he finally found a place to park the goddamned Buick and walked up to the house, Magdelana Lanza was sitting on a folding aluminum and plastic webbing lawn chair on the sidewalk, in the company of Mrs. D’Angelo (two houses down toward South Broad Street) and Mrs. Marino (the house next door, toward the Delaware River). She had an aluminum collander in her lap, into which she was breaking green beans from a paper bag on the sidewalk beside her.
Vito nodded at Mrs. D’Angelo and Mrs. Marino and kissed his mother and said, “Hi, Ma” and handed her a two-pound box of Italian chocolates he had bought for her in the gift shop at the Flamingo in Vegas.
She nodded her head, but that was all the thanks he got.
“The toilet’s running again,” Mrs. Lanza said. “And there’s rust in the hot water. You either got to fix it, or give me the money to call the plumber.”
“I’ll look at it,” Vito said, and went into the house.
To the right was the living room, a long, dark room full of heavy furniture. A lithograph of Jesus Christ with his arms held out in front of him hung on the wall. Immediately in front of him was the narrow stairway to the second floor, and the equally narrow passageway that led to the kitchen in the rear of the house. Off the kitchen was the small dark dining room furnished with a table, six chairs, and a china cabinet.
He went up the stairs and a few steps down the corridor to his room. It was furnished with a single bed, a dresser, a small desk, and a floor lamp. There were pictures on the wall, showing Vito when he made his first communion at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, his graduation class at Mount Carmel Parochial School, Vito in his graduation gown and tasseled hat at Bishop John Newmann High School, and Vito in police uniform and his father the day he graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy. There was also an eighteen-inch-long plaster representation of Jesus Christ on his crucifix.
Vito tossed his bags on the bed and went down the corridor to the bathroom. He voided his bladder, flushed the toilet, and waited to see if the toilet was indeed running.
It was, and he took the top off the water box and looked at the mechanism.
He didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with it. He jiggled the works, and it stopped running. Then he ran the hot water in the sink, letting it fill the bowl. When he had, he couldn’t even see the fucking drain in the bottom.
Sonofabitch!
The simplest thing to do would be to give his mother the money and tell her to call the plumber. But if he did that, there was certain to be some crack about his father, May He Rest In Peace, never having once in all the years they were married calling a plumber.
After work tomorrow, Vito decided, I’ll go by Sears and get one of those goddamned repair kits. And see what they want to replace the fucking hot water heater.
FIVE
“Mayor Carlucci’s residence,” Violetta Forchetti said, clearly but with a distinct Neapolitan accent when she picked up the telephone.
Violetta was thirty-five but looked older. She was slight of build, and somewhat sharp-faced. She had come to the United States from Naples seventeen years before to marry Salvatore Forchetti, who was twenty-five and had himself immigrated four years previously.
There had just been time for them to get married, and for Violetta to become with child when, crossing 9th and Mifflin Streets in South Philadelphia, they were both struck by a hit-and-run driver. Salvatore died instantly, and Violetta, who lost the child, had spent four months in St. Agnes’s Hospital.
The then commander of the 6th District of the Philadelphia Police Department, Captain Jerry Carlucci, had taken the incident personally. He was himself of Neapolitan heritage, had known Sal, who had found work as a butcher, and been a guest at their wedding.
He had suggested to his wife that it might be a nice thing for her to go to St. Agnes’s Hospital, see what the poor woman needed, and tell her she had his word that he would find the hit-and-run driver and see that he got what was coming to him.
Angeline Carlucci, who looked something like Violetta Forchetti, returned from the hospital and told him things were even worse than they looked. Violetta’s parents were dead. The relatives who had arranged for