The Venetian and the Rum Runner - L.A. Witt Page 0,49

but here.

Business was business, though, and respectable businessmen who wanted to stay respectable businessmen came to Mass every Sunday. Some with dark circles under their eyes from long nights on Rum Row. Others with jackets still smelling faintly of gunpowder and even, on occasion, blood. A few weeks ago, a couple of boys from rival gangs had sat on opposite sides of the sanctuary, one’s nose puffy and broken, his eye black, and the other man’s knuckles still scraped and raw. They stayed away from each other when they could and shook hands when it couldn’t be avoided. No one said a word, though both men opted to forego Communion that Sunday. They probably hadn’t been to confession yet.

But they did come to Mass. It was business, after all. And this was church. And businessmen didn’t miss church.

Someone a few rows back coughed. It was a deep, hacking sound, and Carmine shuddered. No one in his family had escaped the sickness that had swept through the city, and for weeks, that kind of wet, painful coughing had echoed off the walls in their home. He’d been the last to fall ill after spending the first days taking care of his mother and sister, praying they didn’t develop the horrific bloody cough that had plagued his father’s final weeks. They’d been assured it wasn’t the tuberculosis that had claimed his father, but that had been cold comfort when Carmine had been trying to will Mama and Giulia—and later, himself—to breathe without choking.

They’d survived. Plenty of people in their neighborhood hadn’t. Maurizio had lost a son, a daughter, a son-in-law, and two grandsons. Sal’s wife had survived, but to this day, she was weak and sickened easily. Vincente’s brother, a soldier in Carmine’s caporegime, had never been quite the same in mind or body since the fever that had nearly killed him.

The family’s physician had insisted that the Influenza was over and had been for a few years, but even he jumped sometimes and crossed himself when someone coughed nearby.

Someday. Someday, it would be far enough behind them all that no one would even notice when someone else coughed. Carmine wondered if he’d live that long.

Today, though, it wasn’t just the occasional cough or sniffle that had Carmine’s attention wandering away from Father Revello’s words.

There were others here in the pews who he sometimes saw at bathhouses and clubs and the seedy places where men like him found each other. Once in a while, a look of recognition would pass between them in church or on the street, but no one breathed a word. That code of silence was nearly as strong as omertà.

And usually Carmine didn’t even let himself think of those places or those men when he was here, but today he went there. All night last night, he’d kept dreaming about seeing a familiar face through semi-opaque steam or hearing the echo of a distinctive Irish brogue in a shadowy corner of a subway station.

Had he just been away from those places too long? It had been a while. Weeks, at least. Months, now that he thought about it.

But that didn’t explain why he kept dreaming about dim light on red hair or pale blue eyes wide with need.

Carmine stared at—more like through—the altar as he slowly released a breath. Oh, he could talk himself around it all he wanted, but he knew why those eyes and that face kept drawing his mind to the city’s most secret corners.

From the first moment they’d faced each other across the subterranean office, Danny had become a lightning rod for Carmine’s concentration. Carmine couldn’t help it; it wasn’t every day he saw so much fierceness in such beautiful eyes. Even when Danny had come back, bitterly resigned to working for Carmine, he’d still been fierce and proud.

And God help him, Carmine couldn’t stop thinking about him. About what it might be like if the air between them were warmer. If Danny put his hackles down even more than he already had. If that smile had, just once, been meant for Carmine.

Carmine rubbed his tired eyes before fixing his attention—his gaze, anyhow—on Father Revello. He had to at least give the illusion that he was solemn and focused like everyone else.

But damn if he was.

And damn if there was any point in pining after that man of all men.

Danny grudgingly worked for him, though, and he’d warmed up a little more each time they’d met in Carmine’s office, but Carmine didn’t delude himself