Chapter 5 - The Houses That Never Got Repaired
On the day I met Special Agent Lena Ortiz, I was wearing the most expensive suit I owned and felt like the poorest man in Chicago.
Ortiz had chosen a conference room in the federal building. There were no framed portraits, no coffee service, and no special treatment for someone with my name. Across the table sat Mara, my new criminal defense attorney Daniel Keene, and an agent whose calm expression suggested she'd already heard better lies than anything I might invent.
"Mr. Romano," Ortiz said, "we are investigating public-contract fraud, witness intimidation, and possible attempted murder. We are also investigating your organization. I want to be clear about that."
"I expected you would be."
"Your wife has supplied financial records, but she is not asking for favors on your behalf."
"I know."
"Then we can begin."
For two hours, I answered questions that would once have made me walk out of a room. I explained why Blackthorn could have moved money without raising internal alarms. I acknowledged the illicit freight accounts Julian had identified. I gave Ortiz the names of executives who could verify which contracts I had approved and which were presented to me while I was recovering.
She wrote almost nothing in front of me. I assumed everything was being recorded by more reliable means.
"Why cooperate now?" she asked at last.
"Because someone nearly killed my wife."
"That explains wanting a particular man arrested. It doesn't explain exposing the rest of your business."
I looked at Daniel. He did not rescue me from the question.
"My wife spent months trying to uncover stolen money while I benefited from a system designed to make stealing easy," I said. "I can't tell the truth about her injuries and then pretend the rest of the truth isn't mine."
Ortiz leaned back. "We'll see whether your actions match that answer. I cannot promise protection from prosecution."
"I'm not asking for a promise."
That was the first time in my life I had spoken those words to a government official and meant them.
Outside, Sophie waited in a quiet lobby beside Rosa. She had come for a separate appointment and refused to let our interviews be combined. When she saw me, she stood carefully.
"You look terrible," she said.
"It's the lighting."
For an instant, her mouth twitched. The ghost of our old humor passed between us before vanishing.
"There's somewhere I need to go," she said. "Mara's taking me to one of the Harbor House buildings. I thought you should see it. Only if you can come without making a spectacle."
I took off my expensive jacket and handed it to Daniel. "Lead the way."
The building stood on a street in Pilsen where a bakery shared a wall with a laundromat and painted murals brightened brick darkened by winter weather. From the sidewalk, it looked ordinary. Inside, the second-floor hall smelled of damp plaster. A yellow bucket sat beneath a ceiling stain.
Sophie climbed the stairs slowly. I walked behind her, not close enough to crowd her, close enough to catch the railing if it failed.
A woman named Mrs. Albright opened apartment 2B. She was seventy-four, with white hair tucked into a scarf and the impatient eyes of someone tired of being promised repairs. Her grandson Noah sat on the floor making a cardboard city out of cereal boxes.
"Sophie," Mrs. Albright said, opening her arms, then stopping. "Can I hug you?"
"Gently," Sophie said, smiling.
They embraced with an ease that made me look away.
Mrs. Albright showed us a bedroom where black mold spread along the corner above a child's bed. She pointed to a window that would not close and a radiator that stayed cold when the temperature dropped.
"They held a fundraiser for our building," she said. "I saw the pictures in the newspaper. The money came, according to the letter. The workers didn't."
She looked at me. My name was on the letterhead she'd kept in a folder.
"You were the man in the photograph," she said.
"Yes."
"Then tell me where the money went."
For once, there was no amount of cash I could offer that would answer the question. People had written checks believing they were buying warmth for a child. My organization had treated the funds as another current in a river of money. I was wealthy enough not to notice the theft. Mrs. Albright's grandson had learned to sleep with two sweaters because of it.
"I don't know all of it yet," I said. "But I am going to find out, and the records will go to the authorities."
Mrs. Albright gave me a hard look. "I've heard 'going to' before."
"You have every reason not to believe me."
Noah looked up from his cardboard buildings. "Are you the rich guy?"
"I was," I said.
"Can rich guys fix windows?"
Sophie turned toward the hall, covering her mouth. I couldn't tell whether she was laughing or crying.
"They can pay people who know how," I told him. "But somebody has to make sure the work actually gets done."
Before we left, Noah brought me his cardboard city. He had placed tiny paper people in the buildings, with arrows showing where they were supposed to go when the rain came through the ceiling. One of the arrows led straight off the edge of the box.
"Why is this one going outside?" I asked.
"That's us," he said. "Grandma says if the room gets wet again, we'll sleep at Aunt Lena's. But she has four people already."
I had sat through meetings about property acquisitions where entire apartment buildings appeared only as addresses and projected returns. Noah had drawn a family evacuation route in blue crayon. He was young enough to believe the problem was a puzzle; he was old enough to have learned that grown-ups could make promises and not keep them.
Mrs. Albright walked us to the door. "I don't need you to like me," she said to me. "I need you to stop people from treating my home like a number they can move around on paper."
I told her I couldn't undo what had happened. I could help make sure her testimony and the financial records reached people with the power to act. She nodded, neither impressed nor dismissive. It was the fair response.
Afterward, Sophie took me aside near the stairwell.
"Don't write a check and call it redemption," she said. "The residents need independent control of the repair funds, not another Romano promise."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I'm learning."
She studied my face. Then she said, "That's a better answer."
Julian called that evening with the first complete tracing of the money. Blackthorn had received a series of payments from Harbor House contractors and used them to acquire an interest in a freight terminal that our legitimate company was competing to purchase. The arrangement meant Adrian would gain private control over an asset paid for in part with stolen public funds.
"There's more," Julian said. "A related company financed the gallery's rigging vendor. Calder Rigging was subcontracted through a city-approved event services firm."
"Owned by whom?"
"A trust that benefits Commissioner Sloane's brother. We can trace the payments, but the underlying contracts were signed by your executive office."
I asked for copies and spent the night studying them with Daniel. On three documents, my signature was genuine. I'd approved broad expense categories and left the detailed reviews to Adrian. On two, the signatures were electronic and originated from Adrian's credentials. We could distinguish them, but that did not excuse my negligence.
At midnight, Sophie called.
"I've been thinking about the photograph from the gallery," she said. "The one with Sloane in the reflection."
"So have I."
"Before the gala, he came to the stage and spoke to Adrian. I was waiting with my speech. They didn't notice me behind the curtain."
"What did they say?"
"I heard Sloane say, 'This changes the agreement.' Adrian told him to stop worrying and let the evening happen. Then Adrian asked me to move toward the podium so the photographer could check the angle."
"Did you tell anyone?"
"I told you I thought the lighting looked unsafe."
My pulse stumbled. "You did?"
"In the car. You said Adrian had hired professionals and that I was making myself nervous for no reason."
I remembered the ride: my hand on a phone, a dispute about shipments, Sophie beside me in a green evening dress. She had been trying to tell me something. I'd heard only interruption.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I know you are. I need you to remember it anyway."
After we hung up, I found the old gala program in a drawer. Sophie's photograph filled half the page. Beneath it was a short biography describing her work in financial accountability. I had skimmed it that night, proud of the elegant wife beside me, never imagining that her expertise might threaten a man in my own family.
In the morning, a new development came from an unlikely source. Mrs. Albright had remembered a quiet young woman who visited her building last spring, claiming to work for the city. She had asked questions about the renovation grants and left a card with no official seal. Mrs. Albright had kept it because she disliked the woman's manner.
The name on the card was Cora Calder.
Mara located Cora through a social worker in Rockford. She was twenty-nine and had worked as a scheduler for the rigging company. When Mara mentioned Sophie, Cora became frightened and tried to end the call. Sophie took the phone herself.
"I'm the woman from Halstead," she said. "I'm not asking you to risk your family for mine. I only want to know whether your father is alive."
For a long time, nothing came through the speaker except breathing.
Then Cora said, "My father isn't missing. They wanted him to look missing."
"Who did?" Sophie asked.
"The people who said they'd protect him if he kept quiet."
"Can we help him?"
"I don't know. My little brother is still in school. We don't have money to run again."
Sophie glanced at Mara. "We can put you in touch with a lawyer and an investigator who isn't on anyone's payroll. You don't have to trust Gabriel. You don't even have to trust me. Just talk to someone independent."
Cora gave us the name of a lakeside town north of the city and asked that we never contact her through her old number again.
The next afternoon, Ortiz sent two agents to check the address. They found a vacant rental house, fresh groceries in the kitchen, and a chair overturned near an open back door. No blood. No sign of an obvious struggle. Only an abandoned jacket and a torn photograph on the counter.
Ortiz called me after speaking with Sophie.
"Someone got to Calder before we did," she said. "But there was something tucked into the photograph. A piece of paper with a message addressed to your wife."
I could hear Sophie asking for the phone in the background.
Ortiz read the message aloud anyway.
I DIDN'T CUT THE FIRST CABLE. I ONLY DID WHAT THEY TOLD ME AFTER IT WAS TOO LATE.
Below the words was a single initial, followed by a number I recognized from old shipping records.
R. 04-18-06:12.
Nicholas Rusk. April eighteenth. Six twelve in the evening.
May you like
The exact minute Adrian had met the man in our garage.
And if Calder had not cut the first cable, there was another person at the gallery who had begun the sabotage before the hired technician ever arrived.
