Paolo Romano stood on the street before the building that housed the Little Italy Community Society and considered the neighborhood around him. It was dark, and late; the drive back to Manhattan from Long Island had been long. But the Five Points never slept, and the hard-hearted bustle of dark things happening in the dark pulsed around him.
He hadn’t been on Long Island before this day, though his sister had lived there for three years. He hadn’t seen her in that long. Even now, on the night of a day he’d been in the town she’d made her home, when he’d seen her husband and spoken to him, Paolo still had not seen Caterina since she’d moved away from Mulberry Street.
He had meant never to see her again. Caterina was hope and goodness personified. Here in Little Italy, they’d called her La Bellezza, The Beauty, and she fit that name in more than the shape of her face or the sheen of her hair.
Caterina was light. Paolo was dark. He’d been no good to her when she’d had no one else, and he would be worse for her now. So when he’d arranged with his brother-in-law to get her away from Little Italy and its evils, he had meant that to include himself.
Now, however, it appeared that his business would extend to Long Island.
He’d been so close to her today. Close enough to see her husband, to hear of their family, to be invited to their evening meal. She was all that was left of his family, and he’d been so close. He might have seen her today, shared bread with her. Perhaps felt her love and forgiveness.
Forgiveness he did not deserve.
Paolo shut his eyes against the empty black of loneliness rising into his chest. Then he shoved it away and answered the question that had been asked.
“No, Cosimo. I’m going up. Put the Mercedes away, get a couple of the boys to wash it. Then the rest of the night is yours.”
His driver and guard, a square-headed, blunt-nosed boulder of a man more than twenty years Paolo’s senior, gave a nod that was partly a bow and wedged himself again behind the wheel of the motorcar he’d left running. With a wave, he started slowly down the street. Paolo watched him turn the corner before he turned himself and strode to the building.
It was only ten feet at the most, but in those few steps, several men and two women of the sort who would be out after dark in this unkind neighborhood greeted him with deferential nods and soft words.
He returned their greetings with one nod of his own but no more, and walked into the building, and the business, that had become his when he’d killed the man who’d had it before him.
So far, Paolo had made few changes to the Little Italy Community Society or to the businesses run from it. He’d simply taken it over from the man he’d killed and run it better.
On the first floor of this building was a suite of offices, two small rooms that served as a reception area and workspace for his secretary and for his second-in-command, and a large office that Paolo used for himself. He’d changed virtually nothing in that room after he’d taken over; it amused him to sit behind a massive carved desk in a heavy, tall-backed leather chair like a throne and know that he’d claimed it for himself.
There was a kitchen and large pantry as well, and two small rooms from his cook and housekeeper, but those spaces, Paolo entered only rarely.
Most of his time was spent in the other half of the first floor, a larger room arranged as a parlor. This was where he met with the people seeking his help or his partnership, or those whom he’d called to make an accounting or a reckoning. If he brought them to his office, it meant that business had become quite serious and the reckoning severe.
Tonight, at this late hour, the first floor was dark and quiet. But beneath his feet, as he stood at the foot of the staircase that would lead him to his private rooms, the floor shook lightly with the commotion from the basement. Even the newel post shook.
Below him, the boys and young men who made up most of his workforce lived, and that basement was never quiet. Boys, especially such as these, were rambunctious, to say the least. But they knew