Page 268 of Mario
Not yet.
I need answers first.Realanswers.
Not medical-site panic. Not anonymous message board speculation. Not translated fragments of Italian articles that may or may not be accurate. Real information, from somewhere I can verify.
I open my browser again.
All the tabs are still there, but there’s one specific one I keep returning to. Maybe because it’s one of the few that’s local and in English.
It was written not long after Mario took over what used to be Hawthorne Investments. A profile, mostly. It’s not as business-toned as I wish it were. It’s a bit tabloid-y, but nothing too focused on the business mentions his wife or anything personal beyond the vague “he came from Italy,” so this is really the only choice I have.
I skim past the paragraphs about the business and zero in on the background paragraphs.
Widowed father of twin sons.
The late Anna Conti, who died in Naples roughly a decade earlier under circumstances that were never fully publicly clarified.
Never fully publicly clarified.
I stare at those words until they blur.
There it is again—that careful way of saying something without actually saying anything.
It’s not an accusation. That would be an open-and-shut libel case.
This is more like a door left cracked.
I scroll to the byline.
Cindy Sullivan.
I click her name.
Nothing.
I copy it and open a new search.
Cindy Sullivan, journalist, Chicago
A LinkedIn site comes up, and I click that first.
A picture of a pretty middle-aged woman with a chic brown bob is revealed. Under it, she describes herself as an Independent Journalist. Long-form reporting. Investigative profiles. Chicago business, philanthropy, political donors, and private wealth.
I read through her profile and see that she’s written a few pieces for a business magazine, some random newspapers here and there. It’s not hard-hitting journalism or anything.
But I wasn’t expecting that. No one who wanted to keep a career at theChicago TribuneorForbeswould ever speculate on the mysterious death of a wealthy man like Mario Conti. So, I have to settle for an independent journalist who sometimes writes for…
I suppress a sigh.
ForChicago After Dark.
I need to do this.
I open my email—not my work email. Nothing connected to Murray Legal or with my name in it. This is an email I created in middle school that I keep around purely to give to stores to catch all the spam.
My fingers hover over the keyboard for a moment before I start typing.
Then delete it.
