Chapter 6 - LUCA’S VOICE CAME BACK AFTER TWENTY-TWO YEARS
Luca sounded younger than Marcus expected.
That was the cruelest part.
His father had been dead so long that Marcus unconsciously imagined him old.
The tape returned him as a thirty-three-year-old man with a tired Chicago accent and too much breath in his voice.
“Tony, I know about Cicero.”
A chair scraped.
Tony answered:
“You know what Vincent wants you to know.”
“No. I have the books.”
“You have numbers.”
“I have names.”
Silence.
Then Luca said:
“I’m done.”
Tony laughed.
“You don’t get done.”
“My brother already is.”
That line made Vincent close his eyes.
Luca continued.
“Vincent’s closing routes. You keep opening them under his name.”
“What do you think happens if the old guys hear Torino went soft?”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
Then another sound.
A glass hitting a table.
Luca:
“If anything happens to me, the ledger goes outside.”
Tony:
“To who?”
Luca did not answer.
The tape ended less than a minute later.
No confession.
No murder order.
No perfect solution.
But enough to prove Tony had lied about one central fact.
Luca and Tony were fighting over unauthorized business shortly before Luca’s death.
Marcus stared at the speaker.
“That’s it?”
Mercer nodded.
“That’s what evidence usually sounds like. Incomplete.”
Marcus laughed once.
Years of certainty had just been replaced by ambiguity.
He hated it.
Vincent understood.
Truth is easier to demand before you learn how often it arrives missing pages.
Tony was questioned with counsel present and denied everything. He claimed Luca knew Vincent wanted him disciplined and manufactured accusations to protect himself.
Then investigators obtained Tony’s current financial records.
That was where the case changed.
For nearly fifteen years, he had been receiving annual payments through a consulting company registered to a Nevada corporation.
The ultimate owner was difficult to identify.
But the amounts began the year after Luca’s murder.
And one payment increased dramatically three months before Tony started telling Marcus that Vincent had killed his father.
Someone had been paying Tony for a very long time.
May you like
Not merely to steal from Vincent.
To stay close.
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