Chapter 11: Stitches

Marta lost them in four turns.

She cut through a loading lane behind a restaurant supply store, killed her headlights, and rolled the van into a dark garage bay.

We sat there with the engine ticking and listened to the silver car roar past the mouth of the lane.

Lucio's two cars went by.

Then the street was quiet.

"They'll circle back," Marta said. "Hold on."

She drove the last twelve blocks without lights, hugging the curb.

The bakery sat on a corner of Passyunk Avenue, a narrow brick shop with a striped awning and trays of dark loaves in the window.

Marta backed the van into the alley and pulled down the metal door.

The back room smelled of flour and yeast and warm stone.

Two long steel tables stood in the middle, under hanging pans.

Santino walked in on his own legs and made it to the nearest table before he leaned on it.

Then his knees went.

"Lift him," Marta said. "Table. Careful."

We got him up.

I cut his shirt away with kitchen shears.

The wound was above his left hip, a ragged furrow where the bullet had gone through the muscle and out the back.

It was ugly and wet, and my stomach rolled.

"Is it deep?" Marta asked, white-faced.

"It went through," I said. "It missed the bone. I think."

"You think."

"My father taught me this," I said. "When I was fourteen, a dockworker got shot behind the restaurant. Dad stitched him on the bar. I held the lamp."

Marta set a bottle of grappa and a clean needle from the sewing basket beside me.

"Burn it," she said. "Both."

I washed the wound with the grappa while Santino swore in Italian through his teeth.

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