Locates Perephone

"How's Persephone?"
He stared at me.
"Persephone," I said. "Demeter's daughter. She was carried away by the Lord of the Underworld."
Marcone's stare became cold.
"He kept her there in Hades, but Demeter froze the whole world until the other gods convinced him to return Persephone to her mother." I turned a page. "The girl. The one in the coma, who you're keeping in a hospital somewhere, and visiting every week. That's Helen's daughter, isn't it. The one who got caught in the cross fire of one of your shoot-outs."
Marcone didn't move.
"Newspaper file on it said she was killed," I said.
I read several more pages before Marcone answered. "Tony Vargassi, my predecessor, I suppose, had a son. Marco. Marco decided that I had become a threat to his standing in the organization. He was the shooter."
"But the girl," I said, "didn't die."
Marcone shook his head. "It put Vargassi in an awkward position. If the girl recovered, she might identify his son as the shooter, and no jury in the world would fail to send a thug to jail who'd shot a pretty little girl. But if the girl died, and it came back on Marco, he'd be looking at a murder charge."
"And someone who murders little girls gets the needle in Illinois," I said.
"Exactly. There was a great deal of corruption at the time - "
I snorted.
Marcone's little smile returned for a moment. "Pardon me. Say instead that the Vargassis exerted their influence on official matters with a heavy hand. Vargassi had the little girl declared dead. He convinced the medical examiner to sign false paperwork, and he hid the girl away in another hospital."
I grunted. "If Marco got identified as the shooter and put up for trial, Vargassi could produce the little girl. Look, she's not dead. Mistrial."
"One possibility," Marcone replied. "And if things went quietly for a while, he could simply delete her records."
"And her," I said.
"Yes."
"Whatever happened to old Tony Vargassi?" I asked.
I saw a flash of Marcone's teeth. "His whereabouts are unknown. As are Marco's."
"When did you find out about the girl?"
"Two years later," he said. "Everything was set up through a dummy corporation's trust fund. She could have just..." He looked away from me. "Just lain there. Indefinitely. No one would have known who she was. Known her name."


White Night Chapter 43, Page 478-480