Even Pop, when he held Nonna’s hand and kissed her fingers, showed no toughness, just a gentle “How are you, Momma?” He didn’t pray out loud, but Lance felt his prayers. They didn’t talk, but he sensed Pop reassessing him. He’d expected him to give it up already, but that wasn’t possible.
He’d brought up the job once, but Lance had earned his portion of the rent by soloing two parties, playing a wedding with Chaz, and finding odd jobs in the neighborhood. Most of his free time he’d spent with Nonna, though it seemed there was less and less he could do for her.
Physiologically, there was no reason for her to be failing. She ate and drank what she was given, moved with assistance, but spoke no word and showed no interest. A visiting nurse had checked her over and found nothing to warrant this slide. It was shock and heartsickness that had drained her spirit of life. He had never known her to give up, but she was giving up now.
In the chair beside her bed, Lance clenched his jaw. He had fasted and prayed for her to find strength, and for Detective Gamet to find answers. Neither had happened. Gamet had returned the file with an apology. “I can’t commit the resources. We have too many cold cases as it is.”
“What about the Borsellinos?”
Gamet had not liked the question. “Get outta here, Lance. Do something with your life.” But when he’d stood there still, Gamet had placed his fists on the desk. “I’ll tell you this much. Paolo Borsellino? He’s in Ryker’s, serving life for racketeering, conspiracy, and murder.”
Not for conspiring to murder Nonno, and the one who’d committed it might still walk free. The curse was unreturned until the vendetta was settled, but no one seemed to realize what was at stake. Lance had left there bleak and angry. Every time he turned to some other authority, it came back to him.
He hadn’t gone to Nonna’s room when he got back. He’d gone to work, searching public records and tangential leads to locate the men identified in the file. Two were dead, one besides Paolo incarcerated, but of the others, all but one still lived in the area. So he’d started his own detailed account of each.
Over the next week he’d located homes and offices and recreational spots; cars, boats, schools, and churches—significant places in the life of the Borsellino family. Mostly alone, but sometimes with Rico, he had moved through uptown Manhattan, swank Chelsea and Long Island neighborhoods. Though he had no training, surveillance had come naturally—imagine that.
In a sense, he now worked undercover for Nonno, his eyes, as Vittorio had been. After the first week of locating, he’d started in to learn his enemy. And for that Sofie’s Neon was a no-can-do. He’d hit up Saul Samuels. In return for playing his niece’s bat mitzvah—Rico air-brushing the toms and cymbals—he got use of Saul’s silver Mercedes. Saul didn’t drive it much anyway.
Now he sat with Rico outside a Chelsea townhouse. At first, he’d expected crack houses and gang lords. But though the family had begun that way and undoubtedly profited still from illicit operations, the Borsellinos had risen to decadent opulence and bought themselves respectability.
He had to laugh at his own family, still tucked away in their fourstory building, his aunts and uncles thinking they’d made good, moving north to the suburbs. But behind his laugh he seethed, not that these people had more, but that they’d built it on his family’s blood. “It’s obscene, Rico.”
“Yeah. The wages of sin.” He formed a crooked grin. “If Juan wasn’t so stupid, I’d have grown up here.”
“If you’d grown up here, you’d be one of them.”
Rico sobered. “I didn’t mean it, ’mano.”
Lance turned back to the townhouse where a woman, the second wife of Ricky Borsellino Jr., stepped outside to catch a cab. He might have followed the cab, but he knew she was picking up their daughter from karate.
The problem with surveillance was that people became real. He now had faces to the names, faces for the wives and ex-wives, kids and stepkids and grandkids. Like Nonno, he’d entered their world, gone to church with them, shaken hands at the sign of peace. They had no idea who he was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Star’s hair formed a soft bonnet of curls around her head where it rested on Rese’s thigh. The late-August garden was splendid in the evening light, clumps of aster and daisies, mums and fuchsia—names she’d learned from Star. Around the workshop, goldenrod and penstemon stretched proudly to the slanting rays. She had laughed when Star spread the blanket and ordered her to sit, but now she was glad to be dragged from the workshop where she’d been diligently productive.
Star held the book open against her knees. “‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’ ”
And some couldn’t see their greatness when it hit them between the eyes, Rese thought with a familiar wrench. She pushed the thought aside with something close to violence and forced her focus another direction. How could it take so long to get a hearing to vacate a stupid court order that was no longer relevant so she could bring Mom home? She’d completed her part weeks ago.
“You’re not listening.” Star tipped her head up.
“I was thinking about Mom and if we’ll ever get through the bureaucratic sludge.” Though most of the time Mom wasn’t even aware that her situation could change. Rese sighed. “Sorry.”
Star settled the book on her chest and closed her eyes. “Hear that?”
She listened. Birds twittering. The tap of Baxter’s nails and the pad of his feet as he crossed to them, licked her neck and chin, and then settled with a wumph across her other thigh. Rese stroked him automatically. “What am I supposed to be hearing?”
“Life passing.”
“Hmm.”
Star opened her eyes. “I finished something. I’d like you to see it.”
Had to be some kind of record. When they were growing up Star was afraid to call any piece of art finished, and actually left most of her paintings incomplete. As she didn’t want anyone to see something before it was done, Rese had caught only glimpses. But since the painting she’d made for Lance, Star had completed six canvases and let her see them all.
Something in her tone seemed different this time, though. “Is it in the attic?” Star had taken that space over as her indoor studio, even though it must have memories of afternoon jams with Lance and Chaz and Rico, of her taking the mic and finding her voice. Maybe because it did.
Star got up. “Yes, but don’t move.”
Good thing, since Baxter had scrunched in with his paws until his whole head, neck, and shoulders were on her. “You are a glutton,” she told the dog as they waited for Star, and he accepted her opinion without remorse.
In a few minutes, Star carried out a midsize canvas and held it before her. Rese studied the collage of musical instruments framed by an inference of subway tunnel walls. As she looked, her eye picked out Rico’s hair and face formed from the shadows and lines of the various drum images on the upper right. The face would appear to anyone who looked long enough, but Star had to know she would recognize Rico. “It’s great, Star.”
“I’m sending it to him.”
Rese looked up from the painting to Star’s face. “Really?”
“He doesn’t have to keep it.” A slight tremor betrayed her.
Rese said, “He’d be crazy not to.” Though he’d been a little crazy; the whole thing had, but she and Star were doing fine now. Why would she want to stir the pot?
————
After studying the Borsellinos until he could tell where they’d be at noon on Wednesday, who they’d be with, what they’d order for lunch, it had come clear that some of the respectability was an illusion. Lance had guessed which members actively controlled the family “businesses,” who were used as muscle, and who seemed to be uninvolved.
But he didn’t know who had killed Nonno. And he wasn’t likely to learn about it without getting inside the operations as Nonno had. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he could pull that off.
If the hit had been a power play, then he’d assume Paolo’s son Leon or his cousin Gerard. They had the biggest houses, the best toys, the meanest tempers. But those were guesses and didn’t mean either had personally sabotaged Nonno’s car.
He had watched, rage growing inside, but what good had it done? He had no answers, no direction. If God had called him to this, why didn’t He make himself clear? Lance clenched his fists. He had followed Nonno’s example, watching and waiting. He had gathered current information, nothing that would necessarily incriminate or be accepted by Seabass or anyone else as evidential.
But he was looking at an operation that had profited by Nonno’s silence, then stabbed him in the back. Lance shook as a new thought seized him. Vendetta did not require direct retaliation. As they had all suffered from the vendetta against them, so the Borsellinos would suffer whatever blow he struck. He had told Rese when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. But he hadn’t meant it this way. He’d never meant it this way.
His hands broke out with sweat. How could he even think it? “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord—but sometimes it’s mine, too, and yours.” Was this what it had come to? A justice outside the law? A personal vengeance? He gripped his head.
He’d fought in self-defense, fought to defend the weak. If he’d been given a shot at the terrorists en route to the towers, he’d have taken it— without regret. But that wasn’t the same, or was it? He reeled.
Could he target someone and take him out? He knew which men still ran the rackets, which ones had probably killed, if not Nonno, then others. He knew who cheated on their wives, who beat on their kids. He could choose the worst of them and do the world a favor. Not only for his family, but all those who were still being hurt by the drugs and pornography and worse.
Others had been called before him to end evil and accomplish God’s will. Moses had struck the ground with his staff, closing the sea over Pharaoh’s army, drowning men and beasts. Real men. Men whose eyes he’d looked into.
Joshua wrought destruction on Jericho. Peter spoke the Lord’s edict on Ananias and Sapphira. Even Jesus had cursed the unproductive fig tree, metaphorically damning those who failed to respond to the Lord’s desire. Unfaithful servants, afraid of a hard master who shrank from God’s will, were slain.
He wasn’t afraid to die. He would give his life as Tony, as Nonno, even Quillan and Vittorio, had done, but that sacrifice wasn’t enough to end this blood feud. Dread sucked him down as he realized what might be required.
Would God make him lower than the low, despised, reviled? A murderer? His years in the Peace Corps, with Habitat, and on the mission to Jamaica like nothing. His daily offerings, millions of graces, prayers and praise—dust and ashes.
He would become his enemy. Like those who killed Tony, who killed Nonno. His spirit writhed. No, Lord. Call it pride, call it arrogance. He was not the evil he hated. He wasn’t! Fists clenched, he shook his head in fierce denial, rejecting even the possibility.
Then he grew still, empty. He hardly breathed, hardly dared show his face … because he knew he had it in him. No loss had hurt so much as being laid bare.
————
Chaz had seen Lance’s fervor. It was one of the things that had drawn them together, that had caused a friendship in spite of their natural differences. For Lance there was no halfway. He’d spent himself on the streets of Jamaica, in parts of Kingston that were more like hell, giving succor to the weary and downtrodden—sometimes at personal risk.
Chaz had carried him back one night, bruised and bleeding from interfering in a gang rape. Lance hadn’t known the woman he’d defended, hadn’t seen the color of her skin or counted those against her. But he’d taken the violence meant for her into his body as she escaped. That he hadn’t died, Chaz considered a miracle. Lance had powerful angels.
Chaz had seen him burn with indignation, weep with compassion. He’d marveled at the joy that came over him when the last nail was driven and one family would no longer sleep in the street. When he put a bowl of soup into the hands of a child, it was almost a sacrament.
So he wasn’t entirely surprised when Momma knocked on the door, beside herself. “He won’t eat; he won’t talk.” Momma waved her hands. “I ask him to sit with his grandmother, and I find him in a trance. Not even Joshua’s trumpet could get through. I should call the priest.”
“Let me see.” Chaz followed her across the hall to where Lance sat with Nonna’s Bible in his lap. It wasn’t a trance, but a fierce concentration. He didn’t want to be hassled out of whatever he’d fixed on. “Don’t worry, Momma. He’s okay.”
“He’s okay?” She threw up her hands. “It’s okay not to answer your mother when she’s talking?” She shrugged. “Fine. I’ll go.” It was no wonder she’d worried. She knew the face he presented at home. She hadn’t seen him out in the world, serving the wretched with zeal and thoroughness, hadn’t witnessed the moments when something ignited inside him.
Chaz didn’t know what was burning in Lance now, but when Momma had gone, he crouched down. “Look at me, mon.”
Lance raised his eyes from the Bible in his lap.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“You know what Abraham said when God asked him to kill his son Isaac? I’m ready.” Lance swallowed. “He said, I’m ready.”
Chaz nodded, seeing behind the words. What did Lance think God had asked of him?
Lance sat back in the chair. “God told him, take this child you love, the one you prayed and waited for, the son my promise depends on. Take him like an animal and slaughter him. Make a holocaust of your heart.”
Chaz said, “God had to know there was nothing between them, not the beloved son, not even the promise He himself had made. God had to know Abraham would do anything to serve him.”
“Even something that seems so wrong?”
“What’s the matter, mon?”
His gaze pierced. “Since I was a kid, I’ve looked for God’s will, searched out the possibilities, the opportunities, all the little things. But inside, I wanted something big, something radical.”
Chaz nodded. He knew that. Lance wore the hunger on his face.
“But now …” Lance looked away. “What if I can’t do it?”
“What is it you have to do?”
Lance didn’t answer.
Chaz frowned. “What is it, mon?”
Lance shook his head. “It’s all been laid out, everything that’s happened, even Tony …”
“He works all things for good.” He was glad Lance could finally see that.
But Lance closed his eyes, pain pinching his brow. “I think I know what God intends. But I don’t know how I’ll do it.”
Chaz clutched his shoulder. “His grace is sufficient, his power made perfect in weakness.”
The breath escaped Lance slowly, and he nodded. “Thank you.”
Chaz stood up. Lance held nothing back. His zeal for God was not feigned. Even so, passion could be dangerous.
————
Rese parked the truck beside the villa, hope swelling inside her. Mom had said nothing on the drive; whether out of terror or dismay or even happiness, it was hard to tell. As a child she had learned to read every nuance of Mom’s expression, trying to gauge what was coming next. But now the medication or the progression of her condition had made that almost impossible. Or she just had to learn to see again.
“Mom? We’re home.”
Her mother stared out the window as Rese ducked under the branches of the scarlet-tinged maple. The vineyard owners had waited out the last golden days, then rushed into the highlight of the year, harvesting the grapes. If things hadn’t changed, that would have meant a full inn, booked solid from Labor Day through mid-October, at the least. Throat tight, she went around and helped Mom climb out. How had she thought she could tuck her into a guest room with all the other guests? Thank God, she’d come to her senses.
As they approached, Star opened the front door
and stood there in a blue dress, peacock-feather earrings, and an iridescent green scarf in a band around her head. Mom’s gait had gotten awkward, Rese noticed as she helped her up the porch steps.
Star smiled beatifically and swung the door open. “Welcome home, Mom.”
Rese startled. Star didn’t even call her own mother Mom.
As they went into the house, Rese sensed Mom’s confusion. “You won’t remember it,” she said. “It’s a new house I fixed up as Dad taught me.” Even if Mom didn’t grasp that Dad had died, there was no point avoiding the subject. Too many things had gone unspoken for too many years.
She walked Mom through the front sitting room and into the dining room, but within minutes her eyes darted and her brow creased, her fingers flicking frantically.
“One, two, three, four. Now there aren’t any more. One, two. One …”
It must be overwhelming her. Rese had thought she’d feel less confined if she’d seen it all, but maybe a single new room was enough to start with. “Come on upstairs. I’ll show you your room.”
“Rose Trellis,” Star reminded as they climbed. She had declared the creams and pinks of that room healing, and Rese doubted Mom would voice an objection. If at some point she seemed to prefer one of the other rooms, they were certainly available.
Mom counted the stairs to the top, then looked as though she’d turn around and go back down. Did she want out already?
“This is your room.” Rese led her into the one at the end of the hall. The canopy bed frame was wreathed in pink silk rose vines and creamy organza. It was the most feminine of the rooms, and now that she thought about it, that should suit Mom’s personality. Unless her tastes had changed. Could she even think in those terms?
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