Page 108 of Five Survive

“She said she would pay me for the risk,” Red said, sniffing. “After the trial, if they got a conviction, she was going to pay me twenty thousand dollars.”

Simon whistled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Oliver spat. “Mom doesn’t have twenty thousand dollars lying around.”

But they did. The Lavoys did have that. And more. Catherine had promised her. Said she could give it to Red, in cash.

“It wasn’t just that, though,” Red carried on, switching to Reyna, who wasn’t looking, she was staring down at the towel, at the color of Maddy’s skin. “I needed that money, yes, like you’ve all been saying, you know I need money.”

Simon shuffled awkwardly.

“But it was something else too. Joseph Mannino was shot twice in the back of the head. That’s how they executed people, Catherine told me.” She glanced over at Arthur. How his family executed people. Now it made sense why he didn’t want to join the family business. Not flipping houses, but bodies, drugs. He’d tried to tell her the truth, in small ways. She paused, readying herself for the punch to her gut. “That’s how my mom was killed too, five years ago. Two shots to the back of her head while she was on her knees. She was executed. At an abandoned power station on the waterfront in SouthPhilly, pretty close to where Joseph Mannino was killed. The police never found out who killed my mom, the case is unsolved. But Catherine…your mom,” she said, eyes finding Maddy, “your mom told me that, though they could never prove it, it was likely someone from that family, someone in the Mafia, who killed her. It was their style. And my mom was investigating the family, looking into their network of crimes, right around the time she died, so that makes sense. Maybe she found out something and they killed her for it.”

And if it was Frank Gotti’s fault that her mom died, then it couldn’t be Red’s fault. Except it still was, wasn’t it? There was enough doubt left for Red to fill in with her own guilt. They’d never be able to prove who it was, that was what Catherine said, and she knew about these things. But Red needed the money, and she needed somebody else to blame, and there Catherine was, giving her both. Everything she needed, to fix herself, fix everything. But now the plan was gone, dead, it only worked if no one knew.

Maddy winced, gritting her teeth, a high gurgling in her throat.

Arthur shook his head, eyes crinkled with confusion.

“What?” Red asked him.

He sighed. “My dad would never kill a cop. He’s smarter than that. It was one of John D’Amico’s rules: never kill police. It kept the heat off them. Your mom was captain of a police district.” Arthur stared at her. “No one would have touched her.”

“B-but,” Red stuttered. No, don’t take it away from her, she needed it. “Mrs.Lavoy said—”

“She works in the DA’s office, right?” Arthur said, face scrunching even farther, chewing on some silent thought.

“She’s assistant district attorney,” Oliver said, cricking his neck. “Soon to be district attorney, and she’d never do any of the things Red is saying. My mother is not a criminal. Red is lying, do notbelieve her. That’s not the name you’re after. It wasn’t my mom. And what would even be in it for her, huh? Red? What does she get out of using you to set up Frank Gotti?”

Oliver’s eyes were aflame, burning into hers. She wasn’t lying, she wasn’t.

“Well,” Simon stepped in. “You said it yourself earlier, Oliver, didn’t you? You said it’s a historic case, and that if she gets the guilty conviction she’s pretty much guaranteed to be voted in as DA.” He shrugged. “She wants to be DA, right? That’s what she would get out ofit.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Oliver rounded on him now, enough fire in his eyes to share around.

But Red was watching Arthur instead, a shadow crossing his face as he looked down, thinking, thinking, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“What?” she asked him, and he jolted back into the room, staring around at the corners of the RV as though it were finally shrinking around them, a countdown to crushing them all.

“It’s…” He drew off, swallowed, started again. “My family has a contact in the DA’s office. Has for years, maybe even ten years now. No one ever knew who it was, though, they always contacted us anonymously, encrypted messaging on a burner phone. Used to talk only to John D’Amico, but then when he started to get sick, they would contact my dad and Uncle Joe—Joseph Mannino, I mean.”

Oliver stared at him, horrified. “There’s a leak in the DA’s office?” he asked. “Working with organized crime?”

Arthur nodded. “For years. That’s how we would find out the identity of witnesses in cases against the family, or the locations of members who had flipped and were cooperating with the police. Information about trials and other criminal cases against ourcompetitors. They would get charges dismissed sometimes. Shipments of seized guns or drugs for evidence that we could then intercept. All of that came from this person inside the DA’s office. We paid them for their information, into an offshore account, but we never knew who it was. Until…” Arthur glanced at Red, an awkward shift in his shoulders, a glint in his eyes. “That’s how we got your identity, Red. Just two days after the charges were filed against my dad, when we learned there was an eyewitness, even though there couldn’t be, because my dad didn’t kill Uncle Joe. My dad told my brother to message this contact, to ask who you were.”

“And?” Red and Oliver said at the same time, and she didn’t like that. No, they weren’t on the same side. The RV was split again, but Red didn’t know where she belonged anymore. With Oliver, who had thrown her out of the RV to her death, who had held a knife to her throat, who forced Maddy into his plan and now she was dying over there? Or Arthur, who had been lying to her from the moment they met last September? Because he’d needed to meet her, for his own plan. Of course he’d shown interest in her, laughed at her jokes, offered her rides home, charmed her with kind words and kinder eyes, she’d been his mark. What an idiot she was to think there was anything else there. He was here to get information from her and kill her, that was it. And yet Red found herself standing closer to him, edging away from Oliver, because the danger was in Oliver’s eyes, no one else’s.

“And,” Arthur answered, looking at Red, not Oliver. He had obviously chosen his side. “They told us they needed a day or two to get us the information. And when it came, in early September, it didn’t come the normal way, through their burner phone. My father received an email with Red’s name and social security and her home address. And the email address that sent it belonged to a Mo Frazer, who works in the DA’s office.”

“Ugh, of course it’s Mo Frazer,” Oliver spat. “That makes so much sense. So he’s in bed with organized crime, is he?”

Arthur shook his head, unsure. “Well, we assumed he must have been the contact all this time, and maybe he slipped up on this occasion. But it never sat right with me. He sent that from his work email, his name right there in the sender’s address. That leaves a trace, somewhere on a server that law enforcement can find. It was so different from all the contact we’d ever had from him before. Careless.”

“He got sloppy,” Oliver said. “They always do.”

“Or…” Arthur bit down on his lip. “Or he wasn’t the one who sent it, because he isn’t the contact. It was someone trying to pin the leak of Red’s identity on him. Someone else in the DA’s office.”

His eyes found Red’s, latching on.

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