Chapter 7 - A Taste of Salt and Burning Diesel
Victor Cross backed away toward the revolving doors, his manicured hands clawing at his silk tie, his chest heaving as if he were suffocating.
"Lorenzo... listen to me!" Victor pleaded, dropping all pretense of legal dignity, his voice trembling with pure, unadulterated terror. "It was business! The syndicate was over-leveraged in ninety-nine! The federal reserve transfer was an unauthorized black-budget operation—if the regulators had found that gold on our docks, the Falcone family would have been indicted under military treason!"
"So you locked the hatch from the outside, Victor?" Lorenzo whispered, taking one slow, measured step forward.
"I didn't lock it! The crew panicked when the valves slipped—"
"The metallurgical report proves the chains were secured before the water touched the keel," Lorenzo interrupted, his voice dropping into that chilling, razor-sharp register that made grown men break into a cold sweat. "And the four contractors you hired to burn through the bulkhead at Berth 9 gave us your signed wire-transfer authorizations thirty minutes ago."
The two hundred dockworkers and syndicate capos in the lobby took half a step forward in unison.
The collective sound of their boots against the travertine sounded like an advancing iron army.
Victor looked around the vast room in wild, cornered panic.
He looked at the forty syndicate captains who had taken his legal advice for twenty years.
Every single capo averted his eyes.
Every single man reached inside his coat, resting his hand on his weapon.
"Carmine! Frank! Tell him!" Victor screamed, reaching out toward the veteran capos. "I protected your trusts! I laundered your dividends!"
Don Carmine Falcone, the oldest capo in the family, slowly pushed his glasses down his nose and spat onto the polished floor at Victor's feet.
"You drowned our brothers for Swiss paper, Victor," Falcone rasped with ancient, merciless disgust. "In our world, an enemy shoots you in the chest. A traitor locks you in the dark. You are lower than a sewer rat."
The heavy glass revolving doors were shoved open from the street.
Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance walked into the lobby, flanked by twelve armed federal marshals with arrest warrants drawn.
Marcus Vance stopped beside Lorenzo, looking down at the groveling attorney.
"Victor Cross," the federal prosecutor announced, his voice echoing across the high ceiling. "You are under arrest for twelve counts of aggravated first-degree capital murder, federal maritime piracy, and the grand larceny of two hundred and fifty million dollars in United States Treasury assets."
The steel handcuffs clicked around Victor Cross's wrists with a sharp, final snap.
As the marshals dragged the weeping, ruined lawyer toward the waiting federal transport on Michigan Avenue, his heels skidded across the travertine, leaving a streak of grease across the marble floor.
May you like
His cries of frantic, pathetic denial faded into the roar of the morning traffic until the heavy glass doors clicked shut forever.
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