Chapter 13: The Envelope

I put her on speaker.

"Say it again, Carm."

"Augie's mother. Her maiden name is on the parking company. I'm looking at her headstone on my phone right now. Angels on it."

Dom sat very still on the end of the bed.

"I know that headstone," he said. "I carried her."

Carmela went quiet. "Oh. Hi, Mr. Scarpa."

"Good work, Carmela."

"Thank you. I'm drunk."

She hung up.

Dom looked at the river for a long time.

"He bought your building," he said. "With my son's signature."

"With pill money."

"Yes."

"Then I'm taking it back from him."

Two banks had already turned me down for a small business loan, one in four minutes and one with a nicer letter.

On Tuesday morning I was cleaning the teeth of a woman from the credit union on Independence Avenue.

Half my patients banked there.

She sat up, spat, and wiped her mouth.

"How much do you need down?"

"Seventy-five thousand," I said. "I have eleven."

"Get me the rest by next Friday," she said, "and the credit union lends you the building. I'll sign it myself."

I told Carmela at lunch.

Carmela stood up on a chair in the waiting room in her pink scrubs and clapped her hands.

"Listen up. The Scarpa boy sold this building out from under Dr. Lentini to a parking lot. We need sixty-four thousand dollars."

An old man waiting for his dentures put down his newspaper.

"A parking lot," he said. "On 5th Street?"

By three o'clock it was all over Columbus Park.

Nonna baked.

She baked for nine days straight in the back of the Holmes Street bakery.

Her old regulars came to buy it, and the new owners put every dollar in a coffee can.

The shoe repair couple put a jar on their counter with a sign in black marker: DR. DANI FIXED MY BRIDGE FOR TOMATOES.

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