Margaret looked at Claire, then back at me. “Still direct. That hasn’t changed.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
I believed her, which annoyed me.
“When did you last see her?”
“This morning.”
“Where?”
“In Queens. A furnished apartment above a closed tailor shop. She had been there three nights.”
“Why?”
“She said it was temporary.”
“Temporary because of what?”
Margaret’s mouth trembled, but only once. “Because someone found them.”
“Them?”
“Emma and the boys.”
I sat across from her. The chair was too small, the table too flimsy. In another life, it might have made the conversation less threatening. In this one, it only made me aware of how large my shadow looked under fluorescent lights.
“Start at the beginning,” I said.
Margaret’s fingers curled around the paper cup. “Emma came to me four years ago. Pregnant, scared, stubborn. She said she couldn’t stay near you. She said if you knew about the babies, you would either take them into your world or burn the world down trying to protect them. She didn’t want either.”
Something heavy settled behind my ribs.
“She should have told me.”
“Yes,” Margaret said. “She should have. And you should have been a man she could tell.”
Claire looked away.
Margaret did not.
I found I could not argue.
“She built a life,” Margaret continued. “A quiet one. Different names in different places, but not criminal. Don’t look at me like that. She worked. She paid rent. She took those boys to the library every Wednesday. She made pancakes shaped like animals. She did not use your money.”
“I never offered any.”
“She wouldn’t have taken it.”
No, she wouldn’t.
“What changed?”
“Three weeks ago, she saw a man watching the playground.”
“What man?”
“She didn’t know. Not police, she said. Not ordinary either. After that, she began moving. She called me two days ago and asked if I still remembered the emergency plan.”
“The plan was bringing them to me?”
Margaret’s eyes softened. “No. You were the last plan.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
“Then why now?”
“Because last night she received a message.”
“What message?”
Margaret reached into her purse and withdrew a folded napkin. She slid it across the table.
Written in black ink were six words.
Bell Harbor wasn’t the only witness.
I stared at the sentence until the church basement seemed to fade.
“What happened in Bell Harbor?” Claire asked.
Margaret shook her head. “Emma never told me. She only said if those words ever appeared, Jason had to know.”
“Know what?” I asked.
Margaret’s gaze held mine.
“That the danger didn’t begin with the boys. It began with you.”
On the ride back to Emerald Tower, the city passed in wet streaks beyond the tinted glass. Claire sat beside me, quiet longer than usual.
Finally she said, “Are you going to tell me?”
I kept my eyes on the window.
“In Bell Harbor, Emma saw something she wasn’t supposed to see.”
“What?”
“A meeting.”
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
“With who?”
I exhaled slowly. “A federal agent named Daniel Price.”
Claire turned toward me. “Alderman Price?”
“His brother.”
The past unfolded in pieces I had kept sealed for years.
Daniel Price had been an ambitious federal investigator with clean suits and dirty methods. He wanted to bring down half the city and build his career on the wreckage. But he also had debts, secrets, and a weakness for leverage. Bell Harbor had been neutral ground for a meeting meant to keep a war from spilling into the streets.
Emma was never supposed to be there.
She had come back to the motel early because rain ruined her walk along the pier. She heard voices through the wall. Mine. Daniel’s. Victor’s.
She heard enough to understand that the lines between law and crime were not where people thought they were.
The next morning, she asked me if I had ever told her the truth about anything.
I told her truth was dangerous.
She said lies were worse.
Two weeks later, she vanished.
“And Daniel Price?” Claire asked.
“Died six months after Bell Harbor. Car accident.”
“You don’t believe it was an accident.”