Short Paid

In October, the letter comes to the house, not the yard. It is from a federal office in Cadman Plaza, and the first paragraph calls the meeting "voluntary." Eddie Keane has built the Mercier tower on favors he never wrote down, and now someone with a subpoena wants them in writing.

The inspector who logged the scaffold death as a short, clean "accident" has been to dinner with the wrong people. Prosecutor Ruiz needs a name for the dinner and a wrench for the fall. Eddie's lawyer tells him that silence is the work. Frank Calabro tells him that a man who becomes accurate is a man the family cannot afford.

The tower is nearly done. The bill is not.