Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Pier

Roz walks into the Cavallaro office and offers Santo a deal, he tells her to leave New York, and Tullio Torrisi orders her to Sunday dinner.

I didn't take the roses.

Dino left them on the bleachers anyway, and the kids spent the afternoon picking off the petals and floating them.

By three o'clock the shallow end looked like a crime scene.

At four I got in my car and drove to Staten Island.

The Cavallaro piers sat on the Kill Van Kull, under cranes the color of rust.

Containers were stacked six high. Trucks lined up at the gate.

I'd been there twice as a kid, both times in the back seat while my stepfather made a phone call.

I'd never been inside the office.

The office was a two-story block of brick at the end of the main pier.

A man at the gate saw my face and picked up a radio.

By the time I parked, four men were standing on the office steps.

They stared at me the way the cousins used to.

The stray. The one who threw the ring.

"I'm here to see Santo," I said.

Nobody moved.

Then the door opened, and a thin man in glasses came out holding a ledger to his chest.

"He's busy," he said. "But he said you'd come."

He led me up a metal stair.

Through a glass wall I saw Santo before he saw me.

He stood by a desk with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled.

A dockworker sat in the chair across from him, holding his cap in both hands.

The man was older than my mother. His hands were shaking.

Santo wasn't shouting. He wasn't even standing close.

He set a phone on the desk between them and turned it so the man could see the screen.

The man looked at it and went gray.

Santo said something short.

The man nodded, again and again, and stood and walked out past me without looking up.

His cap was still in the chair.

"Who was that?" I said.

"Somebody who used to work here."

"What did he do?"

"He told a Torrisi foreman which containers we don't open for customs."

Santo picked the cap up off the chair and dropped it in the trash.

"Now he works somewhere else."

"Is he alive?"

He looked at me then, a long flat look.

"I'm not my father's friends, Roz. Sit down."

I didn't sit.

"I heard them," I said. "At the party. Through the vent in the pool house."

I told him everything, start to finish.

I said it fast and flat, because if I slowed down my voice would go.

Santo listened without moving.

He didn't look surprised once.

When I finished, the office was very quiet.

"You knew," I said.

"Two weeks."

"Two weeks?"

"One of Tullio's drivers owes me money. He drove them home from a dinner and they forgot he could hear."

"You've known for two weeks that they were going to kill me."

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me."

"I told your mother to get you out of New York."

"You didn't tell me."

He leaned back against the desk.

"Would you have believed me?"

I opened my mouth.

I shut it again.

If Santo Cavallaro had called me two weeks ago and said my fiancé was going to drown me, I'd have hung up and blocked him.

I'd have told Dino, and we'd have laughed about it in bed.

"No," I said.

"So."

"That's a fair hit," I said. "I hate it."

"You can hate it on a plane."

"I'm not getting on a plane."

"Roz."

"Stop saying my name like it's an order."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"They bid on my building," I said. "Torrisi Construction. They want to turn Lane Four into lofts."

That got his eyes open.

"When?"

"The city decides on Labor Day. Dino offered to pull the bid if I marry him."

"Of course he did."

"So here's my deal."

I finally sat, in the chair the dockworker had left.

"You want the Torrisis gone. I want my pool. Help me win the bid, and I'll help you catch them."

"Catch them how?"

"They still think I left over a toast. Dino came with roses this morning. He thinks he can win me back."

"No."

"I can get close to them. You can't."

"No," he said again. "You'll leave the city, and I'll handle Tullio."

"Handle him how?"

He didn't answer.

The silence told me plenty.

"My kids need that pool," I said. "Some of them live in buildings where the boilers flood. Some of them have never seen the ocean. I'm not leaving them to lofts."

"You'll be no use to them dead."

"Then make sure I'm not."

We looked at each other across his father's desk.

He was the boy who'd stood on the edge and watched me choke.

He was also the only person in New York who'd tried to save me.

"I'm not leaving," I said. "You can help me or you can watch."

Something moved behind his eyes.

I think it was the word "watch".

"Go home," he said quietly. "Lock your door."

That was as close to a yes as I was getting.

I walked back down the metal stair past the man in glasses.

The four men on the steps parted for me without a word this time.

The sun was low over the water. The lot smelled like diesel and salt.

A long silver car was parked beside mine.

The back window came down.

Tullio Torrisi climbed out, heavy and slow, an unlit cigar between two fingers.

"Rosaleen."

He opened his arms.

I didn't step into them.

He stepped into me instead and kissed my cheek, warm and dry, the way he had at every Christmas.

His mustache scraped my skin.

"My son is a fool," he said. "Young men are fools at parties. I've told him so."

"He told it as a joke."

"And he's ashamed. He hasn't slept."

He patted my face with his ring hand.

"Sunday you'll come to dinner at your mother's house," Tullio said. "Both our families, the old way."

He smiled at me with his whole face.

"And you'll fix my son's heart."

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