Chapter 7 - THE ACCOUNT OF DEAD MEN
The dead man's name on an airline reservation was more useful than a hundred anonymous threats. An airline could verify ticket issuance and payment records. An investigator could compare the traveler's identification to a real person. None of us needed to invent a resurrection to know something was wrong.
The ticket had been purchased through a travel desk used by Bellini Advisory. The office's counsel produced a statement claiming that a junior clerk had entered an old customer profile by mistake. The actual passenger, according to their records, was a corporate contractor named Warren Dace. The clerk had since resigned.
Naomi asked for the original booking history and requested that investigators interview the clerk independently. Richard's lawyers agreed to preserve the data but resisted immediate disclosure on confidentiality grounds. Naomi said the dispute might require a judge. I wanted to make a phone call to someone who could end it in ten seconds. I made coffee instead.
I had been taught that power was a shortcut around obstacles. I was learning that sometimes an obstacle was a safeguard against a more dangerous man—me.
The search of my father's old trust records produced a pattern. After my mother died, Kestrel Community Services billed for dozens of medical transfers involving vulnerable patients. Some recipients could be verified. Others had incomplete files. Several names belonged to people who had died before the bills were issued. The total amount was substantial enough to harm families, though the exact loss remained uncertain while auditors checked duplicate entries and recovered payments.
Among the names was Peter Sorrell. Payments had been listed under his identity years after his death. Somebody had reused old records, perhaps to conceal which person received the funds.
Judith Park called the arrangement a ghost ledger. She disliked the phrase, she said, because it made the dead sound complicit. The living had chosen to reuse their names.
I invited former employees of my shipping companies to speak with an independent ombudsman. Naomi insisted the invitation be made in writing and make clear that no job, pension, or compensation depended on cooperating. The first responses were hesitant. Some workers had suffered injuries and then been asked to sign settlement forms they did not understand. Others had received small checks from a medical support program and believed further benefits were unavailable.
One woman, Rosa Medina, sent a letter describing her husband's injury at a warehouse loading dock. He had lost the use of two fingers. Their settlement file claimed they had accepted a cash payment much larger than what they received. She kept every bank statement. Naomi referred her to independent counsel and the financial auditors.
I read Rosa's letter three times. My mother had written about shipping records, stolen money, and the need not to defend every terrible thing a family did. I had treated that warning as a mystery about her death. For workers like Rosa, it was not a mystery. It was rent, treatment, and the ordinary cost of being ignored.
At the next meeting I authorized independent management of the Moretti family medical fund, with auditors empowered to review past claims. I recused myself from decisions involving disputes over my own companies. The arrangement did not erase the criminal business I still controlled. Nor did it earn me absolution. It did give harmed families a channel that did not lead through my desk.
That afternoon Elena Reed came to Chicago at her own expense, accompanied by Patrick. She requested a meeting at Naomi's office, with no security presence inside. When she arrived she carried the wooden horse wrapped in a blue scarf. I brought the photograph of my mother and the surviving letters.
Elena placed the horse on the table. “I don't know why she protected me,” she said. “I don't know whether she knew my mother. I want to know if the person I was before the accident is somebody I can find.”
Judith showed us a copy of the accident registry. The family car had been registered to a woman named Miriam Rossi, who had been traveling with her daughter, Ella. Miriam was the niece of a dockworker who had reported safety violations at a Moretti warehouse. The registry identified Miriam as deceased. It did not list a surviving child, because the hospital placement had used a substitute name.
“K.M.R.,” Elena whispered, touching the horse. “Katarina, Miriam, Rossi?”
“Possibly a gift from Katarina Moretti to Miriam Rossi,” Judith said. “We still don't know who carved the initials.”
Elena accepted that. Her shoulders dropped a little, as if she was relieved to stop being forced into a dramatic revelation.
Naomi explained that the adoption file contained an identifying statement from Miriam's sister, who had disappeared from official records after the accident. The sister's name was Sofia Rossi. Records suggested she might now live in Ontario. Elena could choose whether to contact her. She chose to write a letter before attempting a visit.
It was the first decision about her own past she had been invited to make without someone else's urgency attached.
While we spoke, Daniel received a message from the independent computer examiner. The conservatory camera had recorded more than the photograph of me. It captured a person entering K Room three nights before Lily discovered the moisture. The video showed a dark jacket, gloved hands, and an ordinary canvas backpack. The face was obscured. The person removed folders from the cabinet and placed a slim device under the portrait mechanism.
“Can you identify them?” I asked.
“Not from this image,” Daniel said. “There's a transit badge on the bag. It may help.”
The badge resembled the visitor passes used at my old Canal Street office. Those had been destroyed when the building was demolished. Except, as Naomi reminded us, old passes circulate, are copied, and appear in drawers long after a company closes. The object indicated familiarity, not identity.
Later the examiner recovered a fragment of audio. A man instructed the intruder to leave the blue folder and take the rest. His voice was distorted by the ventilation system. For one second, another voice interrupted: “Bellini says the second room is already empty.”
It was the first direct recorded reference to Richard in connection with the staged discovery, but it remained hearsay captured in an unknown voice. Naomi preserved it and referred it to investigators. She would not allow me to play it for Richard at his next luncheon.
Richard called me himself that evening. His tone was affectionate.
“Gabriel, I understand you've been speaking with people about your mother. There are private facts about that time which might upset you.”
“I'm already upset.”
“I would hate for a stranger to use your grief. Come to my office tomorrow. We'll speak privately.”
“I'll come with counsel.”
A pause.
“Do you no longer trust me?”
“I no longer think trust means giving someone the keys to every room.”
His silence lasted long enough for me to remember myself as a boy waiting for his approval.
“Your father would be disappointed,” Richard said at last.
“Perhaps.”
“Think carefully about what you're tearing down.”
“I am.”
He ended the call.
The next morning, federal investigators served preservation demands on Bellini Advisory and several related contractors. Richard was not arrested. His office announced that it was cooperating. The old financial records began moving toward a proper investigation with procedures that did not rely on my temper.
At noon an envelope arrived for Olivia at Felicia Grant's office. It contained a copy of a letter written by my mother but never sent. Its final paragraph had been removed, and in its place somebody had typed an accusation: Gabriel Moretti knew everything.
Olivia asked me what I intended to do. The temptation to insist it was a lie rose immediately. I had been thirteen when my mother died. I had not known about Kestrel then. But I had inherited my father's businesses and ignored signs of wrongdoing later. I could not use childhood ignorance to excuse the adult I became.
“Investigate the letter,” I told her. “And investigate me.”
Olivia regarded me for a long moment. Then she said, “That might be the first answer my mother would have respected.”
At five, Naomi returned with a certified copy of the old medical trust's board minutes. A meeting held ten days after my mother's funeral authorized the destruction of certain records said to contain duplicate patient data. The chair had been Vittorio Moretti. The legal adviser had been Richard Bellini. The third signatory was a physician whose name I recognized immediately.
Dr. Julian Mercer had issued my mother's death certificate.
May you like
The auditor's report also named a smaller harm I almost overlooked. Every time a family asked why a settlement check was late, a clerk had been instructed to say that a signature was missing. Some people made three journeys to the same office before they were allowed to see a form. Some paid for transportation they could not afford. Those costs never appeared in the fund's balance sheet. They were borne privately by the people least able to absorb them. Naomi asked that the claims process include a way for families to describe those losses, even when exact receipts no longer existed. I agreed to fund the review but not to control who qualified. It was a modest concession by the standards of my wealth and a radical one by the standards of my upbringing.
And he was still alive.
