hours the little Arkansas town was abuzz with what had happened, which eventually spilled its way to a bar where a drunken loser looking to make good on an extended debt in our organization hoped he might turn the information into a clean slate. The feds hurried the McCartneys along, but not before the information got back to New York, not before Arthur, Lydia, and Melody were being followed by men in our crew.
My life began a transformation in that moment. The little girl was to be hunted, killed, buried, her existence whittled down to a memory for her extended family that would grow fainter by the year. The flame of innocence that had been flickering for years in my family would soon be extinguished and redemption would be impossible—and most troubling, I seemed to be the only one who cared. Granted, most guys who took a beating (or worse) from a Bovaro had earned it, and even as a kid I learned to be okay with that. But knowing that this poor little girl would be running her whole life because of me became more than I could bear.
For the next eighteen months, through the countless motions to delay the trial, both the Bovaros and the McCartneys lived out a series of near misses. My uncles were on the trail of the McCartneys repeatedly, with a few opportunities for elimination that ended in empty-handed returns. Other times, the McCartneys inexplicably slipped right out from under us, as though we were right behind them—when we weren’t.
Every trip, every time someone was sent to rub them out, I went sleepless. I lost weight. When I didn’t actually become ill, I feigned it and resigned myself to my bedroom. I spent some time throwing up and more time fighting back tears and a burgeoning anger. Shamefully, the elder McCartneys weren’t my concern, rarely crossed my mind; the little girl would come into my room and haunt me like the ghost she had yet to become.
I’d overhear the conversations and loose planning of how and who would terminate the family. They would run through a generic itinerary like a grocery list. The mother. The father. The plans to evade the feds. And the girl. One conversation in particular stuck with me, a discussion between my father and an associate whose voice I couldn’t quite place.
Then they started speaking in Italian, which usually meant they wanted to talk confidentially. The only people in my family who could really get a full grasp of a conversation spoken in full Italian, complete with Sicilian dialect, would be the grown-ups. By then, though, I was well on my way to acquiring broken Italian—learned mostly through discussions like these—that I carry with me to this day, and I was able to understand enough of the language to translate the following exchange while they ate at the small table in our kitchen:
“This is our last shot, amico,” my father said softly. Amico means friend, and everyone was amico—could have been a son, an associate, or someone about to serve him a gelato or take a bullet.
“We know how to find them, Tony. We’re going to take care of it, eh?” said Amico.
“Need to be.” Or something like that.
“You know what this means for our family. For me.”
“I know, ’Tone.”
Then some gibberish about the puttanesca.
“We can’t take them out on the courthouse steps.” I’m not even sure which one of them said this. The point was they seemed more determined than ever. The point was they seemed more desperate than ever. The point was… the McCartneys did not stand a chance.
They were the Smiths this time, and it turned out Melody’s name was Karen. I know that all the Karens who’ve dwelled on this planet were at one time little girls, but the name sounded so mature to me. Karen Smith sounded like a lady running for elected office or the owner of a local business. I overheard the aliases of her parents, too, but I’ve long forgotten them; they were, after all, the second set in a lengthy series. And the fact that they received this series of identities exposes a truth: The Smiths survived. Long after the fact, I was informed that no one had a clear shot. I wondered if maybe even the most villainous guy on the job looked down at little Melody and knew there was no way to end her life, that some glow of purity and promise shielded her and weakened those men