Delia casually took off her coat and draped it over the couch. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “That night you told me to wait? I was used to waiting for you, so I waited a long time. I was wearing a gold jacket you’d given me. I tried to get the blood out. There was no soap up here in the bathroom, so do you know what I did?” Nate stared at Delia, a puzzled look on his face. She had his attention now. “I went downstairs to Billy’s darkroom. I found the soap. I couldn’t resist looking at his photographs. Maybe a little bit of torture — to look at Christmas pictures of you and Angela and Billy, that sort of thing. Clues to see if you loved her. I found something else.” Delia reached into the pocket of her pants and handed a small snapshot over to Nate. “Do you know what you’re looking at?”
“A bad photograph of a car.”
“Bad because of the angle? Do you notice the license plate? Because I think that’s the point of the photo. There were others like this. They’re all dated. Photographs of cars, of men meeting in a secluded house… taken by a boy who was supposed to wait in the car. That’s what I’m betting anyway. That meeting that the Kefauver Committee is so interested in — the one in 1945? The merging of the Boston mob and the Providence mob — these are the photographs.”
“Why would Billy —”
“He followed you, Nate. He followed you around and took photographs. And I took them all that night, to protect you. Poor scared Billy knew it, of course, but he wasn’t about to ask for them back. Until a few nights ago, when he got fed up with the lies. I think I know what he was going to do with them. Don’t you?”
I took a sharp breath. “He was going to testify against you,” I said to Nate.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” Delia asked. “I think back then, when he took them, he had some sort of crazy scheme in his head — he was going to blackmail you with them — but only so you’d go straight. Blackmail with an innocent heart. He just wanted you to stop. Then one day, while he was following you, he found me.”
Nate suddenly put his hands over his face.
“Why was he here that night with Michael? They were close, like brothers. I guess he just wanted to show off. And here we were… together, and they saw it. I don’t know what all the pictures prove. Maybe nothing. Maybe you’ll skate away on taking the Fifth. But the fact that these photographs exist… friends of yours aren’t going to like that.”
“And the commission might not like knowing you were involved in a certain murder at a certain nightclub,” I added. “I may not have been your moll, but I was your spy. It’s not enough to convict you, I’m sure, but it will sure make you uncomfortable. And Mr. Costello won’t be happy, either.”
Delia waited for Nate to speak, but he didn’t. She pointed to the phone.
“So. Call off the hit man. Leave my family alone. The photographs are in a safe-deposit box. I’ll mail one a year to you if you stay away from Mac. And Kit. And Jamie. And Muddie.”
“And Hank Greeley, too,” I said. “Stay away from him and his family.”
“Do it, Nate,” Da said. “Or by God I’ll kill you myself if you harm my children.”
But Nate ignored him and just looked at Delia. “Dee. Is this what’s become of us, threatening each other like this? The day of my son’s burial?”
“I’m doing this for Billy, too,” Delia said. “I’m just carrying on what he planned.”
For a moment I thought Nate was going to hit her. The heavy threat of violence had been in the room with us but now the air was alive with it.
“You don’t know anything about my son.” The words were forced through his teeth. I could feel my father tense next to me, ready to spring at Nate if he had to. “It makes me sick to hear you even say his name.”
Delia didn’t flinch. “I know you, though. I know you, Nate. And I have nothing to lose.”
She picked up the receiver and held it out.
Nobody moved or breathed. It seemed to take a lifetime before Nate took the receiver from her hand. He dialed a number. “Call it off. Yes,