Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED THE BASEMENT
“Congratulations.”
Elena said it without smiling.
Matteo looked at the reserved card between them, then at the rain crawling down the glass wall behind the table. At 6:58 in the morning, the café was not yet crowded. The espresso machines hissed behind Elena. Somewhere in the lobby, the night security team was handing the building over to the day shift.
“You always this friendly before sunrise?” he asked.
“Only with landlords.”
“I’m not your landlord.”
“You own the building.”
“I own the company that owns the company that owns the building.”
Elena lifted an eyebrow. “That sounds worse.”
For the first time in 2 days, Matteo almost laughed.
Then the elevator doors opened.
An elderly Black man stepped into the lobby carrying a plastic grocery bag and wearing a brown coat polished shiny at the elbows. He moved carefully but not weakly. His left foot dragged half an inch behind his right.
Elena immediately reached for 2 coffee cups.
Matteo noticed.
“You know his order.”
“I know most of them.”
The man entered the café and stopped when he saw Matteo.
His expression changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The kind that came with memory.
“Elena,” he said.
“Morning, Mr. Price.”
Harold Price.
Matteo remembered the name from the footage. Retired fleet mechanic. Thirty-one years with Bellini Logistics. He had started when Matteo’s father, Salvatore Bellini, still worked from a warehouse office with a broken heater and 2 telephones.
Harold looked Matteo over.
“You got taller.”
Matteo stared at him.
Elena pressed her lips together.
Harold put the grocery bag on the table.
“I changed the oil in your first car.”
“I was 16.”
“You drove like you were angry at the road.”
“I was 16.”
“That’s what your father said too.”
Something cold moved through Matteo’s chest.
People rarely mentioned Salvatore directly.
Not in Bellini Tower.
Not anymore.
His father had been dead for 14 years.
Officially, a heart attack.
Unofficially, half of Chicago had believed otherwise for at least a decade.
Matteo had stopped caring what people believed.
“Who are you meeting?” he asked.
Harold glanced at Elena.
She poured coffee.
“Apparently,” Harold said, “you.”
Matteo’s eyes narrowed.
Elena froze with the pot tilted.
“No,” she said.
Harold ignored her.
He reached into the grocery bag and removed a dented metal thermos, a folded newspaper, and a yellow envelope held together with a rubber band.
Matteo looked at the envelope.
His name was written on the front.
MATTEO BELLINI.
The handwriting was not Harold’s.
Matteo knew because he had seen it every day of his childhood.
His father’s handwriting leaned slightly right, hard pressure on the downstrokes, capital B drawn with a sharp lower loop.
The lobby disappeared around him.
“You have 10 seconds,” Matteo said quietly.
Harold sighed.
“That’s exactly the way your father used to talk when he was afraid.”
Carlo emerged from behind a marble column.
Elena’s head snapped toward him.
“You said without security.”
“I said without visible security,” Matteo replied.
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Harold looked at Carlo.
“You Russo’s boy?”
Carlo frowned. “Gianni Russo was my father.”
“I know.”
“You knew him?”
“I knew everybody who worked nights on Archer Avenue before you boys moved everything into glass towers.”
Harold tapped the envelope.
“Sit down.”
Matteo did not move.
People asked Matteo Bellini to sit down exactly once in their lives.
Usually because they never got another opportunity.
But Harold Price had known his father.
Worse, he had something Salvatore had written.
Matteo pulled out the chair opposite him.
Elena stared.
“I thought the chair was reserved,” Matteo said.
“It is.”
“For me?”
“No.”
Harold smiled. “For whoever needs it.”
The answer irritated Matteo for reasons he could not explain.
He sat.
Harold slid the envelope across the table.
Matteo did not touch it.
“When?” he asked.
“Your father gave it to me 2 days before he died.”
Carlo stepped forward.
Matteo lifted 1 finger.
Carlo stopped.
“Why didn’t you give it to me 14 years ago?”
“Because he told me not to.”
“You expect me to accept that?”
“No. But you’re going to hear it anyway.”
Harold wrapped both hands around his coffee.
“Salvatore was scared near the end. Not the kind of scared men like him admit to. He started checking mirrors. Changed cars. Quit using his office phone. Asked me to inspect brakes on vehicles that didn’t need inspecting.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“He died of a heart attack.”
Harold looked at him with tired eyes.
“Did he?”
Silence.
Elena put the coffee pot down.
The bell above the café door jingled as the first employee entered. She saw Matteo and immediately backed out.
Harold continued.
“Your father gave me that envelope and said if anything happened to him, I was to keep it until 3 things were true.”
“What things?”
“First, you had to be running the company.”
“I’ve been running it for 12 years.”
“I know.”
“Second?”
“You had to become powerful enough that nobody could remove you in 1 night.”
Matteo’s eyes sharpened.
“And you decided that yesterday?”
“No. That happened years ago.”
“Then what was the third condition?”
Harold looked at Elena.
Matteo followed his gaze.
Elena’s face lost color.
“No,” she said.
Harold ignored her again.
“The third condition was that somebody had to start using the table.”
Matteo stared at him.
Elena stepped back.
“Harold.”
“You knew?” Matteo asked her.
“No.”
“Elena.”
“I said no.”
Her voice changed.
For the first time since Matteo had met her, it carried fear.
Not fear of him.
Fear of Harold’s words.
Harold reached inside his coat and removed a small brass key.
He set it beside the envelope.
“Your father called it the morning table.”
Matteo said nothing.
“He used to keep 1 in the old Archer warehouse cafeteria. Before there were committees and human-resources portals and electronic scheduling systems, workers with problems could sit there before shift. Sometimes Salvatore came. Sometimes foremen. Sometimes old-timers who knew more than management did.”
Matteo remembered none of this.
He had been a child then.
Harold looked around Bellini Tower.
“When the company got bigger, the table disappeared.”
“And Elena brought it back.”
“By accident,” Elena said quickly.
Harold looked at her. “Maybe.”
She folded her arms.
“It started because Mr. Grady helped a dishwasher’s son with a union apprenticeship form. Then Susan helped one of the cashiers apply for an office job. People kept asking. That’s all.”
Harold smiled sadly.
“That’s how it started the first time too.”
Matteo finally picked up the envelope.
The paper was old.
He broke the rubber band.
Inside was a single sheet.
His father’s handwriting covered both sides.
Matteo read the first line.
If you are reading this, I was wrong about how much time I had.
His hand tightened.
Elena looked away.
Carlo remained absolutely still.
Matteo continued.
There are 7 men inside the company I trusted with pieces of the business. One of them is stealing from me. One may be planning to kill me. I do not know which.
Below that was a list of initials.
G.R.
D.V.
A.C.
P.M.
R.L.
F.N.
W.G.
Matteo knew 6 names immediately.
Gianni Russo.
Carlo’s father.
Dominic Vale.
Still alive. Still on Bellini Companies’ board.
Anthony Caruso.
Dead.
Peter Mancini.
Missing for 11 years.
Robert Leone.
Retired to Florida.
Frank Neri.
Current chief financial officer.
Walter Grady.
The old man who had been sitting in the reserved chair yesterday.
Matteo read the next paragraph.
The money is not the danger. The danger is what they built beneath the legitimate books. If you inherit the company before I can stop it, do not trust the board. Do not trust the auditors. Do not trust anyone who tells you the old warehouse records were destroyed in the Archer fire.
They were not.
The records are below us.
Matteo looked up.
“Below us where?”
Harold placed 1 finger on the brass key.
“Basement 4.”
Carlo frowned.
“There is no Basement 4.”
Harold looked at him.
“That’s why it worked.”
Bellini Tower had 3 underground levels.
Parking.
Mechanical systems.
Document storage.
Matteo had personally reviewed the architectural plans when the building underwent a $40 million security renovation 4 years earlier.
There was no Basement 4.
Harold leaned back.
“The tower wasn’t built from scratch. Part of the foundation came from the old Mercantile Exchange building. Under the east service core there’s a sealed level that disappeared from the plans during construction.”
“Who sealed it?” Matteo asked.
“Your father.”
Elena stared at Harold.
“You knew this the whole time?”
“I knew a door existed.”
“And you waited until now?”
“I waited until the table came back.”
Matteo folded the letter.
“Why would that matter to my father?”
Harold’s face changed.
“Because he said if the table ever came back without a Bellini ordering it, then the company still had people inside it worth saving.”
The words landed harder than Matteo expected.
He stood.
“Carlo.”
“Yes.”
“Lock down the east service core. Quietly.”
Elena stepped forward.
“No.”
Matteo turned.
She pointed at the letter.
“You just found out your father may have hidden something under this building because he thought someone close to him wanted him dead, and your first move is to send armed men downstairs?”
“That is generally what armed men are for.”
“And if whoever killed him is still in the building?”
Carlo’s expression hardened.
Matteo studied her.
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you stop doing exactly what people expect Matteo Bellini to do.”
He almost objected.
Then he remembered the altered security routes that had been discovered 3 months earlier.
The unexplained camera failure on Parking Level 2.
The anonymous tip that had prevented a federal raid on one of his warehouses.
Somebody inside his organization had known things they should not have known.
“Harold,” Matteo said, “who else knows about Basement 4?”
Harold’s eyes moved toward the lobby.
“Back then? Maybe 5 people.”
“How many are alive?”
“3.”
“Names.”
“Walter Grady. Me.”
“And the third?”
Harold opened his mouth.
The café lights went out.
Not dimmed.
Out.
The lobby went black with them.
Someone screamed near the elevators.
Matteo moved before the emergency lights activated.
He grabbed Elena by the arm and pulled her behind the stone service counter.
Carlo drew a weapon.
A sharp crack sounded from the lobby.
Then another.
Gunfire.
Glass exploded somewhere near the entrance.
Employees dropped to the floor.
Red emergency strips flickered on along the baseboards.
“Elena?” Matteo said.
“I’m here.”
“Stay down.”
“Harold.”
Matteo looked toward the table.
The chair was empty.
Harold Price was gone.
So was the brass key.
Carlo crouched beside the counter.
“Shots came from outside. Security is sealing the building.”
Matteo’s phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A single message.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE TABLE EMPTY.
Attached was a photograph.
Harold Price stood inside what looked like an old concrete corridor, his hands raised.
Behind him was a steel door with faded white paint.
On the door, barely visible beneath rust, was a number.
B4.
And beside Harold stood a man Matteo recognized immediately.
Dominic Vale.
One of the 7 initials in Salvatore Bellini’s letter.
A man who had served on the Bellini board for 22 years.
A man who was supposed to be in London.
Elena leaned over Matteo’s shoulder.
Her breath stopped.
Not when she saw Dominic.
When she saw the wall behind him.
“What?” Matteo demanded.
Elena pointed to a faded symbol painted beside the B4 door.
A small blue circle divided by 3 white lines.
“I’ve seen that before.”
“Where?”
She looked at him.
“In my mother’s things.”
Matteo went still.
“You never told me your mother worked for Bellini.”
“She didn’t.”
May you like
Elena swallowed.
“At least, that’s what she always told me.”
