Four Seconds to Lose (Ten Tiny Breaths #3)(108)
Dan mumbles something unintelligible as he shifts my suit—strewn over the couch—and takes a seat. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time and I sure as hell shouldn’t be here in the first place. I could lose my job over this.” With a heavy sigh, he reaches back to pull out a white folder that’s tucked into the back of his pants, concealed. “Two weeks ago, I opened my front door to get my newspaper and found an envelope with my name on it, marked ‘Confidential, DEA.’”
“Two weeks ago?”
“Yeah.” Sheepish eyes flicker to me. “It was from Charlie.”
I’m on my feet in a second, my voice suddenly blasting through my office. “You’re telling me now?”
“Relax, Cain. Just . . .” His hand moves to rub the frown out of his forehead. “Sit down.” As easygoing as Dan is, he knows how to pull his authoritative mask on. I do as asked because I can tell by the stubborn set of his jaw that he won’t continue otherwise. “I didn’t know what to make of it at first. To be honest, I was freaked out. I mean, who the hell is dropping off envelopes at my front door in the middle of the night? I only joined the DEA a few weeks ago. Eventually, though, I opened it.” He pauses. “It was a note from Charlie to me, telling me I should be looking into a Sam Arnoni from Long Island, New York, because he’s bringing large quantities of heroin into Miami.”
“Sam Arnoni?” The Sam that I talked to that day on the phone?
Heroin?
Fuck, Charlie!
“Yeah. There were some other names included. First names: Bob, Eddie, Manny. Street names, no doubt. Useless.” He pauses. “But I started looking into this Sam Arnoni guy and . . .” Dan’s head falls back. “Cain, you have the worst f**king luck in the world.”
I feel my brow pull together tightly. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“‘Big Sam’ Arnoni has been on the FBI’s radar for years, but they can’t nail him.” Rifling through the folder, he pulls out a small bundle of papers affixed together with a paper clip. He tosses it onto my desk without ceremony. “The guy has enough completely legitimate businesses—some inherited, some built by him from the ground up—to make it easy for him to launder his money and hard for the Feds to catch him. Plus, he’s smart. Smarter than most of these lowlifes. He’s kept his organization small. There’s no grandstanding, no Godfather power-trip crap.
“Six years ago, the Feds thought they finally had an in. A guy by the name of Dominic was ready to turn. But he disappeared before they got any concrete information. Showed up dead a few months later. After that, this Sam guy buckled down even more.”
Picking up the stack, I begin flipping through the pages. Mostly candid shots of a large, graying man in slacks and a leather jacket. “So, he’s small-time mob, basically?”
Dan gives a half-nod, half-shrug. “Except I wouldn’t say small-time. Not anymore, by the sounds of it.”
I keep flipping, looking for something of value to me. “And how is Charlie involved in this? Are you saying she’s—” My words die as I land on a picture of the same man with his arm around a young blond girl as they walk down the sidewalk. She can’t be more than ten, and she’s smiling wide up at the man, an ice-cream cone in her hand.
Dan pulls out a second stack of papers from the folder. “Sam Arnoni married a woman by the name of Jamie Miller twelve years ago. The picture on the top is her. She used to work at The Playhouse in Vegas.”
The small hairs lift at the back of my head. That’s where Charlie said she had worked. I study the picture of the woman in a skimpy silver dress and instantly see the resemblance—same blond curls, same wide mouth, same doll face, hidden by layers of heavy makeup.
Dan keeps talking, but I already know where this is going. “Jamie Miller died two years later giving birth to Sam’s son, who also died. She had a daughter.” I flip through picture after picture of Sam and the young girl. The two of them eating fries at a diner, him pushing her on a swing, him cheering her on as a medal is slipped over her neck, as she bows on a stage.
And Charlie is smiling in each and every one of them. As if she’s genuinely happy.
“So, this Sam Arnoni guy raised Charlie as his own daughter.”
Dan’s mouth twists in a grimace as he pulls out the last stack of papers, handing it to me. “Her name’s not really Charlie, Cain.”
“I know.” How many times had I cried her name out as I came? Did she even care that it wasn’t hers?
My admission earns a high-browed stare but I don’t elaborate, accepting the paperwork from Dan with a deep inhale.
What am I about to find out?
My hand falters on the first page—a candid color photo of Charlie coming out of the gym, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face clear of makeup, her eyes shining like a meadow of violets in the sunlight. Just like she looked coming back from the gym in my building every morning, right before we showered together.
The painful lump in my throat that I removed earlier with physical violence and copious amounts of cognac is back with a vengeance. I’m about to ask Dan if I can keep this file when I see the copy of her driver’s license.
The request dies on my lips.
“Is this real?” I close my eyes tightly and reopen them, hoping for a different outcome.