“I’m sorry about what happened in the car.” His eyes moved then, coming up slowly to meet mine. “You hit a sore spot, that’s all.”
He merely looked at me for a moment, and then put up a hand to his shoulder, rolled it a few times. “So did you.”
“Iamsorry about it.”
“Whatever.”
“Tino Morelli is a difficult topic for me.”
His face changed when I said the name, his eyes narrowing slightly. “I never would have guessed.”
It was all I’d intended to say for this apology. I owed Baxter Flynn nothing, after all, and everything and anything I told him could be used against me when he was reinstated to the FBI, for I had no doubt he would be.
But I’d never talked about Tino with anyone, and for some reason, right then, it feltgoodto say his name. Like it revived the old man, brought him there into the room with us.
“I loved him,” I said simply, and then said it again. “I loved him. How could I not, given what he did for me?”
Bax swallowed, a reflexive bounce of his throat. “What did he do for you?”
Maybe the red wine buzz still lingered, because I sat back in my seat and I started talking. I told Special Baxter Agent Flynn about my lazy drunk of a father who gambled every dollar that came into his hand and beat my mother, and me too if I got in the way. About how I knew someone in the family had to put food on the table, so I took it upon myself.
“So that’s when you joined the Morellis?”
I scoffed. “At twelve? No. The only Family running around Brooklyn back then was the Clemenzas, and the only thing I knew was that I didn’t want to join with people like that. But I was a pretty little kid, and people like pretty little kids. They don’t watch their bags and coat pockets when they’re staring at your face. I used to go out to Central Park, follow people around and relieve them of their wallets—only one day I picked the wrong target. Imagine that, huh? Some stupid kid trying to pick a mobster’s pocket.” I couldn’t help laughing at the memory. “Tino, he’d just started out on his own after Carmine Vicario granted him permission to split and start his own business in Manhattan. He liked to walk the Park from time to time. Said it helped him think. He was already rich back then, but he grew up on the streets, and there are instincts you don’t grow out of. He grabbed my wrist before I even got my fingers all the way into his pocket.”
Baxter’s eyes were wide, his face rapt with attention. “And then what happened?”
“He asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, and I—” I gave a grim smile of remembrance. “I burst into tears. He took me back to his place and he made me take a bath. I left a ring around that tub like you wouldn’t believe. Then he ordered in a feast of food—you should have seen my face, God knows Tino laughed when he saw it—spread it all over the dinner table, and he made me eat until I was stuffed. He took me home with all the leftovers I could handle, and then some. I arrived back here in Brooklyn that evening in the kind of car everyone stares at, with more food than my family needed for a week.”
I paused, my smile fading as I remembered the next part. “My father was furious.” The words he’d spat out at me had stuck in my mind a long time, and I had no desire to repeat them. “But Tino took him into another room, and when they came out, it was settled. I was leaving home, going to live with Tino Morelli. My father was a foolish man; he thought things about Tino…” I shook my head. “Tino would have been well within his rights to kill my father then and there, but he was merciful. Let my father think what he liked, even paid off his gambling debts. As for my father, he didn’t care what happened to me.”
“And your mom?” Bax asked.
“She drank as much as he did. It had dulled her heart by then. Neither of them had wanted me from the start, I was an accident. My mother told me time and again from a young age that I was unwanted. Undesired. That it was only my face that she kept me for, because she liked when the neighbors exclaimed over what a beautiful child she had.”
Bax looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
He shook his head. “It’s not pity. It’s simple humanity, Angelo. I am sorry that such a thing should happen to any child.”
I waved it aside. “That night changed my life. From then on, I was Tino’s man. He brought me up, educated me, taught me what it meant to beFamiglia. Whatever he wanted, I swore I would do for him. They say gratitude is no good basis for love, but I never found it so. From the day he took me into his house until the day he died, Augustino Morelli had my gratitude and my love. He was more than a father to me, and I owe him everything that I have in this life. He was a great man.”
Bax sat back on the sofa with a quiet whistle. “None of that information about your childhood is available—anywhere. And believe me, I’ve looked for it.”
“I was picked up a few times for pickpocketing, break and enter, petty theft, but that was all before Tino. He had my record erased and he taught me to be smarter than I had been. And so from then until now, your friends in law enforcement have not been able to pin anything on me, despite their best efforts.”
He chewed on his lip, thinking. “Did you ever see your parents again?” he blurted out.
“My father died two years later. He owed the Vicarios more money by then, and eventually they decided to make an example of him for the rest of their customers. My mother died soon after that. I didn’t attend either of their funerals. For me, they stopped being family the moment Tino Morelli took me in.”
“What about your brothers and sisters, back in Sicily?”
I shrugged. “What about them? I don’t know them.”
“No, but they’re still family. Still your blood. Doesn’t that matter?”
I tried to find a way to explain. “It matters, perhaps. But they are not part of the world I inhabit. They are innocents. My eldest brother, before my mother died, told her she should disown me. My brother made it clear—as the new familial patriarch, you understand, after my father’s death—that I would not be welcome in their homes if I ever went back to Sicily. My profession, the life I’d chosen, it can be divisive in the old country.”
