Chapter 18 - Goldfinch Towers

Chapter 18: Chapter 18 - Goldfinch Towers

Jesse leaned against the wall beside the elevators and scrolled through Carrie Morton’s file a second time, slower now.

She is twenty-five years old. Waitress. Three years at a restaurant in Astoria called Marlowe’s, a mid-range spot on Ditmars Boulevard with checkered tablecloths and a lunch special that, according to Nolan’s notes, nobody ordered twice.

He scrolled further. The casting profile with zero bookings. The dropped theater program. The open calls that went nowhere.

And under Known Associates, one line that made him pause.

Aileen Morton, 22. Sister.

Jesse tapped his chin with the edge of the phone.

Carrie worked the lunch shift on weekdays. It was almost noon.

He could be in Astoria in half an hour. Sit in her section.

Jesse was smiling at the thought when his phone buzzed in his hand.

AUNT MARIE.

The smile faded.

He stared at the screen as it rang. Once. Twice. Three times.

He thought about letting it go to voicemail. Every instinct he’d built over the last thirteen years told him that nothing good ever came from a Goldfinch calling.

But she’d come to the hospital in the middle of the night. She even covered the bill and she hadn’t known about the eviction.

Four rings.

Jesse sighed and answered.

"Hello?"

"Hello?" Aunt Marie’s voice came through sharp enough to cut glass. "Hello? That’s what you have to say for yourself? I went to the hospital this morning with breakfast, Jesse. And the nurse tells me you checked yourself out hours ago. Before the doctor even saw you!"

Jesse pulled the phone slightly away from his ear.

"Aunt Marie—"

"You had broken ribs! You were coughing up blood! And you just walk out of there like you’re leaving a movie theater?"

She sounded like a mother.

Like his mother, standing in the kitchen with her hands on her hips the time he’d ridden his bike to Queens without telling anyone.

Jesse didn’t know what to do with that.

"I’m fine," he said. "Really. I’m at work right now."

"At work?" Her voice climbed an octave. "At work? Jesse, you should be in bed. Resting. Healing. Not running around that awful company doing God knows what for people who barely know your name!"

"I’m fine, Aunt Marie. I can handle it." He glanced down the hallway toward Andrew’s office, where he could still hear raised voices through the glass. "They need me here."

"Do they?" Marie said. "Do they really, Jesse?"

He didn’t answer.

"Let me tell you something. If you dropped dead at your desk tomorrow, that company would carry on like nothing happened. They’d have someone else in your chair by Monday. They wouldn’t send flowers. They wouldn’t come to the funeral." Her voice softened, just slightly. "They don’t care about you, sweetheart."

The word sweetheart hit him somewhere under the ribs that had healed overnight.

Jesse was quiet for a moment.

"Do you?" he asked.

The line went silent.

"Do you care about me, Aunt Marie?"

He heard her take a breath.

"If I didn’t care about you," she said slowly, "I wouldn’t be this worried."

Jesse closed his eyes.

He wanted to believe her. That was the problem. Some small, starved part of him wanted to believe her so badly that it scared him.

"Don’t worry," he said finally. "I’ll close early today. I promise."

"Good." Another breath, steadier now. "Take care of yourself, Jesse. Please. You’re all I have left of her."

The call ended before he could say anything back.

Jesse stood by the elevators for a long time, staring at the dark screen.

Then he slipped the phone into his pocket and pressed the button for the lobby.

********

Twelve miles away, in the marble lobby of Goldfinch Towers, Marie Goldfinch lowered her phone and let out a long breath.

The lobby was the kind of place that had been designed to make people feel small. Forty-foot ceilings. A chandelier the size of a car. A sweeping staircase that went nowhere in particular. Black-and-white portraits of three generations of Goldfinch men lined the far wall, every one of them looking down their noses at whoever walked in.

Her father was up there. Her grandfather. Her brothers, too, younger in the photos, before age and greed had finished carving them into the men they were now.

There was no portrait of Emma.

They haven’t been since the day Jamie Byrne’s crimes became public news.

Marie slipped her phone into her designer bag and crossed the lobby, heels clicking against the marble. The security guard at the desk nodded at her. She didn’t nod back.

She stepped into the private elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

As the doors slid shut, she caught her reflection in the polished brass. Black dress. Pearl earrings. That streak of gray in her brunette hair she’d stopped bothering to dye.

She looked tired.

She was tired. Tired of this family. Tired of the silence. Tired of thirteen years of telling herself she’d make it right with Emma someday, and then running out of somedays.

The elevator opened onto the forty-second floor.

The executive suite was quiet. Thick carpet swallowed her footsteps. The receptionist at the front desk half-rose from her chair, mouth opening to announce her.

Marie held up one hand, and the woman sat back down.

She walked straight to the double doors at the end of the hall and pushed them open without knocking.

The office was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the East River and the rooftops of Queens. A bar cart stood in one corner, crystal decanters catching the light. A leather couch nobody ever sat on. A desk carved from a single slab of walnut that had cost more than most people’s houses.

And seated in two leather armchairs by the window, glasses of scotch in hand at eleven forty-five in the morning, were her brothers.

Leonard Goldfinch was the eldest. Sixty-three, thick-bodied, with a full head of silver hair he was vain about and a face that had settled into a permanent scowl somewhere in his forties. He held his glass like a weapon.

Mason sat beside him, two years younger, thinner, sharper, with wire-rimmed glasses and a habit of smiling when he was angry. He was smiling now.

Both of them turned to look at her.

"Well," Leonard said. "Look who finally decided to show up."

Mason glanced at the antique clock on the wall. "Twenty minutes, Marie. You kept us waiting twenty minutes. You called this meeting."

"Some of us have actual businesses to run," Leonard added. "We don’t all have time to sit around waiting on you."

Marie didn’t answer.

She walked over to the leather couch nobody ever sat on and dropped her bag onto it. It landed with a soft, heavy thump.

Then she turned and faced them.

"Why did you two file an eviction notice on Jesse without telling me?"