Chapter 7 - The Room on the Third Floor
Room 312 smelled of expensive floral soap, rubbing alcohol, and the faint, sweet scent of dying flowers.
The room was large, with a wall of glass that looked out over the gray, white-capped waves of Lake Michigan. On the high hospital bed in the center of the room lay Ramon Morales.
He didn't look like the man who had controlled the South Side shipping docks for thirty years. He looked like a handful of yellow bone wrapped in tissue paper. His skin was translucent, dark purple veins visible along his temples and his hands, which lay thin and quiet on the white sheet.
Beside the bed sat Marcos Morales.
Marcos was forty-two, thick-necked, wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit that couldn't hide the fact that he spent four days a week in a gym in West Town. He had a gold watch on his right wrist and a small, neat mustache that made him look like a cheap actor in an old movie.
He was looking at a thick legal document on his tablet when the door unlocked with a soft beep.
Marcos didn't look up immediately. "I told you, nurse, he doesn't need another shot until—"
"He doesn't need a shot," a voice said from the doorway.
Marcos froze.
He looked up slow.
Hector Voss was standing in the doorway. He was alone. His dark gray suit was clean, his hands loose at his sides, his eyes flat and steady as a pair of iron coins.
Behind him, standing in the quiet hallway, was Marcus—and beside Marcus stood small Elena, holding her coat closed with both hands.
Marcos’s hand moved instantly toward his left armpit, where his shoulder holster sat under his suit jacket.
"Don't," Voss said softly.
He didn't draw a gun. He didn't step forward. He just reached into his suit pocket, pulled out a small, black digital recorder, and pressed the play button.
A wet, shaking voice filled the quiet room—Brennan’s voice, recorded four hours earlier in the basement of The Iron Kettle.
"...Marcos offered fifty grand... he said if the kid isn't around to sign the trust transfer when she turns eight... it all goes to an independent conservator... he said she wouldn't make it to her eighth birthday... he had Cruz set up the snatch..."
The recording clicked off.
Silence fell over Room 312, broken only by the steady, rhythmic hiss-click of Ramon’s oxygen machine.
On the bed, the thin, yellow hands twitched.
Slowly, agonizingly, the old man’s head turned on the pillow. His dark eyes—clouded with cataracts and morphine—opened wide, locking onto Marcos’s face.
"Marcos..." the old man rasped. His voice was like two dry stones grinding together at the bottom of a well.
Marcos went pale. "Father... it’s a lie! It’s Hector Voss! He’s trying to shake us down for the dock titles! He took Elena!"
"I didn't take her," Voss said quietly. "I found her eating bread crumbs out of my trash in the rain because your men left her in an alley."
Elena stepped forward through the open door.
She didn't look at Marcos. She didn't look at Voss. She walked straight to the side of the hospital bed, her small white shoes silent against the thick carpet.
She reached out and laid her small, warm hand over Ramon’s thin, cold fingers.
"Granddad," she whispered.
The old man’s face broke. The hard, terrifying line of his jaw—the jaw that had ruled South Chicago for three decades—softened into a wet, shaking tremor.
"Elena..." Ramon choked out. A single tear tracked through the deep, yellow furrows of his cheek. "My little bird..."
He turned his head toward Marcos, his eyes clearing for one brilliant, terrifying second of pure, unadulterated rage.
"You..." the old man rasped, pointing a long, skeletal finger at his eldest son. "You... aren't... my blood."
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"Father—" Marcos pleaded, stepping forward, his face twisted in panic.
"Get out," the old man wheezed. His chest heaved against the thin gown. "Get... out... before... I... die..."
