Chapter 6: The Woman Who Knew Everything
It took four days to find Lena Vasquez.
She was in Milwaukee, in a rented room above a dry-cleaning shop on a quiet residential street, and she opened the door when Roman knocked as though she had been expecting him since the moment she left Chicago.
She was thirty-two, dark-haired, and composed in the particular way of someone who has made a decision and is no longer afraid of its consequences.
"I wondered how long it would take," she said.
"Four days," Roman said.
"Invite me in."
She stepped back.
He entered.
Marco waited in the hallway.
The room was small — a bed, a table, two chairs, a window overlooking a street where nothing was happening.
A laptop on the table.
A coffee cup.
A manila envelope beside it that Lena made no move to conceal.
Roman sat down across from her without being invited to.
"You left the photograph," he said.
"Yes."
"You were in my penthouse."
"Celeste gave me a key two years ago.
In case something happened to her and someone needed to get her things." Lena sat down.
"I used it once, after she left, to get a few items she asked me to bring her.
I saw the photograph was still on your desk — the one Marco had found.
I left the note on the back."
"Why?"
Lena looked at him steadily.
"Because I wanted you looking inward.
At yourself.
At what you'd built and what you'd broken." She paused.
"I didn't know about the ledgers then.
I didn't know someone else was using your distraction for something worse."
"But you know now."
She glanced at the envelope on the table.
"Dmitri Hale contacted me ten days ago," she said.
"He thought I was still close to Celeste.
He thought I might be willing to pass something to her — a message, he said.
Something she needed to know for her own safety."
"What message?"
"That the person who has been working against you isn't after you specifically." Lena's voice remained level.
"You're the path.
The federal judge — the one connected to your South Loop transaction — he's the target.
Someone wants him removed from the bench before a ruling he's set to make in sixty days.
Your ledgers are the instrument.
You're the leverage."
Roman was very still.
"Who?" he said.
"Hale didn't know the name.
He was hired through two intermediaries.
But he gave me something." She reached across and pushed the manila envelope toward him.
"He copied one page from each ledger before he passed them on.
He kept the copies as insurance.
He gave them to me because he was frightened and he thought Celeste might protect him."
Roman opened the envelope.
Three pages.
His own handwriting on two of them.
A typed contract on the third, with a signature at the bottom he did not immediately recognize.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he did recognize it.
The signature belonged to a man named Arthur Greer.
A city planning commissioner who had retired four years ago.
A man Roman had met exactly twice, both times in rooms full of other people, both times briefly.
A man who, Roman now recalled, had a son.
A son who was currently a federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Illinois.
Roman set the pages down.
"The son," he said.
"The prosecutor.
He's building a case using his own father's signature as the entry point."
"And your ledgers as the proof," Lena said.
"He doesn't care about you.
He wants the judge recused or removed before the ruling.
Your prosecution is the mechanism."
"What ruling?"
"I don't know.
Hale didn't know either."
Roman looked at her.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Lena was quiet for a moment.
"Because Celeste loves you," she said.
"She left you, and she was right to leave you, and I helped her do it and I would do it again.
But she doesn't want you in a federal prison.
She doesn't want your daughter to grow up visiting her father through glass." Her voice didn't waver.
"She asked me, before she left, to watch out for something like this.
She said the people around you would eventually use your blind spots against you.
She said you'd never see it coming because you'd be looking in the wrong direction."
Roman looked at the table.
"She told you that."
"Six months ago.
When she was still hoping you'd change." Lena folded her hands.
"She was protecting you even then.
While you were busy not deserving it."
The room was very quiet.
Roman picked up the three pages and put them back in the envelope.
"I need to know the name of the second intermediary," he said.
"The one between Greer's son and Hale."
"I know it," Lena said.
"But I want something first."
Roman looked at her.
"I want your word," she said, "that you will not use anything I give you to find Celeste.
Not her location.
Not her new name.
Not anything."
"She used a new name?"
"Your word, Roman."
He looked at the envelope in his hands.
At the three pages that could end his freedom.
At the window behind Lena where the ordinary street continued its ordinary business, entirely indifferent to the conversation happening above it.
"You have it," he said.
May you like
Lena studied him for a moment.
Then she told him the name.
