(two each) and proceeded to the same clerk.
“Thought you were trying to avoid getting her the same discs.”
I pulled out a wad of twenties from my pocket. “Change of approach.”
I left the store and walked through the parking lot with my new stash of music. At the time, my car had the best stereo system of any I’d ever owned. Six months prior, I’d traded in the trusty Mustang for a candy apple red Audi S4 convertible, a machine even faster and more luxurious than its predecessor, more in-your-face and un-Bovaroesque than any other car in its class; the status didn’t matter here, only the speed and comfort. When I first drove it back to Brooklyn, parked it in the reserved spot behind Sylvia, it brought mixed reviews:
POP, to a smattering of crew members: “Hey, my kid got class or what?”
GINO: “I’m sorry, Officer, all I remember is he was driving a bright red Audi.”
PETER, after three seconds of staring: “Seriously?”
I’d positioned myself in the corner of the lot at Best Buy, a perfect diagonal distance from where Melody had parked. I got in and turned the key, powered the cab without turning the ignition, emptied the in-dash CD changer. I started ripping open the new CDs, loading the changer one by one, then started the first disc. And I sat there, the cab growing dimmer from an increasingly cloudy sky, listening to Aimee Mann. The music was unfamiliar to me—quite mellow and gentle, like falling leaves or snow, the words and style both thoughtful and thought-provoking. I’d been exposed to a moderate variety of music in my life: the usual mix of Sinatra and Bennett and their kindred, the hair bands of the eighties of which Peter had fancied himself their chief emulator, and that frigging trance.
But these songs—the tunes and words—held me temporarily captive, seemed to be trying to explain something intended to stick with you beyond a meal in a restaurant, beyond a loud concert, beyond a single play.
I listened to the entire CD.
These were the first words I ever heard Melody say. She wasn’t speaking directly to me, but she was definitely speaking.
Within months my collection grew, the first real collection of music I could call mine, expanded into a diverse assortment all on its own; Aimee Mann introduced me to Neil Finn, who introduced me to Jack Johnson, who introduced me to Sufjan Stevens. A friendly, amiable bunch they were. And where I’d once had a drink at my side in those earlier days at Sylvia, I now had headphones affixed to my head almost permanently, drowning out the trance with music that many times threw me into a real trance, and with each and every note of the music, I felt I had a snapshot of Melody with me, like rereading a romantic note from a lost but not forgotten lover.
I found comfort in Melody’s proximity. It made it easy to get a fix, though I never got the one I was hoping for. Not even once could I rest in thinking she was safe. I always viewed her as a prisoner with a cell the size of whatever community Justice decided to make her home. I could have existed this way for some time, and did—until just after I turned thirty.
My thirtieth year held such promise: Sylvia’s reputation soared, and maintained a solid staff and outstanding kitchen personnel; our family was in the midst of a relatively peaceful and successful time, a period where Justice seemed to have lost interest and my father began relying on a greater circle of trusted and made men, reducing my personal requirement for involvement; Melody was within a morning’s journey, and even though she seemed wary, she also seemed stable.
And just as I let my guard down, everything changed.
Turned out Justice hadn’t lost interest; they’d been busy strategizing, quietly putting together a battle plan against my family intended to serve as the harbinger for all organized crime, Italian or Russian or Chinese, in New York or Chicago or Miami. We weren’t aware of it at the onset, but Justice’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section had taken nearly two years’ worth of budget and dedicated it to making an example of one family: the Bovaros.
And to make this plan work, they’d assembled a group of players who were willing to testify against us, each serving up a specific chunk of data that when connected to the ends of the players on either side all looped together into a