Chapter 2 - Locker 214
Clarence survived the ambulance ride.
That was the first good news.
The second was less reassuring.
"He had a significant cardiac event," the doctor told me in the hospital corridor. "He's stable for now, but the next twenty-four hours matter."
Roman stood six feet away, speaking quietly into his phone.
He had given me space during the examination.
I noticed that.
I also noticed that people treated him differently.
Nurses who had never met him knew his name.
A police officer in the lobby stopped talking when Roman walked past.
Two men in dark coats appeared outside Clarence's room without introduction.
He had power.
Not the kind printed on a business card.
The kind people felt before they understood it.
I hated that I felt safer with him nearby.
Clarence opened his eyes just after five.
I sat beside him.
Roman remained near the door.
Clarence saw him and immediately tried to sit up.
"Easy," I said.
His eyes moved from Roman to me.
"Too late," he whispered.
"For what?"
He ignored me.
"Bellucci."
Roman came closer.
"Clarence O'Donnell."
"You remember me."
"I remember everyone from my father's garage."
Clarence gave a dry laugh and winced.
"Your father's garage. That's generous."
Roman's expression hardened.
"Where is Gabriel?"
Clarence closed his eyes.
"I don't know."
Roman took another step.
"You sent me the note."
"I sent nothing."
"Then who did?"
Clarence looked at me.
"Bluebird isn't a person anymore."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
He swallowed.
"Your father built a dead man's switch. Evidence in pieces. No one person knew everything."
Roman's patience thinned.
"My brother."
Clarence looked at him.
"Gabriel survived the warehouse."
Roman's face emptied.
"He was alive?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Long enough to learn who ordered the fire."
"Salvatore."
Clarence's eyes shifted toward the door.
One of Roman's men quietly closed it.
Clarence nodded.
"Your uncle."
Roman turned away.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
I could see his hands flex at his sides.
"Why?"
"Because Gabriel found the books."
"What books?"
"Payments. Judges. cops. unions. construction contracts. Your uncle had been bleeding your father for years and building his own crew."
Roman faced him again.
"Gabriel would have told me."
"He tried."
"Then why didn't he?"
Clarence looked at me.
"Because Thomas stopped him."
Roman's stare hardened.
I felt the air change.
"Why?"
"To save your life."
Roman laughed once without humor.
"My father said Thomas killed Gabriel."
"Your father said what Salvatore needed him to say."
Clarence coughed.
I poured water and helped him sip.
"Locker 214," I said. "What's in it?"
His eyes widened.
"You remembered."
"You told me."
"Union Station. Lower level. Old commuter lockers aren't public anymore, but the service corridor still has the bank. Thomas kept the key."
"My father is dead."
Clarence's gaze dropped to the small pendant around my neck.
A plain brass key hung there.
I had worn it for six years.
My father gave it to me the morning before his car went through a guardrail near Joliet.
I had always assumed it belonged to an old toolbox.
My fingers closed around it.
"This?"
Clarence nodded.
Roman stared.
"Your father gave you the key to evidence against my uncle?"
"He never told me what it opened."
"He was trying to keep you alive," Clarence said.
"Then why keep it with me?"
"Because nobody looks twice at a waitress wearing a cheap brass key."
I should have been offended.
He was right.
Roman moved to the window.
"Salvatore knows."
Clarence's mouth tightened.
"Maybe."
"The robber said he knows about her."
Clarence went pale.
"Then he knows more than maybe."
I stood.
"We go now."
Roman turned.
"No."
I looked at him.
"Excuse me?"
"You stay here."
"That's my father's key."
"And my brother's evidence."
"Then we're both going."
"It's dangerous."
"So was a shotgun."
"Norah."
"I am not staying in a hospital room while you take the one thing my father left me and disappear."
Roman stared at me for a long moment.
Clarence actually smiled.
"She's Thomas's daughter."
"I noticed," Roman muttered.
Union Station at night was all echo and shadow.
Roman brought three men.
I objected to all of them.
He ignored me.
The service corridor was reached through an unmarked door beside an old maintenance office. Roman's man, Luca, somehow had a key card.
I decided not to ask.
The locker bank was rusted and half-hidden behind cleaning equipment.
Numbers ran from 181 to 240.
Locker 214 was at knee level.
I knelt.
The brass key fit.
For one second, nothing happened.
Then the lock turned.
Inside was a metal cash box.
Roman lifted it out and placed it on a utility cart.
I expected money.
Guns.
Maybe photographs.
Instead we found a child's red mitten.
A cassette tape.
Three Polaroids.
A ledger page sealed in plastic.
And a letter addressed in my father's handwriting.
ROMAN BELLUCCI.
Roman stopped breathing.
"Open it," I said.
He did.
Roman,
If you are reading this, I failed to keep the truth buried long enough to protect you.
Your brother did not betray your family.
He discovered Salvatore was arranging murders and laundering money through Bellucci Construction. Gabriel came to me because he believed I was the only cop not already bought.
The warehouse fire was meant to kill both of us.
We escaped separately.
Gabriel was injured.
I hid him.
He refused to leave Chicago until he could get proof that Salvatore was also responsible for your mother's death.
Roman's hands tightened on the paper.
"My mother died of cancer."
Clarence had followed us against medical orders.
Not physically.
Through a phone Luca held on speaker.
"No," Clarence's weak voice said. "She didn't."
Roman looked at the phone.
"What?"
"She was poisoned slowly. Medication switched. Records buried."
Roman went white.
I read the rest over his shoulder.
If Gabriel succeeded, he was supposed to meet me at St. Agnes on February 12.
He never arrived.
I searched for him.
So did Salvatore.
Three days later, your father announced Gabriel's remains had been identified from the warehouse.
That identification was false.
Someone wanted the search to stop.
I believe Gabriel was taken alive.
The final line was underlined.
If Norah is with you, protect her. She saw the man who came for Gabriel.
I stared at the words.
Roman looked at me.
"What man?"
"I don't remember."
"You were there."
"I was nine."
"Try."
I closed my eyes.
The old apartment.
My father whispering.
Gabriel at the kitchen table.
A knock downstairs.
My mother taking me by the shoulders.
Go upstairs. Don't come down.
I had gone halfway.
Then I had looked through the railing.
A man entered.
Tall.
Gray coat.
He shook my father's hand.
Gabriel stood.
There was an argument.
And on the man's right hand—
A ring.
Gold.
A black stone carved with a wolf.
My eyes opened.
"Roman."
He waited.
"The man wore a ring."
"What kind?"
"Black stone. Gold band. A wolf carved into it."
Luca, beside us, swore.
Roman turned to him.
"What?"
Luca looked reluctant.
"Boss."
"Say it."
"Your uncle wears that ring."
The corridor became very quiet.
Roman looked down at the letter again.
Then one of his men shouted from the doorway.
"Move!"
The first shot hit the locker above my head.
Metal screamed.
Roman knocked me to the ground as more gunfire tore through the corridor.
Luca fired back.
Lights shattered.
The maintenance hall plunged into darkness.
Roman covered me with his body.
"Stay down."
"Wasn't planning to dance."
He almost smiled.
Then a figure moved at the far end of the corridor.
Roman fired once.
The figure disappeared.
Footsteps thundered away.
Luca ran after them.
I crawled toward the cash box.
Roman grabbed my arm.
"What are you doing?"
"The tape."
Another shot sparked against the wall.
I reached the box and pulled the cassette free.
Roman swore, seized me around the waist, and dragged me behind a concrete pillar.
"Do you always ignore instructions?"
"Only bad ones."
His face was inches from mine.
For one strange second, with bullets still echoing through Union Station, neither of us moved.
Then Luca shouted.
"They're gone!"
Roman released me.
I stood.
The cash box had been hit.
The Polaroids were torn.
The ledger page was punctured but readable.
And the cassette tape in my hand was intact.
I turned it over.
There was writing on the label.
GABRIEL — FEBRUARY 11.
Roman stared at it.
His brother's voice.
Recorded the day before he vanished.
We drove back to the diner because my father's old cassette player was still in the office.
The police had released the building.
Broken glass covered the floor.
Coffee had dried beneath the counter.
I found the player in a cabinet.
Roman sat across from me in a booth.
Luca stood near the door.
I pressed PLAY.
Static filled the diner.
Then a young man's voice came through the speaker.
Roman closed his eyes.
I knew immediately.
Gabriel.
"Tom, if you're hearing this, I couldn't make the meeting."
A pause.
Breathing.
"I was right about Salvatore. But he's not working alone."
Roman opened his eyes.
Gabriel continued.
"Someone inside the family has been helping him since before Mom died."
The tape crackled.
May you like
Then came the sentence that changed Roman Bellucci's face forever.
"If anything happens to me, do not trust my father."
