Chapter 30: Sunday at June's

Cain arrived at our apartment at four fifty-eight with three peach pies and a suit.

"It's family dinner," June said, opening the door. "Not a deposition."

"I was told five o'clock," said Cain. "I assumed formal."

"You assumed wrong."

"I have a second tie in the car."

"Come in before the neighbors see you holding that many pies."

It was too late for that.

The old woman from downstairs had been on the landing since four, supposedly watering a fern.

She is seventy-eight, five feet tall, and has never once been afraid of anything.

She looked Cain up and down and said, "You're the one."

"I am told so, ma'am."

"Take your shoes off."

I have seen men with bodyguards faint at the sound of Cain's name.

He took his shoes off and set them side by side on the mat.

June's apartment is two rooms and a kitchen, and on Sundays it holds nine people if no one breathes.

Tonight it held June, me, the old woman, one of June's nursing friends who had come for the food, and the scariest man in the city.

He sat where he was put, on a folding chair at the end of the table, with his knees against the legs of it.

June set a dish in front of him.

It was her famous casserole, made of noodles, canned tuna and a crust of crushed potato chips.

I watched him look at it for a long time.

"Clause three," I said quietly, from the next chair.

"I remember clause three," he said.

"You eat what's served."

"You ate lemon cake for fourteen months, Mara. I can eat a potato chip."

He picked up his fork and took a large, deliberate bite.

The table watched.

The old woman leaned forward.

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