“You can’t drop out. Ten more weeks.”
He laughed to himself, as if I’d misjudged ten weeks as too long or too short, but I’d somehow misjudged everything.
“I parked in front like a dope,” he said. “I’m walking out of a storefront for an Italian crime family—”
“Tell them you were looking at the books—”
“Practically carrying a camorra capo’s wife.”
“Wife!” Valentina interjected loosely, flopping her arm up before pointing at herself and collapsing.
“You’re finished in this town,” I said to her.
I started away, but Daniel called to me.
“Tink, when we have enough evidence on who shot Paulie, we’re taking him in.” He indicated Antonio with a jerk of his head.
I faced him fully and took all the defensiveness out of my voice. I wasn’t protesting, I was stating a fact. “He didn’t do it.”
Without waiting for an answer, I went back into the restaurant.
twenty-seven.
antonio
tto and Lorenzo pulled up out front just as Daniel went out the back for the women. He’d told me he wasn’t fucking Valentina, which I could have told him. I wasn’t giving him permission either. He was still on the other side of the line, and I wanted him to stay there. I reserved the right to break his legs over that or anything.
Otto closed the driver’s side door, scanning the street as always. Lorenzo got out of the passenger side. And no one else. They walked away from an empty car.
Could they not find the others? Or were they coming separately? Normally that wouldn’t even give me a second’s pause, but a bit of doubt crept into my head. Something wasn’t right.
Zo came in first. He didn’t make eye contact. Otto came in in the middle of lighting a cigarette. I sat at the bar as Zia came out with a tray of something that steamed.
“How many are coming?” she asked, putting the tray in the center of the table.
“Two more,” I said. No one disagreed.
“The staff will be here in half an hour. So sit!”
Otto and Zo mumbled thanks and sat for lunch. When Zia passed me again, I put my arm around her. I didn’t say a word, just kissed her forehead. She’d been good to me, and I might always be angry at her for hiding Valentina, but I had to forgive her or more than my love for my wife might die. She patted my arm and pushed past the swinging doors.
Otto leaned back in his chair, cigarette between his third and last fingers. Zo sat with his hands folded over his crotch and cleared his throat.
There was a heavy silence I didn’t understand.
“Simone and Enzo?” I asked, sitting.
Zo put his hands out then back down. More silence. A pot banged in the kitchen.
“Come on, Zo!” Otto shouted.
“I can’t say it.”
Otto stamped out his cigarette as if nailing it to the ashtray. Then he clapped twice. “Welcome back!” Otto came at me with both hands out. He planted them on my neck and kissed my cheeks twice. “You look good for a dead guy! Gagliardo!” He patted my shoulder and kissed my cheeks again.
“You kiss me again, you’re going to have to marry me,” I said.
“I have a wife,” Otto replied. “This guy”—he indicated Zo—“he’s single. Give him a kiss, would you?”
“I think Zo fucked me already,” I said. “Where are the others?”
Zo made a noise that was a cross between a groan and an ah. “They ain’t coming.”
“Excuse me?”
“We… uh. The day you was gone, we made a pact with Donna and now… they got families. They don’t want another war.”
“They’re cowards!” Otto shouted, but I didn’t hear him.
There were a million reasons to make peace. Strategies within strategies. It depended on who my people thought had killed me. If they thought it was the Bortolusis, which was what we’d intended, then the allegiance would be to partner against them.
“You made a pact? For what purpose?” I asked.