Her house is the same. She’d honestly wondered if she’d ever see it again. She certainly couldn’t have imagined that this fiasco would end with her cooking at home for her granddaughter, a new pal, and a strange cabbie with hairy shoulders.
Dennis helps them carry in the groceries. Lucia remembers her bear on the rear dash. Wolfstein has her bag and the picture of Vic from Meats Supreme.
Rena checks the mail. A copy of The Tablet, her electric bill, her gas bill, some circulars, and a business card for a Detective Rotante from the 62nd Precinct with illegible scribble under his printed contact info. She’s not sure what they know, how much they’ve pieced together, if they think she’s just a mother they’re delivering bad news to or what. Either way, this Rotante—or someone else—will be back.
The house is cool, quiet. They settle in the kitchen. The flowers Enzio brought her are wilted in their vase already. Rena drops the mail on the counter and puts the eggs and cheeses and meats in the fridge. Everything else she keeps out on the counter.
Wolfstein props the Vic photo on the counter by the stove, under the phone.
Lucia drops her backpack in the living room and looks at all the pictures on the wall. Rena joins her and watches as she takes them in: Rena and Vic at their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary dinner at Colangelo’s on Stillwell; a picture of them embracing at Gershwin’s on their first visit; Adrienne as a baby, wearing a silk bonnet; Adrienne’s sixth-grade class picture, her hair in a ponytail, her eyes bright and happy.
“That’s my mom?” Lucia asks, pointing to the baby and then to the sixth-grade girl.
“Who else?” Rena says.
“I never pictured her as a kid.”
“She was a sweetheart. I have a million more albums. Pictures of me and Papa Vic, pictures of your mother’s birthday parties, her Communion and Confirmation, her school plays, everything. We can look at them after dinner.”
“Okay.”
“I’d like to take you to Papa Vic’s grave, too. We can spend an afternoon there, have a picnic, bring some bread and cheese.”
“A picnic at the cemetery?”
“It’ll be like having a meal with him. You can tell him all about yourself.”
“Tell him how I stabbed my father.”
“He’d understand.”
Rena shows Lucia all around the house and asks if she remembers it at all.
“I’ve been here?” Lucia says.
“When you were little. I think you were three the last time. You were running all around. You bumped your head on the kitchen table and left in tears.”
Lucia looks in Rena’s bedroom, where nothing’s changed since Vic. She looks in the room that was Adrienne’s as a girl, the tired white walls and dusty light fixture, Adrienne’s height measured in the doorway, stopping around age ten. Rena’s always hung up on how quickly things end, but maybe she should be thinking more about the possibility of starting anew.
They go upstairs, which is where she’d lived with Vic when they were just married and her parents were still downstairs. The apartment’s out of time. She doesn’t go up there much. A bookcase in the living room is full of her photo albums. A crate of Adrienne’s Cabbage Patch Kids is on the couch; Rena would sometimes, back when she and Adrienne were first on the outs pretty severely, hold them and remember how Adrienne had cared for those dolls as a girl. Vic’s boxes are piled in a corner next to their little scuffed starter dinette set. More pictures on the walls: Vic in a tux on their wedding day; Rena as a bridesmaid for her cousin Vivian in Staten Island; her parents on their sixty-fifth anniversary, having pizza at Di Fara.
“What if someone comes for the money?” Lucia asks.
“I don’t know,” Rena says.
“I don’t think we should let this driver guy know everything.”
“I’m sure Wolfstein only told him some of it.”
Wolfstein and Dennis are at the kitchen table downstairs, playing cards. Rena and Lucia find them in a heated game of Rummy 500. They have a scratchpad out, and Wolfstein’s cleaning up. They’re sharing some airplane bottles of vodka that Wolfstein must’ve found in the back of the liquor cabinet behind all the twenty-year-old bottles of sambuca and vermouth.
Lucia says she’s tired and goes into the living room to take a nap, sleeping with the backpack and the bear huddled close to her. Wolfstein and Dennis continue their game, laughing and drinking.
Rena starts her gravy. She browns garlic in olive oil. She pours in the crushed tomatoes, careful not to let it sputter up at her. After that, a little salt and pepper and a few leaves of the fresh basil. She puts a pot of water on at a low boil. She starts on the braciole, laying out the flank steak and flattening it with a meat hammer. She remembers the steps as her mother taught them to her when she was a girl, when there was nothing better than being in the kitchen with her mother and her grandmother and her aunts. She thinks of all the recipes that are lost to time, but she’s happy that some live in her and that maybe she can pass them on to Lucia. She sprinkles oil on the meat and then spoons on bread crumbs, cheese, garlic, salt, pepper, and parsley. She rolls the meat and ties it with some butcher’s twine she finds in the top drawer next to the stove. She browns the meat and then deposits it in her big pot of bubbling gravy.
Wolfstein’s sniffing the air. “That smells amazing,” she says.
Rena is focused on her work. It feels good to get lost in making food. She always loved feeding Vic and his guys. She loved feeding Adrienne as a girl. Her hands feel raw and useful, bread crumbs and eggs clinging under her nails. The smells are strong and good.
“Can I use your phone?” Wolfstein asks, going to the rotary on the wall.
“Of course.”
She dials a number. “Mo?” She pauses, laughing. “Yep, you bet. Get back to it. I’ll call you later.” She puts the handset on the hook.
“Is Mo okay?” Rena asks.
“She’s got Pescarelli tied up in her mother’s bed. They’re loaded.” A beat. “I was thinking, Rena, and no pressure here at all, but I was thinking we could go to Florida, if you want to get away from all this. I know you’ve got the house here, but I’ve got connections down there. My friend Ben Risk could set us up with a nice place. You’ve got what you got”—she winks, indicating she hasn’t spilled about the money to Dennis—“and you and Lucia could really make a new life down there. Maybe our new pal here, Sweetie Pie Dennis, can drive us.”
Dennis shrugs. “Why not?”
Rena looks down at the kitchen counter. It could work. If no one comes for them here, why not indeed? “I’ll have to think about it. I’ve got to do something with Adrienne first. I’m all she has.” In the rush of excitement over being reunited with Lucia, Rena’s managed to push away thoughts of seeing Adrienne dead and damaged on a slab, of seeing her in a casket, of having to lower her into the ground.
“Of course.”
Rena picks up the card from Detective Rotante. “A detective was here. He left this. Maybe I should call.”
“He knows where to find you.” Wolfstein snatches the card from her and pockets it.
“Are we tempting fate being at my place?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe. Let’s enjoy it. The food smells so good.”
Rena starts the sausage and peppers. Another favorite of her mother’s. She cooks the sausage in olive oil, the aroma of fennel filling the kitchen, and then slices some yellow and orange bell peppers over the pan. The peppers sizzle in the oil. A little salt and pepper follows. A heaping spoonful of the gravy. Stirring it with the wooden spoon. Simple.
“My mouth’s watering over here,” Dennis says.
Smoke rises up under the range hood. She clicks on the fan.
She puts in the ziti. When it’s cooked, she empties it over a strainer, dumps it back in the pot with some gravy, an egg, ricotta, and mozzarella. Then she spreads that in a foil baking tray and puts it in the oven.
Everything is going now. It won’t be too long before the meal
is ready. She sits down at the table with Wolfstein and Dennis and says, “Deal me in.”
They start a fresh game of Rummy 500. Wolfstein pushes one of the airplane bottles of vodka across the table to Rena. Rena, fanning her cards facedown, unscrews the cap and takes a little pull of the vodka. She doesn’t feel like she’ll be sick. She drinks a little more.
Playing and drinking passes the time. Everything Wolfstein says makes Dennis laugh. She’s on fire. Rena’s laughing, too.
Lucia comes back out about forty minutes later, claiming the good smells woke her up. If she had nightmares about any of what’s happened, she doesn’t say anything. She just joins them at the table and says she can’t wait to eat some of this delicious food.
“It’s almost ready,” Rena says. She gets up and checks on everything. It’s getting dark outside. She can see that through the window. A curtain is falling over the neighborhood. She hears sirens, whistles, car horns, tires peeling out.
Wolfstein and Lucia play War now, Wolfstein slapping down a triumphant king. Dennis gets up to use the bathroom and then comes shuffling back.
The clock tells Rena it’s time for the ziti to come out, and the braciole has cooked long enough in the gravy. She gets plates from the cabinet over the sink, forks and utensils from the drawer closest to the fridge, napkins, glasses. She sets the table. Wolfstein offers to help, but Rena says she’s got it. She collects the cards and tucks them into a slot in the wooden mail organizer hanging behind the front door.
Rena puts a pitcher of tap water on the table. Lucia sneaks a pull off one of the airplane bottles of vodka. Rena sees her and decides not to say anything. She dishes out the ziti and braciole and the sausage and peppers, spooning more gravy over everything. She passes around the bread.
The doorbell rings. Rena remembers that Dennis’s car is in the driveway. She wonders if it’s Detective Rotante. Or maybe it’s just another real estate agent; they often come around at dinnertime, when they most expect to catch people at home, wanting to remind them that these days you can get a lot of dough for a house like this. Or maybe, God forbid, it’s someone from Sonny Brancaccio’s crew, putting out feelers.
“Ignore it,” Rena says.
Lucia looks concerned. So does Dennis. Wolfstein reaches across the table and puts her hand on Rena’s forearm.
Another ring, followed by some light pounding on the door. No voices that she can hear. After a couple of minutes of silence, whoever it is hasn’t rung or knocked again, and Rena lets out a sigh of relief.
“Lucia, you want to do us the honor of saying grace?” Rena says, sitting down and wiping sweat away from her forehead with a napkin.
Dennis takes off his ball cap and chucks it on top of Wolfstein’s bag on the empty chair in the corner.
Lucia hesitates and looks around, as if searching for something that could double as a prayer. “I’m thankful we’re here,” she says. “I hope this meal never ends.”
“Amen,” Wolfstein says.
Dennis says it, too.
Rena doesn’t, but she smiles. “Don’t forget to save room for cookies,” she says. They sit around the dinner table, the tray of ziti on a crusty oven mitt in the center, the braciole on a green porcelain plate, extra gravy in a dish next to that, the sausage and peppers in her beautiful hand-painted Ricco Deruta bowl, everything still hot and perfect, and there’s suddenly the music of living in Rena’s old, sad house.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great debt of gratitude to my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber, and to everyone at Sobel Weber: Siobhan McBride; Sara Henry; Kristen Pini; and Adia Wright. Thank you all.
Tom Wickersham’s input on an earlier version of the manuscript was invaluable. Thanks so much, Tom.
Thanks to my wonderful editor Katie McGuire, and to Claiborne Hancock, Jessica Case, Sabrina Plomitallo-González, and everyone at Pegasus Books.
Love and thanks to my French family: François Guérif; my translator Simon Baril; Oliver Gallmeister, Marie Moscoso, and everyone at Gallmeister; Jeanne Guyon; Laurent Chalumeau; Sébastien Bonifay and my new pals in Corsica; and to the all of the wonderful booksellers and readers I’ve met.
Thanks to Ion Mills, Geoffrey Mulligan, Clare Quinlivan, Claire Watts, Clare Holloway, Katherine Sunderland, and everyone at No Exit Press.
Thanks to Wolfgang Franßen and everyone at Polar Verlag in Germany.
I’m beyond thankful for the friendship and support of Megan Abbott, Jack Pendarvis, Ace Atkins, Jimmy Cajoleas, and Alex Andriesse. As Barry Hannah said, “Heaven is pals.” I love you guys.
Thanks to the Farrells, Neubauers, Adlers, Clarkes, and Frawleys of Throggs Neck and Monroe, New York and to the Farrells and Orrs of San Francisco. Thanks especially to Uncle Bobby Farrell. I’m lucky as hell to have married into this family.
Thanks to my pals George Griffith, David Swider, Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Tyler Keith.
Thanks to Richard and Lisa Howorth, Cody Morrison, Lyn Roberts, Bill Cusumano, Slade Lewis, Katelyn O’Brien, and everyone at Square Books.
Above all, thanks to my family: my wife, Katie Farrell Boyle; our kids, Eamon and Connolly Jean; and my mother, Geraldine Giannini. I love you all so much.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Joseph and Rosemary Giannini, who—I hope—would’ve gotten a kick out of it.
ALSO BY WILLIAM BOYLE
THE LONELY WITNESS
GRAVESEND
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM PEGASUS CRIME
“Boyle launched his gritty vision about this section of Brooklyn in his debut.
The Lonely Witness offers an excellent sequel with a superb plot, matched by its realistically shaped characters.”
—Oline Cogdill, The Associated Press
“A knockout combination of in-depth character work, Brooklyn atmosphere, and straight-up gritty noir. The devotion Boyle demonstrates for character, story, and place is perhaps the one unadulterated emotion on display in a story imbued with ambiguous morality and loyalty.”
—Shelf Awareness (starred)
“What makes William Boyle’s work ring with such a strong and true voice is that he realizes for many daily life is a struggle. His writing prays for them.”
—MysteryPeople (Pick of the Month)
“A beautifully nuanced novel that has an unhurried but compelling narrative drive, a central character you are totally invested in, and a locale that does indeed function as a major character.”
—Criminal Element
When a young woman with a sordid past witnesses a murder, she finds herself fascinated by the killer and decides to track him down herself.
Amy lives a lonely life, helping the house-bound receive communion in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. One of her regulars, Mrs. Epifanio, says she hasn’t seen her usual caretaker, Diane, in a few days. Supposedly, Diane has the flu—or so Diane’s son Vincent said when he first dropped by and vanished into Mrs. E’s bedroom to do no-one-knows-what.
Amy’s brief interaction with Vincent in the apartment that day sets off warning bells, so she assures Mrs. E that she’ll find out what’s really going on with both him and his mother. She tails Vincent through Brooklyn, eventually following him and a mysterious man out of a local dive bar. At first, the men are only talking as they walk, but then, almost before Amy can register what has happened, Vincent is dead.
For reasons she can’t quite understand, Amy finds herself captivated by both the crime she witnessed and the murderer himself. She doesn’t call the cops to report what she’s seen. Instead, she collects the murder weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer.
Character-driven and evocative, The Lonely Witness brings Brooklyn to life in a way only a native can, and opens readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM PEGASUS CRIME
“An adrenaline-charged debut in the Elmore Leonard vein: blue-collar Brooklyn setting, idiomatic dia
logue, no detective figure. Bristling with energy, Gravesend marks Boyle out as a new name to watch.”
— The Guardian (UK)
“A moving debut. The characters are swept into a downward spiral of desperation as they grapple with the weight of the past and the pull that the neighborhood has on them. Fans of classic noir will find a lot to like.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A bruiser and a heartbreaker of a debut. With echoes of Lehane and Pelecanos but with a rhythm and poignancy all its own, it’s a gripping tale of family, revenge, the strains of the past and the losses that never leave us.”
—Megan Abbott, author of Give Me Your Hand and You Will Know Me
“Gravesend kicks ass! An irresistible combo of an insider’s tour of Brooklyn and true and authentic 21st Century Noir. Boyle is one to watch.”
—Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Fallen and Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies
In a masterful work of neo-noir, this novel expertly captures the desperation of Brooklyn neighbors who find themselves caught up in crimes of the past.
It’s been sixteen years since “Ray Boy” Calabrese’s actions led to the death of a young man. The victim’s brother, Conway D’Innocenzio, is now a 29-year-old Brooklynite wasting away at a local Rite Aid, stuck in the past and drawn into a darker side of himself when he hears that Ray Boy’s has been released. But even with the perfect plan in place, Conway can’t bring himself to take the ultimate revenge.
Meanwhile, failed actress Alessandra returns to her native Gravesend after the death of her mother, torn between a desperate need to escape immediately back to LA and the ease with which she sinks back into neighborhood life. Alessandra and Conway are walking eerily similar paths—staring down the rest of their lives, caring for their aging fathers, lost in the youths they squandered—and each must decide what comes next.
In the tradition of American noir authors like Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy, William Boyle’s Gravesend brings the titular neighborhood to life in this story of revenge, desperation, and escape.
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