Chapter 2 - My Father Was Not the Man I Thought
I did not answer Lorenzo’s question.
That may have been the smartest thing I did all week.
“I think you have the wrong number.”
He laughed softly.
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you want?”
“Conversation.”
“About?”
“Daniel.”
Hearing my father’s first name in a stranger’s mouth made me angry.
“You don’t get to call him that.”
A pause.
Interesting.
“Protective.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Then say what you want.”
“I want to make sure Arthur hasn’t frightened you.”
I almost laughed.
Arthur had bled on my floor, confessed to killing a man, and brought me a key connected to my dead father.
Frightened was fair.
Still:
“This is between me and Mr. Costello.”
“Which one?”
I hated the joke.
“Goodbye.”
“Norah.”
I stopped.
“If Arthur tells you your father was innocent, he’s lying.”
The line went dead.
I sat in my car for five minutes.
Then called Arthur.
His private number had appeared in my phone only once—sent that morning with one message:
IF ANYONE CONTACTS YOU, CALL.
He answered on the first ring.
“Norah.”
“Your brother called.”
Silence.
Then:
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.”
“Where are you?”
I looked around.
“No.”
“What?”
“You don’t need my location.”
“He found your number.”
“He could find my location too.”
“Norah.”
“No.”
I heard him breathe.
Then his voice changed.
“Are you somewhere public?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there.”
“That is an order.”
“A request.”
Better.
“What did Lorenzo say?”
I repeated it.
Arthur went quiet at:
If Arthur tells you your father was innocent, he’s lying.
“Do you know what he means?”
“No.”
“I’m getting tired of that answer.”
“So am I.”
He asked if I would meet him at a café in Oak Park.
Public.
No estate.
No car.
I agreed because I chose to.
Thirty minutes later, Arthur arrived alone.
Or looked alone.
I spotted two men at separate tables who never touched their coffee.
“You brought security.”
“Yes.”
“You said alone.”
“I am alone at this table.”
I stared.
“Technical honesty is still annoying.”
“Fair.”
He looked better.
Clean shirt.
Bandage under sleeve.
Eyes clear.
No alcohol.
No blood.
More dangerous somehow because this was the version everyone knew.
I put the key on the table between us.
“Daniel Hayes was born Daniel Costa.”
Arthur’s face changed.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
“Costa.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back.
“I know that name.”
My stomach tightened.
“From where?”
“Costello records.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Your family keeps records on everybody?”
“People connected to business.”
“What business?”
He looked at me.
“I’m trying not to use euphemisms with you.”
“Good.”
“Organized crime.”
A woman at the next table stirred tea.
Nobody reacted.
Chicago.
Arthur continued.
“My grandfather had three crews on the West Side in the eighties. One was led by a man named Salvatore Costa.”
I stopped breathing.
“Related?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Daniel Costa appears in old books as a driver and electrician.”
My father.
Commercial electrician.
That part true.
“Driver for who?”
“Vincent Moretti.”
The old friend Arthur killed.
I gripped the table.
“How old was Dad?”
“Early twenties.”
Before me.
Before Mom.
Before Hayes.
“What did he do?”
Arthur looked carefully at me.
“I don’t know everything.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
Daniel Costa worked legitimate electrical jobs during the day.
At night, he installed hidden wiring.
Alarm bypasses.
Warehouse circuits.
Phone taps.
Nothing glamorous.
Everything useful.
He helped Vincent move through buildings without being seen.
I thought of Dad fixing outlets.
Teaching me which breaker controlled the kitchen.
Ordinary skills.
Different uses.
“Was he violent?”
“I have no record of him killing anyone.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“No evidence of violence.”
Not innocence.
Facts.
“What happened?”
“In 1994, something went wrong at a warehouse on Archer Avenue.”
I was born two years later.
“Police?”
“No.”
Of course.
“Fire?”
Arthur nodded.
“Three men died.”
My stomach turned.
“Dad?”
“Survived.”
“Vincent?”
“Survived.”
“Your family?”
“One of the dead was my uncle.”
Silence.
There it was.
My father and Arthur’s family linked by bodies.
“What caused the fire?”
“Officially electrical.”
I laughed without humor.
“My father was the electrician.”
“Yes.”
“Did he cause it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lorenzo says he wasn’t innocent.”
“I heard.”
Arthur looked at the key.
“After the fire, Daniel Costa disappeared. Six months later, Daniel Hayes got an electrician license in Indiana. Two years later he came back to Illinois.”
“Why didn’t your family find him?”
“My grandfather did.”
I went cold.
“What?”
Arthur’s father? Grandfather.
“He let him go.”
“Why?”
“No record.”
I stared.
“You have records but not that.”
“My grandfather did not write down mercy.”
That sentence stayed.
I asked:
“Was Vincent there?”
“Yes.”
“Could Vincent have helped Dad leave?”
“Likely.”
Then why carry my father’s key twenty-nine years later?
Arthur did not know.
We went to the county property-record office? Not needed. Instead, key search.
I showed him a photograph Beth texted of the green military box from an old family picture.
Arthur recognized the marking.
“That’s a utility lockbox.”
“So?”
“Old Chicago Transit storage contractors used them.”
My father had worked on transit electrical contracts in the nineties.
One company name appeared in his employment history:
Hawthorne Utility Services.
Arthur knew it too.
A shell company once controlled by Vincent.
Of course.
We searched public corporate records through my phone.
Hawthorne dissolved twenty years ago.
Its last known address was a warehouse near Cicero.
Now converted to self-storage.
My pulse jumped.
“Storage.”
Arthur looked at the key.
“Maybe.”
I said:
“We go.”
“No.”
I stared.
“Excuse me?”
“You do not walk into a location tied to Vincent after Lorenzo contacted you.”
“You asked me to decide.”
“Yes.”
“So I decide.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“You decide about yourself. I decide whether I help you do something reckless.”
“That is not how consent works.”
He almost closed his eyes.
“Norah.”
“Do not use my name like a warning.”
We stared.
One of his security men shifted.
Arthur noticed.
Lifted one finger.
The man stayed seated.
Then Arthur said:
“You’re right.”
I blinked.
“About what?”
“I can refuse to go. I cannot forbid you.”
Good.
“Will you go?”
“Yes.”
I almost smiled.
Progress through irritation.
We did not go alone.
We contacted the storage facility manager first.
The brass key did not match modern unit locks.
But the leather tag carried a faded number beneath D.H.
317.
Unit 317 existed.
Rented under a legacy contract paid annually in cash through a money order service.
Tenant:
Daniel Hayes.
My father had maintained a storage unit during cancer.
Never told me.
The manager required death certificate and estate authorization.
Good.
Law existed.
I called Beth.
She emailed executor documents.
We waited.
Arthur hated waiting.
I enjoyed that more than I should.
At four, the manager opened the outer gate.
Unit 317 was small.
Concrete.
Dust.
One metal chair.
Three electrical tool cases.
And the green military box.
My throat tightened.
“Dad.”
I walked toward it.
Arthur stayed near the door.
Not touching.
The brass key opened the box.
Inside were no guns.
No cash.
No drugs.
Photographs.
Cassette tapes.
A ledger.
And one sealed envelope.
NORAH.
My hands shook.
I opened the letter.
Dad’s handwriting.
Pumpkin,
He called me that until I was sixteen.
I sat on the concrete floor.
Arthur looked away.
Privacy.
Good.
The letter said if I found the box, then either Daniel was dead or Vincent had broken a promise.
He apologized for lying about his name.
About his past.
Then:
I did things before you were born that I am ashamed of. Some were illegal. Some hurt people even when I did not intend them to. Do not let anyone turn me into a hero because I became your father later.
Tears blurred the page.
He knew.
He anticipated exactly what I needed.
Not innocence.
Truth.
Dad wrote that the 1994 warehouse fire was not an accident.
He had disabled one alarm circuit because Vincent told him the building would be empty.
It was not.
Three men were inside.
One was Arthur’s uncle.
Dad did not set the fire.
But his work kept the alarm from sounding.
He carried that guilt forever.
I stopped reading.
Arthur had gone still.
“Your uncle.”
“Yes.”
I handed him the page.
He read.
His face changed.
No rage.
Grief old enough to be quiet.
Dad continued.
Vincent helped him leave after discovering the fire had been ordered by someone else.
Not Costello.
Not Costa.
A third man.
The ledger named payments.
One recurring initial:
L.C.
My blood went cold.
Lorenzo Costello had been a child in 1994.
So not him.
Another Lorenzo.
Arthur saw.
“My father.”
I looked up.
“What?”
Arthur’s father was Lorenzo Costello Sr.
Dead nine years.
The fire that killed Arthur’s uncle may have been ordered by Arthur’s own father.
The room changed.
Then I found the final line in Dad’s letter.
Vincent kept proof because Daniel refused to destroy it.
If anyone came looking after Daniel died, Norah should not give the ledger to a Costello.
Any Costello.
I slowly looked at Arthur.
He read my face.
“What?”
I folded the letter.
May you like
“My father says I shouldn’t trust you.”
Arthur went completely still.
