Bound to My Mafia Stepuncle novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: Christmas Eve Eve

I took the back stairs three at a time.

The lot was empty.

The trash bag had split open on the ice.

One of my mother's pink slippers lay on its side by the dumpster.

Angelo came down behind me with the heavyweight and stood there breathing hard.

My phone rang in my hand.

The screen said Mom.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Paulie said.

I put it on speaker so Angelo could hear.

"Where is she?"

"Somewhere warm. She's fine. A little upset about her slipper." He chuckled. "Here's how Christmas goes."

I didn't say anything.

"Tomorrow night is Seven Fishes at my brother's house. Domenic did it every year. The family comes, the captains come, the wives come."

"So?"

"So I'm doing it this year. And at the table, in front of all of them, you stand up and say my name."

"Then the lawyer puts the paper in front of you, and you sign it."

"And my mother?"

"Comes down for dessert," he said. "She'll be home for Christmas morning."

"Let me hear her."

There was a muffled sound, and then my mother's voice, thin and fast.

"Riley, don't you give him one thing, don't you..."

Then a slap, and then Paulie again.

"Seven o'clock," he said. "Wear the beige."

The line went dead.

The heavyweight turned and put his fist through the dumpster lid.

Angelo didn't move at all.

That scared me more.

By noon we were at the social club on Morris Street.

The pinochle tables had been pushed together.

The crane operator sat at one end with a blanket over his knees, eating soup.

The oldest captain sat at the other end with his hearing aid turned all the way up.

The lawyer had come in his raincoat.

He'd brought a detective from the district attorney's office, a woman in a gray suit with a notebook.

She didn't call me sweetheart.

She didn't call me anything.

She just read.

She took each piece in her own gloved hand and asked where the originals were kept.

The navy jacket was still on its hook at the union hall, and she wrote that down too.

Then she listened to the crane operator for forty minutes without interrupting once.

When he finished, she closed the notebook.

"That's enough to arrest him for your father," she said. "It's not enough to find your mother."

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