A brutal world the don lived in, but of course it didn’t seem that way to Tommy Boyle. Tommy had set his mind on being rich and famous—if it took a Faustian committment to the don, then so be it. It was uncontrolled enthusiasm, a twenty-four-year-old grafter’s vow.
A product of the state’s thriving special-education program, Tommy had a natural inclination for business, according to his friends. Blond and well-built, his ice-blue eyes burned with a fierce desire to accomplish great things. Some suspected that at times he suffered minor emotional disturbances. Tommy was, they said, a dreamer. He could be accident prone, forgetful. Sometimes he would pass into a kind of trance for twenty-four hours straight with a blankness in his eyes that many found alarming. His father had warned him to be especially careful, that things among the gangsters had started to go funny. All the mobsters, it seemed, had lost their sense of irony. But Tommy remained positive. Borrow money, pay it back with interest, simple.
He’d sit for hours with a yellow pad and black and red pens, sketching out ideas for a menu. New York–style wieners, french fries with vinegar, tuna club, turkey club, steak sandwiches, grilled chicken club, bacon-and-egg western sandwiches, and the pièce de résistance: coffee milk served from a magnificent, polished copper dispenser liberated by his grandfather from a destroyed hotel in Calvados, France.
Recently, due to the toxic combination of his infernal horniness and late-night drinking, Tommy had impregnated his girlfriend. A woman with whom he had nothing and everything in common, and they’d just married. A pregnant wife and no job. Tommy felt incredibly unlucky and hoped that maybe dealing with the don would change all that.
In those days his Olneyville neighborhood was a desolate area of rundown, multifamily triple-decker homes and small manufacturing shops, which sat in a valley across an overpass that ran above the Route 10 connector to I-95. It was a short walk from the Italian Federal Hill section of the city. There were no signs showing the demarcation points, differentiating one neighborhood from the other, and none were needed. The intersection of Atwells and Harris was the boundary. Along Atwells up on Federal Hill sat cafés, restaurants, salumarias, social clubs, laundromats, pastry shops, and live-poultry markets; all part of the don’s fiefdom. When gang-banging street criminals considered edging out of their Olneyville neighborhood and moving toward the Hill, the thought was a fleeting one. The don deplored any and all street crime unless, of course, he himself ordered it. Brainless violence was bad for business; it brought unwanted attention from the police. Olneyville gangsters did their dealing in Olneyville; it was safer.
*
Not long after opening the diner to outrageously favorable reviews, Tommy suddenly felt an enormous inner brightness. Mighty success smiled and the money rolled in. On weekend nights lines circled the block, wieners by the thousand were consumed. During that heady time, in a spurt of passionate gusto, Tommy finally fell madly in love with his wife Callie. Dark brown skin, part Japanese and part Brazilian with a round pretty face, Callie delivered a baby girl they named Lara. All seemed perfect. Until it was not.
With the don, Tommy shared an interest in contact sports, recreational drugs, experimental sex, and a need to amass a huge amount of money. It took him only a few months to pay off the loan, 20 percent interest and all. Then, on a bright summer Wednesday in July, Tommy was startled to learn that the don, in the precise middle of a ridiculously slow fellatio, had an enormous ejaculation. It was said that the Old Man called on God, grabbed at his chest, and died. In that one luxurious moment, Tommy Boyle’s protection was gone and all changed.
Twelve years later
Her name is Lara Boyle. She is twelve years old, sitting on the top step of the stoop in front of her family’s house. She waits for her babysitter. The blue sleeveless sundress she wears is embroidered with tiny yellow tulips. Lara is as neat as a pin; being neat and well-groomed is a permanent character trait that will follow her all the days of her life.
The family car is parked in the driveway, and her father is putting cardboard boxes, one at a time, into the backseat. The boxes are heavy and she notices the patches of sweat staining the light brown shirt he wears, she thinks from the heat of the morning. Lara does not know that her father’s sweat flows with nervousness and fear.
“Callie!” her father shouts, drawing Lara’s attention. He runs his hands through his hair, shouting for her mother again, and then he slowly brings his hands to his face, calling out once more. When he turns to look at Lara she sees a small, sad smile form, and in that moment her mother comes out of the house, moving quickly, as if angry or afraid.
“Vanessa is on her way,” her mother says.
Her father nods, then bends and puts his hands on his knees, holds them there as though he is in pain, rocking. “Call her, Callie, call her again.”