Chapter 8: What Newport Knew
The voice on the other end was a woman's.
Older.
Unhurried.
"Mr.
Moretti.
My name is Doris Hale.
I was the event coordinator for the Newport dinner three months ago.
I believe you and I need to talk."
Gabriel sat down slowly.
"How did you get this number?"
"Richard Whitaker gave it to me six months ago when he hired me to arrange the dinner," Doris said.
"He wanted me to have direct access to you in case anything went wrong with the logistics.
I never needed to use it until tonight."
"Why tonight?"
"Because a man came to my home this evening.
He said he was a lawyer representing the Whitaker family and that I needed to sign a statement saying that the staff arrangements for the Newport dinner were entirely my own decisions — that no one had given me a photograph or specific instructions about which server to assign to the private room."
Gabriel's hand tightened on the phone.
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him I needed to think about it," Doris said.
"And then I called you."
"Did you sign anything?"
"No."
"Good." Gabriel stood.
"Ms.
Hale, I'm going to send someone to you tonight.
His name is Marco Vitale.
He works for me.
He will take a full statement from you — everything you remember about the instructions you received for that dinner, who gave them, when, and in what form."
A brief pause.
"Will I be protected?"
"Yes," Gabriel said.
"You have my word."
He ended the call and looked at Marco, who had materialized in the doorway again with the quiet reliability that had made him indispensable for fifteen years.
"Newport," Gabriel said.
"Tonight.
Take Ferrara's associate for the paperwork."
Marco was already reaching for his coat.
"The Whitaker lawyer," Gabriel added.
"Find out who he is and who sent him."
"Already working on it," Marco said, and was gone.
Gabriel set the phone down.
Elena was watching him from the window.
Thomas Brooks had moved to the chair Camille had vacated and was sitting with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor with the expression of a man doing a long, uncomfortable accounting of his own choices.
"What happens to my father?" Elena asked.
Gabriel looked at her.
"That depends on what he does next."
Thomas looked up.
"The money you moved through the Moretti accounts," Gabriel said to him directly.
"Was any of it yours originally?
Money Whitaker took from you?"
Thomas was quiet for a moment.
"Some of it.
He brought me in as a partner nine years ago.
I invested two hundred thousand — everything I had.
Over the years he restructured the arrangement so that my share kept shrinking.
By last year I was effectively working for him without the title." He paused.
"I didn't fight it because I knew what he knew about me.
About Elena.
About why I left Boston the first time."
"Why did you leave?" Elena asked.
The question landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
Thomas looked at his daughter.
"I owed money," he said.
"To people who were not patient about being owed money.
I left because I was afraid they would come after your mother and you to get to me.
I told myself it was protection." He stopped.
"It was also fear.
Both things were true."
"Did they come after us?" Elena asked.
"No."
"So we were alone for nothing."
Thomas closed his eyes.
"Yes.
I told myself for years that it had been the right call.
That you were safer.
That I had protected you by leaving." He opened his eyes.
"I was protecting myself from having to live with what I'd done.
That's the truth."
The lamp on the desk hummed.
Outside, the grounds were dark and still.
Elena looked at her father for a long time.
"I need you to do something," she said finally.
"Anything."
"I need you to cooperate fully with Mr.
Moretti's lawyer.
Whatever you know about Whitaker's accounts, whatever documents you have, whatever he told you — all of it."
Thomas nodded.
"Yes."
"And I need you to stop making decisions about my life without asking me," she said.
"The Newport scheme.
Sitting outside in a car for three hours.
Deciding when it was and wasn't the right time to find me." Her voice was not loud.
It was very precise.
"I am not a problem you get to manage from a distance.
If you want to be in my life, you ask.
You knock on the door.
You accept whatever answer I give you."
Thomas looked at her with the eyes she had inherited from him.
"I'll knock on the door," he said.
"Good," Elena said.
She looked at Gabriel.
"What do you need from me?"
Gabriel considered her — this young woman in a burned uniform who had walked into his house as a maid and was leaving it as something he did not yet have a word for.
"A statement," he said.
"Everything Camille told you when she came to your apartment.
Every word you remember."
"Tonight?"
"Tonight, if you're able."
Elena straightened.
The bandaged arm came up slightly as she adjusted her posture, and she glanced at it briefly — not with self-pity, just acknowledgment — and then looked back at Gabriel.
"I'm able," she said.
Gabriel nodded.
He reached for his phone to call Ricci.
It buzzed before he touched it.
A message from Marco: *Whitaker lawyer's name is Preston Cole.
He's been Whitaker's personal attorney for eleven years.
He sent two other people tonight besides Hale.
One to the Newport event venue manager.
One to a former Moretti employee named Daniel Sears.*
Gabriel read the name twice.
Daniel Sears had worked in his accounting department four years ago.
He had left under circumstances that had been described, officially, as a mutual parting.
Gabriel had known at the time that the description was generous.
He had let it stand because pursuing it further had seemed like more trouble than it was worth.
He was beginning to understand that Richard Whitaker had been building this for a very long time.
And that the Newport dinner had not been the beginning.
It had been the final step in something that started years before Gabriel had ever met Camille Whitaker.
He set the phone down.
"Elena," he said.
"Before you give your statement — there's one more thing I need to ask you."
She waited.
"When Camille came to your apartment six weeks before Newport," he said, "did she come alone?"
Elena thought for a moment.
"There was a car outside," she said slowly.
"I noticed it when she left.
I assumed it was a driver." She paused.
"It was a black car.
I remember thinking it was very expensive."
"Did you see the driver?"
"Briefly.
He was older.
Gray hair.
He didn't get out."
Gabriel looked at the message from Marco still open on his phone.
Richard Whitaker's hair had gone fully gray two years ago.
Gabriel had seen him at a fundraiser in October and thought, briefly, that he looked older than expected.
"He was there from the beginning," Gabriel said, mostly to himself.
"What does that mean?" Elena asked.
Gabriel looked up.
"It means this ends tonight," he said.
"All of it."
He dialed Donatella Ricci.
She answered on the second ring, which meant she had been awake and waiting, which meant Marco had already called her, which was why Gabriel had kept Marco for fifteen years.
"I have a USB drive," Gabriel said.
"I have a witness in Newport.
I have a former employee who is about to be contacted by a lawyer trying to buy his silence.
And I have two people in my study who are ready to give full statements." He paused.
"How quickly can you move?"
"How quickly do you need?" Ricci said.
"Yesterday," Gabriel said.
May you like
"Then I'll be there in forty minutes," she said.
"Make coffee."
