Chapter 10: The Old Men

"Tell him yourself," I said. "He's parked at the end of the street."

Vin's smile slipped.

He didn't walk to the end of the street.

When I told Kirill in the car, he laughed out loud for the first time since I'd known him.

"My bathhouse," he said. "He wants my bathhouse. Fine. Tell him I want his shoes."

"This isn't funny."

"It's very funny. He's betting a building on a man he knows is telling the truth."

The old men met on Sunday afternoon in the back room of a restaurant in the Italian Market that was closed for the day.

Five of them, the heads of the oldest families in the city, at one round table with a white cloth and a bottle of grappa nobody touched.

They'd been at my First Communion.

They'd been at my wedding.

They'd carried my father's coffin.

Vin sat on one side of the room with three captains and Romina, in white again, holding a handkerchief.

Kirill sat on the other side with me and two of his men.

The shooter sat in a chair in the middle, alone, in a clean shirt Nadia had ironed for him, his hands shaking on his knees.

The oldest of the old men nodded at him.

"Talk."

He talked.

The church parking lot.

The white envelope.

The scarf, the sunglasses, the soft voice.

Nine-fourteen, the window, the photo.

"Make sure, the one in the window."

When he said it, Romina pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.

"Do you see the woman who paid you?" the old man asked.

The shooter's eyes went around the room.

They stopped on Romina.

"That's her voice," he said. "When she cried just now. That's the voice."

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