Chapter 4 - The View from the Fourth Floor
The fourth floor of the Moretti mansion smelled of cedar shavings and dry lavender. Large dust sheets covered the heavy mahogany furniture, and tall windows framed the gray November skyline of Upper Manhattan.
Elena sat on the edge of a high four-poster bed, her hands knotted tightly in her lap. Lily sat on the hardwood floor near the window, where the pale autumn light fell across three blank sheets of drawing paper.
The door opened without a knock. Dante entered, carrying a glass of warm milk on a small silver tray, accompanied by a plate of sliced apples and cheddar cheese.
Elena rose instantly, smoothing her gray uniform. “Señor Moretti, I can clean the sheets. I can dust the dressers. Please let me do something.”
“Sit down, Elena,” Dante said. He placed the tray on a low table near Lily.
Lily did not look up immediately. She was drawing a map of the fourth-floor corridor. She had already marked the positions of the two guards stationed outside the door, depicting them as tall black rectangles with round hats.
“Giuseppe Falcone’s grandson has been found,” Dante said, looking at Elena. “The boy is unharmed. He is currently with his mother at an airfield in New Jersey.”
Elena let out a ragged breath, pressing her knuckles to her lips. “Jorge used to say... he used to say that men like Victor were wolves, but you were the shepherd. He said the shepherd still kills sheep when he is hungry.”
“Jorge was half right,” Dante remarked, pulling up an upholstered armchair and sitting down across from them. “I am not a shepherd. But I don't kill the sheep that warn me about the wolves.”
He looked down at Lily. The girl had taken a slice of apple. She chewed methodically, her large gray eyes studying Dante’s hands.
“Why did you look into the tailor’s pocket, Lily?” Dante asked.
Lily swallowed the apple. “It wasn't in his pocket. It was on the table under the cloth. He dropped a button, and when I went under the counter to find it, I saw his legs shaking. Big people only shake when they are going to do something bad.”
“Who else shakes?” Dante asked.
“The man with the gray hair who visited you this morning,” Lily said casually. She picked up a blue crayon. “When he stood by the door, his shoe tapped four times. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Like the clock in the kitchen.”
“Did he tap his shoe when he was talking to me?”
“No,” Lily said, drawing a series of small, rhythmic dots across the bottom of her page. “Only when he looked at the mirror. He looked at you in the glass, and his shoe tapped. Then he smiled. But his eyes didn't get smaller. When people really smile, their eyes get small.”
Dante felt a cold, familiar stillness settle in his chest. Victor Romano had stood in the entrance hall of the Moretti residence for a decade, maintaining the posture of a loyal uncle. Yet a child who had not yet learned to read cursive had dismantled his deception in forty-eight hours.
“Draw me the car outside,” Dante said.
Lily stopped drawing dots. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking. Then she selected a black crayon and a dark brown one.
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“The black van near the corner with the broken light,” she said, her hand already moving with swift, terrifying accuracy across the clean paper. “The one that doesn't move when the street sweeper comes.”
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