June’s voice turned cold. “And now you want forgiveness because someone cut your breakfast?”

“No. I came because your brother treated me like a person without knowing what I’d done. I wanted to remember what that felt like before I did something I should have done years ago.”

He placed a small paper card on the workbench. It listed a time and a location: MONDAY, 9 A.M., NORTH PIER REDEVELOPMENT HEARING.

“The city is about to award a new food-service concession at the rebuilt pier,” Marcel said. “The applicant uses the cooperative’s name. The people behind it intend to hire workers through the same coercive system that destroyed the original kitchen.”

“Then report them,” Daniel said.

“The report is already written. What they don’t have is anyone willing to stand in front of the workers and tell them why the arrangement is dangerous.”

June pointed toward the street. “That’s your job, not ours.”

“You’re right,” Marcel said. “But my name will make everyone think it’s a fight between criminals. Nathan’s name still means something to the men and women who were there.”

Daniel felt the old familiar pull of a stranger turning his father’s reputation into an obligation. He did not like it.

“You don’t get to borrow my father,” he said. “Not after what you did.”

Marcel nodded and left the card behind.

Chapter Four A: The Second Name

After Marcel left, June waited for the sound of his footsteps to fade before pulling down the garage shutter. The building smelled of bicycle grease and cardboard, ordinary smells that made the last hour seem unreal. She laid the photograph of the cooperative beside Marcel’s card and pointed to the man standing at the far left.

“Who’s that?”

Daniel studied the angular face. “I don’t know.”

“Look at the collar.”

A small metal pin shaped like a square knot was attached to the man’s jacket. Their father had kept an identical pin in a jar with loose screws, though neither child knew what it represented. June fetched the jar. The pin was still there, a cheap thing with a bent clasp, nothing like the elaborate insignia associated with organized crime.

They had never asked Nathan about it. Growing up, Daniel had assumed it belonged to a service club or one of the repair shops where their father worked. June spread the photograph flat beneath a desk lamp. The man wearing the pin wasn’t smiling with the others. His eyes were fixed on someone just beyond the frame, and his right hand rested against the table as if he wanted to steady it.

“We could ask Orsini,” Daniel suggested.

“Or we could stop asking Orsini everything.”

June found their father’s battered address book beneath a box of spare cables. Half the entries had been crossed out; others were distinguished by descriptions such as CARL, LEFT KNEE or MRS. H, FOUR CATS. In the back, on a page headed DO NOT THROW AWAY, Nathan had drawn the same knot symbol beside three phone numbers. The first was disconnected. The second belonged to an insurance office. The third answered after six rings.