David Baldacci - Daylight

The woman looked away, made the sign of the cross, mumbled what sounded like a prayer, pulled out a book from her coat, and started to read it in the fading light. Pine saw that it was a small Bible.

Pine watched her for a few more seconds and then knocked on the front door.

Her creds and mentioning John Puller’s name got her inside, where she spoke with a CID agent named Bill Crocker, a buzz-cut young man with a trim, runner’s build and a serious expression. She explained her interest and he said, “We’ve looked where we needed to look and bagged what we needed to bag. Chief Puller wants us to stay here until he says otherwise, and he told us about you. So look around. But if you find something we missed . . . ?”

“You’ll be the first to know, I promise.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She started on the top floor and worked her way down. The place was a mess. There was a hole in one wall of a bedroom that allowed one to see outside. The faucets were all rusted, the sinks stained, and the carpet and padding was so threadbare she could see the subfloor in numerous places. Tony’s bed was a sleeping bag laid out in one room. His clothes were not hung in the closet; they were rolled into a massive ball on the floor. Empty fast-food containers littered the floor. A flat-screen TV hung on one wall. An Xbox controller lay under it.

Well, at least he has his priorities right.

The kitchen had far more ants and roaches than pots and dishes. And the few that were in the sink had food crusted on them so deeply that she wasn’t sure in which year they had been placed there. It was so filthy here, the very air seemed permeated with grime, germs, and a burgeoning plague.

She finally arrived in the basement. The dust patterns in the floor told her that CID had taken several large items from down here. The walls were paneled in cheap plywood, and someone had attempted to paint them the ugliest brown she had ever seen. The carpet was ripped and ratty and pulled up in several places to reveal the concrete slab just below. The air was musty enough down here to make Pine’s nose wrinkle and lungs twitch.

She leaned against a wall and peered around the space. She would bet that the white residue on the carpet was coke dust or shavings from a pill mill machine. And the dust patterns were probably the outline of the base of said pill machine. Vincenzo obviously did his criminal manufacturing work down here where prying eyes could not reach. Normally she would be interested in that, but nothing about her current situation qualified as normal. Yet what she might be interested in was possibly staring her right in the face.

The wall of old framed pictures. They were all hanging off-kilter, and Vincenzo had apparently never bothered to set them right. She doubted he ever looked at them while he was down here doing his drug alchemy. It was probably just his family, after all.

She strode over there and flicked on the overhead light right above this section of the space. The fluorescent tubes popped, flickered, and then came to life, turning murky to milky. She started from the top left with an eye to working her way to the bottom right.

Halfway through Pine stopped and stared at the image of a younger Ito Vincenzo, the man she believed had taken her sister, Mercy. And then he had tried to blame all of that on her poor father. She thought his features, surprisingly enough, were kind. She knew him to be anything but, at least when it had come to herself and Mercy.

Her gaze continued to travel along the rows of pictures. She spent a little time with Bruno Vincenzo, Ito’s mobster older brother, whom she recognized from another photo of the man she had seen in a newspaper. He had been coming out of a federal courthouse and trying to shield his face with a paperback book. Pine believed that Bruno was the reason Ito had done what he had. It was retribution against her mother for having helped send Bruno to prison, where he had ended up getting a shiv in his carotid for turning snitch on his fellow mobsters.

Next to Ito’s picture was the framed image of a woman. The photo was old; she could tell by the clothes, hairstyle, and picture quality. It looked like one of those instant Polaroids. The woman looked to be about the same age as Ito. Was it his wife, Tony Vincenzo’s grandmother? Possibly another source of information, if Pine could only find her.

And maybe I might have someone to ask about that who is very close by. And why the hell didn’t I think of it before? Come on, Pine, start bringing your A game.

She hustled upstairs and out the front door and over to the edge of the front porch where the old woman still sat in her rocker, still reading her Bible.

“How long have you lived here?” asked Pine.

“My husband and I bought this place a year after we were married. Got a good deal. We raised our kids here.”

“So a long time, then?”

“Over fifty years.”

“So you knew Ito Vincenzo? He lived here back then with his family.”

“Yes, I knew him.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything.”

“Why?”

Pine walked over to the woman’s porch and perched on the rail in front of her. She wanted to be on the lady’s home turf when she said what she was about to say; it might make all the difference.

“I think he might have abducted my twin sister thirty years ago and nearly killed me.”

For the first time Pine thought she had the woman’s full attention.

“And Ito came back the next morning and got into a fight with my father, trying to blame him for what had happened. For a crime he had committed.”

The woman sized her up. “Thirty years ago. You must’ve been just a child.”

“I was six.”

“Why would Ito have done that? That wouldn’t be like him at all. He was a good, God-fearing man.”

“Maybe something else came along that he was even more afraid of: He had a brother, Bruno Vincenzo.”

The woman visibly shuddered.

“So you knew Bruno too, I take it?”

“Night and day, those two. Ito was nothing like Bruno. We all knew what Bruno was.”

“You mean the mob?”

“I mean a lot of things and all of them bad. It got so that Evie wouldn’t allow him to come over.”

“Evie is Ito’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“And Ito was okay with that?”

“To tell the truth, Ito couldn’t stand his brother.”

“That’s interesting and informative.”

“So I can’t believe Ito would have done something like that. He was a nice guy, raised his kids right. Helped me and my husband out when we needed it. Fixed our furnace, helped reroof our house. Folks did back then. Now? Nobody knows nobody.”

“Teddy’s in prison. And we both know about Tony. So how good could Ito have really been as a father?” She looked at the woman questioningly.

“Well, Ito had a business. He worked long hours. And Teddy took after Bruno, I think. Always a bad one. Nothing you can do about that when it’s in the blood. Always in trouble. Looking for the quick buck.”

“What happened to Teddy’s wife? I assume he was married?”

“Yes. She left him. About ten years ago. She’d had enough. I would’ve never lasted that long. They used to live here. Fights all the time. The thugs Teddy had over, and they were thugs. They threatened us. Would’ve gotten bad, but I do have to say that Teddy wouldn’t let them hurt us. Maybe because we were friends with his parents. Only kind thing I ever knew him to do. So Tony grew up around all that. No wonder he turned out the way he did.”

“Do you know where Teddy’s ex is?” asked Pine.

“Jane? No. I haven’t heard from her in years. I hope she found happiness somewhere. That woman deserved it if anybody ever did.”