“Tony kept a ledger. A handwritten ledger. Computers can be hacked or seized. Tony didn’t trust them. But it’s easy enough to hide a ledger where no one will ever find it. No one except maybe the maid. Like I said, Tony was careless in front of me. I saw where he put it.”
Vincent swallowed the last of his meal, then patted the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin.
“I’d like very much to see this ledger,” he said.
I started to tell him where it was. He held a finger to his lips.
“It’s best if that information stays between you and me,” he said. “Come whisper it in my ear.”
Until then I’d kept my voice steady, but now I was scared. I thought maybe I’d gone too far. Maybe Vincent couldn’t accept the things I’d said about his nephew. I saw him cutting my throat as I leaned in, making an example of me for the others.
But stealth attacks weren’t Vincent’s style. Instead, he patted my shoulder and called me a good girl.
I cupped both hands around his ear, said in the lowest voice he could possibly hear, “The fireplace in his den. The mantel is hollow.”
“Understood,” he said. Vincent’s
