Chapter 3 - THE JOB SHE DIDN’T WANT
Three mornings later, Norah learned two things at once.
First, Arthur Costa lived in a stone mansion overlooking the city, not beneath a highway bridge or inside a shelter.
Second, Vincent Costa had apparently decided that saying no to him once counted as the beginning of a negotiation.
Norah discovered this when a black sedan appeared outside the Copper Kettle at seven-thirty in the morning and Hayes walked in wearing a suit that made the breakfast regulars stare into their coffee.
Gus hurried from the kitchen.
“Can I help you?”
Hayes ignored him and approached Norah’s section.
“Mr. Costa would like to speak with you.”
Norah set down a plate of eggs. “Mr. Costa has a phone.”
“He called.”
“My phone service is suspended.”
Hayes seemed to file that information away. “His father has refused breakfast for two days.”
That stopped her.
“Is he sick?”
“Doctor says physically stable. He keeps asking for Mary and stew.”
Norah closed her eyes.
Gus appeared beside her. “You’re not leaving in the middle of a shift.”
Hayes looked at him.
Gus changed direction. “Unless it’s a family emergency. Obviously.”
“It isn’t my family,” Norah said.
But twenty minutes later, she was sitting in the sedan anyway.
The Costa estate sat behind iron gates and old trees on a hill where the city looked clean from a distance. Norah expected marble, armed guards, and the particular emptiness rich people mistook for elegance. She found all three. What surprised her was the smell of cinnamon coming from the kitchen and Arthur sitting at a breakfast table wearing pressed pajamas and glaring at a plate of oatmeal as if it had personally betrayed him.
When he saw Norah, his whole body relaxed.
“Mary.”
Norah pulled out the chair beside him. “You causing trouble?”
“They keep giving me paste.”
The nurse across the table looked offended. “It’s steel-cut oatmeal.”
“It’s paste,” Norah agreed.
Vincent stood by the window, arms crossed.
“You came.”
“Your employee said he wasn’t eating.”
“I’m not his employee,” Hayes muttered.
Norah ignored him.
She asked the cook for toast and scrambled eggs. Arthur ate half the toast before anyone could argue about his diet.
Afterward, when Arthur allowed the nurse to take his medication, Vincent asked Norah to join him in the library.
“I’m offering you a job,” he said.
“No.”
“You haven’t heard it.”
“I have a job.”
“You make four dollars under the table for every hour Gus doesn’t put on your timecard.”
Norah went still.
Vincent continued. “You owe eight hundred in utility arrears. Your rent increased last month. You’ve been applying for hospital cafeteria jobs and home-care work.”
Her face burned. “You investigated me.”
“I investigate everyone who enters my father’s life.”
“I fed him. I didn’t apply for clearance.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating kindness like suspicious activity.”
Vincent leaned back against the desk. “My father trusts you. He fights the nurses. He wanders. He refuses food when he doesn’t recognize the room. You calm him without lying to him in ways that frighten him.”
“I am not trained in dementia care.”
“You wouldn’t replace his medical team. You’d be a companion. Four afternoons a week. Good salary. Transportation included.”
“How good?”
He named a number.
Norah laughed because otherwise she might cry.
“That’s more than I make in a month.”
“It should be. My father matters more to me than most things I spend money on.”
She looked toward the library door. “And what do you want from me?”
“For him to eat. Talk. Sit in the garden when he’ll tolerate it. Tell me if the staff ignores him.”
“That’s all?”
Vincent hesitated.
“I want you to tell me when I’m doing something that makes him worse.”
Norah stared at him.
“Your employees don’t do that?”
“They enjoy remaining employed.”
“So you need someone too poor to be afraid of losing a job?”
His mouth twitched. “Something like that.”
Norah walked to the window. From here, the city’s poorest blocks were hidden behind rain and distance.
“I have conditions.”
Vincent straightened.
“I report medical concerns to the nurse, not you. I don’t carry messages for whatever business you run. I don’t lie to Arthur just because the truth is inconvenient. And if I ever feel unsafe here, I leave.”
“Agreed.”
“No bodyguard following me into my apartment building.”
His expression changed.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want my neighbors thinking I’m involved with men like you.”
“You are involved with a man like me.”
“I work for your father.”
The distinction landed harder than she intended.
Vincent nodded. “Agreed.”
That afternoon Arthur led Norah into a sunroom and showed her a photograph he kept hidden inside a book.
A young Vincent stood between Arthur and a dark-haired woman in a summer dress.
Mary.
Norah looked nothing like her except for the tired eyes.
Arthur tapped the photograph.
“Vinny was afraid of storms.”
Norah smiled. “I heard.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“Your secret is safe.”
At the doorway, unseen by either of them, Vincent had stopped walking.
For the first time in years, the sound of his father laughing filled the house.
And Vincent realized he would have paid almost anything to hear it again.
Norah did not accept the job immediately. She asked for twenty-four hours, went home, and wrote the number Vincent had offered on the back of an old electric bill. Then she wrote everything that could go wrong beneath it.
Arthur could become more attached to her. Vincent could decide her honesty was less charming once it interfered with his plans. The armed men at the gates could stop feeling like background scenery and start feeling like what they were. Gus could fire her for reducing her diner hours. Worst of all, she could begin needing the money enough to ignore warning signs.
At noon she visited the public library and used a computer to search Vincent Costa's name.
The results were worse than she expected. There were photographs outside courthouses, articles about alleged racketeering, businesses tied to nightlife and shipping, and carefully worded reports that used phrases like "suspected organized crime figure" because nobody had ever proven enough to write something simpler.
Norah printed three pages and carried them to the estate the next afternoon.
She placed them on Vincent's desk.
"You left out a few qualifications during the interview."
He glanced at the headlines. "I assumed the bodyguards suggested I wasn't a dentist."
"I need you to say it plainly."
Vincent met her eyes. "I have committed crimes. Some were violent. Some of my businesses are legal. Some grew from things that were not. I am not asking you to participate in any of it."
"And if I see something illegal?"
"You make your own decision."
"Even if that decision hurts you?"
A pause.
"Yes."
May you like
Only then did Norah sign the employment agreement Lydia had prepared. She added one handwritten line beneath her name: Employment does not purchase silence.
Vincent initialed it without complaint.
