Don's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: The Driver

"Why now?" I said.

"Two men came to my door tonight." Her voice cracked. "Davide's men. They asked my son if Daddy ever calls from Florida."

"What did he say?"

"He's seven. He said Daddy's in the basement."

I put the lamp out.

A captain's wife from the second chair stood up without being asked and took my keys to lock up.

Leandro came down the stairs in his socks, saw my face, and went back up for his shoes.

We drove to Red Hook in his brother's green sedan, with the quiet woman in the back seat holding her purse.

Her house was narrow and dark, two streets from the water.

She took us down the basement stairs past a washing machine and a box of Christmas lights.

A man was sitting on a camping cot under a bare bulb.

Thin. Gray in his beard. A blue swallow on the back of his right hand.

He saw Leandro and stood up so fast the cot went over.

"I washed your grandmother's cars," he said. His voice was high with terror. "I washed them every Saturday. She gave me a cannoli every Saturday."

Leandro didn't say anything.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs with his hands at his sides.

I watched them close into fists. Then open. Then close.

"Sit down," I said to the man. "Nobody is going to hurt you."

He looked at Leandro.

"Is that true?"

Leandro didn't answer.

"Tell us," I said. "From the beginning."

The man sat on the edge of the overturned cot.

"Davide paid me five thousand dollars," he said.

"Take the old lady's car off her lot. Drive it down Atlantic slow at ten-fifteen."

"A guy in the back with a rifle shoots high, at the restaurant windows."

"A scare, he said. For the Iannones to take the blame. Nobody gets hurt."

"Who was the guy in the back?"

"Davide brought him. I never knew his name. He went to Florida after." He rubbed the swallow on his hand.

"We came down Atlantic. The guy fired. Glass everywhere, way up high. And I looked in my mirror."

He stopped.

"What did you see?" I said.

"Davide. In the doorway behind the two brothers. He had his arm out straight." The man's eyes filled.

"I saw the flash. Then the big one fell forward. I put my foot down and I never stopped driving till Jersey."

Leandro made a sound.

Not a word. Just a sound, low in his chest.

"In August his men took me off the piers," the man said, faster now.

"Drove me to Jersey. Broke two ribs. Put me on a bus to Florida."

"Said if I came back, they'd start with my kids."

"I got off in Philadelphia and walked into a church and cried. Then I came home."

His wife was crying on the stairs.

"I'll say it," he said. "In front of anybody. Cops. Priests. The whole Corsetti family. But my wife and my kids have to be someplace he can't reach. Tonight."

"My grandmother's house," Leandro said.

His voice came out rough.

"Tonight. My men on the door. Her father's already there." He nodded at me. "He'll teach your kids gin rummy. Badly."

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