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  "I get it," Loretto said, "but where do I stand with Vince? That's what I want to know."

  "I already told you." Mike sounded like he was getting annoyed. "Vince ain't saying nothing, but he told us to leave you out of things. If I was you, that'd make me worry."

  Patsy said, "If Lottie squares this with Vince, and you do some more jobs with us—maybe that'll calm him down."

  "Do you think he believes me that I was sick that night?"

  "Yeah, food poisoning," Mike said, like he didn't believe it.

  Patsy said, "Here we are, boys," and he pulled over outside a line of shops with windows that looked out onto the street.

  Mike said to Loretto, "Forget about Vince for now. Come here." He gestured for Loretto to lean over the backrest as he drew a diagram with his finger on the car seat. "The bar's at the back of the room, like this . . ." He drew a line indicating the curvature of the bar. "Big Owney's boys were sitting on this end when I came by before." He indicated where the men were sitting. "Right behind them, there's a curtain into a back room."

  "Sure," Patsy said, "but that don't mean they'll be sitting there now."

  "Yeah, I know," Mike said. He looked like he was thinking things over as he opened his door and gestured for Loretto and Patsy to follow. At the back of the car, he popped up the trunk, checked the street to see if anyone was watching, took a pump-action shotgun out from under a blanket, and handed it to Loretto. "You got that .45 I just gave you?"

  Loretto patted the back of his coat, where he had the .45 tucked into his pants.

  Mike said, "What's it doing back there?"

  Loretto said, "I figure better to blow my ass off than my balls."

  "Very funny. Look," Mike glanced at the door to the speak, which was in between a stationery store and a grocery shop. "Give me and Patsy time to go around back; then come in the front and blast a hole in the ceiling. While everybody's scurrying around like rats looking for a sewer, me and Patsy'll come in from the back and take care of Big Owney's torpedoes."

  Loretto said, "What do you want me to do if they start taking shots at me?"

  "Do what you gotta do," Mike said, "but they ain't gonna want to get themselves killed looking after Jablonski."

  "You know who they are?" Patsy asked.

  "They didn't look too tough to me," Mike said. "Probably a couple of out-of-work Joes that Madden picked up off the street."

  "Shouldn't be nothin' to it, then," Patsy said to Loretto.

  Loretto hid the shotgun under the flap of his overcoat and waited in the shadows of the stationery store while Patsy and Mike went through an alley to the back of the building. His arms and legs felt light and a little shaky. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. Gina was in the back of his mind. She'd be furious if she knew he was here. He checked the street. A block of stores and shops, only the speak to draw a late-night crowd. Everyone else asleep on a work night. He felt like he could hear the slightest sound: if someone dropped a fork in a second-floor apartment a block away, he'd hear it and see it in his mind's eye.

  Chances he'd get shot were slim: he was the one with a shotgun in hand and a .45 tucked under his belt. He checked his wristwatch. He wanted to give them plenty of time to get into the back room. Chances he'd have to shoot someone were also slim. Mike was right. They wouldn't want to get themselves killed. But chances were excellent that if someone recognized him, he'd be getting another visit from Cabo's boys, or Luciano's, or maybe Madden's. Since Vince was in jail, Loretto was out of the picture and the big boys had Vince's trial on their minds, not him, not Loretto—but if word got out that he was in the action again, working for Vince, then the story might be different. Then he might get another visit. He was thinking about this and about Gina and about a dozen other things all at the same time so that the effect was that he wasn't really thinking about anything at all, just a buzz of thoughts rattling around, bouncing off each other. Had there been a single night since Cabo's boys pointed those cannons at his head that he hadn't thought about them, about that moment? He doubted it. His thoughts at that moment were like his thoughts now: not so much thoughts at all as a buzz, a circus of little pieces of thoughts soaring on a trapeze behind his eyes. Gina would be furious, and, still, part of him liked this feeling. Part of him liked it, part of him was scared, part of him knew what he was doing, part of him didn't. And then he moved to the speak door, knocked, and when it opened an inch kicked it open the rest of the way. He punched the air out of a skinny doorman by hitting him hard just under the ribs with the butt of the shotgun, and then found himself striding into a barroom with maybe a half-dozen patrons seated around tables and four or five men at the bar, including the bartender. "Gentlemen," he said, and he pulled the trigger, blasting a crystal chandelier to pieces, the room suddenly full of glass and dust.

  The men at the bar and at the tables all dove for the floor. Patsy and Mike came out of the back room, through a bead curtain, and had to get down on the floor to collar Madden's boys. Mike clocked them both with the blackjack, took their guns from them, left them sprawled out on the straw-covered floor. Patsy grabbed the bartender and pulled him into the back room, and Mike used the guns he'd just taken from Madden's boys to blast away at the shelves of liquor behind the bar, liquor and glass flying everywhere. What patrons there were left in the bar crawled or ran out the door and disappeared. One guy scuttled like a crab, his eyes on Loretto, his hand dangling to the ground as if ready at any instant to drop, leap, or run. Thirty seconds after Loretto shot the chandelier dead, he was alone in the barroom, the shotgun aimed at the exit as he backed up through the bead curtain and found Patsy behind the bartender, holding him by the arms. The guy was older, maybe in his forties, wearing a long white apron that tied around his waist and a striped red vest over a white dress shirt with a black bow tie. Mike stood in front of him, holding a bottle of wine. The bartender's lip was bleeding, nothing much, as if maybe he'd been smacked.

  Mike said, "This is a good bottle of wine." He showed it to Patsy.

  Patsy said, "I never been a big wine expert. Looks like a bottle of wine."

  "No," Mike said, "this is an expensive wine." He asked the bartender, "What do you get for this? Twenty bucks?" When the bartender started to answer, Mike threw the bottle into the wall, shattering it. He picked up what remained by the neck, sniffed it, said, "Nice bouquet," and slashed the bartender's face, gashing his cheek and mouth before tossing the bottle away. The guy screamed, shrill and loud, and Mike shoved a dishrag into his mouth. He held it there roughly until the screaming stopped. When the room was quiet, he removed the dishrag and blotted blood from the bartender's face and then pressed it against the gashed cheek to slow the bleeding. "I don't really care how much it costs," he said. "The point is, it's not our wine. We didn't sell it to you." He leaned toward the bartender, his expression asking the question, Do you understand?

  The bartender nodded. He was shaking and crying, and his tears drew lines in the blood on his face.

  "Good," Mike said. "You tell Mr. Jablonski that I'll be around again." He gestured toward Loretto. "Me and my friend here who doesn't like crystal chandeliers. Tell him we'd like to talk to him, put everything back in order the way it was. Right?"

  The bartender nodded, and Mike said, "You're a lucky man, friend. 'Cause if this was Vince Coll here tonight instead of me . . . Trust me," he said, "you're a lucky man."

  Patsy said, "Tell Jablonski that when Vince gets out, he's gonna want to talk to him, too." He let the bartender loose and then held him by the shoulders until he felt sure he wouldn't fall when he let him go.

  Once they were all back in the car, Patsy said, "The mug'll keep that scar for the rest of his life."

  Mike said, "Least he's not blind," reminding Patsy of what Vince did to Joe Rock.

  "That's something," Patsy said, and then the car was quiet for the rest of the ride.

  When they dropped Loretto off, Mike got out of the car with him. The street was empty and dark, and he and
Loretto stood in the center of it. Mike looked up at the windows of his mother's apartment. "Listen," he said, "I'll leave you out of it, 'cept when we have to."

  "Have to what?" Loretto took a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit up.

  "When we need another guy we can trust," Mike said, and he followed Loretto's lead and lit up. Behind them, Patsy slid over into the passenger seat, rolled down the car window, and leaned out to the street as if he wanted to join the conversation.

  "Maybe Lottie can straighten things out for you," Mike said, "maybe not."

  "And if she can't?"

  "You might be able to hide out from Dutch and them, but not from Vince."

  "It'd be nice to know beforehand," Loretto said, "if there was trouble coming my way."

  Mike looked back to Patsy, who rolled up the window and slid back behind the wheel.

  "Yeah," Mike said, and though he said it very softly, the meaning was clear. He'd look out for Loretto. He asked, "How's Freddie?"

  "He's doing good," Loretto said. "Real good."

  Mike patted Loretto on the arm. "I'll be in touch when we need you." He looked up once more at the windows of the apartment where he'd grown up and then got back in the car and drove off with Patsy.

  Alone on the street, Loretto sat on the stoop to finish his cigarette. He ran his fingers through his hair, felt a sharp prick, and his hand came away bloody. Embedded in the soft skin of his forefinger, a half-inch-long sliver of glass drew blood like a tiny straw, sucking it out along its brief length to the end, where drops quickly formed and fell away. He pulled the sliver out, tossed it to the street, and held his hand over the edge of the steps, where the grit and dirt soaked up the blood dripping from his finger. He looked to the sky, found a dark smudge of clouds, and closed his eyes. He thought about the shotgun blast and the chandelier exploding as everyone scurried away from him, as if he were the wrath of God; and then, a moment later, he was back in the basement of Gaspar's house, looking down into the wine cellar. He seemed to see it more clearly now in his mind's eye than he had at the time. He saw the rough dirt wall and the dark circles of the wine bottles where they penetrated the walls, the circles of the bottles in the circle of the wine cellar and Gaspar and Dominic wedged into the center of the circle looking up at him, Gaspar with smears of blood across his face and a thick black clot of blood at the corner of his mouth, as if his bottom lip might have been ripped, Dominic with one eye swollen closed, an ugly mess of yellows and blues, the other eye clear and untouched, open and looking up out of the wine cellar as if watching for something or someone, as if waiting.

  Loretto stubbed out his cigarette, checked his hand to see that the bleeding had stopped, and wrapped the cut finger with his handkerchief. He guessed the bartender was in a hospital room somewhere by now, getting his face stitched up. He was tired. He pulled himself to his feet and started back up the stairs. He tried to be as quiet as he could. He hoped to slip back into Mama's house unseen.

  Wednesday - December 13, 1931

  1:00 p.m.

  On the first day of the trial, Lottie found that watching the proceedings made her nervous to the point of sickness. Strenburg, one of Vince's lawyers, had arranged a seat for her in the balcony, close to the door, so she could go in and out without making a fuss, though she had to leave her coat and get the guy next to her to guard it or else she wouldn't have a seat when she got back. The courthouse was packed. Coppers every ten feet out in the hall, and it seemed like half the city took off from work to be at the big show. From where Lottie sat, she could see the first few rows of spectators huddled shoulder to shoulder on long benches like church pews that were separated by an aisle where a couple of coppers stood with their hands folded in front of them, watching the proceedings. On the other side of the railing from the spectators, Vince and Frank sat at a table with Strenburg on their left and Leibowitz on their right.

  Neary, the prosecuting attorney, had just told the jury he had an eyewitness to the murder of Michael Vengelli and that he would prove beyond a doubt that Vince Coll was the murderer and that nothing less than a conviction for murder in the first degree would serve justice. With Neary's demand for a first-degree murder conviction, Lottie's stomach had cramped and a swell of nausea had threatened to remove her from the courtroom. Now, as Leibowitz rose from the defendant's table to address the jury, she took one of Vince's handkerchiefs from her handbag and tried to pat a sheen of sweat from her face without ruining her makeup. She wanted to be there for Leibowitz's opening remarks to the jury but lasted only long enough to hear him insist that the whole case against Vince was a fabrication invented by unscrupulous individuals more interested in the state's thirty-thousand-dollar reward than in justice. Before the balcony's padded swinging door closed behind her, she heard Leibowitz tell the judge and jury that he would prove beyond a doubt that Vince was hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime on the day the poor Vengelli child was murdered. A minute later she was in the ladies' room, on her knees in front of a porcelain john, vomiting up her lunch. Behind her, a lady copper, the same one who had been keeping an eye on her all day, knocked on the stall door and asked if she was okay. Lottie said, "Give a girl a little privacy, will you, hon?" and then waited for the sound of retreating footsteps and the door closing before she pulled herself up and took a seat on the commode.

  Jack had agreed to testify that Vince was with him in Albany at the time of the Vengelli child's murder, but Leibowitz was worried that Jack Diamond would hardly make an unimpeachable witness, given he was currently on trial himself for kidnapping and torture—again. Diamond had come up with the idea of having Shorty go along with him, saying he was with Jack and Vince at the time of the murder. Shorty had no rap sheet at all: he'd been a professional athlete who'd played for the New York Giants. Leibowitz figured between Shorty and Jack, they'd have just what they needed, a believable alibi that would leave the jury in doubt of Vince's guilt. Frank didn't need an alibi: he'd already been convicted and sentenced to the chair for the murder of Joe Mullins; but if Vince got off, so did Frank, not that it mattered much to him.

  Lottie straightened herself up as best she could and then went to the sink and washed her face. She knew that Leibowitz planned to make the police look like bad guys who were harassing Vince and maybe even in league with Vince's enemies in the bootlegging business, and while it all sounded fine as Vince explained it to her, her confidence fell apart when she heard Neary addressing the jury and telling them he had an eyewitness. Would the jury believe a couple of bootleggers like Jack and Vince or this mystery witness? The way Lottie saw things, it all came down to the witness, whom the coppers were doing a good job of keeping under wraps. No one knew anything about the guy. Whenever she told Vince that she was worried about the outcome of the trial, he reminded her that Al Capone beat a mug to death in a crowded bar, and Leibowitz had gotten him off.

  Lottie put her purse down on the edge of the sink and went about reapplying makeup. Leibowitz had issued an official communiqué from Vince and all the papers had printed it. It was supposed to be in Vince's own words, but Leibowitz had told him what to say and Lottie had helped him write it. She had a copy torn from the Daily News in her purse. She stopped what she was doing, found the scrap of newsprint, and reread it for the fiftieth time:

  I would like nothing more than to lay my hands on the man who did this—I would tear his throat out. There is nothing more despicable than a man who would harm an innocent child. So far as I am concerned, I am not afraid of the outcome. I can prove I was miles away when this crime was committed. It is a frame-up on the part of my enemies, who have tried many times to assassinate me and have failed. Now they are trying to bring about my death through the law.

  When she was finished reading, she folded the paper carefully, placed it back in her purse, and went about applying lipstick. Reading the statement made her feel better. It was almost as if because it was written and printed in a newspaper, it must be true. When she read it, she half bel
ieved it herself.

  By the time Lottie returned to the courtroom balcony, a cute little girl was on the witness stand. Lottie took her seat and folded her coat in her lap while below her a court attendant rolled a bullet-riddled baby carriage up the courthouse aisle, past the spectators, and toward the bench. The crowd gasped at the sight of the carriage, the way it was torn apart by bullets. Lottie, only seconds after retaking her seat, felt a combination of nausea and jitters coming over her. She tried to settle herself by focusing on Vince and how handsome he was in his new sky-blue suit. He seemed calm and attentive, seated quietly with his hands folded on the table, his eyes on the witness stand. For a moment, Lottie thought she might be able to pull herself together, but then Neary pointed at Vince and asked the girl if she recognized him, and Lottie found herself rising from her seat and pushing through the padded doors. The girl had said "No" almost immediately, but it didn't help. Lottie started down the stairs and toward the street. She needed air. She needed the cold on her skin and to move fast along the street, around the block, to keep walking, to walk off the jitters, to walk until she could take a normal breath. Her stomach was empty, so maybe after the walk she'd try to get a bite to eat. Maybe then she'd be able to return to the courtroom.