as he aimed to make an example of Sammy the Saint in full view of the Tobacco Club, what else he wasn’t telling me.
He’d be on the roof for another hour. And he often failed to latch his side of the door. So did I, now we’d lived together for so long.
Church-mouse quiet, even though there was no real need for stealth, I tried the handle.
The door swung open immediately.
Hackles prickling, I sped toward his writing desk—I’d often watched him make journal entries as we sat together over frittata and coffee. The current one rested in plain view.
It took me mere minutes to scan the past two months. The panic drained like a fever ebbing. He was dreadfully annoyed at the Clutch Hand’s ability to execute orders from Sing Sing. The construction of the Tobacco Club had run over budget, but he expected to make all back within three months. The political push for Prohibition he found ever so encouraging, because every renegade on the island smelled the same opportunity. He had tremendous confidence in Nicolo Benenati’s capacity to murder people.
As did I. Shivering, I replaced the journal and turned to leave.
I hesitated, curious.
It occurred to me that I knew precious little about Mr. Salvatici. He was born in Italy but had a pounding great facility with English because he had gone to a Naples school with a tutor from Boston who admired to master oil painting, and his mother had made the best burrata on the planet, according to him. But everything else was shrouded in darkness.
In for a penny, I thought.
Gliding full sail for the bookshelf, I soon found a neat row of older journals. I opened one to a random entry.
March 17, 1893. The faro tables at the Rusted Anchor, 44th Street by the river, continue to turn a steadier profit than anyone hoped. I keep after all my associates from home to at least take a job as a dealer even if they refuse to dirty their hands, but many are uncomfortable anyplace outside Little Italy. Learn English, I say. Take some pride in yourself, I insist, to which they answer that our village was so lousy with the Family that simply our arriving in America was enough to count ourselves lucky. It might be enough for them, but when I write to Mamma, I want to tell her I’m king of something, any something. I think of her back home, unable to leave my grandparents as they wither, reading her youngest son’s letters. All that distance, all that effort, ought to mean something.
More than my most recent entanglement meant, anyhow. I hesitate to speak of that even here, but I ought to have forestalled all romantic considerations until after I was established. I never knew temptation could course so strongly through me. But that was no excuse, and I can only plead ignorance of prior experience with infatuation. From henceforth, I must be more calculated.
The first section sounded in character enough to bring a smile to my face. And supposing that my guardian’s hometown was riddled with cagnolazzi, it explained a great deal of his raison d’être. But as for romance, even infatuation—I’d grown so used to Mr. Salvatici’s quiet courtesy toward me that I’d foolishly forgotten he’d the same equipment as any other fellow. I wondered, reading eagerly ahead, who she was, but almost no mention of her was made except to say that the liaison was finished.
August 8, 1894. Saw the local boys over supper in Harlem for the first time in months. Some talk of leaving New York, finding a simpler life in light of the fact the Family begins to thrive here as grandly as they ever did back home. It’s demoralizing, watching them turn the other cheek continually. We fought bitterly over the question. Saddening as it is, if they want no part of the empire I mean to build, then I want no part of them.
Meanwhile, I seem to have made as clean an escape from Cupid as possible. I wish her well for all her unsuitability, but great ambitions require great sacrifices. I cannot allow anything or anyone to slow me down.
So this explained why Mr. Salvatici never spoke of her. I could find no further trace for the next two years, as if any ink devoted to her had faded into the white of the page.
An unsettled feeling combined with guilt over reading private diaries caused me to retreat and lock my side of the door, and