Chapter 9: Mrs. Zito Lies

"March ninth," Mauro said, before I'd even started. "Dom's birthday. We got drunk on it every year since we were fifteen."

"And his father?"

"October. The guardrail on Oregon Avenue. Everybody knows that."

"So count."

He counted on his fingers in the dark of my car.

He stopped with his hand open.

"He's dead before Dom's born," I said. "So who's the baby girl after?"

The wipers went back and forth.

"Mrs. Zito could have it wrong," he said. "Dates. Grief does that."

"Then ask her."

He looked at the house, at his uncle pouring wine in his chair.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Ten o'clock. You come with me."

He got out with the brick still in his hands.

Halfway up the walk he looked down at it, and he put it in his pocket.

The next morning he picked me up on Passyunk in the Escalade.

He'd shaved.

He'd brought a box of pastry from the good place on Ninth Street, the kind Dom used to bring.

We didn't talk on the drive.

Mrs. Zito opened the door before we knocked.

She was in her church dress on a Monday, with lipstick on and her rosary in her hand.

"Mauro," she said. "Come in, come in. Giada."

She didn't hug me.

She looked at a spot over my shoulder.

The front room smelled like coffee and somebody's cigar.

Mrs. Zito didn't smoke.

On the mantel, behind Dom in his tuxedo, there was a new envelope.

It was fatter than the last one.

The same hooked capitals.

For Dom's mother.

There was a box of cannoli on the coffee table already, from the same place Mauro's pastry came from, with the string cut.

"Sergio came by Saturday," Mrs. Zito said quickly, when she saw me look. "Such a good man. He sits with me."

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