“I found the file in Dad’s shed on the RICO case. And I tracked down Angelica in Miami. Maybe you could fill in some of the blanks for me.”
Vince’s face went stark white, only emphasizing the cuts and bruises. “You talked to Angelica? Are you out of your mind? Do you know who she is?”
“She told us,” I said.
“Us?”
“Me and Kate. We were there together. And Scarlet,” I added. “But we left her at the hotel.”
“This whole thing is such a mess,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Here, let me put some coffee on while I explain.”
I felt bad about telling him I was off coffee, but I wouldn’t mind holding a hot cup considering my leather jacket wasn’t as warm as it had been in Miami, so I didn’t stop him from making it.
“You know about the RICO case?” he asked.
“Yeah, Kate filled me in on a lot of it. And I found out some from Angelica. She’s a complicated woman. Crazy. But complicated. Who sends their husband and children to prison on purpose?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “I’ve learned something important over the course of my career.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“To never trust anyone,” he said. “And when Angelica reached out right after she was put in WITSEC I didn’t really have a choice but to play the role she set me up for. You can imagine what it feels like to take down a criminal ring the caliber of de Salva, and know with certainty that the mastermind behind all of it is still roaming the earth free and clear. They didn’t call her the queen for nothing. She sent me a handwritten thank-you card with her new name and contact number to my home address. Your dad got one too. She knew everything about us. She mentioned personal things that no one knew. She mentioned you and Phoebe in the letter to your dad.
“After that, all we could do was wait. She wouldn’t contact us often, just every few years. But it was often enough to know she was still keeping watch on us. She’d dress it all up in polite speech and thank-yous, and there was nothing ever threatening outright. But you couldn’t help but feel threatened.”
“Why did she want to keep tabs on you?” I asked.
“Because my team couldn’t be bought,” he said. “Charlie and I hand selected the cops we trusted to work the case. And the FBI and DEA guys were getting bought off left and right. And the ones who didn’t get bought were turning up dead.”
“Did it have to do with the drugs that were taking over de Salva’s territory?” I asked. “Angelica explained about the competition moving in. She said that’s why she sent them to prison. She said whoever was running the drugs would’ve killed all of them if they’d stayed around much longer.”
Vince snorted. “Yeah, well, we were pretty sure at the time that the drugs were being run by a guy named Rudy Guzman. Very slick. Very polished. Carmen de Salva was rough. He was old school, and he worked the system the old-fashioned way—through hard work and intimidation. But Rudy was a politician. Came out of nowhere. No one knew anything about him—where he was from, what his real name was. All we knew was it wasn’t long after he moved to town that the drug problem in Savannah skyrocketed. We felt like idiots chasing our tails. We knew he probably had help from someone high up in the city. But even with the help of someone high up in the city, that didn’t explain how he was getting around de Salva.”
A little lightbulb was starting to flicker in my brain. “Valentina de Salva,” I said.
Vince nodded. “We knew it was her. That’s why it made us sick when the Feds agreed to the immunity deal in exchange for her husband and everyone in his organization. She was eliminating the competition. But they just wanted to close a big case and say they brought down the de Salvas. It looked great in the press.”
“It’s been twenty years,” I said. “Why is this all coming back to light now? Angelica is down in Miami. Carmen is dead. Her sons will be in prison for the rest of their lives. What’s changed?”
“Carmen was murdered,” he said.
“What?” I asked. “How? He was an eighty-year-old man who’s been in prison for twenty years.”
“Because I was in contact with him before he died,” Vince