Chapter 15: Last Hand

The silver Lincoln pulled away from the curb.

I stood there with a can of hairspray in my hand and my heart going.

"Shiv," Bernie said. "Don't."

"Where's his game?"

"Shiv."

"Where?"

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she took her keys off the hook inside the door.

"Packer Park," she said. "Big brick house on the corner, with the plaster lions. My dad used to drive Uncle Gerry there and wait in the car."

Luciano's driver was still at the curb with the engine running.

I bent to his window.

"Packer Park. Raimondo's house."

His face went careful.

"Signora, I should call him first."

"Then call him on the way."

"He'll say no."

"He'll say no to you," I said. "Not to me. Drive."

He drove.

Bernie sat in the back with her blow-dryer cord still wrapped around her wrist.

I was wearing my yellow sundress, the one I'd worn to drive to Chestnut Hill the first day.

The driver was on the phone in a low voice for three blocks.

Then he held it back to me over his shoulder.

"He wants you."

I took it.

"Bee," Luciano said. "Turn around."

"No."

"I'm twenty minutes away. Wait for me outside."

"If I wait twenty minutes, my father loses another house."

"It's not safe."

"Nobody touches a man's wife without him," I said. "I'm just going to stand next to the table. You've seen me do it."

He was quiet for a second.

"Leave the line open," he said.

I put the phone in the pocket of my dress, still connected.

The brick house had plaster lions on the steps.

The side door to the basement was propped open with a brick.

I went down.

It was a finished basement with a bar along one wall.

There were three card tables and maybe twenty men.

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