Chapter 2 - The Lie on Tommy's Lips
Tommy didn’t move toward her.
In a room where twenty hardened men would have stepped forward to inspect a ghost, Tommy Callahan took half a step backward toward the exit. His hand—the same hand that had carried a casket handle at my wife’s funeral—was pressed so flat against his thigh I could see the seam of his trousers strain under his knuckles.
"Leo," Tommy said. His voice was too high, a thin, stretched wire of sound that didn't belong to a man who ran the northern docks. "Leo, Jesus Christ. Look at her. She’s a street girl. She’s... she’s concussed or sick. Get her out of here before you lose your mind."
I didn't take my eyes off her face.
Clara—or the woman who looked, breathed, and bled like Clara—was shaking so violently her knees clicked against the hardwood floor. The small drop of blood from her index finger fell onto her gray denim apron, soaking into the cheap fabric like dark wine on stone.
"Look at me," I commanded, my voice dropping into the quiet register that made even my lieutenants keep their hands visible.
"Please, mister," she whimpered. Her accent wasn't Clara’s polished Boston cadence. It was flat, dry, and worn down by cold winter nights and shelter soup lines. "I didn't mean to drop the glass. I’ll pay for it. I’ll work double shifts. Don't call the police. Please... my baby..."
"What’s your name?" I asked, kneeling until my face was level with hers.
"Chloe," she choked out, shielding her swollen stomach with her uninjured arm. "Chloe Miller. Ask Rosa. She brought me from the shelter three weeks ago. I just clean. That’s all I do."
"Where did you get that scar?" I reached out, my thumb trembling as it hovered half an inch from the tiny, crescent-shaped line above her left eyebrow.
I knew that scar. I had kissed that scar on a sailboat off Martha’s Vineyard four years ago when a low boom swung around and caught her off guard. She had laughed through her tears, letting me wipe the blood away with my handkerchief.
"I... I don't know," she whispered, her brown eyes wide with genuine, unadulterated terror. "I woke up in a county hospital five months ago. They said a truck hit my car on Route 9. They said my head took the brunt of it. I don't remember who I was before the ambulance."
The room went dead silent.
I stood up slowly, my heart pounding against my ribs like a sledgehammer. Route 9 was three miles from the fiery ditch where state troopers had dragged the burned frame of Clara’s Mercedes six months ago. The dental records had been matched by Tommy’s personal coroner. The watch found in the ashes had been her grandfather’s Rolex.
I turned around slowly to face my best man.
Tommy was sweating. Small beads of moisture glinted under the dim Edison bulbs hanging over the mahogany bar.
"Tommy," I said softly.
"Leo, don't do this to yourself," Tommy stammered, raising both hands, palms out. "You've been drinking single malt for three hours. You're seeing what you want to see because you miss your wife. Clara burned in that car, Leo! We watched the smoke!"
"I buried a closed casket, Tommy," I reminded him, walking toward him step by slow step. "Because you told me the body was too charred for me to look at. You told me to spare myself the nightmare."
"The coroner signed the report!" Tommy snapped, his tone turning sharp, defensive, and ugly. "The state police signed it! What are you saying, Leo? That I faked a death? For what?!"
"Gabe," I called out without turning my head.
My chief enforcer, a six-foot-four wall of muscle who had served my family for fifteen years, stepped out from the shadows near the back booth.
"Lock the doors," I ordered. "Nobody leaves the Cobalt Lounge tonight. Not Tommy. Not the guards. Nobody."
"Leo, you've lost your damn mind!" Tommy yelled, his face flushing dark red as Gabe pulled the heavy iron bolt across the front entrance with a loud CLANG. "You're locking up your own family over a pregnant amnesiac cleaner?!"
"She isn't a cleaner," I growled, turning back to the terrified woman on the floor.
I leaned down, picked her up into my arms as if she weighed nothing, and pulled her close against my chest. She gasped, grabbing my lapels in panic, her warm breath hitting my neck—and there it was again.
Bergamot and dried lavender.
The exact custom perfume Clara had imported from France. A perfume no shelter girl in New Jersey could ever buy.
"Take her up to my penthouse," I told Gabe. "And bring Dr. Evans through the private alley entrance. If anyone sees him, kill them."
May you like
I looked Tommy straight in the eye as I carried my wife toward the hidden elevator behind the bar.
"We're going to have a long talk, Tommy," I whispered. "And by sunrise, somebody is either going to be re-married... or buried."
