Lawrence ignored him. He took another step closer to Nora, and the light from the chandelier caught the faint scar along his left temple.
“I was his handler,” he said, so softly only she could hear at first, then louder, because he meant for the room to hear it. “Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Crane. Organized Crime Unit. Daniel Bellweather was CI-1847 for thirty-one months. He reported to me every Thursday at seven a.m. in a diner on Canal. Black coffee, two sugars. He never missed a meeting until the week he died.”
A murmur rippled through the ballroom, louder now, phones lifting higher without pretense.
Victor went pale, then red.
“You,” he breathed at Lawrence. “You son of a bitch. You’re the leak.”
Lawrence finally looked at Victor, and all the tiredness in his face hardened into something like steel.
“No, Victor. You were the leak. You leaked poison into the river for ten years. You leaked money into shell companies. Daniel just wrote down what you did.”
Nora’s fingers tightened around the notebook until her knuckles went white. She had rehearsed this moment for six months with her legal aid attorney, a tired woman named Patel who had told her, don’t go to the gala, send the letter, let us file. But her mother had coughed blood into the kitchen sink that morning and said, it’s fine, we can skip this month’s treatment, and Nora had put on the dress.
She had not expected Lawrence Crane to be here, drinking champagne three feet from Victor Castellano.
“You told me he died of a heart attack,” she said to Lawrence. Her voice cracked for the first time. “You told my mother it was natural. You came to our apartment. You brought the flag.”
Lawrence’s eyes filled.
“I know,” he said.
Victor saw his opening. He lunged, not at Nora but at the notebook, his hand shooting out to grab it, to tear it, to end this.
Nora was faster. She jerked back, clutching it to her chest, and Victor’s fingers only grazed the cracked leather before two hotel security guards who had been hovering at the edge of the ballroom finally stepped forward, uncertain who they were supposed to protect.
“Get her out of here!” Victor snapped at them, straightening his cuffs with a violent tug. “She’s trespassing. She’s threatening me. Remove her.”
One guard looked at Nora’s burning cheek, at the notebook, at the hundred phones now openly recording. He hesitated.
The other guard looked at Lawrence.
Lawrence reached into his inside pocket and took out a badge wallet and a folded piece of paper. He held them up.
“Lawrence Crane, Manhattan DA’s Office. And this is a federal preservation order for evidence related to an ongoing RICO investigation,” he said clearly, his prosecutor’s voice filling the room the way it must have filled courtrooms for thirty years. “That notebook stays with its owner until she decides what to do with it. You touch her again, Victor, and I will have you cuffed on this floor in front of every donor you invited here to impress.”
Victor stared at the badge as if it were a weapon.
Nora’s breath was coming fast. She had imagined triumph. She had not imagined this sick, tilting feeling, as if the floor under the chandeliers had shifted.
Because Lawrence was still looking at her with that terrible guilt.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked him.
Lawrence swallowed. The ballroom was so silent she could hear the faint buzz of the chandeliers.
He glanced at Victor, then back at her.
“Daniel didn’t die of a heart attack,” he said.
The words landed like a second slap, but inside her chest this time.
Nora’s knees locked. She felt the notebook press hard against her ribs.
“What?”
Victor made a small, involuntary noise and took a half step back, his eyes darting toward the service entrance.
