Chapter 4 - The Lining of the Coat
The staff quarters were located in the damp, subterranean western wing of the chateau, where the light from the narrow, grated ground-level windows was always gray and shadowed.
Damiano reached Room 112 with Dante right behind him, having intercepted his boss halfway down the hall.
"Boss, the perimeter alarms just spiked," Dante warned, his hand resting on the Sig Sauer tucked into his belt. "Three unmarked sedans just turned off the highway onto the private access road. They're moving fast. No transponders."
Damiano didn't stop walking. He jammed his master key into the lock of Room 112, threw the door open, and stepped inside.
It was a small, Spartan room: a narrow iron-frame cot, a wooden dresser with chipped white paint, and a small wardrobe with a warped door. Inside the wardrobe hung three plain dresses, a woolen sweater, and—hanging near the back on a wire hanger—a heavy, dark-blue winter coat with faux-fur trim.
"Marcone's cleaners," Damiano said, his mind calculating angles, timelines, and body counts with terrifying speed. "They tracked the phone signal Marina used to call her sister in New Jersey two days ago. They found us."
"We need to evacuate the house," Dante said, pulling his radio from his lapel. "Get the cars in the subterranean garage—"
"No," Damiano interrupted, unhooking the heavy blue coat from the hanger. "If we move now, they spot the convoy on the access road. We fight them here. On our terms."
He slammed the coat down onto the narrow iron cot. His fingers, scarred and hardened by decades of violence, found the heavy hem of the lining. With a sharp, practiced jerk, he ripped the stitching apart.
Out spilled a cascade of items onto the gray blanket: three passport cards stamped with forged names, a thick wad of high-denomination bearer bonds, and a flat, black leather-bound notebook with the initials L.V. embossed in gold leaf on the cover.
Damiano flipped the notebook open.
Columns of numbers, bank routing codes, encrypted Swiss account numbers, and the explicit, notarized signatures of corrupt port authority officials and municipal judges on Marcone’s payroll. It was the Rosetta Stone of the New York underworld. The single document that could send Frank Marcone to a federal penitentiary for the rest of his natural life.
"We have it," Dante said, staring down at the pages with grim satisfaction. "What’s the play?"
"The play," Damiano said, slipping the ledger into his inner coat pocket, "is to draw them into the house, secure the east wing, and remind Frank Marcone why his father used to cross the street when he saw a Serrano coming."
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Before Dante could answer, the first heavy, rhythmic thud echoed through the stone walls of the chateau.
Someone was hitting the reinforced oak front doors with a battering ram.
