Things were fitting together.
We finally had a name, at least a first name, and that he worked for someone high up at the capitol in Hartford. Someone in the government. Patrick always felt that the guy who came after me was simply the muscle for someone else.
Someone Patrick’s father was clearly blackmailing.
I’m on my way back w—
The exchange of money probably took place in the lot of the Stateline Diner.
“You know it’s not just about the money,” this Charlie had said as he stalked me at the boatyard. “The money’s only the tip of it.”
The tip of what?
“We want those pages,” he said. A diary. A journal.
Whose diary? And describing what? What had Patrick’s father found?
We also knew he was tied in with a partner in this. He’d given his cell phone out to someone.
“Who the hell doesn’t have a cell phone today?” I asked Patrick while he drove back home.
For a lot of the ride he seemed lost in thought. As if coming to grips with the fact that the man he respected so much had gotten involved in something ugly. Remembering how he was described at the funeral—“salt of the earth”; a guy “who gave his word and kept it,” who “didn’t start out with much and didn’t leave with much either.” I tried to reconcile how these things fit into a person who was blackmailing someone. Maybe someone high up in the state government.
When we finally made it back to Bensonhurst, Patrick drove up to the driveway and stopped.
I opened the door. He didn’t move. “You’re not coming in?” I asked.
“Not right now.”
“Why?”
“I have to see someone. I think I may have an idea who my father was working with.”
“Where’re you going?” I asked. Though I didn’t have to. I knew. I could read it in his eyes.
“Back to Staten Island,” he said.