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“Do you have any more notebooks?” he asked. “Any more diaries?”
She nodded hesitantly. “A few.”
“Get them for me.”
A few turned out to be closer to a dozen. She lugged them out from her room and set them on the small table in front of Dr. DeMarco. He eyed them thoughtfully, surveying the covers, but he didn’t open a single one. “These will need to be destroyed. They’re too dangerous to keep laying around.”
“But you said they can’t use them,” she said.
“You’re right, but it’s not just the police you have to worry about. Some of this information, if it falls into the wrong hands, would be like handing an atomic missile to a deranged man.” He paused, shaking his head. “Completely catastrophic.”
She didn’t argue. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Dr. DeMarco turned away from the journals after a moment and strolled over to the window. He looked out at the street below, the early evening sunshine bright on his face. “They know where you’re living now, so I suspect this is just the beginning.”
“I don’t know how they found my address,” she said. “I tried to lay low like Corrado told me to do.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Vincent assured her. “It was all me.”
“You?”
Vincent pointed at his foot. “I forgot they were monitoring me.”
Haven’s gaze drifted toward the GPS monitor around his ankle, the small scar on her back weirdly itching as she thought of the chip she used to have under her skin. “They tracked you.”
“Yes.”
“So they know you’re here now.”
“Yes,” he replied. “They’ll be keeping an eye on this place now that they know for certain you live here. Dia confirmed it when they dropped off the box.”
“But . . . why? Why can’t they leave me alone? I haven’t done anything.”
“True, but I have.”
His explanation made little sense to her.
“We should think about moving you,” he continued. “The choice is yours, obviously, but I think Corrado will agree with me when I say you’ll be in much better shape if you drop far off their radar until all of this blows over.”
“If I don’t move?” she asked. “What then?”
He waved her over to him. Slowly, she stepped in his direction, hesitating beside him at the window. He motioned across the street at a man lingering near a tree, a cell phone to his ear as he casually kicked some acorns on the sidewalk. It was nothing out of the ordinary to her. The guy was vaguely familiar, a neighbor she assumed—the one with the hat who held the elevator for her.
“Meet Agent Cerone,” he said quietly. “And if you don’t move, expect to see a lot more of him.”
* * *
The vast RICO indictment was neatly arranged on the desk, the small bold typeface spelling out more than twenty years of criminal conspiracy. There were thirty-two counts total, hinting at involvement in dozens of crimes. Murder, assault, kidnapping, extortion, gambling, loansharking, theft . . . the list formally and apathetically detailed the violence and mayhem that had ruled the windy Chicago streets for decades, as if they were outlining something as simple as a shopping list.
On or about March 20, 1988, in Chicago, the defendant, Corrado A. Moretti, together with others, intentionally caused the death of Marlon J. Grasso. On or about April 13, 1991, in Chicago, the defendant, Corrado A. Moretti, together with others, intentionally caused the death of . . .
On and on it went for forty-eight pages.
Corrado had spent the good part of the past hour silently reading through the charges, reliving the moments he could easily remember and a few he wished he could forget. He took it all in, absorbing the summarized case, and felt nothing even close to distress except for a simple phrase on the first page that troubled him:
Trafficking in persons for servitude . . .
“This is wrong,” he said, glaring at the words. “I never did that.”
