“Oh, big man, so strong and masculine.” She squeezes my forearm. Her cheeks turn red. “I mean, uhm?—”
I lean in close. “Nobody looks at my wife like that. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.” She’s blushing like crazy and still touching my arm. “Where’d all this muscle come from, by the way?”
“Good genetics. Hard work. Clean diet.”
“Amazing. The trifecta.”
Lenny comes back out and interrupts our conversation. He dumps a big bucket down onto the counter and gestures. “Go ahead and dig. If I’ve got that key, it’ll be in there.”
Kira’s jaw drops. The bucket is filled with keys, dongles, carabiners, and all sorts of keychains. “We’ll never find it in that thing,” she moans.
“Ah, no worries,” Lenny says happily. “I’m not closing for a few hours. Go ahead and take your time. We’re not busy.”
I thank him and carry the bucket to the corner of the room. I dump half out, spread it thin, and kneel on the carpet. Kira joins me, hands pressed to her head.
“Do you even know what it looks like?”
“Like a safe deposit box key.”
“We’re screwed.”
“It’ll have a small chit attached to the key’s ring with 387 stamped on it. That’s the box number.”
“Well, okay, maybe less screwed, but still.” She sifts through the mess. “This is a nightmare.”
“We’d better get to work.”
She’s right, it really is a nightmare, but we manage to fall into a good workflow when Lenny offers us an empty container to dump the stuff we’ve checked already. I pull a handful out, we sift it together, Kira drops everything in the second bucket, and the process repeats. Slowly, we make our way through the pile, looking at every single object one at a time.
It’s excruciating. Kira yawns loudly. Lenny ignores us mostly. Some customers come through, and he deals with them. A couple of old ladies give us a weird look as they browse a stack of guitars.
“Ah! Ah! Holy shit!” Kira suddenly leaps to her feet, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Stellan. Stellan! Holy shit!”
I climb up and take the key she’s got in her hand. It’s flat, gold, and has a tag at the end.
“387,” I read, heart hammering in my chest. “This is it.”
“It’s got to be it, right?!”
“Could be just another key with a similar tag,” Lenny calls from behind the counter, barely looking up from his phone. “Might want to keep looking.”
Kira looks distraught, but I shake my head. “This is it.”
She throws her arms around me and hugs me tight. I hold her, kiss her cheek, and shove the key into my pocket.
“You two gonna clean all that up?” Lenny calls as I head to the door with Kira on my arm. “Hey, hold up!”
“Next time, don’t eye-fuck another man’s wife,” I say, looking back over my shoulder. “You’re lucky I’m just leaving a small mess.”
Lenny has the good manners to look slightly ashamed. “Good luck to you folks,” he says with a wave. “I’ll straighten up, don’t you worry.”
For the first time since my father died, hope blooms in my chest. I never really thought I’d find this key. I kept thinking I’d have to rob the damn bank just to get the book back. But this makes my life so much easier. Bank robberies come with way too much risk these days.
Now I can walk right in and take what I need.
The book is mine again. The Corsetti Famiglia is saved.
