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  Lottie had moved around behind Vince and was massaging his shoulders. Florence glared at her briefly and then went back to puffing on her cigarette.

  Jack filled his tumbler with gin. He glanced up at Lottie as if annoyed by her presence. "So," he said, "as we were saying, Vince. The boys put you out of business in the city, then we don't have the markets we discussed. We got nobody to distribute to, we might as well shove the hooch up our asses." He looked up to Lottie. "You'll excuse my French."

  Lottie ignored him.

  Florence said, "Don't feckin' worry about her."

  Vince said, "We ain't losing our markets." His shirt was open at the collar, and his eyes were bloodshot from drinking. He was hunched over the table. "I said we'll take care of it."

  "Sure," Jack said, and he slouched back in his seat. "But when? Give 'em a few more weeks and they'll wipe you out." He tilted the tumbler of gin to his mouth and drank like it was water.

  "Ah," Florence said, "those bastards—"

  Vince clapped his hand over Florence's wrist. He pointed to the kitchen. "Go help Sally and Maria."

  Florence gestured to Lottie. "I don't see this bitch helpin'—"

  Vince yanked Florence halfway out of her seat and slapped her arm down on the table.

  "Son of a bitch," Florence muttered, the curse aimed at no one in particular. She followed Sally into the kitchen.

  Lottie took Florence's seat.

  "Look," Vince said to Diamond, "Dutch has got his own problems. I hear Mulrooney snatched his records. They're going after him on taxes."

  "He's got lawyers for that," Jack said. He refilled his glass with gin. "And it's not just Dutch that's the problem."

  Frank reached over the table for the gin. "We got to hit 'em back," he said to Vince.

  Mike said, "We could blow up a couple of their warehouses. Let 'em know they want trouble, we'll give it to 'em."

  Vince said, "I'd like to stuff Dutch's head in a fuckin' fishbowl." He toyed with his drink. "Maybe we should toss a couple of pineapples into the Cotton Club. That'll make 'em think."

  "Jesus!" Jack said. "Not the Cotton Club. You'll have the whole city on your ass."

  Tuffy said, "We already got the whole city on our ass, if you ain't noticed."

  Frank said, "That gives me an idea," and he set his glass down on the table. When the room went quiet and everyone turned to him, he said, "You know Joe Mullins? He keeps all the Dutchman's records in his head."

  "Yeah," Mike said. "I heard that. He's got one of those what-do-youcall-it memories."

  "Photographic," Jack said.

  "That's right," Frank said. "He's got a photographic memory. He's got everything from Dutch's inventory to his payoffs all in his head."

  "So?" Patsy said. He'd been quiet through most of the evening. Only now, when talk of a particular action was gaining momentum, did he speak up. "What are you sayin'?"

  Jack said, "He's saying Joe Mullins would be a tough man for Dutch to lose."

  "That's right," Frank said.

  Vince asked Frank, "Is he hard to get to?"

  "No," Frank said. "Wouldn't be hard at all."

  Sally and Maria came into the dining room lugging two big bowls of pasta and sauce. Sally's bowl was filled to overflowing and sauce dripped to the floor and on the table before she finally put it down in front of Jack.

  Jack said, "You got dishes and forks and such, doll?"

  "Yeah," Sally said. "Comin' right up." She offered Jack a bright smile.

  Maria stood behind Patsy and put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Doll," Jack said to Maria, "be a sweetheart and go help your girlfriend."

  Patsy reached behind him and patted Maria on the thigh. "Don't let it get cold," Maria said. She pointed to the pasta and then joined Sally in the kitchen.

  Jack said to Vince, "Man can't run his business without keeping good records, that's all I got to say." He pulled the pasta bowl toward him and sniffed it. "I think I'm hungry."

  Loretto pulled the bottle of gin away from Frank. "Hey, Vince," he said. "I'm just speculating— What if Dutch and the syndicate— What if they're trying to get you do something stupid?" He poured himself a drink. "You know what I'm saying? They tossed a bomb into the Mad Dot. Don't you think they know you're going to come right back at them?"

  "You're speculating?" Jack said before anyone else could speak. "Who's this?" he asked Vince.

  "He's a friend," Vince said.

  Jack said to Loretto, "I know you?"

  Vince said, "He's the mug put a knife to Dutch's throat. You heard about that?"

  "You don't say?" Jack lifted his glass in a toast to Loretto. "That was you?"

  Loretto said, "I should've cut his throat when I had the chance." As soon as the words came out, he was surprised by them. He didn't know why he'd said it.

  "I like this kid," Jack said to Vince. To Loretto he said, "I bet you Dutch was shittin' his pants, the yellowbelly."

  "As I recall," Loretto said, "he might have been a little pale."

  "Listen, kid. What's your name?"

  "Loretto."

  "All right, Loretto. In this line of work, it's important to know when to talk and when not to talk. You hear what I'm sayin'?"

  Loretto fingered his drink.

  Lottie spoke up. "Ah, let him talk," she said to Jack. "It's Vince and his boys puttin' their necks out."

  Vince placed his hand on top of Lottie's. "Go find Florence, will you, doll? Tell her it's time to eat."

  For a moment, Lottie seemed on the edge of exploding. Then she shoved her chair back and left the room.

  Vince said to Jack, "It's settled," and yelled into the kitchen for the dishes. "We're fuckin' starvin' in here!"

  Sally and Maria came into the dining room toting stacks of dishes and handfuls of forks and spoons, which they dropped haphazardly around the table. In a minute, everyone was crowded around the food, reaching over each other to pull out chunks of spaghetti and plop them down on their plates. The spaghetti was overcooked and stuck together in clumps. The sauce was watery and the meatballs chewy. None of this seemed to bother anyone as they splattered sauce over the table in a hurry to get at the food. Florence and Lottie came back into the room and Florence took a seat next to Joe. Jack held a meatball on the tines of a fork in one hand and a tumbler of gin in the other. He took a bite of the meatball, washed it down with gin, and launched into a dirty joke about a whore and a priest. When he hit the punch line, Florence laughed the loudest and immediately tried to one-up him with an even dirtier joke, one so full of profanity that even her husband shook his head as if shocked by his wife's language. Lottie was the only one not eating. She tried to catch Loretto's eye, but he looked away toward the front door. He remembered that Shorty was still out there, wrapped in his thick raccoon coat, looking like a marauding beast. Loretto thought it was a wonder no one shot him. When he turned back toward Lottie, she was gone.

  Tuesday - September 29, 1931

  12:37 a.m.

  Vince and Jack were still drinking, the bottle of gin between them now nearly empty. Frank and Sally, Tuffy, Mike, Florence, and Joe were all huddled around the table, the whole lot of them drunk, drinking and telling jokes, smoking cigarettes and cigars. Loretto watched them through the back window as he leaned against a porch column and smoked one of Patsy's Luckies. Patsy and Maria were seated alongside each other on the porch railing, and Lottie, wrapped up in an old army blanket, was rocking in a swing suspended from the ceiling by lengths of rusty chain, hidden in shadows. With each slight movement back and forth, the chains squeaked. They were all sober and quiet. Beyond the porch, a light drizzle was visible in the glare of a bare bulb screwed into a white ceramic base above the back door. The rain looked like a silvery screen wrapped around the house.

  Maria linked her arm through Patsy's and rested her head on his shoulder. She covered her mouth and yawned. "I'm getting tired."

  "They'll be making a racket half the night," Patsy said. He put his ar
m around Maria's shoulders. He was boarding here, in an upstairs bedroom, sharing a room with Tuffy. Mike and Frank had the room across from them.

  Out of the shadows, Lottie said, "You boys have all known each other since you were kids." She laughed quietly. "It's funny," she added, "thinking of you all runnin' the streets, climbing fire escapes and lampposts in short pants, like kids do." She laughed again. "I don't know why it strikes me so funny."

  "Loretto here," Patsy said, "didn't come around till later. He grew up in an orphanage."

  "What was that like?" Maria asked.

  "Wasn't so bad." Loretto tapped the ash off his cigarette and watched it fall glowing into the darkness over the porch railing. "I got a pretty good education there."

  "Yeah?" Patsy said. "Is that where you learned words like speculatin'?"

  "Patsy," Loretto said, "you got spaghetti sauce on your cheek."

  When Patsy sat up and ran his hands over his face, Loretto laughed at him.

  "Ah, leave him alone," Maria said, and she pulled Patsy close again and snuggled up against him.

  Lottie said, "Where's your husband think you are tonight, Maria?"

  "He'll be travelin' from now till New Year's."

  "I wanna put a bullet in his head so she can get the guy's money," Patsy said, "but she don't want no part of it."

  "You're not a cold-blooded murderer, Patsy DiNapoli. You talk like you're Al Capone, but I know better."

  "Jesus," Lottie said. "He's a real Boy Scout, aren't you, Patsy?"

  "What's the big idea, Lottie?" Patsy sounded more tired than annoyed. "What's botherin' you?"

  "I already said what's bothering me. Is anybody listening?" she asked. "No. All of a sudden everybody's a genius. I'm telling you, there's gonna be trouble. Dutch and them ain't dumb. The Mad Dot was bait, and Vince is swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. They're just tryin' to get Vince back in the city, where the cops and everybody else is looking for him."

  Patsy said, "You're worryin' too much. Vince knows what he's doing."

  "Sure, you're all geniuses now." Lottie went back into the house without another word or so much as a glance at the others.

  "She's probably got the rag on," Patsy said. He slid down from the porch railing and pulled Maria along with him.

  "Don't be a big jerk," Maria said.

  "We're calling it a night," Patsy said to Loretto.

  "Me, too, in a minute."

  Maria pulled herself away from Patsy long enough to give Loretto a kiss on the cheek. Then she and Patsy followed Lottie back into the house.

  Alone on the porch, Loretto reached for the brass pull chain dangling from the ceramic fixture over the door and clicked off the light. He made his way to the porch swing and stretched out in the darkness. Lottie had left the army blanket draped over the backrest, and he pulled it over him. The rain continued to fall steadily, though he couldn't see anything other than the small patch of porch floor directly under the back window. He closed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest, his head propped up on the armrest. When he moved, the chains squealed. From inside the house, he heard Vince and Jack talking loudly over the background chatter of the others. It sounded like they were telling stories. Every once in a while there'd be an outbreak of laughter. He tried to tune out the voices and concentrate on the rain. Gina was there in a corner of his thoughts, but Loretto concentrated on listening. He liked lying on the porch swing. He liked the way the night and the quiet made him feel. He closed his eyes and rocked himself, peaceful in the dark.

  Friday - October 2, 1931

  10:00 a.m.

  The weather had shifted overnight from blustery and cold to bright sunshine and temperatures in the 70s. Joe Haley, bolt upright in the driver's seat, clutched a mug of java in his right hand and the steering wheel in his left. Loretto kept his eyes on a road bracketed by long stretches of green felds and stands of trees with brightly colored leaves—reds and yellows and oranges and every shade in between. It was just the two of them in the car. They were on their way into the city with a list of chores to accomplish. On the one hand, Loretto was feeling surly at being relegated to the role of an errand boy. On the other hand, he was glad not to be privy to any details. He knew enough. He knew Joe Mullins was looking at an early funeral. He knew there were three bombs with short fuses in the back seat of the car under an old blanket. In the trunk, a black valise with a pair of .38 Supers, a .45 automatic, and enough ammunition for a small war was propped up next to a jack and a pump-action shotgun. He knew Vince had plans for a bloody weekend. He knew that, but the only one he knew specifically to be marked for death was Mullins.

  "This is some weather, huh?" Joe said. "Indian summer."

  And that was the end of the conversation. Joe went back to driving and sipping his coffee, and Loretto went on thinking about Mullins. He knew him a little. They'd met a few times in the course of Loretto's business with Gaspar and Dominic, and he'd never figured him for anything other than a working stiff. Mullins ran a drop for Dutch's empty beer barrels, and Gaspar had done business with him now and then. On the occasions when they'd met, Mullins had been friendly enough, taking the time for a handshake and a slap on the back. He was an older guy, in his forties. One of those men who likes to put his arm around the shoulders of a young guy and give him advice. Once he'd taken Loretto aside, put a finger in his face, and told him to be careful with the girls. "Mug like you," he said, "you don't want to be a father with a family to take care of before you're ready. Do you get my drift?" Loretto had played out his role as the inexperienced kid. "Sure, Joe," he'd said. "I get your drift." Mullins slapped him on the back and sent him on his way. The memory of that little encounter had come back to Loretto fercely in the past few days. He told himself that Mullins knew the nature of the business. They all did. And he pushed his thoughts elsewhere.

  "Listen, Joe," Loretto said, "tell me again what we're doin'?"

  Joe put his coffee cup down on the dashboard and fished a slip of paper out of his pocket. "We got to get a room for Patsy and Mike at the Ladonia Hotel on the East Side, a room for you and Tuffy at the Maison on the West Side, a couple of rooms for Vince and Lottie and Frank and Sally at the Cornish Arms." He stuffed the slip of paper back in his pocket.

  "He's got us spread out all over town."

  "That's the plan. Lottie says it's better that way."

  "Queen Lottie," Loretto said. "What about you and Flo?"

  "Flo's getting us a room near the Penn Post Garage, over on West 36th." Joe picked up his coffee again. He was an ordinary-looking guy with a leathery face, looked like a million other dockworkers, men who spent their days out in the weather hauling heavy cartons from pallet to pallet.

  "So you used to work on the docks," Loretto said.

  "Docks, freight yards."

  "Ever miss it?"

  "Are you kiddin'? I miss it like Flo misses washin' floors."

  "Listen, Joe," Loretto said, "can I ask you a favor? You don't need me to make a bunch of room reservations. How about droppin' me off at my girlfriend's place?"

  Joe grinned and said, "What do I get out of it?"

  "I'll owe you a favor. Never know when a guy might need a favor."

  Joe looked at his wristwatch. "All right, but be back at the Maison by one o'clock." He winked at Loretto. "That enough time?"

  "Yeah," Loretto said. "That'll do."

  11:00 a.m.

  The front door to Gina's was propped open with a wash bucket, the black and white squares of the foyer's linoleum floor slick and wet. Loretto managed to reach the steps leaving only one footprint on the newly washed floor. He knocked at Gina's door, waited, and knocked again. When she didn't answer, he rattled the door and called her name, and when she still didn't answer, he took his stiletto from his pocket, wedged it into the door frame, and popped the lock. Once inside, he closed the door behind him and put the stiletto away.

  He had no idea what he was doing. It felt urgent to get into the apartment, and so he had b
roken in—and now he waited and looked around. On the living room couch, directly in front of him, a yellow dress was draped over the armrest, and nylon stockings were balled up in a crevice between two cushions. Spread out on the coffee table, yesterday's newspaper was open to the sports section and a big headline announcing that the World Series was tied at one game apiece, with the Philadelphia A's having taken the last game. A picture of Connie Mack, the A's manager, took up the bottom third of the page. Mack looked like an undertaker in a dark suit, with a narrow face under a straw boater. Loretto picked up the dress and the stockings and carried them into Gina's bedroom. He folded the dress neatly and placed it on her bed. He put the stockings in the bathroom hamper and then returned to the couch, where he stretched out facing the two tall windows that overlooked the street.