Chapter 15: Nino

I called Nino nine times before the sun was up, and he did not pick up once.

Santino drove with one hand and held the other out for the phone.

"He sleeps with it on his chest," I said. "He answers on the first ring. He has done it since I was a girl."

"I know."

Nino lived in a brick two-family on Fingerboard Road, on the ground floor, with a red awning over the door.

The awning was torn.

The door stood wide open.

I was out of the truck before it stopped.

Inside, the kitchen light was on, and a pot of coffee had boiled down to black tar on the stove.

His gray overcoat lay on the floor in the hall.

His hat lay under it, crushed flat.

"Nino!"

Nobody answered.

Santino went through the rooms with his gun out, and I stood in the kitchen with the watch in my fist.

On the table lay a crossword puzzle, half filled in, in blue pen.

The pen had skidded across it in a long line.

A woman's voice came from the doorway.

"They took him an hour ago."

It was the old neighbor from upstairs, in a quilted robe, holding her cat.

"Four men, a gray van," she said. "He told them to let him get his coat. They didn't."

"Did he fight?"

"He hit one with the cane." She almost smiled. "Then they hit him with it."

I put my hand over my mouth.

The old woman looked at me with her wet, cloudy eyes.

"You're Alberto's girl," she said. "Bring him home."

By ten o'clock my father's kitchen was full.

Seven men stood around the table with their hats in their hands, the same seven who had walked out of Dario's dining room.

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