Chapter 4: Tuesday Visiting Hours

On Tuesday my husband sat beside me in the back of the Escalade and did not say a word for forty minutes.

Remo drove with his eyes on the road.

I held my purse in my lap with both hands.

Tancredi looked out of his window at the Verrazzano Bridge going by, and at the water under it.

He had put on a plain grey suit instead of the black one.

I noticed it, and I did not know why I noticed.

At the county building a guard checked my name against a list.

Then the guard checked Tancredi's, and his face changed.

"Mr. Falzone. We weren't told."

"I'm only a visitor," Tancredi said. "Like my wife."

He stood behind my chair at the glass, one hand on its back, close enough that I could feel his coat against my shoulder.

My brother came in.

He saw me first, and his face opened.

Then he saw who was behind me.

Emilio picked up the phone and held it a foot from his ear, so that I could hear him anyway.

"Why is he here?"

"He wanted to come," I said.

"Sure he did." My brother looked straight past me. "Say it to my face, Falzone. Did you sign it?"

Tancredi leaned down and took the second phone from the wall.

I turned my head and watched his mouth.

"I did not," he said.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I don't expect anything from you."

"Then who did?"

"I'm finding out."

Emilio laughed.

"I took that job on the Coney Island warehouse because a man in your family told me which door would be open," he said. "Ask yourself who."

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