Chapter 4: The Kitchen at Midnight

Dinner ended when Marcello's mother stood up and said the soup was cold.

Nobody had touched it.

Marcello said he'd answer my question later, in private, and I let him walk me upstairs without a word.

At midnight I was still awake in his bed, and he was still not on the couch.

I found him in the kitchen.

It was a restaurant kitchen, all steel and white tile, with copper pans hanging over an island the size of a car.

He stood in his shirtsleeves in front of the open refrigerator, holding a ham.

"You eat when you're angry?" I said.

"I eat when I'm thinking."

He set the ham on the island and took a long knife from the block.

I took it out of his hand.

I didn't mean it as a threat, but we both looked at it.

I sliced the ham myself, thick and crooked, because my hands needed a job.

He watched the knife, not my face.

"Tell me who drove Eli to the warehouse," I said.

"I did."

The knife stopped.

"I drove him there myself," Marcello said.

"Three years ago in March. He asked me to stop at the gate, and I did."

"And?"

"He said he'd walk the last hundred yards."

"Why?"

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