Chapter 6: Say It

I did not get in the car.

"Luca doesn't send his consigliere to collect me," I said.

"He sends a driver and a phone call."

Ottavio's smile held.

"He's in a meeting.

"I volunteered."

"Then I'll wait for the driver," I said.

"Graciela," he said.

His voice was kind and tired, the voice of an uncle at a funeral.

"You walked out of a guarded house alone.

"There is a man on the corner of 8th who has been told to follow you since Sunday.

"I'd rather have you in my car than in his."

I looked down the avenue.

A man in a gray cap leaned against a lamppost fifty yards away, and when I looked at him he looked at his shoes.

I got in.

I did it because I wanted to see where Ottavio Lindner would take me.

I was eighteen and I thought that was courage.

The long gray car pulled away from the curb.

Ottavio sat on his side with his reading glasses in his hand and his legs crossed.

His suit cost more than my father's factory made in a month.

He made small talk.

He asked about my mother and how I liked the Quarter House.

Then he asked, in a mild voice, whether the folder was still under my arm.

I put my other hand over it.

"You read very well," he said.

"I heard you in the sacristy.

"It made a great impression."

"Where are we going?" I said.

"For a drive," he said.

We went down Channelside past the cranes and the container yards.

Then we crossed the long bleak causeway, where the bay opened gray and flat on both sides.

He did not take the road back.

The driver stopped at the last pier of the old fish docks, where the road ran out into planks.

A cafe stood there with one lit window and the rest of its shutters down.

The driver stopped the car and got out and lit a cigarette, looking away.

I heard the click before I understood what it was.

Ottavio had opened the glove box.

He took out a small black pistol and set it on his knee, quite gently, pointed at the floor.