Chapter 8: The Key

I didn't touch the key.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"Found it." Ricky grinned. "Lucky day."

"Found it where?"

"Does it matter? It sticks. I need a good one." He tapped the counter. "You're the best, right? Everybody says the Bruno girl's the best."

Connie looked up from her pharmacology book at the end of the counter.

She looked at Ricky.

She looked at me.

"Is this him?" she asked. "The altar guy?"

"Hi," Ricky said, and gave her the smile. "Ricky Palumbo. Palumbo Motors, Coney Island Avenue. You need a car, you come see me."

"I'd rather walk into the sea," Connie said, and went back to her book.

He laughed.

I picked up the key by the rubber cap.

I turned it over under the lamp like any locksmith would.

"It's a restricted blank," I said. "I can't copy it without a card from the owner."

"Come on. For me?"

"Especially not for you."

On the counter beside the machine sat Nonno's old tin of impression wax.

I set the key down on the counter for one second while I reached for a pen.

Then I picked it up again.

My thumb had pressed the blade flat into the wax in the tin, hard, on the way past.

Ricky didn't see. He was looking at himself in the glass of the key display.

"You look good, Lili," he said. "Better than at the wedding. That dress didn't do you any favors."

"Thanks."

"No, I mean it. You were all..." He made a stiff shape with his hands. "You know. Like a lamp."

I held out the key.

He took it and put it in his shirt pocket.

"You know what everybody said after?" he asked. "When the Don stepped up?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me."

"They said it was charity." He leaned in. "Charity, Lili. The big man feeling sorry for the girl nobody wanted."

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