Page 13 of The Guilty Trial

He wasn’t tall—maybe five-eight—but carried himself with blunt authority, clearly earned from two decades of managing roughneck longshoremen. “You know how long it took me to get this office? This chair? Twenty-three years of working my way up from the docks, earning these men’s trust. I started loading containers when I was nineteen years old. Nineteen. I’ve fought for workers’ rights my whole career, and I don’t have time for people like Sterling stirring up trouble where there isn’t any.”

“And yet Sterling’s investigation wasn’t without warrant,” Allie said. On their way there, she had reviewed the partial file MacKenzie had given her. The allegations of union corruption weren’t baseless—there were documented irregularities in contract negotiations, questions about kickbacks from shipping companies, and financial discrepancies that demanded investigation. “There were legitimate concerns about financial improprieties within the union.”

“Legitimate?” Bianchi barked a humorless laugh. “Sterling didn’t care about legitimate. He wanted headlines. He wanted to make a name for himself by going after working men who’ve done nothing but fight for fair wages and safe working conditions. You think these corporations give a damn about the guys breaking their backs on those docks? They’d work them to death if we didn’t stand in the way.”

His face had flushed red, and veins stood out on his temples. Allie recognized the anger—it was genuine, rooted in years of battling a system that often favored profits over people. But she also knew that genuine anger often fueled violence.

Bianchi seemed to realize he’d said too much. He crossed his arms and set his jaw. “I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”

“Where were you from Friday night into early Saturday morning?” Jason asked.

Bianchi’s scowl returned in full force. “Are you seriously pressing me as a suspect?”

“Just answer the question, Mr. Bianchi,” Allie said.

For a long moment, he stared at them, his jaw working like he was chewing over whether to cooperate or throw them out of his office. The silence stretched, broken only by the distant sound of machinery from the docks.

Finally, “I was at a wake. Redstone Bar, over on Pacific Avenue. One of our guys passed last week from a heart attack. Fifty-two years old, healthy as a horse one day, dead the next. We sent him off properly.”

“What time did you leave?” Allie asked.

“After two. Maybe closer to two-thirty.” His voice had softened slightly, the memory of the wake tempering his anger. “There were over fifty people there who’ll verify that. Tony was well-liked. A good man. Better than Sterling ever was, I’ll tell you that.”

Jason tilted his head slightly. “A wake at a bar?”

Allie answered before Bianchi could. “It’s an old Catholic tradition. Still common in some blue-collar circles.”

Bianchi nodded. She watched some of the tension ease from his shoulders. “Tony would’ve wanted it that way. None of that funeral home nonsense with organ music and fake flowers. Just drinks and stories and people who actually gave a damn about him. We laughed, we cried, we told every embarrassing story we could remember. That’s how you honor someone.”

There was something almost vulnerable in his expression now, a glimpse beneath the hardened exterior. Allie filed it away; people were rarely just one thing, rarely just angry or just grieving. They were complicated, contradictory.

“We’ll need a list of names,” Allie said. “People who can confirm your alibi.”

Bianchi’s glare darkened again, the vulnerability disappearing behind his scowl. “I already told you⁠—”

“We still need the list,” Jason broke in.

He muttered something under his breath that sounded like a curse, then pulled a notepad from his desk drawer and started scribbling names. His handwriting was cramped and angry, each letter pressing hard into the paper. Allie watched him work, noting the way his shoulders hunched, the way his mouth formed a tight line. She imagined he wrote like he did everything else—with force and barely contained aggression.

“What about the argument you had with Sterling at the courthouse?” Allie mentioned casually. “Witnesses said it got heated.”

“Of course it got heated.” The union head looked up. He held her gaze with a silent challenge. “He was trying to destroy everything I’ve built. Everything these men have fought for. You’d be heated too if someone tried to tear down your life’s work based on nothing but assumptions and political grandstanding. I wasn’t afraid of telling him how I felt.”

He finished the list and shoved the paper across the desk. Allie took it and scanned the names. They would have to verify every one, cross-reference the times, build a timeline that either cleared Bianchi or tightened the noose around him. Fifty witnesses at a wake was either the most convenient alibi she ever heard or the most airtight.

“We’ll be in touch if we have more questions,” Jason said, and rose to his feet.

Bianchi didn’t respond, just turned his attention back to the papers scattered across his desk. He dismissed them as if they were nothing more than another inconvenience in a day full of them.

Outside, Allie climbed into the passenger seat and closed her eyes briefly, letting the investigation settle into place. The weight never got lighter, only more familiar.

Jason started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, navigating carefully around a forklift that had backed across the road without warning. They drove in silence for a moment before he spoke.

“He could have hired someone.”

Allie opened her eyes. “What?”

“Bianchi. Even if his alibi checks out, he could have paid someone to do it. Longshoremen can be a rough crowd. I worked a smuggling case out of Long Beach a few years back. These guys operate in a world with its own rules. Wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think they could find someone willing to get their hands dirty for the right price.”