Chapter 7 - THE MAN WHO KNEW WHERE HE WENT
I wanted to hang up on Conrad Bell.
Instead, I held the phone against my ear and listened to his rough breathing. Somewhere behind him a television murmured. I pictured the older man from the family album, a badge at his belt, offering my mother coffee while quietly deciding which parts of her life she deserved to know.
"I'm not meeting you alone," I said.
"I wasn't asking that."
"I want Detective Price and Iris Chen there. We meet in a public building, and everything you say goes on the record."
"All right," he replied. "I suppose I should've asked for that twenty years ago."
The next afternoon, Conrad sat across from us in a municipal conference room outside Providence. He was seventy-one now, with a trembling left hand and thick white eyebrows. He brought a canvas briefcase and a small cardboard box bound with string.
I didn't shake his hand.
"I told your mother I would protect you," he said when he saw me. "I meant it."
"Then why did you tell Vittorio where Dad was?"
He looked at Detective Price, who explained the interview procedure and reminded him that he could seek legal counsel. Conrad said he'd spoken to an attorney and wanted to make a recorded statement.
"After the fire," he began, "Gabriel came to the station with bandaged hands. He told me Nico had been collecting proof of missing charity funds. He said a woman survived, but she was frightened and needed time. He asked me to protect his wife and daughter while he found the last records."
"And you told Vittorio?" I asked.
"Vittorio came in that night. He said Gabriel had stolen from the family, that his own people were going to find him before the police did. He promised me they'd only talk. Then he showed me a photograph of Thomas standing outside his apartment. My brother was young and alone. Vittorio wanted me to understand how much he knew."
"So you chose Thomas over my father."
Conrad didn't defend himself. "Yes. I told Vittorio where Gabriel was staying. Then I lied when Helen asked whether anyone knew."
Anger rose so quickly I tasted metal.
"You could have taken us somewhere safe. You could have told another detective."
"I should have." Conrad's voice broke. "Instead I buried the lead. I marked Gabriel's statement unreliable and let the investigation move toward the story Roberto's attorney wanted."
"And you lived with that?"
"I tried. That's not an excuse."
He opened the box. Inside were copies of dispatch records, an old photograph, and an audiocassette labeled OCT 21 / G.M. The date was four days after the fire.
"Gabriel called me from a pay phone," Conrad said. "He didn't know I'd given up his location. He said someone had followed him, and he wanted me to keep this recording if he couldn't get to the district attorney."
Price asked about the chain of custody. Conrad admitted he'd kept the cassette at home for twenty-one years and could not prove it had never been altered. The detective sealed it nonetheless, explaining that investigators could use it as a lead while authenticating what they could.
"Did you hear from him again?" I asked.
"Not directly. A week later, a fisherman reported a burned jacket caught on a seawall. It had Gabriel's initials sewn inside. I put the report in the file, but the detective leading the investigation called it inconclusive and closed the lead."
"A jacket isn't a body."
"I know."
He slid the photograph toward me. It showed a wet black coat draped over a concrete post. The initials G.M. were visible near the collar.
I stared at it for a long time. Mom had kept our father's old winter scarf in a drawer. I'd sometimes wrapped it around my neck as a child, pretending he had come home. I knew what a piece of clothing could mean. I also knew how little it could prove.
"There's more," Conrad said.
He unfolded a street map with three locations circled. One was the fire station. One was the warehouse. The third was a storage building near the old ferry landing.
"Gabriel asked me to collect a package from a rented locker if something happened to him. I never did. I was afraid I'd be seen. Two months later, the building changed owners. I don't know if the locker contents survived."
Iris leaned forward. "Do you have the locker number?"
"Seventeen. I wrote it down."
Detective Price collected the map and said she would seek records before anyone visited the site. I wanted to run there immediately, but I'd already learned what rushing into other people's locked rooms could cost.
When the meeting ended, Conrad looked at me.
"I don't expect you to forgive me."
"Good," I said.
He lowered his eyes.
"Thomas was the one who saved us," I continued. "Whatever else you did, don't tell yourself my life was safe because of you. It was safe because people kept choosing to help after you stopped."
I walked out before he could answer.
In the parking lot, I sat on a low concrete wall and cried so hard my breath caught. Detective Price waited nearby without intruding. When I could finally speak, I called my mother and told her the truth about Conrad's confession. She wept quietly. Then she said, "Thomas would've hated what his brother did. But he'd be proud you asked the questions."
I stopped at a grocery store before going back to the apartment. The aisles were full of ordinary Tuesday noises: cart wheels squeaking, a radio playing softly, a little girl bargaining with her father over cereal. I stood in front of the oranges for a long time. My father had always peeled them in one long spiral, trying not to break the skin. As a child I believed that trick was proof he could do magic.
I bought four oranges and carried them home in a paper bag. My mother was resting when I called to tell her about Conrad. She listened quietly, then asked what I had felt when I looked at him.
"Angry," I said. "And disappointed in a way I didn't think was still possible."
"That makes sense."
"Do you wish you'd never trusted him?"
"No. If I erase every person who ever disappointed me, I erase the road that brought us to Thomas. I wish Conrad had been braver. I don't wish away the people who helped us survive."
After we hung up, I peeled an orange slowly at the kitchen table. The rind broke halfway around. I tried not to cry over such a ridiculous little failure, but I did anyway. For the first time, the memory of my father felt like a real thing I could hold instead of a story other people controlled.
That evening, Santino came to the apartment with takeout from a small Italian restaurant in town. I had agreed to see him, but when I opened the door I still expected a bodyguard or an order. Instead, he carried two paper bags and looked uncertain.
"Mrs. Ortega said you forget to eat when you're upset," he said.
"She talks too much."
"She certainly told me what she thinks of my household management."
That made me laugh for the first time all day.
I let him in. We ate at the little kitchen table while rain tapped against the window. He didn't press me for details about Conrad until I brought it up, and when I did, he listened with his hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee.
"Your father tried to reach someone he trusted," he said. "And that person betrayed him."
"Your father was the one who threatened him."
"I know."
I put down my fork. "How can you sit here and say that so calmly?"
"Because if I pretend I can argue the facts away, you should ask me to leave."
I stared at him. The arrogance I'd expected wasn't there. Neither was the easy apology that would have cost him nothing.
"You don't have to solve everything for me," I said.
"I can't."
"I don't even know whether I like you."
A corner of his mouth lifted. "Fair."
"And you're still my employer. That makes all of this complicated."
"More than complicated," he said. "I've asked the household office to offer you paid leave while the assault is investigated. If you decide not to return, you'll receive everything you're owed. You don't have to stay near me to keep a job."
I thought about the months I'd spent carefully measuring every dollar, the fear of losing Mom's treatment, and my humiliating proposal in front of fifteen guests. For the first time, I could imagine a future in which I made a choice without fear sharpening its edges.
"I think I'm going to resign," I said.
Santino nodded, though sadness flickered through his eyes. "I'll make sure the paperwork is straightforward."
"Not you. Human resources."
"Human resources," he agreed.
The next morning, Iris called with news about locker seventeen. The storage facility had closed years earlier, but its contents had been auctioned to a local salvage business. A detailed inventory survived in the company's records. One item was listed as a metal document case with a blue star painted on its lid.
My breath caught.
"A blue star?"
"Yes."
My father's nickname for me. His little bright star.
I asked whether the case still existed.
"We think so," Iris said. "The owner sold it to a private buyer four years ago."
"Who bought it?"
Her voice grew careful.
"A company owned by Roberto Venturi."
I gripped the phone.
May you like
The proof my father had hidden hadn't been lost.
The man we'd been investigating had acquired it.
