Chapter 2 - The Crayon Drawing on the Desk
My blood turned to ice in the narrow service corridor as Caleb Ross tilted the glowing security tablet toward my face.
On the screen, an internal building access log clearly showed Terminal Four—the point-of-sale register right behind my walnut service bar—transmitting a four-digit elevator bypass authorization at seven-fifteen that evening.
"I did not type any elevator code into my register, Caleb, I do not even have clearance to use the guest elevators, let alone a sealed floor," I whispered fiercely while glancing back toward the door of the staff lounge where Sophie was waiting.
Caleb smoothed the silk lapel of his dinner jacket and gave me the warm, harmless smile that made every wealthy matron in the dining room adore him.
"Of course you didn’t, Marissa, just like you didn’t officially bring an unauthorized six-year-old child onto hotel property fourteen nights in a row in violation of our insurance policy," Caleb replied softly.
"Someone used my terminal while I was in the pantry restocking ice at seven-fifteen," I insisted, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"And if Dante Moretti’s security chief Vincent Russo sees that raw log tomorrow morning, you will be fired and handed over to the precinct detectives before breakfast," Caleb said, leaning in until I could smell his expensive cedar cologne.
"Fortunately for you and little Sophie, as General Manager I was able to quarantine that server alert on my personal tablet before Vincent’s desk saw it, and all I ask in return is that you keep your mouth shut and tell me everything Dante Moretti asks you about that man in the gray coat," Caleb murmured before turning and walking calmly down the stairs.
I barely slept a single hour that night in our tiny fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Queens, lying awake beside Sophie’s bed while staring at the ceiling and wondering why Caleb Ross was protecting the stranger in the gray coat—and why he had framed my bar terminal to keep me on a leash.
Because the elementary school had a teacher-training closure the next morning and I was scheduled to work an early breakfast setup shift for a private corporate banquet, I had no choice but to bring Sophie back to the staff lounge at seven o’clock in the morning with a fresh pack of crayons and her backpack.
At seven-forty-two, while I was signing for a crate of champagne flutes at the loading dock door thirty feet down the hall, I stepped back into the staff lounge and found Sophie’s chair completely empty.
Seven agonizing minutes passed in which I nearly lost my mind, running silently up and down the back service corridors until my chest burned with panic.
Then the heavy steel fire door of the mezzanine service staircase creaked open, and Sophie came skipping down the concrete steps with her brown braids bouncing and her right hand noticeably empty of the drawing paper she had been coloring on.
"Sophie Lane, where on earth did you go, you scared Mommy half to death," I gasped as I dropped to my knees and gripped her small shoulders.
"Nowhere," she said quickly while staring at the toes of her pink sneakers.
"Sophie, look at me right now and tell me the truth," I said firmly.
She bit her lower lip and looked up with wide, guilty brown eyes.
"I gave Mister Moretti a picture under his big wooden door," she confessed in a tiny whisper.
"What picture did you give him," I asked as a cold wave of dread washed over me.
"The gray man from the elevator, because Mister Moretti looked really worried last night and he needs help seeing him," Sophie explained with six-year-old logic.
Before I could even take her hand to hurry back to the locker room, the internal house telephone on the service bar wall rang sharply.
Daniel Pierce picked up the receiver at the front desk, listened for three seconds with wide eyes, and held the handset out toward me like a live grenade.
"Mister Moretti would like to see you and your daughter in his mezzanine office at eight o’clock sharp," Daniel whispered.
At eight o’clock to the second, I stood outside the towering walnut doors on the second-floor mezzanine with Sophie’s small hand locked inside mine and a gleaming brass letter M staring me in the face.
"Mommy, you are squeezing my fingers too hard," Sophie whispered just as the heavy door swung inward.
Dante’s chief of security, Vincent Russo—a fifty-something former military policeman built like a granite retaining wall—stood inside the doorway and gestured us in with a stone-faced nod.
Dante sat behind a massive slab of dark Nero Marquina marble that served as his desk, and lying directly beneath the warm pool of his brass desk lamp was Sophie’s sheet of construction paper.
She had drawn a thin stick figure wearing a long gray coat and carrying a brown square briefcase, with the words FLOOR 12 printed across the top in thick blue crayon.
"I am so sorry, sir, she is only six and she sometimes imagines things or misunderstands what she sees," I blurted out, wishing the carpet would swallow me whole.
"I do not misunderstand things," Sophie protested with a tiny frown.
Dante looked away from me and down at my daughter, and for the first time in fourteen months, I saw the faintest trace of a genuine smile touch the corner of his mouth.
"Come here, Miss Lane," Dante said softly as he walked around the front of the marble desk and crouched down to her height once again.
Sophie let go of my hand, marched fearlessly across the Persian rug, reached into the pocket of her cotton dress, and pulled out a bright red cherry lollipop.
"I have two of them in my pocket, so you can have the red one," she announced while holding it out toward the most dangerous man in New York.
Vincent Russo stared at Dante in stunned disbelief as Dante solemnly accepted the five-cent candy with both hands and thanked her with quiet gravity.
"Now tell me why you drew these black marks on the gray man’s coat cuff and his briefcase, Sophie," Dante said as he turned the drawing over under the lamp.
I stepped closer to the desk and felt the breath freeze solid in my throat as I saw what Sophie had carefully copied in red and black crayon on the corner of the gray man’s briefcase and wrist.
On his wrist she had drawn a jagged red circle that looked exactly like a star-shaped chemical burn scar, and printed on the brass tag of his briefcase were the distinct letters and numbers "UNIT 43-E."
"Mommy, why are you shaking," Sophie asked innocently as I grabbed the edge of Dante’s marble desk to keep from falling.
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"Unit Forty-Three East is not a hotel room number, Mister Moretti," I whispered, my voice cracking with horror as two years of grief came crashing into the room.
"Forty-Three East Tenth Street was the municipal fire registry code of the East Village restaurant kitchen where my husband Marcus burned to death two years ago—and the fire investigator told me at the funeral that the unidentified man seen leaving the alley three minutes before the ventilation ducts exploded had a star-shaped chemical burn scar on his right wrist!"
