From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Door Left Open

Tancredi's POV

I told her before I went, because those were her rules.

"I'm going to see the old capo tonight," I said at the front door. "Then two of his friends. I'll be back before it's light."

She was sitting on the stairs in her coat, with her scalpel in the pocket.

"What will you say?"

"That my uncle promises everyone the same thing, and keeps it for no one."

"Is that true?"

"It was last time."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Go," she said. "You're four minutes early. I checked."

I wanted to touch her face. I put my hands in my coat pockets and went out.

The old capo lived above a bakery in the old neighborhood, and he opened the door with the ring on his little finger.

He did not ask me in. He stood there in his undershirt and looked at me.

"You give up your rank at nine in the morning," he said.

"Then you come to my kitchen at one at night. What do you want, boy?"

"Two things. Call the dock captain and the one who runs the union hall. Have them here."

"Why?"

"Because my uncle promised each of them the other's turf."

The old man's eyes narrowed. He picked up the phone.

They came in their coats, grumbling, and sat at his table with coffee neither of them touched.

I laid it out the way I had once watched my uncle lay it out, in another week, in another kitchen.

"He told you the docks," I said to the first one.

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