Chapter 6: Gerard
Gerard Delacroix was seventy-one years old and had not been frightened of anything in a very long time.
He was a large man, still broad through the shoulders, with white hair kept short and hands that had done physical work once and never forgot it.
He lived in a townhouse in the West Village that he had owned since 1987.
He had a housekeeper named Vera who had worked for him for twenty years and who, Tessa would later learn, had been paid very well to remember very little.
Tessa met him on a Tuesday morning, nine days after the night at Vesper.
She had not planned to be in the room.
Grace Obi had not invited her.
But Grace had called the night before to say that Gerard had agreed to a voluntary interview — his lawyer's strategy, an attempt to appear cooperative before the walls closed — and Damian had told Tessa quietly that she had the right to be there as a family member of the victim.
"He'll try to make you feel small," Damian said.
"He's been doing it for fifty years."
"He's been doing it to me for eighteen," Tessa said.
"Indirectly.
I can manage."
The interview room was not dramatic.
A table.
Four chairs.
A window with frosted glass.
Grace sat across from Gerard and his lawyer, a thin man named Aldrich who kept a legal pad in front of him and wrote almost nothing on it.
Tessa sat against the wall.
Gerard noticed her immediately.
His eyes moved to her once, assessed her, and moved back to Grace.
He did not ask who she was.
That told Tessa he already knew.
"Mr.
Delacroix," Grace began, "I want to ask you about a property on Fulton Street in Brooklyn.
Specifically, a building that experienced a fire in October 2006."
"I owned several properties in that period," Gerard said.
His voice was unhurried.
"You'll need to be more specific."
"The building that housed a restaurant called Rowe's House."
Gerard's expression did not change.
"I remember it."
"You purchased the property fourteen months after the fire."
"At fair market value.
From the estate."
"Moses Rowe had no estate," Grace said.
"He d*ed in the fire.
The property transferred through probate.
You purchased it from the city for significantly below assessed value." She set a document on the table.
"This is the purchase record."
Aldrich leaned over to look at it.
Gerard did not.
"My client was one of several bidders," Aldrich said.
"He was the only bidder," Grace said.
"The other two offers were withdrawn the week before the sale closed." She set another document beside the first.
"These are the withdrawal letters.
Both signed by representatives of companies that, at the time, shared an address with one of your holding entities, Mr.
Delacroix."
Aldrich's pen moved for the first time.
Gerard looked at the documents.
Then he looked at Tessa.
"Who is she?" he asked.
"Moses Rowe's granddaughter," Grace said.
Gerard looked at Tessa for a long moment.
His expression was not guilt.
It was something more complicated than that — the look of a man who has told himself a story for so long that he has stopped being able to see where the story ends and the truth begins.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he said.
Tessa's jaw tightened.
She said nothing.
"Mr.
Delacroix," Grace continued, "I want to ask you about Phillip Okafor."
The name landed.
Aldrich's hand went flat on the legal pad.
"I don't recall—"
"He worked for you from 2004 to 2008.
He drove for you on several occasions.
He has provided a detailed written statement regarding the evening of October 14th, 2006." Grace set a third document on the table.
"He describes driving you to Fulton Street at approximately 11 PM.
He describes waiting in the car.
He describes the fire beginning approximately forty minutes after you entered the building alone."
The room was very quiet.
"That's a fabrication," Aldrich said.
"Mr.
Okafor passed a polygraph examination administered by an independent examiner last Thursday," Grace said.
"We also have his phone records from that night, which place him in the Fulton Street area.
And we have your phone records, Mr.
Delacroix, which show a call to your insurance broker at 6:43 the following morning — before the fire had been reported in any public record."
Gerard's hands were on the table.
They did not move.
"I want to speak with my client privately," Aldrich said.
"Of course." Grace gathered nothing.
She left everything on the table.
As she stood, Tessa stood too.
Gerard looked at her again.
This time there was something different in it.
Not remorse.
But recognition.
The recognition of a man who understands that the thing he buried has finally come up.
"He was a good cook," Gerard said.
Tessa stopped.
"Your grandfather.
He was a very good cook." Gerard's voice was even.
Conversational.
As if they were discussing the weather.
"I offered him three times what the building was worth.
He said no.
I offered him five times.
He said the building wasn't the point." He tilted his head slightly.
"Some people don't understand that everything has a price."
Tessa looked at him for a long moment.
"He understood," she said.
"He just didn't agree with you about what the price was."
She walked out.
In the hallway, Grace was waiting.
She said nothing.
She handed Tessa a cup of coffee from a machine down the hall.
Tessa took it with both hands.
"Will it be enough?" Tessa asked.
"Okafor's testimony plus the phone records plus the insurance timing plus the evidence log alteration?" Grace nodded slowly.
"It'll be enough."
"How long?"
"He'll be formally charged by end of week.
His lawyer will push for a deal.
We won't give him one." Grace looked toward the frosted glass of the interview room.
"He's seventy-one.
His lawyer knows what a trial looks like for a seventy-one-year-old man charged with arson and homicide."
Tessa looked down at the coffee cup.
"What about Laurent?"
"Obstruction.
Evidence tampering.
He'll cooperate fully now — his lawyer called this morning." Grace paused.
"He'll face consequences.
Lighter than his father's.
But real ones."
Tessa nodded.
She thought about Moses.
Twelve tables.
Peeling green paint.
A man who fed a hungry child every night for three years without asking questions.
Some people don't understand that everything has a price.
Moses had understood perfectly.
He had simply decided that some things were not for sale.
Her phone buzzed.
A text from a number she now recognized.
*How did it go?*
She typed back: *It went.*
A pause.
Then: *Come to the kitchen at 3.
If you still want the job.*
Tessa put her phone in her pocket.
May you like
She finished the coffee.
Then she took the elevator down and walked out into the Tuesday morning, and for the first time in eighteen years the weight of not knowing sat down somewhere and stayed there.
