Chapter 4 - THE PIANO BENCH
St. Cecilia’s had been closed for twelve years.
The parish merged with another congregation after water damage, declining attendance, and a lawsuit involving the aging structure. The main building still stood between two newer apartment blocks in Queens, its brownstone walls darkened by weather and neglect.
Luciano wanted to go directly there.
Norah refused.
“I need to return to my apartment first.”
“No.”
She sighed.
“We are doing this again?”
“Yes.”
They were back in the penthouse after spending four hours giving carefully limited statements to law enforcement.
Thomas Bell had surrendered copies of the photograph and recording to a federal investigator he trusted. The original material remained hidden somewhere only Thomas knew.
Luciano hated that arrangement.
Norah loved it.
“You said my apartment was being watched,” she continued. “That means somebody thinks there is something there.”
“It means somebody thinks you may return.”
“Same result.”
“No.”
“Luciano.”
It was the first time she used his name without Mr. Vitiello.
He noticed.
So did Mateo.
Norah leaned both hands against the kitchen island.
“I own almost nothing. Two suitcases, dishes from a thrift store, my keyboard, some clothes, and one box of things from foster care. If somebody wants something I have, it is probably in that box.”
Luciano considered.
“What is inside?”
“I do not know.”
“That is helpful.”
“I was seven. Most of it never made sense to me. A music box that no longer works. A brass key. A piece of burned wood. Three cassette tapes. A child’s bracelet with no clasp. Things Margaret Vale said came from the hospital.”
Luciano became still.
“Cassette tapes?”
“Yes.”
“You never listened to them?”
“I did. One is blank. One has a woman singing in Italian for about twenty seconds. The third is mostly static.”
“Mostly?”
“There is a voice near the end. Too damaged to understand.”
Mateo was already reaching for his coat.
Luciano looked at Norah.
“You should have mentioned this.”
“To whom? The foster system? They already knew. A detective? I was told the fire was an accident. A mafia boss I had not met yet?”
“That last one would have been efficient.”
Norah almost laughed.
They left twenty minutes later.
Norah’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a narrow walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen, above a laundromat and beside a restaurant that changed owners every eight months.
The building smelled like detergent, old paint, and somebody’s garlic lunch.
As soon as Norah entered the hallway, she stopped.
Luciano noticed.
“What?”
“The window at the end is open.”
Mateo looked.
“How do you know?”
“Traffic sounds wrong. Louder echo.”
Luciano signaled to two men behind them.
They moved ahead.
Norah’s jaw tightened.
“You promised no army.”
“Four people is not an army.”
“In your world?”
“In my world, it is barely a dinner reservation.”
The door to apartment 4B stood half an inch open.
Norah heard it before anyone spoke.
“My lock sticks,” she said. “You have to lift the door while turning the key. It never stays open by accident.”
Luciano moved in front of her.
This time she did not argue.
The apartment had been destroyed.
Drawers ripped out.
Mattress cut open.
Kitchen cabinets emptied.
Books scattered across the floor.
The cheap digital keyboard had been overturned and cracked.
Norah entered behind Luciano, touching the wall with her fingertips.
Silence met her.
Not the normal silence of an empty apartment.
A violated silence.
She knew every object by location.
Now the map inside her head was useless.
“What did they do?” she asked.
Luciano did not soften it.
“They searched everything.”
“My keyboard?”
He looked at it.
“Broken.”
Norah closed her eyes out of old habit.
That keyboard had cost eighty dollars at a church sale. Three keys stuck when the weather was humid. The sustain pedal was held together with black tape.
It was still hers.
“Bastards,” she whispered.
Mateo searched the bedroom.
“No box.”
Norah’s heart dropped.
“It was beneath the bed.”
“Gone.”
Luciano looked around.
“Anything hidden?”
“No.”
“Think.”
She turned toward him sharply.
“I am thinking.”
He heard the strain in her voice and backed off.
Norah stood in the middle of the room, listening to the refrigerator hum and rain touching the fire escape.
She rebuilt the apartment from memory.
Bed to the left.
Dresser four steps from the foot.
Small desk beneath the window.
Piano bench beside the keyboard.
She froze.
“The bench.”
Luciano looked toward the broken keyboard.
A narrow wooden bench lay upside down nearby.
“What about it?”
“I bought the keyboard used. The bench came with it.”
“So?”
“When I was eighteen, I moved apartments. Margaret Vale came to see me once before she died. She helped carry the keyboard upstairs.”
Norah walked carefully across the debris.
“She sat on the bench afterward and said something strange.”
“What?”
“She said, ‘Some things wait until you are ready to sit still.’ I thought she was being philosophical.”
Luciano lifted the bench.
One of the underside panels had been pried loose recently.
Empty.
“Someone opened it.”
Norah’s stomach tightened.
“Check the legs.”
“Why?”
“Because one always felt heavier when I moved it.”
Mateo turned the bench and examined the four wooden legs.
One had a small circular cap at the bottom.
He unscrewed it.
A brass cylinder slid into his palm.
Inside was a tiny key wrapped in waxed paper.
Norah exhaled.
“They missed it.”
Luciano looked at the key.
Stamped along the side were three characters.
S-18.
Mateo photographed it.
“Safe deposit box?”
“Maybe,” Luciano said.
Norah held out her hand.
He placed the key into it.
She ran her thumb over the ridges.
“This is not the same as the key from the box.”
“Then there are two.”
“Or there were.”
A sound came from the hall.
Everyone went still.
Three light knocks.
Norah recognized them.
“Mrs. Alvarez.”
Luciano raised a hand to stop her.
“It’s my neighbor.”
“Stay.”
He opened the door.
An elderly Puerto Rican woman stood outside clutching a grocery bag and looking unimpressed by the armed men in Norah’s apartment.
“You,” she said to Luciano. “Too tall. Move.”
Mateo coughed to hide a laugh.
Luciano stepped aside.
Mrs. Alvarez entered.
“Nori?”
“I’m here.”
Norah moved toward her voice.
The old woman hugged her fiercely.
“I saw those terrible people on television. That blond witch pulling your necklace.”
Norah blinked.
“You watch entertainment news?”
“I am seventy-six, not dead.”
She released Norah and lowered her voice.
“Men came yesterday.”
Luciano’s attention sharpened.
“What men?”
Mrs. Alvarez looked him up and down.
“And you are?”
“Luciano.”
“I know who you are. My nephew gambled in Atlantic City during the foolish period of his life.”
Luciano paused.
“My condolences.”
“He is an accountant now.”
“Then he escaped worse.”
Mrs. Alvarez pointed toward Norah’s bedroom.
“Two men. Maintenance uniforms. They said there was a leak. I told them the only leak was in apartment 5C, but they went in anyway.”
“Did you see their faces?” Mateo asked.
“Yes. I also saw their car.”
She reached into her grocery bag and produced a receipt.
On the back was a license plate number written in blue ink.
Mateo stared at her with reverence.
“Mrs. Alvarez, would you consider a career change?”
“Do you offer dental?”
Norah laughed for the first time that day.
The sound startled Luciano.
It was lighter than her speaking voice.
It changed the room.
Mateo ran the plate through a contact.
His expression darkened.
“Vehicle belongs to Argent Development.”
Luciano looked at him.
“The shell company.”
“The one that bought the Leonardi riverfront holdings.”
Norah’s humor vanished.
“Who owns it?”
“We still do not have the top owner.”
Mrs. Alvarez frowned.
“What Leonardi?”
Norah touched the pendant beneath her shirt.
“A family I might belong to.”
The old woman took her hand.
“You belong to yourself first.”
Norah swallowed.
It was the kindest thing anyone had said to her since the gala.
They left the apartment with the hidden key, a suitcase of salvageable clothes, and one surprising discovery.
Mrs. Alvarez had found an envelope pushed beneath her door that morning.
It was addressed to Norah.
No return address.
Luciano opened it only after Norah gave permission.
Inside was a single strip of paper printed with raised dots.
Braille.
Norah ran her fingertips across it.
Her expression changed.
“What does it say?” Luciano asked.
She read slowly.
“The lion remembers where the mother prayed.”
Mateo frowned.
“St. Cecilia’s.”
Norah touched the final line.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Bring both keys.”
Luciano looked at the brass key in her palm.
“You said the other key was in the stolen box.”
“It was.”
“Then whoever took the box has it.”
Norah shook her head.
“No.”
She turned toward the broken keyboard.
“The brass key in my foster box was not a key anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“It broke when I was fourteen. I kept the top half because it was one of the few things from childhood.”
Luciano’s eyes narrowed.
“Where is the other half?”
Norah pointed toward the old upright radiator near the window.
“When it snapped, the bottom piece fell through the floor vent. I could never reach it.”
Mateo moved instantly.
He removed the vent cover and reached into the narrow space.
After a minute, his fingers closed around something metallic.
He lifted a blackened piece of brass no longer than an inch.
Norah smiled faintly.
“They stole half a key.”
Luciano examined the fragment.
Engraved upon it was a tiny lion.
For the first time all day, the advantage belonged to them.
Then Mateo’s phone rang.
He listened for ten seconds.
His face lost color.
“Boss, we identified Argent Development’s controlling trust.”
Luciano waited.
Mateo looked at Norah before speaking.
“It was established by the Vitiello family.”
Silence filled the ruined apartment.
Norah turned toward Luciano.
“Your family bought my family’s property after they died.”
Luciano did not deny it.
He could not.
Norah closed her hand around the broken key.
May you like
The room suddenly felt smaller.
“Maybe,” she said quietly, “I chose the wrong dangerous man to trust.”
