Chapter 42: That’s cassano’s price

THAT'S CASSANO'S PRICE

"What does he want?" I said.

Bruno sat with both hands flat on the table and looked at them.

"The Geneva law firm," he said. "The one receiving Reeves's emails. The billing address registered to my father's house." He looked up. "Cassano says the firm has been laundering money for a network that goes well beyond Richard. Three countries. Fourteen years. Richard was one client among many."

"And Cassano wants it shut down," I said.

"He wants the name of the partner running it," Bruno said. "One name. The person at the top of the structure."

"Why can't he find it himself?" Luca said.

"Because the firm is buried inside four layers of shell companies and the only person with access to the records connecting them is inside the investigation," Bruno said. "Inside our investigation."

"Reeves," I said.

"Yes," Bruno said. "Reeves has been taking payments from the Geneva firm for fourteen months. He knows the structure. He knows the name at the top." Bruno looked at Luca. "And right now Reeves is in a holding facility cooperating with investigators who do not know what they actually have."

Luca sat back in his chair. "You want me to get that name out of Reeves before the investigators do."

"Cassano wants it," Bruno said. "What I want is to give him something that costs us nothing and keeps him satisfied long enough to stay out of our way."

"Giving Cassano the name of a money launderer is not nothing," Luca said.

"No," Bruno said. "But it is better than owing him something we cannot price."

The kitchen was quiet.

Rosa had moved to the far end of the room with her cat and her coffee and was making herself small in the particular way of someone who understood when a conversation did not require them.

I looked at Bruno.

"There is something else," I said. "You are not telling me everything he said."

Bruno looked at me.

"No," he said.

"Tell me."

He was quiet for three seconds.

"Cassano knows about my father," he said. "About the house. About the night he died." He looked at the table. "He has known for years. He told me this morning that he was doing business with my father six months before he died. That my father came to him with a problem and Cassano helped him solve it."

"What problem?" I said.

"Richard," Bruno said. "My father knew Richard was moving against the family business. He went to Cassano for protection." He stopped. "Cassano says he tried to help. That what happened to my father was not supposed to happen."

The kitchen felt very still.

"He is telling you he feels responsible," I said.

"He is telling me he has a debt," Bruno said. "To my father. To me." He looked up. "Withdrawing the claim this morning was part of paying it."

"And the name from Reeves is the rest," I said.

"Yes."

Luca looked between us. "If I approach Reeves directly it has to be through proper channels. I cannot walk into a holding facility and ask a corrupt detective for a name."

"You do not have to," Bruno said. "Reeves will give it voluntarily if he understands what it buys him."

"What does it buy him?" Luca said.

"A conversation with the right prosecutor before Richard's lawyers get to him," Bruno said. "Reeves is not loyal to Richard. He is loyal to his own survival. Give him a way out and he will take it."

Luca picked up his notepad and stood. "I will make some calls."

He went into the hallway and his voice came through low and steady and Rosa came back to the table and sat down and looked at Bruno.

"Your father was a good man," she said.

Bruno looked at her.

"He was not perfect," she said. "He made mistakes. The kind of mistakes men make when they trust the wrong people and refuse to ask for help until it is too late." She folded her hands on the table. "But he loved you. Both of you. He talked about you constantly."

Bruno said nothing.

"He was proud of you," Rosa said. "Not of what you did or what you earned. Of who you were." She looked at him steadily. "I thought you should know that. I should have said it eight years ago."

Bruno looked at the table for a moment.

Then he nodded once. A small nod that carried more in it than any sentence would have.

I put my hand on his knee under the table and he put his hand over mine and held it there.

Luca came back in and sat down.

"Reeves will talk," he said. "His lawyer called back in four minutes which tells you everything about how frightened he is." He looked at Bruno. "We will have the name by this evening."

"And then Cassano is satisfied," I said.

"And then Cassano is satisfied," Bruno said.

"And Richard?" I said.

"Richard withdrew the claim," Luca said. "His statement is contradicted by Rosa's account, Harlan's testimony, and the metadata on the forged documents. His own lawyers will advise him to take a deal before it goes to trial."

"He will not take a deal," I said. "Richard does not accept losing."

"He will when the alternative is twenty years," Luca said.

I looked at Bruno.

He looked at me.

"It is almost over," he said.

"Almost," I said.

Luca's phone rang on the table.

He looked at the screen and picked it up and answered and listened for thirty seconds and his expression did not change but his pen stopped moving on the notepad.

He ended the call and looked at Bruno.

"Reeves gave us the name," he said.

"Who is it?" Bruno said.

Luca turned the notepad around on the table.

Bruno read it.

He read it again.

When he looked up his face told me before he said a word that this was not a name he had expected.

"You know this person," I said.

"Yes," Bruno said.

"Who is it?" I said.

Bruno looked at me across Rosa's kitchen table with the cat watching from the windowsill and the afternoon light coming in low through the curtains and Luca sitting very still with his pen in his hand.

"It is my accountant," Bruno said. "The man who has handled every transaction I have made for the last seven years." He set the notepad down. "His office is four floors below Luca's."

I watched through the window and could not hear a word but did not need to. Cassano spoke with his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes on Bruno's face and Bruno stood with his weight even on both feet and his hands at his sides and listened the way he listened when something mattered. Without moving. Without reacting. Taking it all in before he decided what any of it meant.

Once Cassano gestured toward the house.

Bruno did not turn to look.

Once Bruno said something short and Cassano nodded once and continued.

Rosa came to stand beside me at the window with her cat over her shoulder.

"That man has been around a long time," she said quietly.

"You know him?" I said.

"I know of him," she said. "Your father-in-law mentioned his name once. A long time ago. In a conversation he did not know I could hear." She looked at the window. "He said Cassano was the only man in the city Richard was genuinely afraid of."

I looked at Cassano standing at the garden gate in his dark coat.

A man Richard was afraid of was talking to Bruno.

About something that had started before any of us were in the same room.