Page 104 of The Furies

Vero spoke up.

“And nobody we knew wanted to do what had to be done,” he said. “Her husband might have been a thief and a rat, but she was mourning her dead kid. Luca is right: we were in a jam, and we didn’t have time for niceties. Scaring her some was the right way to go. It just went south fast. The men involved were vermin, and should never have been allowed near her, but it’s not all Luca’s fault. I should have paid more attention to the details.”

I kept quiet. Great guy that he was, Dante Vero had waited until long after one of the men had put his fingers inside Sarah Abelli before deciding that enough was enough. He could tolerate molestation, up to a point, but he didn’t want to have to witness a rape.

Pirato took some time to mull over what he’d heard before turning to me.

“So where are we with this?” he asked.

“My belief is that the same two men may be responsible for targeting Sawyer’s widow,” I said. “I also doubt they have any intention of returning what they took. They don’t strike me as individuals of high moral character. I sense malice to them.”

I looked first at Dante Vero, then Luca Z. I let my eyes rest slightly longer on the latter, and made sure Pirato saw it.

“This is going to end badly for them,” I continued, “because that’s the way they’re calling it. If someone from your organization is involved, now is the time to say so. We don’t want blowback, not if it can be avoided, but if it’s a choice between that and letting these men deprive a mother of all she has left of her dead child, we’ll accept the consequences.”

Pirato stared at Dante Vero and Luca Z.

“Well?”

Vero shook his head.

“No,” he said. “On my mother’s life.”

But Luca Z hesitated.

“I didn’t set them on her,” he said at last, “and I’m not in communication with them.”

“Go on,” said Pirato.

“After that thing in the basement, one of them asked what kind of finder’s fee there might be—you know, if they discovered where that fucking Sawyer had hidden our money.”

“A finder’s fee?” said Pirato. “What were you planning to do, put a notice in the window of a grocery store?”

“What did you take that to mean?” I asked Luca Z.

He addressed his reply to Pirato, not me.

“That they might make another run at her, if the chance arose,” he said. “If they did, and she confessed, they knew we’d find out sooner or later. They couldn’t just walk away with the cash. They’d have to come to us with it, and accept whatever cut we gave.”

And perhaps that had been their plan, at least for a while, until they decided that it might be easier to target Nate Sawyer’s widow and see how much money they could get out of her without involving the Office. I wondered when they’d come up with the idea of taking her daughter’s things. It had the mark of a crime of opportunity, unless they’d somehow found out about the items from someone familiar with her. When they’d entered her home, it was probably in the hope that she might be holding some of the cash there. When that turned out not to be the case, they were sufficiently resourceful, or callous, to figure out another way to make her pay by using her grief against her.

“Who are they?” I said.

“I’m no rat,” said Luca Z.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Your organization doesn’t need any more attention from the police or the FBI, but that’s what’s going to happen if this thing runs its course. We aim to take these men alive, although I can’t guarantee it, and then what they did, and who they targeted, will be revealed. You’re telling us that nobody in this room was aware of what was happening. That might be true, but it won’t stop people from speculating otherwise, and it could be enough to instigate a whole new cyc of investigations, because the law likes nothing better than an excuse to go nosing around in the enterprises of crooked men. And even if that doesn’t happen, you’ll be associated with a crime that will do your reputations no good, not even among your own kind. Stealing the remembrances of a dead girl from her mother? Murderers will cross the street to avoid you.”

Pirato didn’t appear noticeably bothered by this, since murderers probably already crossed the street to avoid him, but Dante Vero had the decency to look mildly ashamed.

“You got kids?” said Louis to Pirato.

“Yeah, I got kids.”

“Grandchildren?”

“Those, too.”

“You care about them?”

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