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  "What are you smiling at?" Dominic put his hat on the seat between them, pulled a black pocket comb from his pocket, and raked it though a profusion of curly black hair. When Loretto didn't answer, he added, "You're grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary."

  Loretto said, "Dutch thought I was a dago."

  "Dutch what?"

  "When he said that thing about dagos killin' and eatin' with the same blade. He figured me for an Italian."

  "How many times I got to tell you!" Dominic gripped the steering wheel and shook it as if he were strangling someone. "You think some WASP family from Westchester drops off their bambino at Mount Loretto? Mammalucc'!" He slapped the steering wheel.

  "Just drive," Loretto said, and he went back to watching the traffic in the rearview.

  Friday - July 31, 1931

  11:06 p.m.

  Gina thought Raymond Novarro was the best-looking man on earth. In the movie she'd just seen with Loretto, Novarro played a Hindu jewel merchant forced to relinquish his love for an American girl, and Gina was chattering about the movie, the girl, and the sadness of it all as she walked hand in hand with Loretto along 107th Street on a perfect summer night. They were on the way to his apartment and the closer they got to his building, the more she seemed to chatter. Loretto was content to let Gina do all the talking. It was one of those rare nights when the stars were so bright they seemed to hover just over the rooftops. Their clasped hands between them swung back and forth with the rhythm of their walking, and he liked the feel of her hand in his, the delicacy of her fingers, the way her palm ft in the center of his closed hand. Along 107th, people were out on their stoops quietly talking with friends and neighbors. From behind an open window, a room full of unseen people burst into laughter. Loretto and Gina glanced toward the window and laughed themselves.

  Mrs. Marcello at first smiled at the sight of Loretto coming back to his apartment with a girl, but then she recognized Gina and the smile disappeared.

  When she reached the top of the steps, Gina gave Mrs. Marcello a kiss and a hug. In her ear, in Italian, she whispered, "I'm divorced now, and I'm only staying a little while," and when she pulled away she added, in English, "Mama sends her love. You should come visit. She talks all the time about the wonderful Mrs. Marcello."

  "I'll see her soon," Mrs. Marcello said, and she gestured to the sky. "What a beautiful night! The air's so clear!"

  "And it's not hot like the last few nights," Loretto said.

  "Did you hear both the Bevilacqua boys, they'll be all right? Thank God," she added, "everybody thought Salvatore . . ." She shook her hand, meaning everyone had thought Salvatore would surely die.

  "It's a blessing," Gina said.

  "The family, they're building a shrine."

  Loretto touched the small of Gina's back and nudged her toward the open door.

  "Buonanotte," Gina said and smiled a little awkwardly.

  "Shot three times," Mrs. Marcello said to Loretto as he walked by her.

  "Salvatore?" Loretto asked. When she nodded, he said, "Everybody knows I had nothing to do with this shooting, right?"

  "Si," Mrs. Marcello assured him. She added, "But you know who did."

  "Mrs. Marcello," Loretto said, and without realizing it he raised his finger to her, "I know nothing more than everybody else seems to know anyway." When he realized that he was pointing at her, he quickly put his hand in his pocket. "I'd appreciate it," he said, "if you would share that with others."

  Mrs. Marcello patted Loretto's cheek. "You're a good boy," she said. "That's what I tell everybody."

  "Thank you," Loretto said. "I had nothing to do with it. I swear to you." Before he followed Gina up the stairs, he gave Mrs. Marcello a kiss on the cheek.

  Gina was waiting for him at his apartment door. "She's like the neighborhood newspaper," she whispered. "By this time tomorrow, there won't be anyone in the Bronx won't know I came back to your apartment with you." She looked shocked and added, "Unsupervised!"

  Loretto unlocked the door and guided Gina into the living room, where she took a seat on the couch. "You'd think I was a girl again," she said, and she crossed her legs. She was wearing a summery blue dress that hiked up over her knees. Loretto's eyes fell to her stockinged legs.

  "Aren't you still a girl?" He went to the kitchen, pulled a bottle of Canadian whiskey from a cupboard, and showed it to Gina.

  "Just a splash. It is illegal, didn't you hear?"

  Loretto went about pouring them both drinks. "Aren't you?" he asked again.

  "Just a girl? No. I'm a divorcée, and we all know about divorcées."

  "You may be divorced," Loretto said. He started to hand her a whiskey glass and then pulled it back. "Straight okay?"

  "I like it straight." Gina took the glass from him. "I may be divorced?" she reminded.

  "But you're still only twenty-one. Same as me."

  "Twenty-two." She again feigned being shocked. "A divorcée and an older woman!"

  Loretto took a seat next to Gina. He put his arm around her neck, drew her close, and kissed her.

  "Oh," Gina said, "are we picking up from where we left off on the roof?"

  "That sounds good." Loretto's heart was already beating hard. Gina's breasts were somehow even more provocative to him under the thin fabric of her summer dress than they had been that night up on the roof, exposed and in his hand.

  "Mrs. Marcello will be listening for every sound that comes out of your apartment, and I told her I'd only be a short while."

  "So you don't want to?" Loretto asked. He backed away.

  Gina sidled close to him and kissed him again. "Listen," she said, "if we're going to do this, we have to be discreet. The other night, up on the roof, that was a onetime fling with a good-looking boy—and nobody had to know."

  "And what's this?"

  "That's up to you. Do you want a onetime fling?"

  Loretto didn't have to think. "No," he said. He was about to say more when a knock on the door interrupted him. "Who's that?" he asked Gina, as if she might somehow know.

  When the knock came again and louder, Gina said, "I don't think he's going away."

  Loretto considered getting his pistol from the bedroom, and for a moment struggled with protecting himself versus looking like a gangster in front of Gina. When the knock came a third time, and louder, he settled for standing back and to the side while he opened the door slightly with his toe jammed against the bottom of it. When he heard his name called, he peeked through the crack and saw Mike Baronti's face, with the familiar scar over his eye. He pulled the door open and Mike slipped into the apartment.

  Loretto couldn't figure what to say. He was too surprised. He managed only to say Mike's name.

  Mike started to speak and then noticed Gina on the couch in the next room. "What's she doing here?" he asked Loretto, as if Gina were somehow out of earshot.

  "What business is that of yours?" Gina was off the couch and in the kitchen—and suddenly an entirely different person than she had been a moment earlier. She stood toe to toe with her brother. "Do you realize Mama's worried sick about you? Everybody's saying you were in that car with Vince Coll and you shot up all those kids. Is that true, Mike? Did you?"

  Mike seemed not to hear a word she said. To Loretto he said again, "I asked you, what's she doing here?"

  Gina shoved her brother and he shoved her back. Loretto got in between them. "Mike," he said, "Gina and I went to a movie, and now we're having a drink before I take her home."

  "Yeah? And you're here all alone, just the two of you?"

  Gina said, "I swear to God, Mikey, I'm gonna slap you silly. You're asking what I'm doing here with Loretto when everybody's saying what they're saying about you? I'm askin' again: Did you have a part in shooting those kids?" Gina's face had darkened, and the way she was standing, she looked like she was a second away from hauling off and slugging her brother.

  Mike put up his hands. "Listen," he said, "let me talk to Loretto out in the hall
a minute. Then I promise I'll come back in here and explain everything to you."

  "You better," Gina said. She went back into the living room and planted herself firmly on the couch.

  In the hallway with Mike, Loretto closed the door behind him. "What's the dirt?"

  "Vince wants to talk to you."

  "Yeah? What about?"

  "Don't worry," Mike said. "He heard you put a knife to Dutch's throat. He wants to give you a kiss."

  Loretto looked around the hallway, at the battered door of the apartment across from him and its cut-glass doorknob, at the yellowing linoleum of the landing. "You sure about this, Mike? He wouldn't be worried about me fingering him for Tuesday's shootings, would he?"

  Mike scratched the back of his neck. "He might be," he said, "but I'm pretty sure he just wants to talk. I give you my word he ain't said nothin' to me about no rough stuff."

  "Where is he?"

  "He's parked around the corner, on 108th."

  "You know the whole damn city's lookin' for you guys, right? Did anybody see you come up here?"

  "Nah. I waited till Mrs. Marcello went in, and I got my hat down to my nose anyway. Where's Dominic?"

  "In Pennsylvania with Gaspar." Loretto answered Mike's question, but his thoughts were on Vince waiting for him around the corner. He wished he had more time to make a decision. "They're buying a couple of milk tankers," he explained.

  "Shippin' beer in milk tankers," Mike said. "That's smart."

  "Sure," Loretto said, and then he and Mike stood there in the hallway staring at each other, neither of them, apparently, with any idea what more to say.

  Mike spoke first. "Look, Loretto," he said, "all I think is Vince wants to talk, just to make sure that everything's okay with you and him after . . . after what happened."

  "Yeah, but you can't tell me for sure he doesn't plan on taking me for a ride."

  "You know Vince," Mike said. "Nobody knows what he'll do. But he didn't say nothing about taking you for a ride. That I swear to you on my mother's life." He waited and then added, "I think you got to go see him. If you don't, then . . ."

  "If I don't, then I'll be in trouble."

  "Yeah," Mike said. "I figure that's the way it is."

  At the bottom of the landing, a mouse took a few careful steps out of the shadows, sniffed at a cigarette butt, and then scurried across the linoleum and disappeared into a hole in the wall. "All right," Loretto said, as much to himself as to Mike, and he started down the steps.

  On 108th Street, Vince waited at the wheel of a black roadster with phony plates courtesy of the inmates at Elmira. He was wearing a straw boater and round tortoiseshell glasses. After the Vengelli kid had died and Mulrooney declared open season on him, he'd dyed his hair black, started growing a mustache, and had Lottie buy him the boater and glasses. When he looked at his reflection, he didn't recognize himself.

  "What's takin' so long?" Lottie was stretched out in the seat next to Vince with her head against the door and her knees to her chin. Tuffy was in the back seat, sleeping. The plan was to head up to Albany after meeting with Loretto.

  Vince didn't bother answering. He felt under his jacket and touched the butt of the pistol holstered over his heart. He figured he needed to have a talk with Loretto. If Loretto had seen him doing the shooting, that could be bad, but he liked Loretto, and he hadn't thought it through any further than this meeting. In the thinking, there wasn't anything about bumping him off to keep him quiet—but then he'd never once thought about killing May Collins till it was already done. It made him jittery to think of that. He'd liked May, too. It was Carmine had to go, and not because he wouldn't come with him when he split from Dutch but because he'd told Dutch—he'd squealed, and he was supposed to be a friend—and it wasn't even the squealing. It was that Carmine showed no respect. He could have just said no, he wouldn't split because he was scared of Dutch, he was happy where he was, anything like that. Instead he'd spit on the ground and said Vince was crazy to rile Dutch and to count him out—and that was saying Vince wasn't tough enough to take on Dutch, and so Vince had to show him and everybody else that he was more than tough enough. He'd learned that lesson with Joe Rock. After he'd blinded Rock that way and sent him running upstate with his tail between his legs, all of a sudden everybody looked at him different. They may have said they were disgusted or it was a sin to do anyone that way—but they were all a lot more careful around him. They watched what they said, and Vince figured out that fear and respect were close cousins. That was the Joe Rock lesson. He knew he couldn't let Carmine talk to him like that, and then Carmine went around telling everybody he had turned down Vince Coll and Dutch would grind Vince and his gang into the dirt—and then he went and told Dutch, and that was that.

  But Vince never thought he was going to give May any trouble. She was only a kid from some hick town in Pennsylvania, and he'd told her he just wanted to have a talk with Carmine, man to man, to straighten things out between them because they'd been friends a long time and then they could go their own ways and go on being friends with no one getting hurt—and May lapped it up like the hick from the boondocks she really was, though she dressed like a moll and worked as a dance hostess and liked to talk like she was all wised up, like she'd grown up on the streets with the rest of them. She'd gone along, gotten Carmine to walk her home after work, and Vince was waiting where he'd said he'd be, and she led Carmine right to him. It was late and there was no one on the block. Frank was at the wheel and Vince was in the passenger seat, at the curb, waiting. Vince'd seen them coming, Carmine and May, and they were laughing about something, like whatever Carmine had just said that was so funny might also be a little scandalous. When they came up even with the car window, Vince said, "What do you know, what do you say?" Carmine froze—and Vince put one in him and then got out of the car and put a few more in him for good measure.

  May never said a word, and this was the thing Vince kept coming back to in his thoughts: the way he'd looked at May after he'd taken care of Carmine and was standing over him with his automatic still dangling from his hand. Frank was in the car, at the wheel. May was shaking and her mouth was open like there was a word she meant to say but it got frozen somewhere, leaving her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. Shaking like her whole body was moving, her arms dancing like a Pentecostal at her sides. Vince hadn't meant to do a thing to May, but by the time he turned away from Carmine there was already a buzzing in his blood. He hadn't ever killed anyone up close before. He'd beaten some half to death and tortured a few, like Joe Rock, but he'd never given someone lead poisoning like Carmine up close, and someone who was once a friend, so when he turned around and May saw him do it, he shot her, too. Hadn't planned on it, hadn't even thought of it—just turned around and did it. That was what made him nervous, that he himself didn't know what it was he might do next.

  "Here he comes," Lottie said. She straightened herself up and kissed Vince on the cheek. The lights went out in the first-floor apartment closest to the car and the street suddenly got darker. "He ain't gonna talk, honey, even if he did see something. You know Loretto. He's a stand-up guy."

  "Sure," Vince said. "And you might have a little crush on him, too. Is that the story?"

  "Don't be a big jerk," Lottie said. "You know there's only one man in the world for me." She reached between his legs.

  Vince pushed her hand away. Loretto was walking up the street, approaching the car. He was a good-looking kid. In the orphanage, they'd lived in long dorms with rows of beds facing each other against the wall and the nuns would walk down the aisle at night with a yardstick or one of those long sticks for pointing at the blackboard and they'd make all the boys keep their hands on top of the covers. Fold your hands over your belly and go to sleep, Sister Aloise used to say. They were tough, those nuns, but Vince figured he'd learned more with them in those three years than he'd learned in all his other years in public schools—not that he was ever really in the public schools much after his mother died,
not him or Pete either. Loretto was quiet but no sissy. Sister Mary Catherine took a special interest in him, and he paid hell for that with everyone. Vince had always liked him because he was smart and even if he was quiet he still knew when to speak up for himself, and then once, when Vince wasn't around and a couple of the older boys were giving it to Pete, Loretto took Pete's side and blacked one of their eyes and kicked the other in the balls. After that it was always the three of them—Pete, Vince, and Loretto. Pretty soon the older boys started leaving the three of them alone, and all the boys their own age were hanging around, wanting to be part of their gang. They were only babies themselves, not even teenagers yet.

  Vince threw open the door and stepped out onto the street just as Loretto drew even with the car. "Took you long enough," he said. "Where's Mike?"

  "Vince?" Loretto had taken a quick step back at the sight of a stranger getting out of a car in front of him. It had taken him a second to realize it was Vince, and he still wasn't entirely sure.