Chapter 16 - THE DINER AT THE CROSSROADS
Two hundred miles away, the rain was falling harder against the plate-glass windows of Harry’s Place outside Altoona.
Inside the warm, grease-scented diner, Sophie was fast asleep across the vinyl booth, her head pillowed on Clara’s woolen scarf, clutching the gray plush rabbit with the yellow-threaded belly so tightly her small knuckles were pink.
Marco Falcone sat across the table, a cup of lukewarm black coffee untouched before him. He was reading a Philadelphia newspaper he had bought at the station kiosk—the same edition Dominic had found on his porch on Monday morning, featuring the front-page story about the federal probe into Valente Holdings.
Clara watched him from across the table, her eyes unblinking in the amber glow of the wall sconce. "Do you think he found the safety deposit box?"
Marco didn't look up from the financial pages. "Dominic always opens his mail, Clara. Especially when the stamp is missing."
"And what happens now?" she asked, her voice dropping into a quiet, steady tone that carried no fear, only the exhaustion of a long journey finally reaching its terminus. "The city knows about the ledgers. The federal grand jury in Camden is sitting on three boxes of carbon copies. He can't buy his way out of this one with real estate and quiet handshakes."
Marco folded the newspaper neatly, creasing the edge with his thumb, and laid it beside the ceramic sugar dispenser. He adjusted his spectacles, his gray eyes clear and steady behind the wire frames.
"Dominic doesn't need to buy his way out," Marco said softly. "He built that city brick by brick, and when a building comes down, the man who laid the foundation is always the last one to leave the cellar."
"You spent fifteen years helping him lay those bricks, Marco," Clara said, her gaze sharpening. "Does it bother you that the walls are falling down now?"
Marco reached out, picked up his coffee cup, and took a slow, deliberate sip before setting it back down on the formica table.
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"I didn't help him build the walls, Clara," Marco said, his voice dropping into a register so quiet it was almost lost beneath the hum of the refrigerator behind the counter. "I just kept the score. And in the end, the person with the pencil always writes the final chapter."
Outside, the Altoona local train gave a long, low whistle as it rolled slowly through the junction, its yellow headlight cutting a sharp wedge through the driving rain toward the west.
