Chapter 6
He didn't answer her. He said, "Go home, Sera," and went back inside.
By Friday it had started.
It didn't start with Rafe. That was the part she could never make her mother understand. Rafe didn't have to do anything.
He only had to stop.
Friday, before noon, Nadia called.
"Two of our trucks have been sitting at the north gate since eight. They're saying the paperwork's wrong."
"The paperwork's been right for nine years."
"I know."
Friday night, she called again.
"Teddy won't pick up."
"Try the yard phone."
"I did." A pause. "He picked up, heard my voice, and hung up on me."
Saturday, two in the morning.
"Somebody put a bottle through the front window on Harrow."
"Was anybody inside?"
"No. It was closed." Nadia's voice was doing something. "That's not an attack, is it."
"No," Sera said. "That's a note."
"Saying what?"
"Saying we're looking."
Sunday, nobody called. Sunday, a man came and stood in her office doorway with his hat in his hands.
"They took one of our drivers off the tunnel road," he said. "Kept him six hours. Sent him home in a cab."
"Which one?"
"Danny."
"How old is Danny?"
"Twenty-six."
"Is he going to drive again?"
The man looked at the floor.
Nobody had sent a message back with him, because Danny was the message.
Monday morning Sera stood in a hospital hallway in front of Danny's mother, who had known her since she was small.
"Mrs. Ferro."
Danny's mother looked at her for about three seconds. Then she turned around, went into her son's room, and shut the door.
Monday afternoon the marina paper came by courier. Three months' notice, signed North Basin, perfectly legal and exactly on time.
Monday evening the phone started going with men who wanted to buy things.
"Eleven of them," Nadia said. "Since six o'clock."
"What are they offering?"
"Half. On everything." Her voice was tight. "One of them asked me whether the auction rooms come with the staff. Sera, he ate at your table in March."
"I know."
"How are you not screaming?"
"Because this is what it looks like. Nobody fights, Nadia."
"What?"
"Everybody just stands around watching to see who flinches." Sera turned her chair to the window. "And the second you do, eleven men you've had dinner with put their hand out at once and ask, very politely, whether you've thought about selling."
Nadia found her in the dark office at midnight.
"Your mother's called nine times."
"I know."
"She called me too." Nadia sat on the edge of the desk. "She wanted me to tell you Danny's hand is on your conscience."
Sera didn't look up.
"It is."
"Sera."
"No, she's right about that part." She put the pen down. "That's the trick of them, Nadia. They're never wrong about the facts. They're only wrong about what you're supposed to do with them."
Her phone lit up on the desk.
RAFE.
It had been going since Thursday. She'd stopped counting somewhere around thirty.
"You could just talk to him," Nadia said.
"If I pick that up, he'll offer to make it stop."
She watched the screen until it went dark.
"And it will stop. That same night. And every person in my family will breathe out."
"And then?"
"And then I'll be back on a floor somewhere inside a year, and Danny still won't have his hand, and I'll have paid for it twice."
She pushed a page across the desk.
Nadia read it.
"How bad?"
"Eleven weeks. Seven without the marina."
"Okay." Nadia set it down. "So what do we do?"
Sera looked at her for a second.
Nine years, four of them in a rented room over a laundry. And Nadia Beck had just said we without a beat of hesitation on a Monday night with a brick through the window on Harrow Street.
"Get me a meeting," Sera said.
"With who?"
"North Basin."
Nadia's face did something complicated.
"Sera. He's the one who just took the marina."
"Yes."
"That's the point I'm making."
"That's the point I'm making too." She got her coat. "Everybody else in this city spent the weekend calling to ask what I'd sell. He didn't call at all. He took a piece off me and then sat down and waited."
"And that's good?"
"That's a man who knows exactly what I'm worth," Sera said. "Which makes him the only person I've talked to in four years who does."
Nadia went out to make the call.
Sera picked up her phone to shut it off, and saw that under the thirty-four missed calls there was one message she'd never opened. Sent Thursday, 3:11 in the morning.
She opened it.
[You're going to go see Devane. Do it.]
And under that, one minute later:
[Then come and ask me your question again.]