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  Angelina said, “Oh, not today.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s his.”

  “It’s the job.”

  She’d never try to talk me out of it, never insist that I leave the bent life. Angelina never told me I was better than this or that I should try to be. We kissed under the mistletoe and she pulled the collar of my coat up high over the back of my neck. It was snowing out.

  As I stepped off the elevator I found a delivery guy at the front desk dropping off a package with the doorman.

  I knew exactly what it was.

  The doorman asked him, “Delivery on Christmas?”

  “I don’t mind. I get triple time and I don’t have to see the in-laws until later tonight. Enjoy the holiday.”

  The delivery guy walked out into the swirling snow and foot traffic. The doorman spotted me and said, “Glad I caught you before you left.”

  I nodded to him, wished him a merry Christmas, and picked up the package.

  It was more tongue. I brought it with me to the Fifth Amendment and let the boys share it and bring it home to their wives.

  ~ * ~

  The morning the twins were born I was trying not to get iced by Vinny Venti’s brother and another torpedo who had come in from Arkansas specifically to do the job. Johnny had been branching out a little too deeply into the Dixie mafia rackets and the bosses down south had decided to clip him. Except they all knew about me so they’d sent their best gunner after me first. Once he’d aced me he’d go after Johnny.

  His name was Arlo Hoyt. I’d met him a year ago on a job that had taken me to Chicago. A capo had started skimming too much from his skipper’s drug and prostitution racket and Johnny had lent me out to the boss gratis in order to earn a favor. The boss had to make sure that the hit looked like it was coming from a rival outfit. The capo was a wise guy from way back with a lot of friends.

  The Dixie mafia, also seeking to earn favor, sent Arlo along to do the same job. We bumped into each other outside of the capo’s house at one in the morning and recognized that we were the same kind of man.

  Arlo Hoyt was in his early 60’s but he was still cut from stone. His ruddy face showed the signs of a lot of beatings. His lips didn’t line up right, his nose had been broken at least a couple of times, and there was a jagged knife scar that curved from the center of his left cheek down and around his jaw. Despite the mileage, his icy blue eyes held a kind of charm and delight, and I suspected he was still lucky with the ladies.

  Even though it was almost sixty degrees out he was having trouble acclimating to Chi’s cold weather and kept his car running and the heat blowing. I slipped up to the driver’s window and tapped on it with the butt of my .38. He wasn’t surprised. He’d seen me coming. He knew what I was. He popped the lock on the passenger side and I climbed in. He gave me a grin, his expression growing more and more amused.

  “So how do we handle this, friend?” he asked.

  “No reason we can’t do it together and each go home and tell our bosses we earned that favor. The Chicago skipper can’t deny either of them or else he admits he was reaching out in two directions at once.”

  “He’s got his girlfriend in there with him. I don’t like the idea of killing women.”

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  “But if there’s no other way, I’ll do her.”

  “No, you won’t. She’s married to a bartender and she’ll split before closing time so she can be home when he gets there.”

  Arlo was a lot more chatty than I expected. He told me a lot about his life and asked a lot of questions. I didn’t say much but I opened up more than I usually would. I wasn’t used to having personal conversations with other torpedoes.

  At two the girlfriend stepped out onto the brick stoop and the capo followed, naked, holding her in his arms for a final kiss of the night. Then she got in her car and pulled away while the captain waved after her. Arlo and I looked at each other. It didn’t much matter if we made a mess. We got out of the car and each put a bullet in his face. Then we shook hands and parted company. I heard about some of his exploits now and again and wondered if we’d ever have to go up against each other.

  Now I had my answer.

  Angelina had gone into labor at five a.m. while I was out on a job. Vinny Venti’s brother Chuck had been in the stir when Vinny had his ticket punched. Chuck understood the message and knew who had sent it and why, but he’d gotten out of the joint two days ago and he’d been talking all over town about how he planned to put two in the back of my head.

  Most of the time this kind of talk was nothing more than mooks mouthing off, but Chuck had gone so far as to say he planned on killing my pregnant wife. Whether he was just letting off steam or not immediately became moot. Anyone crazy enough to say they’d kill a torpedo’s family was too big a risk to let live. So Chuck Venti would have to go down.

  It wasn’t sanctioned by Johnny and it didn’t have to be. I wouldn’t get paid my usual wedge of cash. A lot of hitters went off the grid all the time because they were loose at the seams. If the barber took a little too much off the top, they’d ice him. If their espresso was delivered cold, they’d whack the waiter. Someone stole their parking spot, they’d put six in the guy’s chest. They were maniacs, and in the end they all got taken out of the game in a bloody fashion, usually by their own nervous crew.

  But this was my first time since Jojo that I was going to kill someone for personal reasons.

  Chuck was fresh to the streets again and holed up in a house in Howard Beach, across the street from a high school. Chuck had gone away for five years for raping a school teacher, but now I wondered if there was something else to it. I imagined Chuck standing around the schoolyard, watching the girls on the track team run by, peeking into the gym to see them girls on the balance beam, swinging on the high bar, in their tight outfits. Maybe he’d hit the teacher first because she’d been easier to get to. Maybe he’d been working his way up to the kids.

  I reached for the door handle to get out of my car when my cell vibrated in my pocket. I’d gotten a text from Angelina. Water broke ten minutes ago. On my way to St. Vincent’s. When you’re done with what you have to do meet us there.

  I picked the lock on his back door. Wise guys didn’t trust alarms tied in to the police department. They didn’t want to accidentally trigger a call and then wind up with a squad of cops in their living room.

  I heard the heavy breathing, moaning, and background music of a porno flick. I eased through the dark house and made my way to Chuck’s bedroom. The door was open and light seeped into the hallway. I glanced in.

  Chuck was in his skivvies watching a DVD. He was a little younger than Vinny, his stomach perfectly flat and thick arms muscled the way you only get after a jolt in prison, working out all day long every day for years.

  In the movie, a couple of girls barely out of high school were on their knees giving hummers to gray-haired old men with wrinkled ashen skin and man-tits. The DVD case was open on top of the TV. Daddy’s Little Cum Dumpster.

  I thought of my wife giving birth right now, possibly to two daughters. I stepped into the room and Chuck started, sat up straighter and turned my way.

  “So did your sister Gloria with the Double D’s fuck you up too?” I asked.

  “She had Double D’s at thirteen. I don’t know what the hell they are now, but they’re a lot bigger.”

  He grinned and I knew that Chuck had gotten to do what Vinny never had. Chuck had fucked their sister. I extended my arm to shoot him in the head when Arlo Hoyt stepped out from the dark master bathroom on my right. He looked tired and a little disgusted as he held a .45 on me.

  “You here for me?” I asked.

  “Yep,” he said and gestured for me to toss my piece aside. I did. He patted me down and found my .32 and the switchblade.

  “Been in town long?”

  “Got in a couple hours ago.”

  Things fell into place. C
huck wanted revenge for his brother. That’s why he’d mouthed off, to lure me to him. “Should have known the Dixie mob was the only place left for Chuck to go. You boys fuck your sisters down there all the time.”

  “First cousin was the closest blood I ever managed,” Arlo said. “But we don’t keep score much while sittin’ out on the porch drinkin’ our corn liquor.”

  “If you did, Chuck would have beat you. He swung his sister.”

  “I was twelve and she was fifteen,” Chuck said by way of explanation. He slid off the bed, got dressed, and approached me. “So who do you think was really fucking who? I mean, how’s anybody going to hold that against a guy?”

  “You wag your willy at the girls in the Christmas pageant too?”

  He grinned again. “I don’t need to flash little girls in my trench coat. If I want to fuck them I can find crack whores selling their kids two for a C-note under the 59th Street Bridge.”

  He drew his arm back and I tightened up a second before he unleashed two mean hooks into my gut. I didn’t even double over and that set him off. He threw another two hooks, working my ribs. He came in close and I started to twist aside, but Arlo knew exactly what I was doing. Trying to get Chuck between us. He jammed the .45 under my ear and I stopped moving. Chuck threw a pile-driver into my gut and I stumbled back hard across his bureau, sucking air between my teeth.

  “You didn’t have to cut his prick off with a tin can,” Chuck said. “You piece of shit, that was unnecessary.”

  It took me a minute to catch my breath. “It was necessary. But he was dead when I started. I don’t torture people, ask around.”

  “You’re the one who should’ve asked around,” he said. With a quick right cross he broke my nose. “Because I do torture people.”

  ~ * ~

  Chuck Venti cracked me across the back of the head with my own gun. He worked me over for about ten minutes. He was a pro. He knew how to inflict pain. My blood splashed high and low against his walls. The TV screen was dappled. His face showed the same rage that his brother’s did when Vinny had fucked my mother. He looked a lot like his brother. He looked a lot like my father. As the blood ran into my eyes I kept seeing my old man standing there, smiling, coming at me again and again. I took it the way I had taken it as a kid. Without a sound.

  Chuck backed off then and started to leave the room.

  “Where are you going?” Arlo asked.

  “To the shed.”

  “What for?”

  “What the fuck do you think what for? You thought I was kidding when I said I torture people? I look like someone who would kid about that?”

  “No, I suppose you don’t.”

  “That’s right. Stay here and watch him.”

  Arlo’s scarred features hardened. “I’m not paid to watch.”

  “You’re paid to follow orders. Your boss made an arrangement to watch over me. So now you can watch me cut this guy apart. You want, you can put one in his head right at the end. Then we’ll go to the airport and I’ll say goodbye to this fucking town forever.”

  I heard the back door open and shut.

  My tongue and lips were twice their normal size, but I still managed to eke out, “You really want a guy like this on your crew?”

  There was no expression on Arlo’s face, but I could see something black swirling in his eyes. “Not for me to say.”

  “Make sure you don’t set him up anywhere near your grandkids. He’s a short-eyes.”

  “That kind of thing really bother a guy like you?”

  “It’s been on my mind. I’m about to be a dad for the first time.”

  “When’s she due?”

  “She’s at the hospital right now.”

  Another man might’ve said bullshit. Someone else would have thought I was lying to save my life. But Arlo was a man like me, and so he knew me, and so he knew the truth. He found my phone. He read through my text messages.

  His eyes found mine. He said, “This doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I know.”

  “The job is the job.”

  “And what have you learned doing this job?”

  He paused. “Not a damn thing I didn’t know before it.”

  I nodded.

  “You having kids going to change anything?” he asked.

  “I doubt it.”

  “What would?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe killing my old man.”

  “I heard about that. You’ve been waiting how long now?”

  “Almost thirteen years.”

  “Sad to think you won’t make it after all this time.”

  I said nothing.

  “My pap, I took him into the hills like the mad dog he was when I was fourteen. Used a double-barrel. Reloaded six times until there was nothing big enough to bury. Left the bits there to the wild animals. That’s what he was.”

  “Didn’t change anything for you then.”

  “No.”

  I nodded.

  Arlo looked at the television screen again. It wasn’t kiddie porn playing but it was damn close. He used the remote to shut it off. “No one could say I didn’t do my job if he was already dead when I got here.”

  “And nobody on the crew would have to worry about his kids. Or grandkids.”

  I got up off the floor. He handed me back my gun. When Chuck Venti walked back into the house carrying a chainsaw and a blowtorch he saw the two of us standing together and managed to say, “What the fuck?”

  Arlo and I looked at each other. It didn’t much matter if we made a mess. We each put a bullet in his face. Then we shook hands and parted company.

  ~ * ~

  At St. Vincent’s I paid off an intern to stitch me up and bandage my ribs before I went in to see Angelina. Her parents were in the waiting room and they told me she’d been in labor for three hours. I washed up and put on the scrubs they gave me, then I stepped into the delivery room. It was just about over by then. Angelina still had her feet in the stirrups and the second baby was about halfway out of her. The other was in the arms of a nurse, crying loudly. Angelina glanced at me and said, “Jesus, you took your sweet time.” I kissed her through my mask. The second kid started to howl. We had twin daughters.

  Lathered in sweat and tears, Angelina clutched me and cooed at the babies until the nurses took them away. Angelina’s eyes glazed and I was told she needed to go relax in recovery. I gave her another kiss and she said sleepily, “How about Carmella and Maria? We’ll call them Connie and Mary?”

  Carmella was her mother’s name.

  Maria had been my mother’s.

  ~ * ~

  The jobs kept coming, more and more of them. Johnny Booze was reaching out in all directions and muscling his way deeper and deeper into other syndicate territories. There were no official declarations of war, but a lot of battle lines were being drawn. The Dixie mob was still a little riled over Chuck Venti’s death, but they didn’t do anything about it. They probably decided Chuck was best forgotten after Arlo Hoyt explained what kind of hobbies Chuck was into.

  For over a year the good will between the Chi outfits went stale. I flew into O’Hare a lot and took care of a lot of static. There were some murmurs of dissension among Johnny’s crew but nothing loud enough for Johnny to give me a call about.

  Angelina’s parents came around more and more. They continued to transform before my eyes. The girls became the light of their lives. They goo-gooed as natural as could be. They were patient and loving and changed diapers. They fed the babies and glowed with happiness. They hadn’t been worth shit as parents when we were kids, but they’d come full circle. Angelina’s father cooed and laughed whenever the girls burped or gripped his index finger.

  In the deep night, when Angelina was asleep, I found myself sitting on the floor of the girls’ room, crouched between their cribs, humming a song that had no words and no real tune. I listened to their whispered breathing. I’d wait until they woke for their five a.m. feeding. They’d never manage m
ore than one loud gasping cry before I picked them up, holding Maria in the crook of my left arm and Carmella in my right. I’d shush them and the tremble of love in my own voice would surprise me. I would think of the sins that I had committed in the world and those that had been committed against me. I would eventually pay for my own, but the others would be paid in full to me.

  ~ * ~

  I got word that my father was going to be released on Christmas Eve. I mentioned it to Angelina and she said, “Is that poetic or just ridiculous?” I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer.

  The day before Christmas Eve, while we were out with the babies in their strollers, shopping in midtown, Johnny gave me a call and said he wanted to see me. His voice sounded a little off. I didn’t know what to make of it but I had my suspicions. I didn’t rush. We finished our shopping.

  I drove over to the Fifth Amendment. The second I stepped in I could feel how thick the air was around me, everyone’s focus aimed at me.

  The place had been decorated with an air of artistry. Wreathes and tinsel across the back of the bar, with giant Christmas stockings tacked in place, including one with my name across it. An eight-foot tree in the corner with blinking green, red, and white lights already lit, candy canes dangling, a trumpeting angel up top.

  Johnny was sitting at his usual table, cuffs shot, the glass of Glenlivet hanging in his hand, the way it always was. His boys sat with him until they spotted me, and then they all got up and drifted to the next table over. I sat down across from Johnny.

  “I can’t let you kill your old man.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s worth too much to me. He’s got a lot of contacts on the inside, people I can use to keep the pipelines open in prison. He’s still got his street rats and connections on the department. There’s a lot of money to be made.”

  “Okay.”

  It made him smile. “So if I tell you to let him live, you will?”

  His boys started to brace me a bit, stepping in closer, their bodies tense. They were waiting for Johnny to give them the word, and then they’d pull their hardware.

  As setups go, this was about the stupidest one I’d ever seen. No one had even tried to take my piece away. I already had my gun in my hand under the table, trained on Johnny’s nuts. The boys were behind me and to my left, ensuring that if anyone started anything the crossfire would cut them all to pieces and kill Johnny in the process. They didn’t know how to go about taking down one of their own. That’s why they had me. They’d been dealing with mooks for so long that they figured when I was told to get to my feet and go out in the back alley with them, I’d do it.