Empire of Ashes — Season 2, Episode 70: Berth Nine, Again

0:00 Empire of Ashes. Episode 70. Birth 9, again. Written by Mia. Lena. We met at birth 9. All five of us. For the first time since the morning Dario and I found Nico's note wedged behind a loose board and understood, all at once, that ten months of peace had already quietly run out. I didn't plan this, Pharaoh admitted, looking around at the same water. the same goals, the same tired pilings that had somehow held up an entire year's worth of everything since. I simply found myself driving here, instead of to your house. I think some part of me wanted to stand where it actually started before we asked the question that might tell us how much of it was one man's doing all along. I feel it too, Nico

0:49 said, quiet, his hands in his coat pockets the way they'd been that very first morning. though the man wearing them had changed considerably more than his posture had. I've thought about this doc more times this year than I've thought about almost anywhere else in the city. I didn't expect it to still mean anything, this many months in. It does. I watched him look toward the exact board he'd once hidden a note behind, and thought of the man I'd first met in the shadow of that same information, Greco's driver, my father's killer. A name I'd once wanted to see punished more than I'd wanted almost anything else in the world. I thought of how little that wanting had survived contact with the actual man standing

1:31 beside me now, patient and careful and genuinely trying, in whatever way was left to him, to help finish something he'd once helped start. You're allowed to still find it strange, Nico said, watching me watch him, that I'm the one standing here with you. instead of the reason you'd have had to stand here alone. I don't find it strange anymore, I said honestly. I think that's actually the part that would have surprised the woman who stood here the first time, more than anything else we've learned since. Ten months of peace, and then all of this, Sophia said, and there was something almost dry in it, the specific dark humor she's earned the right to this year.

2:13 halfway through whatever this actually is, and we're back where we started, asking a question none of us wanted to have to ask. I brought coffee, Sophia added, holding up a cardboard tray with five cups, because I refuse to have this particular conversation without at least one ordinary thing in my hands. I don't know why that helps. It helps. It helps. I agreed, taking mine. feeling the warmth of it against fingers that had gone cold the moment we'd pulled up and I'd recognized exactly which Doc Dario was parking near. I think I understand, suddenly, why Pharaoh drove here instead of to the house. Some questions need somewhere solid to stand while you ask them.

2:56 Then let's ask it properly, I said, here, since apparently this is where all the important ones get asked. Dario. I checked the commission's own records first. Farrow said, unfolding a single sheet of paper against the wind, waiting one corner with a stone off the dock the way I remember Nico waiting a very different piece of paper a lifetime ago on this same stretch of wood.

3:22 Formal minutes, attendance logs, the works. There's exactly one recurring, documented commission obligation each month, the full quorum meeting, first Tuesday, always. Falcone's attendance there is recorded, consistent, unremarkable. First Tuesday, I repeated, not second. Not second, Farrow confirmed, which means there's no institutional record of where he is or isn't on a second Tuesday afternoon at all. No meeting to miss. No attendance sheet to check against. If he's been disappearing for a couple of hours once a month on that particular day, the commission's own paperwork would never have caught it, because nothing official has ever required his presence anywhere specific on it. That's not confirmation, I said, hearing

4:12 the caution in my own voice even as something colder settled underneath it. That's simply the absence of anything that could have ruled it out either way. I know, Pharaoh said. I wanted to hand you certainty. I can only hand you the shape of where certainty isn't currently possible to find, which I realize isn't the same gift at all. He was quiet a moment, watching the water.

4:36 I did think of something else, going through old memory rather than paper. Three, maybe four times over the years, at gatherings where his presence would ordinarily have been expected, Falcone simply wasn't there. Each time, there was a reason. Travel a cold, personal business mentioned once and never elaborated on. Nobody thought twice. Powerful men are loud absences nobody questions. I never once thought to ask myself what day of the week any of those absences actually fell on. How hard would it be, I asked, to build our own informal record going forward then? If we can't check the past, could we at least start tracking the future? whether he's reachable, visible, accounted for on the next second Tuesday that comes. Carefully, yes, Pharaoh

5:25 said. Nothing that would ever look like surveillance if anyone found it. Simply noting, the way any of us might note anything, whether he attends the things he'd ordinarily attend on that particular afternoon. I can start doing that quietly, starting with next month's date. Lena, do you remember, I asked Nico. Anything at all from either of your card games with him. Anything about how he spoke of his own time. A day he protected.

5:54 A pattern he mentioned without meaning to. Nico considered it with the particular care I've come to recognize as his, the specific unwillingness to hand someone a memory dressed up as more certain than it actually was. There's one thing, he said slowly. The second time we played, he mentioned, almost in passing, that he kept most Tuesday afternoons entirely free for what he called a standing personal matter, never named, never elaborated on, the sort of thing a careful man says specifically to close a door before anyone thinks to knock on it. I remember thinking, at the time, that it was simply the kind of vague, protective phrase powerful men use to keep their calendars their own. I didn't think Tuesday.

6:37 I didn't think second. I'm telling you what I actually remember, not what I've talked myself into remembering since Sophia found that gala program. Do you remember anything about his tone, saying it? I asked, whether it sounded rehearsed or simply offhand the way most calendar excuses are. Offhand, Nico said, without hesitation.

7:00 That's actually what makes it stick in my memory at all. A rehearsed line gets delivered carefully. The way a man delivers something he's practiced saying if anyone ever asks him directly. This wasn't that. It was tossed off between hands, the kind of thing a man says because it's simply true and he's never once had to defend it before.

7:20 I didn't think anything of it at the time precisely because it didn't sound like a lie being managed. It sounded like an ordinary fact escaping a man who'd forgotten anyone was still listening. That's honest of you, Sophia said. I think it's also more than we had an hour ago. It's still not a name confirmed at a filing office, Nico said.

7:42 I want to be exactly as careful with this as I was with the hand pause at his own card table. A vague phrase about Tuesday afternoons, months before any of us ever heard the word Vincent, spoken aloud by a dry cleaner, is suggestive precisely because none of us went looking for it. I don't want to pretend it's more than that.

8:04 Suggestive and unprompted, I said. That's a different category than suggestive and constructed after the fact. I think that's actually the most honest way any of us has described anything this whole investigation. I'll write it down exactly that way. Sophia said, already reaching for the small notebook she's taken to carrying everywhere this year. Suggestive and unprompted. Not confirmed.

8:29 I think if I keep the language precise on paper, it's harder for any of us to let it drift into something firmer than it's actually earned, even privately, even at three in the morning when firmer would feel considerably easier to carry. Dario. We stood there a while longer, the five of us, not quite ready to leave the dock even once the actual business of the morning had run its course, and I found myself doing the thing Sophia had already named out loud. Measuring how far this exact spot had carried us since the note behind that loose board. The morning we found that note behind the board, we had a name that wasn't real and a location we hadn't even found yet, I said. Now we have Aldo's third

9:13 book, read and understood. We have the Orsini truth, carried carefully by five people instead of buried by one dead man alone. We have a face that might be Vasco's, paused on a beach we can't currently reach. And now we have a first name that might belong to the most powerful man any of us actually knows. When you list it like that, it sounds like considerably more progress than it's felt like most weeks, Lena said. There are two things we haven't touched in a while, I said, and I don't want either of them to quietly disappear simply because they're not the loudest thing in front of us right now. Portifiers still paused.

9:53 Pharaoh's Corvus contact is still quiet. Neither of those has vanished. We've simply been circling something that felt more urgent. I haven't forgotten either, Farrow said. I think of the beach every few days. I think of my contact's islands almost as often. I don't have anything new to report on either front, which isn't the same as having stopped caring about them. Some threads need to sit for a while before they're ready to move again. I'd rather admit that plainly than pretend we're actively working every single piece of this at once. I think that's exactly why we needed to come back here, I said. To actually measure it, instead of only feeling the weight of what's still unfinished. We're not the same five people

10:37 who stood on this dock the first time. We know considerably more than we did. We're considerably more careful with what we know than we used to be. What happens, Sophia asked. If it actually is him. If every piece we've found since that morning at birth nine points, in the end, at the one man who's supposed to be the guarantee that men like Greco never happen again. Then the piece this whole volume has been protecting was never as safe as any of us believed, I said.

11:08 And we plan for that the same way we've planned for every other hard truth this year, carefully, together, without letting the size of it stop us from actually doing the next small right thing in front of us. And if it isn't him, Pharaoh said, if Vincent Falcone really is only a coincidence and the real Vincent is still out there, uninvestigated, laughing at how close we came to the wrong man, then we keep looking, I said, exactly as carefully.

11:37 I don't think either outcome actually changes what any of us does next. It only changes how much it costs us to do it. Dario and I walked home along the water instead of driving, neither of us in a hurry to trade the particular clarity of that dock for the ordinary noise of the rest of the day, and I found myself thinking, more than once, about the specific strangeness of being exactly halfway through something without knowing yet what shape its second half would actually take. I keep thinking about the version of me who stood on that dock the first time.

12:13 I said, ten months of peace. Gone in a single morning. I was so frightened that day, Dario. I don't think I've let myself remember how frightened until standing there again just now. I remember, Dario said. I remember thinking I'd give almost anything to make that fear disappear for you and not having the faintest idea yet how many more mornings like it were still coming. I think I've stopped wanting it to disappear entirely, I admitted. That's a strange thing to say out loud. I don't mean I've stopped wanting to be safe. I mean I've stopped wanting to be the version of myself who never had to learn any of this in the first place. I like who I've become, moving through it. I don't think I'd trade her back

12:57 for the frightened woman on that dock, even if I could. I like who you've become too, Dario said. I liked the woman on the dock as well, for what it's worth. I don't think either version cancels the other out. I think you simply carried her forward into this one. the same way this whole city carries birth nine forward into whatever it eventually becomes. Would you tell her? I asked, the woman standing on that dock the first time, if you could. Would you tell her how much harder it gets before it gets any easier? No, Dario said, after a moment. I don't think I would.

13:33 I think she needed to walk into every single week of this not knowing, the same way we're walking into whatever's still ahead not knowing. I don't think foreknowledge. would have made her braver. I think it might have simply made her tired before she needed to be. What would you tell the version of yourself who stood there that morning? I asked. If not the outcome, what would you actually say to him? Dario considered it for a long moment, the particular consideration he gives to a question he's genuinely never asked himself before. I think I'd tell him he was right to be frightened, he said finally, not to talk himself out of it. the way he tried to that whole first week. I think I'd tell him the fear was

14:15 correct information, not a weakness to manage quietly and hide from his wife. I spent considerably longer than I should have pretending I wasn't afraid to that first month because I thought it was my job to be the steady one. I don't think either of us needed a steady one nearly as much as we needed two honestly frightened people choosing to stay anyway. I wish you'd told me that back then. I said quietly. I'm telling you now, Dario said. I think some things only actually land once you've lived far enough past them to hear them properly. I don't think either of us was ready to hear it, standing on that exact dock the first time. I don't feel tired, I said, surprising myself with how true it was. I thought I would,

15:01 standing here at the halfway point. I feel considerably more like - someone who's actually capable of finishing this than I did on the day it started. Good, Dario said, taking my hand as we walked, the harbor stretching out ahead of us exactly as ordinary as it had looked the very first morning, giving no more sign now than it had been of everything it had already asked of US, or everything it still intended to, to be continued. That was episode 70 of Empire of Ashes. If this one has its hooks in you, the next episode is already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete book is on Amazon and early episodes plus Dario POV bonus scenes are on my Patreon.

15:46 Links are in the description. I've Mia. Thank you for listening.