Chapter 3 - The Number Was Never Dead
I did not get into the car.
This surprised Stefano.
It also seemed to irritate the three armed men now pretending not to surround me.
I backed toward the church doors.
“No.”
“Mara.”
“You just told me you’re Stefano Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“The Stefano Moretti?”
“I’m unaware of another.”
“The man newspapers call—”
“Newspapers call me many things.”
“Organized crime figure.”
“Among them.”
“Suspected racketeer.”
“Yes.”
“Underworld power broker.”
“That one is unnecessarily theatrical.”
I stared at him.
“You brought armed men to my birthday.”
“They stayed outside.”
“That is not helping.”
Behind us, the parish hall lights shut off.
Mrs. Alvarez appeared at the door holding her enormous purse.
Stefano’s men immediately became respectful enough to look like altar boys.
She squinted at us.
“Mara, are you leaving with him?”
“I’m deciding.”
Mrs. Alvarez looked Stefano over.
“You married?”
“No.”
“Felonies?”
One of his men coughed.
Stefano remained perfectly straight-faced.
“None resulting in conviction.”
She considered that.
Then pointed at him.
“Have her home at a reasonable hour.”
“Mrs. Alvarez!”
“What? You’re thirty-seven.”
She walked away.
Stefano looked at me.
I could have hated him for smiling.
Instead, I almost smiled too.
Then I remembered the photograph.
“Tell me about Paula’s number.”
His expression sobered.
“Inside the car.”
“No.”
“Mara—”
“You do not get to meet me four hours ago and start issuing commands.”
His gaze sharpened.
Probably nobody spoke to Stefano Moretti like that.
This was not because I was brave.
It was because I was terrified.
Fear has always made me argumentative.
He seemed to understand.
“All right.”
He nodded toward the church.
“We’ll talk inside.”
Ten minutes later, I was sitting again at the same folding table where I had blown out my birthday candles.
Except now three armed men guarded the doors.
Stefano sat opposite me.
The unfinished cake remained between us.
It was the strangest interrogation room in America.
“Paula Reyes,” he began. “Your childhood friend.”
“Yes.”
“She changed her number nineteen years ago.”
“I know.”
“Do you know why?”
“She moved to Arizona.”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
My chest tightened.
“She told me she moved.”
“She disappeared.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“She disappeared from everyone who mattered.”
“That’s not true. We exchanged letters for almost a year.”
“Postmarked Arizona?”
I tried to remember.
I couldn’t.
“She sent postcards.”
“Without return addresses?”
I hated that he was right.
Paula and I had been inseparable from twelve to seventeen.
Then her father supposedly got a new job.
The move happened quickly.
There had been crying.
Promises.
Phone calls that became less frequent.
Then silence.
“You’re saying she was hiding?”
“Yes.”
“From you?”
“Partly.”
The honesty surprised me.
“Why?”
Stefano looked at the old church kitchen.
“Nineteen years ago, my father, Salvatore Moretti, began collecting evidence against men he had spent most of his life working beside.”
“Criminals.”
“Yes.”
“You say that very calmly.”
“I stopped pretending a long time ago.”
That answer disarmed me.
“My father had rules,” he continued. “Rules don’t make criminals good men. They only tell you which sins they can live with.”
I said nothing.
“He discovered money was being moved through charities, construction funds, churches, shelters. Places nobody wanted to question.”
“St. Bridget’s?”
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped.
“Your mother handled bookkeeping here.”
“She volunteered.”
“She also noticed numbers that didn’t make sense.”
That sounded like Rose too.
She had once returned twelve cents to a cashier because she had been given incorrect change.
“She told Paula?”
“Eventually.”
“Paula was seventeen.”
“She was also working afternoons in the parish office.”
I remembered.
Paula had hated that job.
Or claimed she did.
“She found duplicated invoices,” Stefano said. “Your mother found shell companies. Together, they discovered something my father had been trying to prove.”
“What?”
“That somebody inside his organization was financing Vittorio Barone.”
I knew that name too.
Unlike Moretti, Vittorio Barone appeared in newspapers wearing tuxedos instead of handcuffs.
His company rebuilt half the waterfront.
He funded hospitals.
Sponsored mayoral campaigns.
Had a children’s wing named after his wife.
“What does Barone have to do with you?”
“Everything.”
Stefano’s jaw tightened.
“Nineteen years ago, my father arranged to meet a federal investigator.”
“What happened?”
“He never arrived.”
The room felt colder.
“Why?”
“They found his car beneath the Walt Whitman Bridge.”
I swallowed.
“And him?”
“Three days later.”
I knew better than to ask where.
Stefano’s eyes had gone distant.
“Paula vanished forty-eight hours afterward.”
“And the phone number?”
“My father had called it twice during his last week alive.”
I stared at him.
“Paula’s number?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We never knew.”
My skin prickled.
“When Paula abandoned it, my people eventually acquired the number.”
“You can do that?”
“If you wait long enough and pay the right people, you can do nearly anything with a telephone number.”
“So you kept it?”
“As a ghost line.”
“For nineteen years?”
“Not continuously. But yes.”
“That is insane.”
“Probably.”
“And tonight my invitation arrived.”
His eyes met mine.
“Yes.”
“What exactly did I write?”
“You know what you wrote.”
“Read it.”
He hesitated.
Then opened his phone.
My humiliation returned instantly.
I had written:
Hey, Paula. This is ridiculous because you probably haven’t had this number in twenty years. But it’s my birthday. Everyone canceled and I bought too much cake. St. Bridget’s at seven. If by some miracle this still reaches you, come. There’ll be cake even if it’s only me.
I wanted the floor to swallow me.
Stefano locked the screen.
“You didn’t sound pathetic.”
“I absolutely sounded pathetic.”
“You sounded alone.”
“That’s worse.”
“No.”
The word was surprisingly gentle.
“Those are not the same thing.”
Something in my chest shifted.
I looked away.
“Why did you answer personally?”
He went still.
Another hesitation.
“Because of the name.”
“My name.”
“Yes.”
“You recognized Bell.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew my mother.”
“Yes.”
“So you didn’t come because some random lonely woman invited you.”
His face gave me the truth before his mouth did.
“Not entirely.”
Anger rose.
“You let me think you did.”
“I wanted to see you before I decided what to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because people connected to what happened nineteen years ago have a habit of dying.”
The anger vanished.
“Are you threatening me?”
“No.”
For the first time that night, Stefano sounded offended.
“I’m telling you why I was cautious.”
A sharp knock came from the hall.
One of his men entered.
He leaned close and whispered something.
Stefano stood.
“What happened?” I asked.
His man glanced at me.
Stefano answered.
“Someone broke into your apartment.”
My chair scraped backward.
“What?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“I have to go.”
“No.”
“There are things there—”
“Mara.”
“My mother’s photographs. Her jewelry. Everything.”
“Things can be replaced.”
“People say that when the things aren’t theirs.”
I grabbed my coat.
Stefano stepped in front of me.
Not touching me.
Just there.
“I’m not trying to control you.”
“You are literally blocking a doorway.”
He moved aside immediately.
That surprised me.
“Then come with me,” he said.
We reached my apartment building twelve minutes later.
The front door had not been forced.
My lock had been opened cleanly.
Inside, every drawer had been emptied.
Mattress cut.
Books thrown down.
Kitchen cabinets open.
Nothing expensive was missing.
My television remained.
Laptop remained.
The hundred and eighty dollars in the coffee tin remained.
They had been searching.
I walked into my bedroom.
My mother’s jewelry box lay open.
Empty.
“No,” I whispered.
Then I saw it.
The necklace was still on the floor.
Her earrings remained beneath the dresser.
They had not wanted jewelry.
Stefano entered behind me.
“What did your mother leave you?”
“This apartment.”
“What else?”
“Clothes. Letters. Recipes.”
“Documents?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mara, think.”
I turned angrily.
“I didn’t spend the last twelve years cataloging my dead mother’s possessions in case a mafia mystery developed on my birthday.”
He absorbed that without reacting.
Then his eyes moved to my closet.
The garment bag where I had kept my mother’s red dress was lying open.
Empty.
Stefano looked at me.
“You’re wearing what they came for.”
My heart began pounding.
I looked down at the red fabric.
Suddenly the dress no longer felt like clothing.
It felt like a target.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Every man in the room froze.
I answered before Stefano could stop me.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
Then breathing.
A woman’s voice whispered:
“Mara?”
My knees weakened.
I knew that voice.
Older.
Rougher.
But I knew it.
“Paula?”
A sob caught on the other end.
Then she said seven words that changed everything.
“Whatever Stefano Moretti tells you, don’t believe him.”
The call disconnected.
I slowly lowered the phone.
Stefano was watching my face.
“Who was it?”
I looked at the man who had eaten birthday cake with me less than four hours earlier.
The man who knew my mother’s prayer.
The man carrying nineteen years of secrets behind his eyes.
May you like
“Paula,” I said.
And for the first time since meeting Stefano Moretti, he looked afraid.
