Chapter 2 - Erased Footage
My tenement apartment smelled of wet drywall and burnt toast.
The radiators here didn't even bother wheezing; they were cold cast-iron monuments to thirty years of landlord neglect.
On the laminate kitchen counter, a bright red shut-off notice from the electric company was sitting under my grandmother’s cracked ceramic Virgin Mary.
I didn't turn on the lamp because the power had been cut at four o'clock yesterday afternoon.
I pulled off my wet boots, sat on the edge of the mattress, and rubbed my aching feet until feeling returned.
Every single word Dante Romano had spoken in that SUV was circling my head like a swarm of hornets.
Leo Carbone wasn’t an idiot; he was a terrified coward with a gun and a network of desperate cousins.
Men like that didn’t leave loose ends working twelve-hour shifts at South Side red-sauce joints.
I tucked the heavy cream calling card under the base of the Virgin Mary statue.
I lay down under three layers of wool blankets without taking off my corduroy trousers.
Sleep came in fitful, shallow jerks, haunted by the rhythmic tap of a butter knife on oak wood.
At 8:15 the next morning, my cheap prepaid phone began buzzing violently against the floorboards.
I lunged for it, expecting Gordon to apologize and ask me to cover the lunch rush.
Instead, Gordon’s voice sounded like he was speaking from inside a submerged metal barrel.
“Clara, don’t come to the restaurant today,” he gasped, his teeth audibly chattering.
“You already fired me last night, Gordon,” I said, sitting up in the freezing room.
“Listen to me, you stupid girl!” he hissed, nearly dropping the phone.
“Two men came through the service alley twenty minutes ago before the linen delivery arrived.”
“Who were they?”
“They weren't Dante’s boys,” Gordon whispered, his voice cracking into a high whine.
“They had leather coats and scar tissue over their brows, the North Side crowd from Grand Avenue.”
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit of cold acid.
“What did they want with you?”
“They didn't want anything with me, Clara!” Gordon cried.
“They kicked in the office door, ripped the digital recording box off the wall, and took all the backup drives from the cabinet!”
“The security footage from Table Four,” I said, the realization freezing the blood in my veins.
“Every second of it,” Gordon said. “And then they asked for your personnel file.”
My breath caught in my chest like a jagged piece of slate.
“Did you give it to them?”
Gordon went dead silent on the other end of the line.
“Gordon, answer me!” I screamed into the receiver.
“I have a wife and two daughters in Berwyn, Clara,” he sobbed. “They had a tire iron against my ribs!”
The line went dead with a harsh click.
I threw the phone onto the blanket and bolted to my feet.
My personnel file had my social security number, my emergency contacts, and my exact apartment address on 31st Street.
I rushed over to the front window, keeping myself hidden behind the dusty velvet drapes.
Down on the curb, parked beside a mound of dirty plowed snow, was an unmarked gray sedan with tinted windows.
A man in a charcoal beanie was leaning against the fender, sipping coffee from a paper cup and staring directly up at my third-floor window.
He was checking his watch every thirty seconds.
He wasn't here to ask questions; he was waiting for backup or for nightfall.
I sprinted to the closet, grabbed my grandmother’s old leather satchel, and stuffed three pairs of socks and my passport inside.
Underneath the floorboard in Rosa’s old bedroom, there was a small tin box wrapped in oilcloth.
I pulled it out with trembling fingers.
Inside was an old silver rosary, a faded baptismal certificate, and an antique gold pendant shaped like a split pomegranate.
Rosa had guarded that pendant with her life, threatening to break my fingers if I ever touched the chain.
I shoved the box into the satchel, zipped my canvas coat, and crept down the back fire escape into the frozen alleyway.
The metal stairs groaned under my weight, each creak sounding like an alarm bell in the cold morning air.
I hit the icy asphalt, keeping low behind the row of rusted green dumpsters.
When I reached the end of the alley, I peered around the brick corner toward the front of the building.
A second black sedan had just pulled up behind the gray one.
Two men with heavy shoulders and scarred faces were stepping out, carrying short canvas toolbags up my front porch steps.
They weren't police, and they definitely weren't debt collectors from the electric company.
They were cleaners.
If I had stayed in that bed another ten minutes, Gordon’s severed security footage wouldn't have been the only thing missing from the South Side.
My hands were shaking so violently I nearly dropped my prepaid phone into a snowdrift.
I ducked into the vestibule of a Polish bakery two doors down, the smell of fresh rye and yeast hitting my nose like a memory from another life.
I pulled Dante’s cream-colored card out of my pocket.
The ink was slightly smudged from my sweat, but the eleven digits were unmistakable.
I dialed with a numb thumb, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The phone rang exactly once.
“Speak,” a deep, gravelly voice answered on the other end.
It was Frank.
“Tell your boss that Leo Carbone’s friends just kicked down my front door,” I whispered, leaning against the damp glass door.
There was a half-second pause on the line, followed by the sound of a match striking.
“Where are you standing right now, Clara?” Frank asked, completely calm.
“Corner of 31st and Morgan, inside the bakery with the red awning.”
“Stay behind the counter,” Frank ordered. “Don't buy a pastry, don't look out the window, and don't speak to anyone.”
“Frank, they have guns in canvas bags,” I said, my voice breaking.
May you like
“We have bigger bags, kid,” he said, and hung up.
I pressed myself against the glass display case, watching the flour dust settle on the loaves of bread while the clock on the bakery wall ticked away the longest six minutes of my life.
