Chapter 53 - The Other Brother
The silence in the room was broken only by the rhythmic rattle of the windowpane against the gale off the lake.
"Giancarlo is dead," Gabriel said, though for the first time, his certainty wavered. "We buried an empty casket at Queen of Heaven Cemetery when I was twelve. Father said he was lost during the November gale on the Edmund Fitzgerald run."
"Your father buried an empty casket because federal racketeering indictments were unsealed that same Tuesday," Sofia said, leaning forward. "Giancarlo was Hector’s older brother. The smarter one. The one who understood that running contraband across an international freshwater border is amateur work compared to running industrial waste under government remediation subsidies."
Leo let out a strangled cough. "The superfund contracts. The Calumet riverbed dredging project."
"Precisely," Sofia said, nodding toward the port manager. "For twenty years, the federal government has paid Vance Marine sixty million dollars annually to remove contaminated sediment from the industrial canals and transport it to licensed containment facilities in upper Michigan."
I looked down at David’s notes, my mind racing through the calculations he had jotted in the margins. "The displacement excess... David realized the barges weren't carrying sediment out. They were bringing something else in."
"Not sediment," Sofia said. "Giancarlo figured out that the dredging permits gave Vance Marine vessels absolute immunity from commercial coast guard boardings within the internal waterways. Anything labeled hazardous dredge material is bypassed by standard customs inspection. The seals are federal. To break them requires an EPA court order."
"What was in Hold 3-B?" Gabriel demanded, taking a step toward the table.
"David didn't live long enough to crack the cylinders," Sofia said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "He only saw the shipping manifest from the point of origin: the Sault Ste. Marie locks. But Giancarlo saw David copying the log. Giancarlo didn't consult Hector. He didn't call a council. He had two yard mechanics corner David by the drydock crane."
"Marco and the Greek," I said, the names tasting like bile. "Hector’s muscle."
"They weren't Hector’s muscle," Sofia corrected me, her dark eyes locking onto mine with terrifying clarity. "They were Giancarlo’s men on Hector’s payroll. Hector thought he ruled the empire from his terrace. In reality, he was an old man sitting on a powder keg his brother had packed thirty years ago."
The realization settled over me with crushing weight. All my rage, all my quiet infiltration of the Lake Shore Drive mansion, every translation I had offered across Hector’s mahogany dinner table—I had been staring at the figurehead while the real killer operated from the shadows of the drydocks.
"Where is he now?" Gabriel asked, his hand dropping unconsciously to the holster hidden inside his coat.
"Giancarlo is at the main terminal," Sofia said, checking a gold wristlet watch that had remained hidden beneath her sleeve. "He believes Hector’s collapse leaves the field open. At nine o'clock, the regional syndicate representatives arrive to sign the new operating compact. Giancarlo intends to present himself as the sole surviving managing partner of Vance Marine."
"He doesn't have the grandfather licenses," Leo muttered.
"He doesn't need them if Gabriel is dead and I am committed to an institution for the infirm," Sofia replied coldly. "He has already filed an emergency petition with the probate court, citing my supposed lifelong muteness and cognitive decline."
A grim smile touched Gabriel’s lips, the first genuine emotion I had seen on his face since the tunnel. "He thinks you can't speak."
"He thinks I am an illiterate widow who spent fifty years counting rosary beads," Sofia said, rising slowly from the chair, leaning on her cane with regal poise. "Maya. You will drive us to the administrative building. You are still my interpreter."
I closed David’s notebook and slipped it into the inner pocket of my coat, right next to my brother’s silver watch. "And what am I translating today, Signora?"
May you like
Sofia looked toward the gray expanse of Lake Michigan, where the towering silhouette of an ore freighter was cutting through the morning squall.
"You are translating his surrender," she said.
