and the weather is clear.”
They dropped coins and turned to retrieve their coats. Exited with their collars tugged high against the wind, the older carrying a black leather bag.
My feet as they made measured progress toward the kitchen burned to run. I resisted. When I’d cleared the swinging door, I touched the back of Ezio’s shirt.
“I have to go out. Can you serve the rest of the food?”
“Ovviamente, not a worry.” Ezio’s attention darted my way, snagged there. “Good Lord. What’s happened now?”
“No time.” My fingers fumbled over my apron tie.
“Did cockshitting Mangiapane insult you again?”
“He’s only a pig, Ezio. It’s cagnolazzi* trouble this time.”
Ezio produced a string of colorful Italian swear words. “Put that back on. You are not mixing yourself up with Family!”
Tossing the apron on a rack holding dried tomatoes and pickled peppers, I stood on tiptoe to peck Ezio on the cheek. “Pray to St. Jude for me.”
“Nobody—”
“I have to,” I said.
The kitchen door snicked shut. A blade of wind scraped my throat. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my thin cotton dress, not wanting to feel them shake. Uncle Tommaso had said burn for it. Arson was a common punishment, from the Jewish firebugs preying on Jewish peasants to Italian incendiaries preying on Italian ones. Half a block from Nicolo’s house, the electric streetlamps fizzed to life, glowing firefly yellow. A skittish horse whinnied. An omen or just a poorly broken mare? Teeth tightly locked, I wondered what the contents of the Family man’s bag was. Alcohol? Kerosene?
Saving the cigar shop might be impossible, but the Benenatis lived above it.
I can at least get them out. They can run.
Vanish.
I turned onto 106th Street, its stoops littered with festive straw bales and sagging gourds. Nicolo sat on his chipped front steps smoking cigarettes with his friend Nazario, a curly-headed rascal with soulful eyes that had been hardening lately. Cooling like a spill of wax.
At the time, though, Nicolo’s were still warm as summer whenever he spied me.
“What you want to woo her with is cannoli, not roses.” Nicolo grinned rakishly. “Antonia is fat in all the right places. She’ll make a dozen sons and get so huge you’ll have to buy a metal bed frame.”
“Non è un problema. I know steelworkers. God, she makes me crazy,” Nazario admitted sheepishly.
“Maybe you’re in luck and she loves tiny dicks. Oh, shit. Shut it, there’s a lady present.” Nicolo spread his arms to me in greeting. “Buonasera!”
I caught him by the wrist. “Come inside.”
“Good Lord, Alicia, what the hell is—”
Dragging him up the front stairs didn’t take much effort, since Nicolo would have followed me anywhere. Nazario waved a puzzled goodbye as I shut the front door.
“Jesus, topolina, you’re trembling.” Nicolo extricated himself, but only to hold my hands. “Whose face do I need to mash this time?”
“I overheard Dario’s uncle Tommaso saying they mean to torch your cigar shop.”
“What?” he exclaimed. “Is this about those thugs from the new tobacconist’s three blocks south?”
“No! This isn’t some petty cigar store rivalry, they said your dad hasn’t paid his protection money. This is the Boss of Bosses. They said the order was signed ‘All of Corleone.’”
The frown on Nicolo’s face turned thunderous. He didn’t bother with lights, and I nearly tripped in his wake as he clattered up the shabby stairs to their apartment. When we plunged inside, he turned up one small lamp, its glow sickly in the stifling dim. I stood on the braided carpet with blood pounding in my ears.
“Where—”
“Mom and Dad are at Enrico’s. His pork chop is back on the menu this week.”
“Then what the hell are we doing?” I demanded shrilly. “You all have to run for it!”
“No. We don’t.”
A shadow shaped like my friend Nicolo turned away from the bookshelf. Only this wasn’t Nicolo. It was a seventeen-year-old man with muscled arms, eyes glowing like the cherry at the end of one of his father’s cigars.
The silhouette had a gun in its hand.
“No,” I gasped. “Nicolo—”
“The Clutch Hand can suck my cock.”
I crossed myself. “Please don’t say his name. And that isn’t how this works.”
“It is now.” Nicolo pushed the window curtain a few inches aside. I heard him inhale.
“What?”
“There’s something moving. Down in the rear yard. Is it them, you figure?”
“Probably, they just left. Don’t confront a pair of Corleonesi. Please. It’ll be a closed-casket ceremony and I don’t even have a black veil.” My stomach had relocated to my shoes.
My friend approached me, thin and taut as a riding