Chapter 3 - The Photograph Taken Behind the Restaurant After Midnight

I recognized Brett first.

He wore the same black manager coat he kept draped over his office chair, the one with the torn inside cuff he never bothered fixing. His head was turned slightly, but there was no mistaking the smug slope of his mouth.

The other man was older, maybe fifty, with thinning hair and a gray overcoat.

“His name is Paul Danner,” Lucia said. “Mr. Marquetti’s interpreter.”

I looked at Salvatore.

He was watching me, not the photograph.

“You think Brett is involved in whatever your interpreter is doing?”

Salvatore signed, “I think Brett is afraid of him.”

That was worse.

I remembered Brett outside the private room, anger stretched over fear like cheap paint.

“How did you get this?”

Marco answered. “A security camera across the alley.”

“So you’re watching the restaurant.”

“We started watching Danner.”

I stood straighter. “And now you’re watching me?”

Salvatore’s hands stopped.

Lucia said, “No.”

I kept looking at him.

He signed, “Not without telling you.”

“Comforting distinction.”

“It should be.”

Maybe in his world it was.

I turned toward the door.

“Tessa,” Lucia said.

I stopped.

“We are not asking you to spy on your manager. We are asking you to be careful around him.”

“That sounds like the beginning of asking me to spy on my manager.”

She accepted that without argument.

Salvatore signed something to Marco. Marco left the room.

Then Salvatore looked at me again.

“My problem should not become yours.”

“Too late. My shifts are already gone.”

Something hard entered his expression.

“That was because of me?”

“Because Brett is Brett.”

He signed, “I can fix it.”

“No.”

He frowned.

“If you call the owner and threaten him into giving me shifts, Brett learns exactly the lesson he already believes—that my work only matters because you decided it does.”

Salvatore leaned back.

For several seconds, no one spoke or signed.

Then he nodded.

“Fair.”

It was the first time in years I had argued with a powerful man and not been punished for it.

I hated how much that affected me.

When I left the room, Brett was not in the corridor.

He found me after closing.

The restaurant had emptied. Chairs sat upside down on tables in the main dining room, and the bar lights were low. I was counting cash tips when his reflection appeared behind me in the dark window.

“You stay late with him now?”

I turned. “I was working.”

“Don’t get clever.”

“I’m not trying.”

He stepped closer.

“You don’t know who you’re talking to in there.”

“Do you?”

His face changed.

Barely.

Enough.

I remembered Salvatore’s reaction when he realized I knew ASL. Surprise. Relief. Brett’s reaction had been different. Brett had gone pale before Salvatore ever looked at the door.

“Why did you send me in?” I asked.

“I told you. It was funny.”

“No. You knew he wouldn’t answer spoken questions.”

Brett shrugged. “Everyone knows he’s deaf.”

“Then why were you surprised when we started signing?”

He looked toward the kitchen.

Not the front door.

The kitchen.

Someone was there.

I felt it before I saw anything.

“You should go home,” Brett said.

A shape moved beyond the frosted glass panel leading to the service alley.

My pulse sped.

I picked up my bag.

“Good idea.”

I walked toward the employee exit, then changed direction at the last second and went through the lobby instead.

Outside, cold air hit my face.

I did not go to the train station.

I crossed Michigan Avenue, entered a hotel lobby, and waited near the concierge desk where cameras covered every angle.

Five minutes later, a man in a gray overcoat came out of the restaurant.

Paul Danner.

He stood beneath the awning, scanning the sidewalk.

Then Brett joined him.

I should have looked away.

Instead, I watched through the hotel glass while Brett spoke rapidly.

Danner did not answer with his voice.

He raised his hands.

The signs were clumsy, but unmistakable.

I caught only three words before a bus blocked my view.

Girl.

Understands.

Problem.

My phone vibrated in my hand.

A message from Eli.

You coming home?

I looked back across the street.

Danner was staring directly at me.

I stayed inside the hotel until Danner finally walked away. The security guard offered to call police, but I had no crime to report beyond a man looking at me from across Michigan Avenue. I thanked him anyway.

The next message from Eli read, You are typing too slowly. That means trouble.

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I almost laughed. Then I saw Danner’s reflection disappear from the glass and realized he had never once looked confused about where I was. Whatever Brett had told him, it was enough to make me part of a problem I still did not understand.

And he knew it.