The Don's Obsession

A federal courthouse at rush hour is the safest building in the city and the worst possible place to be wearing a wire, because everyone in it is already looking for somebody. Rain on the marble steps, a wet hiss carrying diesel and damp wool. Val Moretti stands just inside the revolving doors with one hand at her collarbone, thumb finding the pack clipped inside her jacket. The earpiece sits cool and invisible in her right ear. Dead air. She counts to ten, listening for any crackle from the team she was told would be here, and hears nothing but her own pulse. A bailiff's voice echoes off the limestone, calling a docket number she does not need. She watches the elevator bank instead, tracking bodies through the lobby. Three men in off-the-rack suits by the west doors, briefcases in hand, not talking, carrying the bored expense of defence attorneys who bill by the hour and never look at a clock. Somewhere in the building, or still circling the block because they can, is the crew belonging to Dante Vitale. What follows: a ring that holds the shame, a feast that bleeds, flowers he should not have sent, an oath she cannot take twice, a locked door that opens, blood that will not wash out, lies fed to their own people, and a second ring that never fits anybody. Val has been building this case for two years and she has never once been asked whether she wanted it. She was assigned. She accepted. The distinction stopped mattering somewhere around the eighth month, and now she is standing in a lobby with a dead earpiece and nobody behind her. *He was your brother.* *He was a traitor.* *He was your brother.* A closet that smelled of mothballs. A child with her fingers over her own mouth. A wheelchair on a hardwood floor. Dead air in an earpiece. A bag of soup left unopened on a counter. A letter in a pocket that stays folded. One bed. Two names. No good version of this.