Chapter 34 The Name

Chapter 34 The Name
His name was Victor Hale.

Marco said it the way he said everything that mattered, without weight or drama, the way a man stated a fact he had been carrying for a long time and had finally been given permission to put down.

Victor Hale. Sixty-two. American. The kind of man whose name appeared on government websites, whose photograph was in every institutional database that tracked people who were supposed to be trusted. A career that had been a steady unbroken line of public service and credibility. The reputation of someone people trusted with the things that needed protecting from people exactly like him.

He had been Caruso's protection for twenty years.

Not someone who accepted payments and looked the other way. Someone who had been present from the beginning, who had helped architect the operation, who had used his position inside the system to ensure that the trafficking network's financial infrastructure was never examined too closely, that the right cases were delayed or dismissed or never brought in the first place.

He had been the reason Paige could not trace the financial records three years before she died.

He had been the reason Caruso operated for three years inside the Lombardi infrastructure without interference.

He had been the reason Ivy was dead.

She looked at Marco.

"Reyes knows."

It was not a question. It was the assembling of everything Reyes had said and had not said across every conversation they had ever had. The separate investigation already underway. The secondary accounts that could not be disclosed. The reason the official finding on Ivy's death had been wrong for fourteen months and nobody had corrected it.

Reyes knew who Victor Hale was.

Reyes had been building a case against him.

The Caruso trial was never the destination.

"She needs those records," Gia said. "Not for the Caruso trial. For Hale."

Marco looked at her.

"She has been using the Caruso trial as a pathway," she said. "The only legal mechanism that gives her access to the secondary financial records without Hale's knowledge. Because if Hale finds out the records have been located before Reyes can move on him he will destroy them and the case collapses."

"He already knows the records exist," Marco said. "He has been looking for them for three years. Since Ivy found them."

"He knows they exist," she said. "He does not know where they are."

She looked at the portfolio on the worktable.

"He does not know Ivy hid them in a fashion portfolio," she said. "He has been looking for a digital file. An encrypted document. A technical hiding place. Not sixty-three pages of construction notes in a dead woman's handwriting sitting on the corner of a worktable in a house in the Hollywood Hills."

The studio was very quiet.

"We have to get them to Reyes before Hale finds out we have them," Marco said.

"Yes."

"Which means we cannot use any communication channel he might have access to."

She looked at him.

"Which communication channels does a prosecutor have access to?" she said.

"All of them," he said.

She thought about that for a long moment.

Victor Hale was not Caruso. Caruso had been a private attorney operating inside a criminal network with resources and connections but without institutional power. Hale had institutional power. He had twenty years of it. He had access to communications, legal authority, and the infrastructure of a system that had trusted him for two decades.

If he was monitoring communications for evidence that the records had been found he would be monitoring phone calls. Emails. Any digital communication between Gia's number and Reyes's number.

She could not call Reyes.

She could not email Reyes.

She could not send the photographs Marco had taken through any channel that ran through any infrastructure Hale had access to.

She needed to get sixty-three pages of photographed construction notes to a federal prosecutor without using a phone, a computer, or any communication system that a prosecutor with twenty years of access could intercept.

She looked at Marco.

"Paris," she said.

He looked at her.

"The show is in four weeks," she said. "Reyes needs to be there. Not as a federal prosecutor. As someone attending a fashion show. Someone in the audience with no official connection to the case, no record of contact with Gia Lombardi in any database, no communication trail that Hale can find." She looked at the portfolio. "I hand her the portfolio in person. In a room full of people. The most public and therefore the most invisible exchange available."

Marco was quiet for a moment.

Not the quiet of someone assessing options. The quiet of someone who had already made the calculation and was now deciding something else.

"You are using the show as a dead drop," he said.

"Ivy used fashion as cover for three years," she said. "The least I can do is return the favour."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

Not quite a smile.

Close.

"I will contact Reyes," he said. "Through a channel Hale will not be monitoring."

"What channel?"

He looked at her.

"Maria," he said.

Of course.

Maria, who had spent twenty-two years building an archive that a don could not find. Maria, who had submitted an FBI tip through a mechanism that nobody in this family had known about until it was already done. Maria, who had been the most careful person in every room for two decades and who had access to communication channels that had nothing to do with phones or email or any digital infrastructure that could be monitored.

Maria had been doing this since before the house understood what it was becoming.

She would know how.

Her phone buzzed on the worktable.

She looked at the screen.

An unknown number. Not French this time. Not international. A Washington DC area code.

She looked at Marco.

He had seen it.

His face did something she had read correctly after months of learning to read it. Not alarm. Not surprise.

The stillness of someone who had just understood that the timeline had changed.

"Don't answer it," he said.

She looked at the screen.

The call rang out.

Thirty seconds of silence.

Then a message appeared.

Not from the Washington DC number. From a different number entirely. A number she recognised immediately because she had been calling it for months and had saved it in her phone under a single initial.

R.

He knows you have the portfolio. Get out of the studio. Now.

Gia looked at the message.

Looked at Marco.

Looked at the portfolio on the corner of the worktable.

She picked it up.

They were already moving.