I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Bellhop

The bellhop was waiting in the back booth of a diner under the Brooklyn Bridge, with his hat in his lap.

He was twenty-three at most, thin, with a pressed collar and a shaving cut on his jaw.

He stood up when I came in, then sat down again.

"Miss Orsini," he said. "I'm sorry for your trouble."

"Thank you for seeing me."

"I lost my job Monday." He turned the hat around. "Somebody told the hotel I'd been talking. I haven't talked to anybody. Until your man found me."

The young dockhand slid into the booth beside him, looking pleased and a little ashamed of it.

"He was on the twelfth floor with a cart," he said. "Three weeks ago Tuesday."

"I was bringing coffee," the bellhop said. "The door of the big office was open about this much."

He held up two fingers.

"I wasn't trying to listen. I stood there because I'd never seen a man that old talk that quietly."

"What did he say?"

He looked at Ettore, who stood against the wall with his arms folded and had not said a word.

Ettore gave him the smallest nod.

"He said her birthday was the anniversary. He said to seat her as a guest, no gift, and give the cake to a Greco girl while she watched." His voice shook and he steadied it. "He said, a girl like that will walk, and when she walks the docks are ours. Then the son said, understood, Papa."

I had heard it already from Ettore's mouth.

It was different in a stranger's.

It was real, in a diner, over bad coffee, and a boy in a pressed collar was risking his life to say it.

"Will you say it on Friday?" I asked. "In front of the full table, and Aurelio, and Cesare?"

"They'll kill me."

"No," Ettore said, from the wall. "They won't."

It was the first thing he had said, and the bellhop stared at him.

"My crew will put you on a night shift by tomorrow, under another name.

"There will be a man next to you every hour, until Friday and after.

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