Chapter 4 - The Concrete Audit
By Friday morning, the frost on the North Fork oaks had turned into a thick, blinding fog that rolled off the Sound like smoke from a boiler room. Norah sat in the kitchen of the cedar house, her left leg propped on a wooden stool, a yellow legal pad on her knees.
Without the USB drive—which she had hidden inside the hollow base of an antique lamp in her Manhattan apartment—she was forced to reconstruct the financial chains from memory. Her journalist’s brain worked in grids: columns for the state appropriations, rows for the sub-contractors, and small, red circles around the names that didn't match the tax logs.
“Riverside Development,” she muttered to herself, her pen scratching against the paper. “They didn't buy the steel from Ohio. They bought the invoice from Ohio. The actual metal came from an unlicensed scrap yard in Port Newark that’s owned by a shell company called 'Vanguard Logistics'.”
The door from the garage clicked open. Marco entered, his boots wet with gray slush, a brown paper bag under his arm. He didn't look at her pad; he dropped the bag on the counter, revealing two containers of black coffee and a carton of fresh eggs from the farm down the road.
“The boss is still in the city,” Marco said, his voice like rocks turning in a cement mixer. “He spent the night at the Red Hook terminal. Chen’s people tried to move three barges of gravel out of the canal at three in the morning. Luca had the tugboats unhooked. The barges are currently floating in the middle of the harbor with no power.”
Norah looked up, her pen pausing. “That’s illegal. The Port Authority has exclusive jurisdiction over the shipping lanes.”
Marco let out a short, dry grunt that might have been a laugh if his face had the muscles for it. “The Port Authority director is Councilman Harding’s nephew, Miss Blake. He doesn't look at the canal after midnight unless his uncle tells him to. Luca owns the men who turn the winches on the drawbridges. If Luca says the barges stay in the channel, they stay in the channel until they sink.”
He walked over to the stone fireplace, knelt down, and began striking a long match against the granite hearth. A nest of dry birch bark caught the flame, sending a sharp, bright yellow tongue of fire up into the chimney.
“Why do you stay with him, Marco?” Norah asked suddenly, her voice dropping into that quiet, probing tone she used when she wanted an interview subject to forget they were being recorded. “You’ve been with the Moretti family since Luca’s father was running the numbers in South Brooklyn. You could have retired to Florida ten years ago with the union pension.”
Marco didn't look back from the fire. He added two heavy logs of split hickory, his large shoulders flexing beneath his grease-stained canvas jacket.
“Luca’s father was a gambler,” Marco said after a long pause. “He thought the money belonged to the person who held the cards. He died with forty-two thousand dollars in his pocket and seven holes in his chest because he didn't understand that the cards don't matter if the table belongs to someone else. Luca understands the table. He doesn't play the games, Miss Blake. He owns the room the games are played in. A man like me stays with a boss like that because the other options involve a ditch in New Jersey.”
He stood up, dusting the bark from his palms.
“Your old editor called the office this morning,” Marco added, his eyes cutting toward her legal pad. “A man named Miller. He didn't use the regular line; he called the private number for the Red Hook fish market. He said two men in gray coats were standing outside his house in Staten Island with cameras. He wanted to know if you were still alive.”
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Norah felt a cold bead of sweat trace its way down her spine. “Miller has a heart condition. His wife is in a care facility. He can’t handle that kind of pressure.”
“Luca sent three boys from the longshoremen’s local to sit on Miller’s porch,” Marco said simply, turning toward the kitchen counter to crack the eggs into an iron skillet. “The men with the cameras left after ten minutes. But they’ll be back, Miss Blake. In this city, once the gray coats know your name, they don't forget it until it’s carved into a piece of granite.”
