Chapter 2 - THE SHOP ON MULBERRY STREET
Giuseppe Falcone's hands had trembled while sewing for years. Age had brought a stiffness to his fingers, but not enough to spoil a seam. When Marco arrived at the tailoring shop with Detective Hannah Russo, a financial-crimes investigator assisting Evelyn Ward's independent review, Giuseppe stood behind the cutting table and seemed genuinely confused.
“I made three ties,” he said. “All by hand. I delivered them on Friday.”
“Who else handled them?” Russo asked.
“My apprentice, Carlo. The courier. And the gentleman who paid for them.”
“Victor Romano?”
Giuseppe nodded.
Marco placed a copy of Lily's drawing on the table. “Does this look familiar?”
The tailor adjusted his spectacles. His face changed when he saw the moon ring.
“I told that man to leave the stock alone.”
“Who was he?”
“He said he was collecting alterations for Mr. Romano. He wore a green coat, gloves, and an expensive ring. I thought he was security.”
“Did you see him open a tie?”
“I saw him near the box. He said the lining was loose. I went to get a needle. When I came back, he was wrapping the tie.”
Russo asked for the shop's security video. Giuseppe led them to a cupboard containing an old recorder. The camera over the counter had worked on Friday, but the file covering the critical hour was missing.
“Who can delete footage?” Marco asked.
“Only me and Carlo.”
“Where is Carlo?”
Giuseppe looked toward the rear workroom. “He didn't come in this morning.”
Meanwhile, Dante sat across from Elena in the mansion's breakfast room. Lily was building a city from wooden blocks nearby. Dante had asked Elena to take a paid leave while the threat was evaluated. She had refused until he explained that paid leave did not mean losing her job or her ability to leave the house.
“I worked in your home eleven months,” she said. “And in that time you never asked me about Jorge.”
“I should have.”
“He came home with sore hands and oil on his clothes. He liked to bring Lily a paper cup from the pier cafeteria because she pretended it was a tiny hat. He wasn't a number in a report.”
Dante said nothing. He had known men at the docks by their payroll codes and union classifications. Elena made him see the distance between a record and the person it was supposed to describe.
“He told me two days before the accident that somebody had ordered him to use the crane despite a broken sensor,” she continued. “He said the supervisor was angry when he refused.”
“Did he name the supervisor?”
“Frank Deluca. But he wasn't the man with the ring. Frank was frightened too.”
“Why didn't you put that in the incident statement?”
“I did. They sent me a copy afterward. That part was gone.”
Dante called Evelyn on speaker, with Elena's permission. Evelyn confirmed that the copy the company had retained did not mention a sensor or a refusal.
“Then the record was altered,” Dante said.
“Possibly,” Evelyn answered. “We need the original statement and a chain of custody.”
Elena reached into her bag and removed a folded page, worn soft at the creases. “Jorge kept a copy of a maintenance complaint. I didn't know what it meant.”
The page listed a faulty load-limit sensor and repeated requests for testing. A supervisor's signature acknowledged the report. At the bottom, in Jorge's handwriting, was a note: do not operate until repaired.
Dante recognized the signature. It belonged to Frank Deluca.
Before he could speak, Lily climbed onto the empty chair next to her mother and placed a drawing on the table. It showed a crane, a blue box, and a man wearing a crescent ring.
“Lily,” Elena said softly, “why did you draw that?”
“Daddy showed me the big machine. The moon man came to our house when Mommy was crying.”
Elena closed her eyes. The memory had hurt too much to explain to a child.
Dante looked at the drawing. “Did you see the moon man somewhere else?”
Lily nodded. “In the shop. He had his coat off, but he was the same.”
It was the first reliable suggestion that the person who intimidated Elena also visited the tailor when Dante's ties were altered.
Marco called from Mulberry Street before Dante could ask another question.
“Giuseppe remembers the man,” he said. “The footage is gone. And his apprentice has disappeared.”
“Did the apprentice have access to the box?”
“Yes.”
“Find him safely. No private intimidation. Use the investigator.”
Marco paused. A decade earlier, Dante would have told him to bring the apprentice in by any means necessary. Now he heard his employer choosing a different path.
After the call, Dante asked Elena whether he could copy Jorge's maintenance complaint. She gave permission, then held the original against her chest.
“I don't want it to disappear again.”
“It won't leave your hands without a receipt.”
“I don't want revenge, Mr. Moretti. I want Lily to know her father wasn't careless.”
He met her eyes. “That's a better reason than revenge.”
At four that afternoon, Russo located Carlo's abandoned bicycle near the East River. His phone had been found in a trash bin, with the screen broken.
But someone had left one clear photograph on the memory card: the green-coated man entering a black sedan.
The number plate belonged to a car leased by Victor Romano's security company.
Dante stared at the image. He had trusted Victor through a hundred meetings and more than one funeral. He had entrusted him with his father's last instructions.
He was beginning to suspect that loyalty had been the disguise Victor wore best.
Russo returned to Falcone's that evening to reconstruct the missing forty minutes. She asked the tailor not to describe Lily's account first; she wanted his memory without the suggestion of a child's drawing.
Giuseppe remembered that Silas had brought a small case covered in green felt. He had asked for access to the rear worktable and claimed a seam needed adjustment before the final delivery. Carlo had been preparing coffee. The courier had arrived later than usual. The details suggested that the interference occurred while the box was still inside the shop, before Elena signed for it at the mansion.
“Were you paid to look away?” Russo asked.
Giuseppe's face colored. “No. I've sewn for this family forty years. I would never knowingly harm Mr. Moretti.”
“Then why didn't you ask who this stranger was?”
“Because he knew Victor. I thought that was enough.”
The answer troubled him as much as it troubled her. He sat on a stool and stared at the floor.
“My father taught me the Morettis were important clients,” he said. “We were expected to make their orders perfect and never cause inconvenience. I suppose I learned to stop asking questions.”
Russo gave him her card. “Start asking now.”
At the mansion, Elena found Lily drawing the delivery van she remembered from the shop. It was green in the picture, though Elena had not noticed a green van herself. She asked whether the drawing represented something Lily saw or something she imagined.
“The truck was white,” Lily said. “I made it green because green is prettier.”
Elena felt a sudden surge of relief. The girl was observant, but she was also a child who took artistic liberties. Any adult questioning her would need to distinguish memory from imagination.
Elena called Evelyn and explained the difference. The lawyer thanked her and added the information to her notes.
“That might seem small,” Evelyn said, “but it makes the evidence more honest.”
Elena looked at Lily's stack of pictures. “I don't want people calling her a genius and believing every line she draws is a photograph.”
“Nor should they.”
Later, the employee agency called Elena and asked whether she had been instructed to remain in the mansion indefinitely. She told the agent no. A second call came from an unknown number, asking whether she had spoken to anyone about Jorge's accident. Elena hung up and recorded the time.
When she told Marco, he offered to replace her phone and move her to a secure suite. Elena asked instead for written confirmation of the threats and a choice of safer arrangements. She preferred to return to her own apartment when the risk had been assessed.
Dante was informed. He began to offer a larger apartment on a Moretti property, then stopped himself. Giving someone an expensive room was not the same as allowing them to feel safe.
He asked what Elena wanted.
“A lawyer,” she answered. “A reliable salary. And a way for Lily to keep going to school.”
He arranged the first two and helped coordinate the third without demanding a favor in return.
May you like
That night, Elena opened Jorge's toolbox for the first time since his funeral. Beneath the worn screwdrivers she found a folded transit receipt and an old photograph of Lily sitting on his shoulders. On the back, in his handwriting, he had written: She notices everything.
Elena held the photograph close. For a moment she could almost hear him laughing.
