The kitchen at Kir’s brownstone has become a war room.
Jillian’s laptop sits open on the marble island, the cursor blinking inside a half-drafted email to a contact at ProPublica. A second screen on the dining table, hooked up via HDMI, displays a printable PDF of the DeMaris ledger with the most suspect rows highlighted in yellow. Afon is at the window, smoking out into the courtyard against Jillian’s wishes, his back to us.
I’ve been on my feet for ninety minutes straight. Plan A, as it stands, looks like this: tomorrow night, there’s a fundraiser at the Lotte Palace for DeMaris’s reelection committee, a swanky affair that’s costing its attendees thirty grand a plate. I’ll be on the guest list courtesy of an obliging hedge fund client who owes me a favor.
By hook or by crook, I’ll get DeMaris alone in a corridor or a coatroom.
Then I’ll produce a recording device and a weapon at the same time.
Ultimately, the choice will be up to him. He can either confess to his many crimes, most importantly the murder of Raymond Snyder, or I’ll kill him, make it look like a suicide, and plant a confession on his body for the morning cleaning crew to find.
I won’t tell him which to choose, but let’s be very clear: I have a strong preference for one over the other.
It’s a shit plan, full ofwhat-ifs.But it’s a plan.
“The recording is the part I’m worried about,” Jillian says, chewing the cap of her pen. “Even if you get a clean confession, the chain of custody is going to be?—”
“I’m not handing it to a prosecutor,” I tell her. “I’m handing it to you. You’ll know what to do with it. There are a lot of ways to win a court case, and not all of them involve a judge or jury agreeing with you. Reasonable doubt—that’s all we need. From there, shit will snowball, and we’ll get the openings necessary to get Cass out of prison.”
She nods, slowly. Then something occurs to her and she sprints back to her correspondence with ProPublica to keep building out our story here.
I see my phone sliding around the kitchen table. I reach over and snag it to see Kir is calling.
That’s strange. He’s been cooped up in the war room with Lukas all day long, preparing for the worst-case scenario, if this plan goes to shit and they’re forced to batten down the Bratva hatches to fend off the incoming Vainakh onslaught.
I answer the call. “What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“Your kitchen.”
“Put me on speaker. Afon there?”
I set the phone on the island. Afon turns from the window, cigarette pinched between two fingers, and steps closer. Jillian closes her laptop halfway. The room goes quiet, all of us holding our breath.
There’s just a sense that something bad is coming.
“Listen to me,” Kir says. “I just got off the phone with Yasha. You remember Yasha?”
“Refresh me.”
“Local 339. Service workers’ union. He staffs intake, laundry, food service at half the city’s correctional facilities. He’s been on the Bratva’s payroll for the better part of a decade, whenever we need someone inside the system to do us a favor or keep us alert to a situation.”
The dread deepens. Whatever Kir is about to say, it isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.
“He just called me because he caught something on a roster sheet that didn’t look right. A special visit was booked at Rosie’s this morning. Inmate’s name is Snyder.”
I plant a hand on the marble to keep myself level. “Fuck. When?”
“Two hours from now. Maybe less. The paperwork came down from the warden’s office directly. The visitor’s name is redacted on Yasha’s copy, which by itself is interesting, because nothing gets redacted at his level. Not unless there’s some serious political muscle pulling strings. The room booked is one of the conjugal suites in C-wing.” He hesitates. “And the guardassigned to walk her down is a woman named Francesca Collins, whom Yasha has flagged before. She bought a beach house in Sea Bright last summer on a C.O.’s salary. Fishy, to say the least.”
My head is swimming like I’ve been plunged under ocean waves. To recap, someone who can force things to happen has ordered Cass into a meeting in a private, unmonitored room so she can meet with… technically, we don’t know who.
But I have my fucking guesses.
“Mat?” Kir says. “You with me?”
I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. “Yeah. I’m with you.”
