more vicious as his own. Every movie with a villain—how unsatisfied we are unless the comeuppance is delivered. God Himself displayed the most impressive and stunning displays of violence and vengeance on record; consult the Old Testament. But in order for violence to work, it requires one component: passion. You need to be behind it or your ambivalence will lead to inaction. You have to want it.
This concept came shining in Technicolor shortly before I turned twenty-one, when I was handed my first assignment. I was no stranger to trouble, though I labored to avoid it more than my siblings, particularly Peter, who seemed to seek it out and languished in its absence. But I was now an older Bovaro, and my place in the organization required a greater contribution. The McCartneys had not dropped off the radar, but they weren’t nearly the biggest blip on the screen; Arthur and Lydia had become useless to the Justice Department, nothing more than a taxpayer expense. Where a few years ago every single person in our organization was aching to be the one to gun them down and care was taken to devise the most cunning plan, now the McCartneys were simply running from themselves, from their own resident fear that we were on their trail every step of the way.
But remember the mantra: no loose ends.
The McCartneys became a topic of conversation in our house the way most folks discuss cleaning out the gutters or getting an annual exam, an unavoidable task that can be repeatedly delayed. My father was no longer troubled by their potential testimony once his attorneys verified that everything the McCartneys witnessed could never again be allowed into a courtroom; the concern now was showing the world (mostly our peers and those under our influence) what happens when you cross a Bovaro.
The first time I truly appreciated my oldest brother, Peter: One winter afternoon he and I were shooting baskets against a rusty backboard and netless rim in what was arguably a rougher section of our neighborhood near Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, before the renaissance got a foothold. We were halfway through a game of one-on-one when three kids started moving down the sidewalk in our direction. I knew there would be trouble for no other reason than all three were looking right at us. They were sizing us up. By the time these kids made their way around the chain-link fence and onto our lonely court, words were exchanged between the leader of my two-person gang (Peter) and the leader of what appeared to be three big Russian kids. I don’t remember the interchange, though it certainly would have been inane. Of the five of us, I was the smallest, and while looking at my brother and listening to him berate the leader of the other gang for being, essentially, not like us, a fist connected with my eye, knocked me to the ground, then out. A few seconds later, my head limp on the cold sidewalk, I opened my good eye and watched through a haze as Peter wiped out the entire group. Two were already on the ground, crawling in opposite directions, though clearly their collective destinations were away. Peter seemed to be taking his time kicking number three, the mouthy leader, while the kid begged him to stop. As the sirens approached, Peter gently scooped me up and we dashed down a nearby alley, our worn Spalding resting at the feet of the big Russian.
The first time I truly despised my oldest brother, Peter: a few days before my twenty-first birthday. On a journey to Yankee Stadium in our blackened-out Suburban, my father, my siblings—Peter, Gino, and younger brother Jimmy, the kid fated to have been named after a guy whose blood can still be spotted in the grout between the tiles of Vincent’s kitchen floor—and I chatted about what I should be getting for my upcoming birthday.
Gino, my older brother by two years and possessing the most practical personality in the family, offered up the tried and true. “How ’bout a convertible—or better yet, you always liked mine. Take it and I’ll get a new one. Got my eye—”
“Nah,” Jimmy interrupted, “what Johnny wants is Connie Cappelletti.”
“Pass,” I said. “I don’t consider syphilis much of a present.”
“Jimmy just wanted you to have a gift that’ll keep on giving,” Gino said.
“Isn’t Connie, like, thirteen?”
“Seventeen,” Jimmy said, “going on twenty-five.”
“The only thing Connie’s going on is penicillin.”
Gino threaded his fingers together, cracked four knuckles