Carlo's Voice

The recorder hissed. Then Vincent heard his father clear his throat.

"The men asking about the ferry terminal are looking for me, Vince. They want to take me alive because they need the names of the families I've been moving. If they tell you they were after you, ask yourself why they'd need you alive. You don't have the names."

Vincent sat down on the concrete step. His father's voice had the same rasp it always got toward evening. He hadn't remembered that until now. For six years he'd remembered Carlo as a body under a sheet and a row of stiff men in dark suits.

"They think I've been selling property to get money out of the company," Carlo went on. "I let them think that. I was getting people out. If you've got this far, Luis gave Elena the key. I'm glad she found you."

Elena sat beside him. Their shoulders touched. Vincent hadn't realized how cold he'd gotten until then.

On the recording, a chair scraped.

"It started with a woman who used to keep the books for us. She asked for a week off and came back with a broken wrist. Her husband worked for a man I owed favors to. I paid for a hotel and figured that was enough. She went home because her son needed his school uniform. I hadn't even asked if she had a change of clothes for him."

Carlo paused. Vincent could hear a car pass outside wherever he'd been sitting.

"The next time she asked, we got her somewhere she could stay. Luis knew a woman with a room. Adrian got the boy to school until they could move. After that the woman put us in touch with another family. There are thirty-seven now. Some of them used to work for me. Some of them are in trouble because I did business with the men they're running from."

Vincent thought of the names he'd heard at his father's table, men he'd shaken hands with as a boy because his father had told him to stand up straight and say hello. It had been easy to accept that everyone sitting down to dinner had arrived there by making the same sort of choices. For people like the woman with the broken wrist, the choices had been of another kind.

"Adrian helped build it," Carlo said. "He stayed up three nights with that boy when the boy's mother was in the hospital. Remember that if you're ever in a room with him and all you can think about is how angry you are."

Elena pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth.

"What is it?" Vincent asked.

"I used to bring them groceries." She let her hand drop. "I was seventeen the first time Dad sent me with an envelope. Later I knew enough to ask about the people I was bringing things to. I didn't know about all thirty-seven."

The recorder clicked in Vincent's hand. Carlo's voice resumed a little farther from the microphone.

"Two days ago I took Adrian off the work. I found out he'd kept copies of some of the addresses. He told a family they had to stay put after they asked to move again. He needed the father close enough to answer questions about a man we were looking into. I went there myself. The daughter had packed her backpack and had been wearing it around the apartment for three days."

Vincent lifted his head. He had heard variations of Adrian's reasoning all his life. Leave a man where he can help you. Make the best use of what you've got. At twenty he had thought it sounded hardheaded. At forty-two he could picture a child sleeping in her shoes because an adult had told her she might have to run.

"Why did he agree to meet Adrian after that?" he asked.

Elena had both hands in her lap. "I don't know. I would've asked him to stay home."

On the recording, Carlo gave a little laugh, as if he'd heard her. "Adrian says he has something to tell me about the people who asked for the list. I'm meeting him at the terminal before the last ferry. I told him I'd hear him out. He'll want to come back to work. I wish I could tell him what he'd have to do for me to let him."

A long breath followed. Then Carlo spoke more quietly.

"If you find the case, keep the addresses out of Adrian's hands. Trust Elena. She'll ask you things you don't want to answer. Do your best anyway."

The recording stopped.

From where he sat, Vincent could see an old piece of gum stuck to the concrete under a bench. He fixed his eyes on it until he could trust himself to move. He had spent six years wanting to hear his father say he hadn't been planning to leave him with the business. The first thing he'd wanted to do when Carlo started speaking was turn the recorder off and save the rest for another day.

"Rafael said he'd been moving money out because he wanted to leave town," he told Elena. "I asked him if Dad had planned to take me with him. We were standing beside the coffin. I was thirty-six years old, and I still asked."

"What did he say?"

"He said that if Dad had wanted me with him, he would've told me where he was going."

Elena put her fingers on the step between them, next to his. "I'm sorry he let you stand there thinking that."

Vincent looked at her hand. He could remember the day after the funeral with a clarity that hurt. He'd gone to Luis's shop because he wanted to sit on a crate and hear somebody ask why he'd come all the way down without his skates. Elena hadn't been there. For a long time he'd been angrier about that than he'd been about anything Rafael had said.

"Did you ever go back to the shop?" he asked.

"Once. The week they boarded it up. I waited across the street for half an hour." She looked down at their hands. "I used to have this idea that I'd run into you there and we'd both be so relieved we'd forget to be angry."

"I wish I'd picked that day."

Her little intake of breath told him that he'd reached her. A radio crackled out in the service hall before either of them moved.

Marco appeared at the bottom of the steps. "Nina moved Sophie into the lobby with her. There's a man at the gate asking for you. He gave his real name to the guard."

Vincent stood. He slipped the recorder into his coat pocket and handed Elena the key.

Across the ice, a man with silver hair had one hand on the gate. Six years ago, Vincent would have known him by the way he stood before he'd been close enough to see his face.

Adrian saw Elena first. His hand slipped from the gate. Then he turned to Vincent.

"Your father kept a list here," he called. "I need you to give it to me before another family gets hurt."