“Who knew you were bringing Rachael to this specific address?” I asked.
“Just me and Rachael’s lawyer, Mr. Woloch.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
“No. Mr. Woloch had to tell the chief of corrections, but that’s because Judge Levine is going to sentence Rachael on the child endangerment charge in forty-five days, and they have to know where she is.”
“Detectives…” It was Dryden. “Can I see you outside, please?”
We followed him to the back of the house. The back door had been jimmied open. The wooden frame was cracked, and a small pane of glass had shattered onto the breezeway floor.
“You have prints?” I asked.
“They wore gloves. They left footprints when they tracked through the mess in the kitchen, and I can figure out which brand of sneakers they wore and what size, but I doubt if it will help. I wish I could do more, but these guys are pros, and I have to clear out of here.”
He left, and Kylie and I stood there at the back door. Clueless.
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Walk through the breezeway, go into the kitchen, and close the door.”
I did. Five seconds later, I heard glass breaking. I opened the breezeway door.
Kylie had her gun in her hand. “I broke another one of these windowpanes in the back door. Did you hear it?”
“Of course I heard it.”
“So if Rachael and Liz were in the kitchen when these guys broke in, they’d have heard the glass smash,” she said.
“But they didn’t,” I said.
“Because they broke in before Rachael and Liz got home,” she said.
“According to Liz, nobody knew where Rachael was going to hide out,” I said.
“Somebody knew,” Kylie said. “And they were already inside the house, waiting for her.”
Chapter 50
“Like father, like son,” Jojo said, thumbing through his brother Enzo’s leather-bound collection book. “He was only in high school and he already had a nice business going, shaking the other kids down. He even used the family numbering code.”
Papa Joe Salvi smiled and tilted back in the very same desk chair that had been passed down by his father and his grandfather before that. He ran his thumb over the brass studs that held the green leather armrests to the ornate mahogany arms. “I taught him that code when he was only twelve.”
“He never told you?” Jojo said.
“Told me what?”
“About the code. You taught it to me when I was twelve, but I had trouble with it, and I didn’t want to tell you, so I showed it to Enzo. He figured it out in two minutes, and then he explained it back to me. He was a kid, only nine, but that was Enzo—smart as a whip.”
“Oh, he was smart,” Joe said, taking the book from his son’s hands and stroking the soft red leather. Enzo, his youngest—named for his blessed father—Enzo was the one he’d always planned to pass the torch to. Enzo had a head for the business. He was a fox. His big brother was a bull.
“This Mrs. Frye who returned the book,” Jojo said. “Is she white?”
“She’s from St. Agnes,” Salvi said. “What else would she be?”
“Pop, I’m just saying—I always thought the blacks from Ozone Park killed Enzo. They had a grudge from when he beat the shit out of one of their gangbangers.”
Salvi shook his head. “You think this Mrs. Frye got Enzo’s book from some black kid in Ozone Park? No. She found it in her house, and I’ll bet her kid hid it there on the very night that Enzo died.”
“So then this Frye kid—he killed Enzo?”
“Either him or he knows who did.”
“So let me go have a little talk with him,” Jojo said.
“In order for that to happen, I’d have to know who Mrs. Frye’s son is and where to find him.”
“No problem. Why don’t me and Tommy Boy go over there and have a little chat with Mrs. Frye?”
Salvi rubbed his chin and took a deep breath. “Jojo, do you really think that sending over two muscle-bound stunads to scare the shit out of some old lady is the way to go?”
“I don’t know, Papa. I didn’t think about the whole thing. I was just trying to help.”
“There will be plenty of time for you and Tommy Boy to help,” Salvi said, patting Jojo on the knee, much the way he’d pat a dog on the head. “But for now, don’t think. I know exactly how to handle it.”
Chapter 51
“I’m driving,” Kylie said when we got back to the car.
“As long as you asked so sweetly, sure,” I said, tossing her the keys. “Just try to remember that it’s a Ford, not the Batmobile.”