Disabled Mafia Boss Fell Into the Lake and No One Dared to Help — Until the New Secretary Jumped In

By noon, the rain had turned the ocean into a sheet of hammered pewter.

The great house at Newport did not leak, but it groaned. When the Atlantic gales came out of the east, the wind caught the copper flashing on the third-floor gables and made a sound like an organ pipe being tuned three houses away.

Emily sat in the small alcove off the pantry that had been the butler’s silver room in the nineties. Now it held an electric heater, two metal filing cabinets, and a telephone that did not ring through the switchboard; it had an old bell under the desk that gave a single, muffled ding when someone dialed the direct line from the garage.

The door opened without a latch click.

It was not Santino. It was Julian Vane.

He had changed out of his linen into a gray flannel suit with an ivory silk tie. His hair was dry now, parted precisely three inches from the left ear, smelling of almond water and French soap. He carried a leather folder under his arm, the kind they sold to law students at Harvard who wanted people to know they had five dollars to spend on morocco grain.

"Miss Taylor," he said.

Emily stood up. Her fingers went instinctively to the seam of her trousers—Silvio’s trousers, which she had pinned with three safety pins at the waist so they didn't slide down her hips.

"Mr. Vane."

"You have very quick reflexes," he said, leaning against the doorframe. He didn't look at her face; he looked at her shoes, which were the spare pair of rubber-soled nurses' oxfords she had found in the laundry hamper behind the scullery. "A girl from Cranston with those hands. My mother had a girl from Cranston once. She stole seven silver oyster forks and two pillowcases before we found them in her sister’s cellar."

"I don't eat oysters," Emily said.

Julian laughed. It was a soft, wet sound, like a spoon stirring cold gravy. "No. You look more like a cabbage girl. Boiled potatoes and salt pork on Fridays."

He took two steps into the small room. The space was so narrow his shoulder nearly brushed the edge of the metal desk. He laid the leather folder on her blotter, directly over her shorthand pad.

"This is the conveyance for the wharf at Tiverton," he said. "Santino hasn't signed it yet. He has some idea about keeping the old coal trestle for the fishing boats. But the fishing boats don't pay five percent on the mortgage, Miss Taylor. The container people do."

"Mr. Ferrara handles the contracts," Emily said, keeping her hands flat against the edges of the desk.

"Mr. Ferrara," Julian said, his voice dropping into that smooth, low register that men use when they want to explain something to an idiot, "is an invalid who nearly drowned in six feet of decorative water because his coat was too long. If he had stayed under another twenty seconds, this house would belong to an estate trust administered by my father and three lawyers from Boston."

He leaned down until his eyes were level with hers. His teeth were very white, even, and slightly pointed at the canines.

"You should have let the wool stay caught," he whispered. "It would have been much easier on your pension."

"I don't have a pension," Emily said.

"You have thirty dollars a week and a third-floor room where the rain comes through the sash," Julian said. "I know what Silvio pays you. I sign the checks for the petty cash on Mondays." He tapped the leather folder with one manicured finger. "Leave this on his blotter under the tea tray. Don't mention the dock in Fall River. Don't mention the wire on the flatbed. If he signs it before the four o'clock post, there is an envelope in the glove box of my Alfa Romeo that has three hundred dollars in fifties."

Emily looked at the folder. The morocco grain was shiny, like the surface of a new tire.

"And if I tell him you were here?"

Julian smiled again. His eyes didn't move from her throat.

"Santino Ferrara hasn't killed a man since nineteen seventy-one," Julian said softly. "He has two bad legs, six grand jury subpoenas, and a heart that skips every fourth beat when the salt gets in his lungs. I have four cousins in North Providence who don't even know what a grand jury is. They just know what happens when someone doesn't pay their card debts."

He turned and walked out, his shoes silent on the green hall runner.

Emily waited until the chime of the grandfather clock in the main hall had finished its four strokes for the half-hour.

She picked up the leather folder.

Inside were four sheets of vellum, thick and creamy, typed on an IBM Selectric with the large, round type that corporate lawyers preferred because it looked like a deed from the eighteenth century. The last page had two lines for signatures: Santino Ferrara, Managing Trustee, and Julian Vane, Secretary.

Beneath the signature line, in the small, four-point type that most people needed a magnifying glass to read, was a single paragraph:

The party of the first part hereby relinquishes all rights of maritime easement, docking privilege, and terminal oversight concerning Parcels 4 through 9 on the Sakonnet River, conveying said titles irrevocably to the Sakonnet Development Corporation.

Emily turned the page over.

Penciled in the margin of the back sheet, in a small, tight hand that had been rubbed out with an eraser until the paper was thin, were four letters and three numbers:

TRK-84-B