Page 31 of Beautiful Evidence

He loops the square twice before cutting across it at an angle that puts him close to the newsstand. His hand brushes the inside of his jacket twice, a subtle gesture that would mean nothing if I hadn’t seen it a hundred times on the wrong kinds of men.He’s checking the weight of something. Probably a piece he’s not licensed to carry.

I’ve seen him before, maybe in Milan or Florence—one of the Bianchi enforcers who stays out of sight until something needs scrubbing. He isn’t used for frontline work. He’s a cleaner, the kind they only send when a mess is already guaranteed. The fact that he’s here now, walking this route so early, tells me everything I need to know.

The Bianchis aren’t monitoring from afar anymore. They’re moving in for the kill. They’re preparing for whatever comes next, which to them looks like a cleanup.

I pick up my phone off the passenger seat and dial a number I haven’t used in years, speaking low and fast while I keep my eyes on the man outside. I keep my hand covering my mouth in case someone is trying to read lips. He picks up on the third ring. "Who the hell is this?"

"It’s Enzo." The name alone should tell him who has the balls to call him, and I don't give any further explanation.

A long pause stretches across the line, just the sound of his breathing and distant traffic. Then, a gravel-edged voice answers. "You’ve got nerve, calling me."

"I wouldn’t unless it was life or death. I need five minutes." My eyes stay locked on the cleaner… They call him Mr. Clean because that's what he does, but he looks nothing like the American detergent mascot.

"What’s this about?"

"Gordo Costa, Detective Sergeant Elena Greco, and an old Palermo file. You’re still working the internal access terminals,aren’t you?" The cleaner moves again, carrying his freshly purchased newspaper and heading toward the downtown area on foot.

"That depends who’s asking."

I glance up as the Bianchi cleaner stops at a café window and pretends to read the specials. "You owe me, Sal. Naples—remember? I kept Luca Rizzo’s name off your desk and his blood off the headlines. You want me to list the favors, or do you want to square one?"

Sal doesn't answer right away. I hear his breath scrape the receiver, followed by the clink of what might be a spoon in a coffee cup. When he finally speaks, his voice is tight. "Behind thefarmaciaon Corso. Twenty minutes. Don’t make me regret it."

"You won’t."

He hangs up, and I drop the phone in the cup holder and keep my eyes on the man across the square. He’s still pretending not to watch me. That makes two of us. But I have somewhere to be now, and I'm not gonna waste more time on Bianchi shitheads if I can stop the bomb from detonating in the first place.

My contact meets me behind a pharmacy just off Via del Corso. He wears a leather jacket and a pair of faded jeans. His hat pulled low over his eyes shields him from unwelcome viewers, but I recognize him immediately. I park and slide out of the car, leaving my phone on the seat in case for some reason someone might get the courage to listen in on this conversation, and I jog over to where he stands leaning on the brick wall.

“You didn’t hear this from me,” he says, passing a folded paper under a discarded flyer.

I tuck the slip into my coat without looking. I didn't even have to ask him to dig, and the sap is already flowing. "I haven't heard a thing," I assure him, glancing back at my car and the direction I came from.

“Inspector Greco pulled an old Palermo case. It was sealed until recently, but she managed to dig it out and reopen it through a cross-jurisdictional claim. She’s tying Gordo Costa to at least three syndicate killings—maybe four. That’s the hook she’s using to get around the statute and keep the anti-organized-crime case active.”

My jaw tightens, but I don’t interrupt. He shifts his weight, glancing toward the mouth of the alley.

“His daughter, Alessia’s, name is on the witness list. She was the attending medical examiner on one of the old cases, and the lab timelines place her in physical custody of the evidence before it disappeared. That connection alone gives them leverage. They’re calling it material involvement.”

So that’s the angle. They’re not just building a case against Costa. They’re constructing a noose around Alessia too. If they succeed, it won’t matter that she’s innocent. She’s connected. They’ll use that to grind her down until she breaks. "So why aren't they filing charges yet?"

"They're waiting for the smoking gun. I think they want Vescari. Maybe not… That's just my guess." Sal pulls the brim of his hat lower as a woman wearing a long blue skirt rides by on her bicycle, smiling at us as she passes.

I thank him and leave quickly, not looking back. He slithers back to wherever he came from, but I have the intel I've been needing. They don't have enough to actually press charges against Gordoor Alessia yet, and as long as she does as I tell her, she will be safe. It's just convincing her to do so.

When I get to the Costa compound, the tension in the air is immediate. Men mill around the perimeter, smoking and pacing with forced casualness that doesn't fool anyone. I spot Emilio through the map room doorway, hunched over a table with two of our lieutenants and an outsider I don’t recognize. They're deep in conversation and don't look up as I step inside without knocking.

They’re discussing hits, and not in the abstract. Real names are on the table—Elena Greco, Luca Bernardi, and Alessia. Emilio leans over the tactical maps like he’s planning troop movement. His voice is clipped as he calls it a preventative measure. But it isn’t strategy. It’s a kill list.

He wants the problems erased before they spiral. To him, this is triage. Remove the infected tissue. Cut out the rot before it spreads. Alessia’s name sits between the others like a stain he’s already decided not to scrub clean.

I don't let them finish. "This stops now," I say, loud enough to freeze the room. "You don’t get to take her off the board."

Emilio doesn’t even look up. "She’s compromised. We act, or we wait to be buried." The slip of paper burns a hole in my chest. If he would even stop and listen to me, he'd know how bad of a move this is. It's not something the cleaner can disappear.

"She hasn’t given them anything," I snap. "She’s trying to hold the line. And if you give me five minutes, I’ll tell you why you’re wrong."

He raises an eyebrow but says nothing. The others back off slightly, eyes darting between us. They know I'm crossing a lineand the expression the newcomer gives me is nothing short of smug.

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