Chapter 8 - The Poisoned Books
The service loading dock was located beneath the west terrace, accessible through a reinforced concrete tunnel that kept delivery trucks hidden from the main estate grounds.
Three refrigerated semi-trailers were backed against the steel hydraulic bays, their diesel engines idling with a deep, vibrating hum.
Standing on the concrete platform was a stout, red-faced man in an expensive shearling jacket, holding a clipboard and chewing on the wooden tip of an unlit cigar.
This was Carmine Rossi, the owner of Rossi Provisions, who had held the exclusive contract to supply food, wine, and imported luxuries to the Moretti family for eight years.
Two delivery drivers stood behind him, leaning against stacked wooden crates of imported Sicilian olive oil and chilled prime beef.
When Carmine saw me hobble onto the loading dock supported by aluminum crutches, accompanied by Elena and two armed perimeter guards, his bushy eyebrows rose in mockery.
"What's this?" Carmine barked, his voice carrying over the rumble of the truck engines.
"Where is Patrick? I have four thousand pounds of dry-aged beef that needs to get into the walk-in freezers before ten o'clock."
"Mr. Sloan is no longer with the estate, Mr. Rossi," I said calmly, stopping three feet from his platform.
Carmine let out a loud, grating snort of laughter, sending a spray of spit onto the concrete.
"No longer with the estate? What does that mean? He's having lunch downtown?"
"It means he doesn't work here anymore," I replied, keeping my eyes fixed on his face.
"I am Rachel Cole. I manage estate procurement now."
Carmine took the cigar from his mouth and stared at me like I had just spoken in ancient Greek.
"You? You're the little girl who brings the coffee when the boss has his poker nights!"
The two delivery drivers behind him chuckled under their breath.
Carmine stepped forward, thrusting his carbon-copy clipboard into my face with aggressive familiarity.
"Listen to me, sweetheart. I don't care what kind of internal promotion Luca handed out to keep the maids happy."
"Patrick signed these vouchers every Monday at nine in the morning."
"The fuel surcharge is twelve percent this week, and the emergency refrigeration fee is another four grand."
"Sign the bottom of the yellow sheet so my boys can unload and get out of here before the rain starts."
I didn't take the pen Carmine offered.
Instead, I reached out with my left hand and took the clipboard from his grip.
"Give me a minute to review the line items, Mr. Rossi."
"Review?" Carmine's face turned a darker shade of crimson. "There's nothing to review! The terms were set between me and Patrick three years ago!"
I balanced my crutches under my arms and turned the pages of the delivery invoice.
For three years, I had unpacked Rossi's crates in the basement pantry.
I knew what a forty-pound crate of San Marzano tomatoes looked like.
I knew that the Moretti kitchen used forty crates of tomatoes a month, not eighty.
I glanced down at the line items:
Item 412: Certified San Marzano D.O.P. Whole Peeled Tomatoes — 80 cases @ $110/case.
Item 413: Special Reserve Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Castelvetrano — 40 cases @ $240/case.
Item 501: Commercial Logistics Fuel Surcharge — 12.5% of total gross delivery.
I looked from the paper to the crates sitting on the hydraulic lift behind Carmine.
There were twenty cases of tomatoes on the pallet.
Not eighty.
Twenty.
And the olive oil crates were not Castelvetrano reserve; they were commercial blend oil in steel drums with generic export labels.
"Mr. Rossi," I said, my voice dropping into a quiet, icy clarity.
"These invoices don't match the manifest on the lift."
Carmine’s jaw set like concrete.
"You don't know what you're looking at, girl."
"I know how to count, Mr. Rossi," I said, pointing a finger at the loading bay.
"You billed for eighty cases of San Marzano. There are twenty cases on that pallet."
"You billed for high-grade olive oil at two hundred and forty dollars a case, and you delivered commercial blend oil that retails for seventy dollars."
"And this twelve-point-five percent fuel surcharge..."
I looked up from the paper directly into Carmine's furious eyes.
"Patrick’s personal signature is on the bottom of last month’s surcharge voucher."
"Beneath his signature is a routing number for an account at First Commerce Bank."
"That isn't Rossi Provisions' account, is it, Carmine?"
The color drained from Carmine’s cheeks so quickly he looked like he was about to vomit his cigar.
"You're making dangerous accusations, little girl," Carmine stammered, stepping toward me with his fists balling into his jacket pockets.
Before Carmine could close the distance, the two armed security guards behind me stepped forward, their hands resting on the grips of their holstered pistols with an audible click.
Carmine stopped dead in his tracks.
"Patrick was splitting the difference with you," I said, flipping the invoice page over and writing a bold black line through the total amount.
"He allowed you to deliver forty percent of the inventory, billed Luca Moretti for one hundred percent, and split the remaining cash with you through an offshore consulting front."
"That has been going on for four years."
"Which means Rossi Provisions owes the Moretti estate roughly one point two million dollars in fraudulent billings."
Carmine took a ragged, panicky breath, his eyes darting toward the security guards.
"That was Patrick’s deal! Patrick approached me! He said if I didn't play ball, he would cut my delivery trucks off at the turnpike!"
"Patrick doesn't manage this dock anymore," I told him, handing the clipboard back.
"Take your trucks out of this bay."
"What?" Carmine cried out. "What about the meat? It will spoil!"
"Then let it spoil," I said.
"You have until twelve o'clock today to deliver the accurate eighty cases of tomatoes, the genuine Castelvetrano oil, and a certified cashier's check for the three hundred thousand dollars Patrick skimmed over the last six months."
"If that truck isn't back here with the full inventory by noon, I will have Thomas Vance visit your warehouse in Queens with four auditors and eight men who don't ask for receipts."
Carmine stared at me with wide, terrified eyes.
He looked at the tiny, twenty-nine-year-old maid standing on one foot with a pair of aluminum crutches.
He looked for a single hint of hesitation, a single tremor of fear.
He found none.
Carmine turned to his delivery drivers, his voice cracking with hysterical urgency.
"Pack it up! Pack the pallets back into the trailer! Move! Now!"
The drivers scrambled onto the lift, frantically hauling the crates back inside the refrigerated trucks.
Elena stood beside me on the platform, her mouth hanging slightly open in pure, unadulterated astonishment.
"Sweet mother of God, Rachel," Elena whispered under her breath. "Patrick never talked to Carmine Rossi like that in his entire life."
"Patrick was a thief, Elena," I replied, turning my crutches around toward the service elevator.
"Thieves don't bark at other thieves."
As the heavy brass elevator gates slid shut behind us, I looked down at the master key ring resting securely in my jacket pocket.
The estate had been bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts for half a decade.
Patrick Sloan had built a spiderweb of kickbacks, kick-ins, and covert payoffs that reached into every pantry, garage, and cellar on the property.
And now, with every ledger I opened, I was finding the thread that would lead directly to the heart of the Montreal conspiracy.
Because when I checked the back of that delivery voucher, beneath Carmine Rossi's registration number, was a secondary delivery address:
May you like
Pier Fourteen, Maintenance Bay Three.
The very same pier where Patrick Sloan was currently being held by Luca's men.
