The Last Door

The west door had a rectangle of thick glass at eye level. Vincent could see Rafael on the other side, wearing the overcoat he'd had since Vincent was in college. He'd always buttoned it all the way up, even if he was only taking the trash out.

The man beside him had driven Rafael to two of Vincent's birthday dinners. Now he stood one step back from the door, close enough for Vincent to see that he was breathing through his mouth.

Rafael held up a key.

"You had the lock changed," he said.

"After someone broke in."

"I would've done the same thing. Open it for me, will you?"

Vincent could see the second key on the ring. It was for the big house where Carlo had lived and where Vincent still went sometimes when he couldn't sleep. Rafael would let himself in before breakfast and leave a bag of rolls on the counter. He'd done it after the funeral. He'd done it as recently as last month.

"Put your keys away, Uncle Rafe."

Rafael looked down at them as if he'd forgotten he was holding them. He closed his fist and let it hang at his side.

"You're tired. I know what you're like when you stay up all night."

"You knew what I was like after the funeral, too."

"You would've come apart if I'd left you to yourself. There were people who would've taken the whole company from you while you were still picking out a shirt to bury your father in."

"So you got me to sign for the men who took him."

The driver glanced at Rafael. It was the first time his eyes had left Vincent.

Rafael stepped closer to the window. "You signed for a company that would've folded without somebody to make its decisions. It would be convenient now to pretend I held your hand on the pen. You know I didn't."

"I know. That's what I told Mara."

Rafael's eyes changed at the sound of her name. His mouth remained in a patient half smile.

"Where's the envelope?" he asked.

"The investigators received it. They have the signed order and the bank records. They have mine too."

Behind Vincent, the service door to the lobby opened. He heard one set of footsteps. Marco hadn't moved from the end of the corridor, so Vincent knew who it was before he looked.

Adrian had called after Mara met with the investigators. He'd offered to tell them what he saw at the terminal and identify the men he'd recognized as they came through the parking lot. He'd arrived at the rink first. Vincent had asked him to wait in the lobby for the interview.

Now Adrian stopped a few feet behind him.

Rafael looked through the glass at the man he'd once stood beside in Carlo's office. "If you've come to ask me to let you back into the family, you picked a hell of a day."

"I came to tell them what I saw," Adrian said. "Carlo was alive when your men put him in that car. I know who the man at the back door was. He's standing next to you."

The driver went rigid. Rafael turned his head and spoke softly enough that Vincent almost didn't hear him.

"Stay where you are."

The man stepped back anyway.

Vincent kept his palm flat against the wall by the window. "You ordered them to take him alive. Did he ever tell you where the list was?"

Rafael looked back at him. "Your father wouldn't even tell me where he'd been sending my money."

"Did you see him after they took him?"

Rafael said nothing. Vincent could hear a fan somewhere behind him running on a bad bearing. Danny had pointed it out that morning. He'd said it was all right to leave it for one more night if they kept the rink closed.

"He was my brother," Rafael said at last. "I went out there to talk to him. I offered him a way home, and he wanted me to promise I'd leave those people alone."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him he'd put me in a position I couldn't walk back from."

Vincent looked at the man who'd taught him to carve a roast and shown him how to hold his father's hand at the funeral without pushing the sleeve up. There were questions he could spend the rest of his life asking. Had Carlo understood? Had he asked for water? Had Rafael bothered to sit down with him?

"Did you send him home?" Vincent asked.

Rafael held his gaze for a long time.

"I told them to put him back in his car."

Vincent's hand slid down the wall. He wanted to put it through the glass. He wanted, with almost as much force, to turn the clock back one day and let his uncle come in with the rolls.

Rafael leaned toward the window. "You were my brother's son. Everything I did after that kept you alive."

"After what you did to him, you could've told me the truth once in six years."

"Would you have thanked me for it?"

Vincent heard voices at the end of the service hall. Marco lifted a hand to show he'd heard them too. On the far side of the glass, headlights washed over the back wall. The driver took another step away from Rafael, then stopped.

"Let me in," Rafael said. "We still have time to talk."

Vincent remembered Sophie waiting on the bench with one lace undone because he'd said he would come back. He thought of Marisol standing in a kitchen with her son, deciding whose car she'd get into. All at once he wanted to be at home with people who told him what they needed without first making him guess what it would cost.

"Tell the investigators what you just told me," he said.

Rafael turned when they called his name. Vincent watched him set the keys down on the sill outside the door. One agent stepped between him and the driver. The other put a hand on Rafael's arm and asked him to turn around. Rafael obeyed. The keys stayed on the sill.

When they took his uncle out, Vincent went back to the bench by the gate and sat down. There was a fresh slice in the rubber where Sophie had missed the mat with a skate the day before. He put the toe of his shoe on it.

Adrian stopped beside the bench.

"I should've called you," he said.

"Yes."

"I'm going to tell them why I didn't. They'll ask what I did with the addresses I kept. I'm going to tell them that too."

Vincent slid over so Adrian could sit down. For a few minutes they watched the empty ice together. Then an investigator came in and asked which one wanted to go first.

"I'll go," Vincent said.

Mara sat with him while he told them what he'd heard through the door. He gave them the keys from the sill. Then he asked whether he could tell them about the December payment while he still remembered the words he'd used.

"What words were those?" the investigator asked.

"I said it was a small price to pay for a quiet Christmas."

"Whose Christmas were you thinking about?"

"Mine," Vincent said.

When he finally left the interview, he stopped on the rink steps to call Elena. He told her what Rafael had said and where he'd left the keys.

"Do you want me to come down?" she asked.

He could hear Sophie in the background explaining why a game had to be played again even though somebody had already won.

"Could I come up instead?"

"Yes," Elena said. "I'll leave the light on."