One second for the man who spent thirteen years building a file he was never going to live to file. One second for the man who folded a flag into a triangle and said nothing and let me believe, my whole life, that the silence was the price of keeping me safe.
The instrument is in the river.
Luca is waitingat the back door.
Blood on his left sleeve. Not his.
He does not ask about Crane. He says: "He's in the study. Top of the stairs. End of the hall. Door on the right. She's with him."
"How do you know?"
"I asked."
"Asked who?"
"The man on the second floor."
He does not elaborate. He moves up the back stairs, and I follow.
The hallon the second floor is forty feet long. Persian runner. Oil paintings of men I do not know on both walls. A long-case clock at the far end, ticking.
The second door on the right has light under it.
We stop ten feet from it.
I check my weapon. He checks his. We have been moving in the same rhythm for the last forty minutes.
Our bodies do not know it is new.
I am aboutto step forward when he puts a hand on my arm.
I look at him.
He is looking at the door. The quiet of a man who has been deciding what to say and has decided.
Luca says three words.
"After you, Emilio."
I do not move.
He has just given me my name back.
Not Sean. The name from a piece of paper in a closet on West 12th. The name Maria Isabella Moretti was written in ballpoint pen in a hospital bed in Astoria thirty-eight years ago because the name was hers to give, and she was going to give it before anyone could take it.
Emilio.
She gave it. Kostas took it.
I have been Sean Donovan my whole life. I am going to be Sean Donovan for the rest of it. Frank earned that.
But the man standing in this hallway is holding this one for a brother he has had for less than a day.
I cannot speak.
I put my boot to the door.
The door opens.
