Chapter 5 - The Glass in the North Salon
The town house of the de la Torre family on the Gran Vía in Bilbao did not look like a maritime office; it looked like a small, private museum dedicated to the extraction of provincial wealth.
The facade was carved from gray sandstone imported from the French quarries at Angoulême, three stories of arched wrought-iron balconies and plate-glass windows six feet wide, behind which the chandeliers of Bohemian crystal glowed with the warm, buttery light of gas-fed mantles.
It was nine o'clock at night when the Land Rover mounted the granite curb of the carriage drive.
The rain had followed them inland, turning the industrial smog of the city into a greasy, black soup that ran in rivers down the limestone gutters. Diego did not park; he left the vehicle idling against the decorative boxwood urns, the diesel engine clattering with the heavy, uneven thud of a tractor with a cracked head.
Mateo climbed out of the passenger side, carrying the iron pry-bar in his left hand, the heavy canvas sack tucked under his arm.
The front door of the town house was double-valved mahogany, eight feet high, fitted with a heavy brass knocker shaped like an eagle’s talon.
Diego didn't touch the brass.
He kicked the meeting rail between the two leaves with the heel of his work boot.
The lock-plate shrieked, the two-inch brass bolts tearing through the splintering rosewood jamb with a sound like a dry branch snapping under an elephant’s foot. The doors flew inward, crashing against the mirrored walls of the entrance hall, sending shards of beveled silvered glass raining down onto the parquet floor with a musical, shivering roar.
A footman in livery of dark green wool dropped a silver salver of calling cards and backed into the alcove beneath the stairs, his hands raised in front of his face as if he were being charged by an escaped steer.
“Where is she?” Diego asked.
His voice didn't echo; the heavy velvet portières and the thick wool rugs of the hall swallowed the sound, leaving only the dull, vibrating threat of the tone.
From the top of the grand double staircase, a man appeared.
Don Alberto de la Torre. Sixty-two years old, Luciana’s father, a man who had built his career on the quiet management of other people’s bankruptcies. He was wearing an evening coat of black broadcloth with satin lapels, a pearl stickpin in his cravat, his silver hair brushed back from a narrow, intelligent forehead that showed no trace of sweat.
“Diego,” Don Alberto said, leaning over the gilded balustrade with an expression of polite, amused concern. “You have ruined a nineteenth-century lock. My grandfather had that hardware brought from Brussels by private courier. If you have come to renegotiate the coal tariffs, my clerks are at the bank until midnight.”
Diego mounted the stairs.
He did not take them two at a time; he walked with that heavy, deliberate, rhythmic step that made the brass stair-rods rattle in their sockets. Mateo followed three paces behind, the iron bar swinging loosely at his knee, his eyes fixed on the shadows behind the upper pillars where three private guards in blue serge were slowly unbuttoning their holsters.
“Tell your boys to keep their hands off the leather, Alberto,” Mateo said, his voice level and entirely without color. “The local police chief is Diego’s second cousin. If there’s lead in the hall tonight, the coroner won't be called until the tide goes out tomorrow afternoon.”
The three guards froze, their fingers lingering on the flaps of their holsters, looking up at Don Alberto for instructions.
Don Alberto didn't look at them. He was looking at Diego’s eyes.
For the first time, the banker’s fingers tightened on the gilded wood of the railing. “Diego, let us go into the library. There is a decanter of twenty-year-old brandy from Jerez. We have legal documents that need your perusal before the morning papers go to press.”
Diego reached the landing.
He stopped two inches from Don Alberto’s satin lapels. He was four inches taller than the banker, his shoulders twice as broad, his canvas coat dripping black street-water onto the priceless Aubusson carpet between their boots.
“Where is the girl?” Diego asked.
“The girl?” Don Alberto forced a smooth, dry chuckle that sounded like paper rustling in a drawer. “Luciana is in the salon with the dressmakers. If you have come to apologize for the scene at the villa, she is prepared to overlook your... rustic behavior, provided the settlement papers are executed without further delay.”
Diego reached out.
His large, scarred hand closed around Don Alberto’s cravat, twisting the linen until the pearl stickpin popped free and fell into the carpet with a dull thup. He lifted the older man until his patent-leather pumps were barely brushing the floorboards.
“Not Luciana,” Diego whispered. “My daughter.”
The color drained from Don Alberto’s face so fast it looked as though someone had pulled a drain-plug in his throat. His small, neat hands fluttered up to grip Diego’s wrists, his manicured nails digging uselessly into the thick, calloused flesh of the sailor’s forearms.
“Diego... you don't understand the legal structure,” Don Alberto choked out, his tongue protruding slightly as the linen collar bit into his windpipe. “The adoption was processed through the civil registry in Bayonne. It’s registered under French maritime jurisdiction. You have no legal standing in this house.”
“I don't need legal standing,” Diego said. “I have four thousand tons of steel hull idling at the municipal dock, and I have fifty men with coal shovels waiting at the end of the street.”
He threw Don Alberto sideways.
The banker hit the paneled wall with a heavy, hollow thud, his head snapping back against a portrait of an eighteenth-century bishop, the gilded frame tilting thirty degrees on its wire.
Diego turned toward the double doors of the private apartments at the end of the gallery.
He didn't turn the brass knobs. He drove his boot into the center panel.
The door burst inward, revealing a room that looked like a birdcage built by an insane jeweler.
The walls were lined with padded silk the color of bruised plums. A small, high-sided bed made of carved ivory stood in the center of the Persian rug, surrounded by porcelain dolls with glass eyes and wardrobes of French lace so delicate they looked like cobwebs hanging in the gloom.
Sitting on the floor by the window, wearing an identical nightgown of stiff white batiste, holding an identical wooden drawing-board with identical sticks of gray charcoal, was a child.
She had blunt-cut dark hair across her brow.
She had the pale, salt-bleached olive skin of the northern coast.
And when she raised her head to look at the man in the dripping canvas coat, her eyes—cold, clear, impossible gray—were the exact, terrifying mirror of the child sitting three miles away on the window seat of Villa Bellisima.
Diego stopped in the center of the plum-silk rug.
His lungs felt empty, as if the air in the room had been replaced by dry nitrogen.
The little girl didn't scream. She didn't drop her charcoal. She looked at Diego’s boots, looked at the water dripping from his oilskins onto her white rug, and then looked straight into his face with an expression of ancient, unimpressible solemnity.
“You’re very loud,” she said. Her accent was not the rough, salt-bitten dialect of the fishing quays; it was the crisp, razor-sharp French of the convent schools in Biarritz.
Diego dropped to his knees.
He didn't care about the Aubusson carpet. He didn't care about the banker groaning in the corridor, or the sound of Luciana’s silk skirts rushing up the back stairs from the sewing rooms.
He reached out a trembling hand, his massive fingers hovering half an inch from her small, pale cheek.
“What is your name?” he whispered.
The child tilted her head, her charcoal pencil tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the wooden drawing-board.
“My name is Beatriz,” she said. “But the lady in the white dress calls me the settlement.”
A shadow fell across the threshold.
Luciana stood in the doorway, her hair disheveled, her dress half-unbuttoned at the shoulder where she had torn it while running from the lower floor, a small, silver-plated pearl-handled revolver clutched in her right hand.
Her eyes were wild, red-rimmed, the polished composure of the banking heiress completely shredded, revealing the terrified, calculating creature beneath.
“Get away from her, Diego,” Luciana hissed, her finger trembling against the small, curved trigger of the pistol. “She belongs to the de la Torre estate. Her birth certificate is registered in Paris. You don't have a single scrap of paper that says she’s yours.”
Diego didn't look at the gun.
He slowly reached into his canvas coat, pulled out the gold button with the two-headed heron, and laid it on the edge of the child’s drawing-board.
Beatriz looked down at the gold.
Then, with an unhurried, perfectly natural motion, she reached into the small patch-pocket of her batiste nightgown and pulled out an identical piece of metal.
A three-dimensional medallion. Cast in nine-karat gold.
The two-headed heron rising from an uncoiled cable.
On the back, inside the shank, struck with an armorer’s punch: 0–1–8.
May you like
Beatriz looked up at Diego, her small gray eyes narrowing with that terrifying, adult intelligence that only children who have been used as currency ever possess.
“You came for the wrong twins,” she said.
