Chapter 3 - THE LAST SUPPER AT LA LUPANERA
The snow had started again outside the leaded glass windows of La Lupanera, blowing in thick, swirling sheets across Michigan Avenue and turning the streetlights into blurred halos of amber light. Inside, the restaurant was a tomb.
The pianist had gone home. The host stand was empty. The expensive crystal pendants overhead cast long, skeletal shadows across the white tablecloths where half-eaten appetizers sat turning cold beside untouched glasses of Barolo.
At the head table, Frank Duca sat alone.
Martin Voss had already tried to leave ten minutes ago, grabbing his briefcase and rushing toward the service exit, only to find Arthur Cole’s men waiting in the alley with their hands resting casually inside their coats. Voss had scurried back inside like a wet cat, sliding back into his chair with a face the color of skim milk.
Frank didn't look like a boss anymore. At sixty-two, with his silver hair slightly disheveled and his fine silk tie pulled loose at the collar, he looked like an old accountant who had finally realized his ledger didn't balance and the IRS was standing at the door. He poured himself another finger of scotch, his hand shaking so badly the crystal decanter clinked loudly against the rim of the glass.
“He’s coming back,” Voss whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at the heavy front doors. “Frank, we need to call the district attorney’s office. We need to cut a deal. If we give them the federal transit kickbacks, they’ll put us in protective custody—!”
“Shut up, Martin,” Frank said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual charm. He didn't look at the lawyer. He stared fixedly at Elena Moretti’s empty portrait resting against the back of Vincent’s chair, the candlelight catching the glass frame and throwing a pale, ghost-like reflection across the white tablecloth.
“You underestimated the girl,” Frank muttered, almost to himself. “I told you we should have dealt with Nora Walsh six years ago when she first started asking questions about the hospital billing codes. But you said let her go, let her think it was a standard administrative error.”
“Nora was a nurse, not a threat!” Voss hissed back, panic leaking through his legal veneer. “How was I supposed to know she’d leave a micro-cassette with a ten-year-old kid?”
“People like Nora don't leave things to chance,” a voice echoed from the shadows near the entrance.
The heavy oak doors swung open.
Vincent Moretti walked into the dining room. He wasn't wearing his overcoat anymore. His black suit was immaculate, his tie straight, the black onyx ring catching the candlelight as he unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out a thick manila folder. Behind him walked Arthur and Elias, flanking two local precinct captains who had been on Vincent’s payroll since the first Bush administration—men who had just realized that backing a sinking ship was a very good way to drown.
Vincent walked slowly to the head table, stopping right where Frank sat. He didn't pull out his chair. He simply placed the manila folder down on the white tablecloth, right on top of the unsigned port transfer contract.
Frank looked up, forcing a weak, pathetic shadow of his old smile. “Vince… I can explain. It was business. The syndicate was expanding too fast, you were distracted by Elena’s death, someone had to manage the—em—the transition of assets.”
“Assets,” Vincent repeated the word slowly, tasting it like something foul.
He reached down, picked up the gold-nibbed pen that had been sitting beside the contract, and tossed it across the table. It bounced off Frank’s water glass and clattered onto the floor.
“You didn't manage assets, Frank,” Vincent said quietly. “You managed a cage. You kept my wife locked in a concrete box for six years while you sat at my right hand, shaking my hand, drinking my scotch, and pretending to mourn at a funeral where a stranger’s bones were burning in a rusted frame.”
Frank swallowed hard, his throat working convulsively. “She… she was going to expose the real estate fraud, Vince. She found the dummy corporations tied to the dock expansion. If she talked, half the city council would have gone down, and the family would have fractured beyond repair. I did it for the family.”
“For the family,” Vincent echoed.
Without raising his voice, Vincent reached across the table, grabbed the lapels of Frank’s expensive silk jacket with one hand, and hauled the older man half out of his seat. The crystal glasses rattled. Martin Voss shrank back in his chair, pressing himself against the wall as if he could melt into the plaster.
“Elena is alive upstairs in a medical suite being seen by a doctor who doesn't answer to your payroll,” Vincent said, his face inches from Frank’s wide, terrified eyes. “She’s breathing. She’s talking. And she remembers every single day you made her spend listening to the foghorn from Pier 11.”
Frank clawed at Vincent’s wrists, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. “Vince… please… sixty-two years old… I’ve given my whole life to this organization… you can't—!”
“I’m not going to kill you, Frank,” Vincent whispered.
Frank’s eyes widened with a flicker of desperate hope. “You… you aren't?”
“No,” Vincent said, his expression hardening into absolute stone. “Death is too clean for an accountant. You’re going to spend the rest of your natural life in a federal penitentiary where every inmate knows you were dumb enough to get outsmarted by a ten-year-old girl with a cracked tape recorder. Arthur?”
“Boss?”
“Take him out the back way. Make sure he's booked under his real name—Francesco DiMaggio. Let the state prosecutors tear whatever’s left of his offshore accounts down to the bare dirt.”
Arthur stepped forward, grabbing Frank by the collar with a grip of iron. As they hauled the sobbing, broken old man toward the service hallway, Frank’s feet dragged against the polished marble floor, leaving faint scuff marks near the spot where Maggie had dropped her tray three hours earlier.
When the heavy kitchen doors swung shut behind them, silence descended upon La Lupanera once more.
Martin Voss was still sitting against the wall, paralyzed by terror, waiting for the axe to fall on him.
Vincent didn't look at the lawyer. He picked up the port transfer contract, ripped it neatly down the middle into two pieces, and dropped the fragments onto the floor. Then he looked at Elias Grant.
“Get the girl’s file from personnel,” Vincent instructed.
Elias blinked, adjusting his glasses. “Maggie Walsh? What do you want done with her employment record, sir?”
“Change it,” Vincent said, his eyes lingering on the empty chair beside him where Elena’s portrait still rested against the wood. “She’s not a busboy. She’s not staff. Put her down as a permanent consultant on the family trust. Set up a fully funded educational trust in her name—everything from grammar school through medical school, managed directly by my office.”
Elias offered a rare, respectful nod. “Consider it done, Mr. Moretti.”
“And Elias?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Send a car to the safehouse. Make sure Elena has a proper meal, fresh clothes, and a doctor who knows how to treat six years of shadows.”
“Right away.”
When Elias and Voss scurried out of the restaurant, leaving Vincent alone in the cavernous, candle-lit dining room, the boss of Chicago’s underworld pulled out his chair, sat down, and looked across the table at his wife’s portrait.
The candles flickered, throwing warm, dancing light across the silver frame. The snow continued to beat softly against the thick glass of the front windows.
May you like
Vincent Moretti reached out, turned the framed photograph so it faced him directly, and for the first time in six years, he allowed himself to smile.
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