Chapter 6: What Arthur Belin Actually Wanted
I didn't reply that night.
I sat with the phone face-down on the table for a long time, then I went to bed, slept badly, and woke at six with the particular clarity that comes from a night of shallow, watchful sleep.
I called my mother first, as promised.
She sounded better than the night before — a small mercy.
I told her about the restaurant, made it funny, left out the parts that would worry her.
She laughed at the image of me circling a word in a mafia boss's contract with my fountain pen.
"That's my girl," she said.
"Go back to sleep, Mom."
"I'm already up.
The nurses here keep hospital hours."
"I'll call Dr.
Mehta this afternoon," I said.
"We're going to figure it out."
"Casey—"
"We are.
Don't argue with me."
She didn't argue.
That, more than anything, told me how tired she was.
I texted Arthur Belin at eight: *Coffee.
Public place.
You choose.*
He replied in four minutes: *The lobby café at the Barclay.
Nine-thirty.*
He was already there when I arrived — same dark suit, same patient face, a black coffee in front of him and nothing else.
He stood when he saw me, which I hadn't expected.
"Thank you for coming," he said.
"You texted me at midnight," I said.
"I'm curious."
We sat.
A server appeared; I ordered tea I didn't want, because having something to do with my hands mattered.
"I'll be direct," Arthur Belin said.
"Please."
"I don't represent Dominic Russo."
I kept my face still.
"He introduced you as his attorney."
"He introduced me as an attorney.
The distinction matters." He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup.
"I represent a family named Weisskopf.
German-Jewish.
They lost a shipping business and four properties in Hamburg in 1944.
The assets were seized, transferred, and eventually absorbed into a holding structure that has been generating revenue for seventy-eight years under a series of different names."
"The current name being Russo Maritime Holdings," I said.
He nodded.
"The chain of title runs through Albrecht Voss, then through a 1947 transfer that used a postwar inheritance mechanism — an Erbengemeinschaft — to obscure the original seizure.
The transfer was never legally valid.
The Weisskopf family has been trying to prove that for eleven years."
"What's been stopping them?"
"The original transfer document," he said.
"The 1947 contract.
We have copies, but they're incomplete — the critical clause in paragraph nine was redacted in every version we've obtained through discovery.
Last night was the first time I've seen an unredacted version."
I looked at him.
"You were there for the document," I said.
"Not for me."
"I was there for the document," he said.
"You were a surprise."
"How did you know it would be at Maison Étoile last night?"
He paused — the first hesitation I'd seen from him.
"A source inside Russo's legal team.
Someone who has been cooperating with us for several months."
"And Dominic doesn't know you're opposing counsel."
"Dominic knows I exist," Arthur said carefully.
"He doesn't know why I was in that room."
I thought about that.
"He introduced you to me.
Offered me a consulting arrangement.
With you sitting right there."
"Yes."
"Which means he trusts you enough to use you as a prop."
"That is an accurate way to put it."
The tea arrived.
I wrapped my hands around the cup.
"What do you want from me?" I said.
"You read the unredacted clause," Arthur said.
"You can reconstruct it.
Your academic credentials make you a credible expert witness.
If you're willing to provide a sworn statement about what you read — the exact language, the legal interpretation — it could complete the evidentiary chain the Weisskopf family needs."
"And if Dominic finds out?"
Arthur Belin set down his coffee.
"That is the part I want to be honest with you about."
"I'd appreciate that."
"Dominic Russo is not a man who responds to legal setbacks the way ordinary people do.
We have protective measures in place for our cooperating source.
We would extend those same measures to you."
"Protective measures," I said.
"Yes."
"That's a careful way of saying I'd be in danger."
He didn't look away.
"It's a careful way of saying we take the risk seriously and we don't minimize it."
I looked down at my tea.
Forty thousand dollars.
Four months.
My mother's voice on the phone saying *Casey, baby.*
"I need time," I said.
"Of course."
"And I need one thing from you first."
"What's that?"
"The name Konrad Metzger," I said.
"Tell me where it fits."
Arthur Belin went very still.
"Where did you see that name?" he said.
"In the margin of the document.
Below Albrecht Voss.
Different handwriting.
Added later."
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then: "Konrad Metzger is the name Dominic Russo was born under.
Before his family changed it in 1981."
I set my cup down.
"He's not just the inheritor of the structure," I said.
May you like
"No," Arthur said.
"He's the direct descendant of the man who built it."
