Saint of the Narrows Street E-Book

William Boyle

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 571

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Acclaimed author William Boyle, who has come to be known as the 'crime poet of Brooklyn', follows the lives of two sisters who become embroiled in an accidental murder and a well-planned cover-up. 'William Boyle's best novel yet, a vibrant, operatic tale of two resilient, big-hearted sisters and the fateful night that sets their life on a path they never intended. Not since Richard Price has a writer brought New York to such vivid, spectacular life' Megan Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Beware the Woman Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. Risa is a loving mother, a faithful wife, a saintly neighbour - but lately, her husband's slow dive into criminality and abuse has threatened her peace, raising concerns about her and her baby's safety. On the night her younger sister, Giulia, moves in with Risa to recover from a bad break-up, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot. The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for selfdefense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav's childhood friend—the sweet, loyal Christopher "Chooch" Gardini—to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this. Over the vast, dramatic expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighbourhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, and Chooch grapple with the choice they made that night—and each forge a different path when the cracks of a supposedly seamless cover-up begin to reveal themselves.

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Praise for Saint of the Narrows Street

‘The stunning Saint of the Narrows Street is William Boyle’s best novel yet, a vibrant, operatic tale of two resilient, big-hearted sisters and the fateful night that sets their life on a path they never intended. Not since Richard Price has a writer brought New York to such vivid, spectacular life, and Boyle’s southern Brooklyn is all his own: a neighborhood pulsing with hard-earned humor, dive-bar pleasures and thunderous heartbreak’ Megan Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Beware the Woman

‘With Saint of the Narrows Street, a magnum opus of family and crime, blood both shared and spilled, William Boyle proves himself once more the poet laureate of Brooklyn, and a writer of true craft and depth. He shows once more how the crime novel can peer as deep into the human heart as any other artform. William Boyle is the real thing. I don’t know how else to say it’ Jordan Harper, author of Everybody Knows

‘You don’t read a William Boyle novel as much as you inhabit his intricately drawn world. Saint of the Narrows Street is on par with the best of Pete Dexter, Richard Price, and William Kennedy. This is a tour de force, knockout book; an immediate classic that will stay with you long after you finish the last perfect chapter’ Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Let the Devil Ride and The Heathens

‘No one can make the everyday vagaries of life feel like Greek tragedies the way William Boyle can. He effortlessly maps the path of desire that moves through the human heart like burning chrome’ S.A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed

‘Saint of the Narrows Street is a hundred-proof shot of tragic love. Nobody writes like William Boyle. Every character has a huge thumping heart. You can smell the skeevy bars and taste the home-cooked lasagna. Boyle deals in details, but this is a big, epic novel, and it’s his best yet’ Eli Cranor, Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough

‘A new William Boyle novel is always cause for celebration, and Saint of the Narrows Street might be his best work yet. A novel brilliant in structure and in its study of the long-term effects of a single violent crime. Ambitious in scope and impossible to put down. Boyle is that rare writer who is able to walk the line of social commentary and crime thriller’ Willy Vlautin, author of The Horse

‘With its rich setting, compelling plot and an unforgettable cast of characters – flawed and fascinating and heartbreakingly real – Saint of the Narrows Street will stay with you long after you turn the last page. A classic noir page-turner, it’s also a deeply moving story about the dreams that keep us alive – and what happens when those dreams inevitably shatter’ Alison Gaylin, Edgar Award–winning author of We Are Watching

‘William Boyle’s Saint of the Narrows Street is incisive, beautiful, brutal – a book that examines what happens in a small world when big secrets are held down. Set in a neighborhood you will smell and feel as if it’s your own, this novel presents a cast of characters you’ll swear you’ve known or known about for years, and yet they’ll find a way to surprise you. Death echoes, rumors kill, and the living are cursed on Saint of the Narrows Street’ Henry Wise, author of Holy City

‘William Boyle’s Saint of Narrows Street drew me in and wrecked me. A powerful story about the ripple effect of violent acts on the lives of good people. Everyone needs to read this book’ Nikki Dolson, author of All Things Violent

To Katie, who makes broken things better

Located on the western edge of Gravesend, Saint of the Narrows Street is something of an anomaly, an oddly named block between Bath Avenue and Benson Avenue, buried amongst the numbered Bay Streets, about a ten-minute walk from the promenade that looks out at the tidal strait separating Brooklyn and Staten Island known as ‘the Narrows.’ Ask denizens of the street what the name means, and you’ll get a lot of head scratching and confounded looks.

One sunny spring afternoon, as I go from house to house speaking to residents, I stop to talk to a slump-shouldered young man sitting on his front stoop with a can of cheap beer. ‘Who is the “saint of the narrows”?’ I ask him.

‘Who ain’t?’ he responds, grinning.

– Stephen Grisolia,

Far Reaches: A Walking Tour of Southern Brooklyn

Part 1

FUCK THE SACRAMENTS

Saturday, August 16 & Sunday, August 17

1

Risa’s in the kitchen, crying into a gravy-stained dish towel as she heats up the remaining chicken cutlets on the stove in her cast-iron pan. Her hands are clammy. Sweat beads her hairline. Her purple T-shirt has dusky little circles on it from the popping oil.

Her sister, Giulia, is sitting at the dining room table, holding eight-month-old Fab.

At twenty-eight, a new mother, Risa feels old and worn out already. Giulia’s four years younger than her, and she still seems so full of life, like the world can break her and she’ll bounce back no problem. She’s lithe, tan, looks chic in the acid-wash jeans and blue Oxford shirt she’s wearing. Fab’s squirming around, playing with the buttons on her shirt, blowing raspberries against her sleeve. Giulia’s come over with her own heartbreak – having split with her latest boyfriend, Richie, moved out of their apartment, and shown up here with a suitcase and nowhere else to go – but she hasn’t noticed yet that it’s Risa who’s in tears. Of all nights.

Not that there’d be any good nights with Sav still around. He’s out now, thankfully. Probably at that heavy metal club he goes to, L’Amour.

‘He’s getting big,’ Giulia says, her focus wholly on cooing Fab. ‘He’s about the cutest baby I’ve ever seen. I could take a bite out of his little apple cheeks.’

‘It all happens so fast,’ Risa says. ‘I feel like I took him home from the hospital yesterday.’

‘You really don’t have to heat those cutlets up. I’m not that hungry.’

‘You’ve got to eat.’

‘I can’t remember the last time I had a home-cooked meal.’

‘I’m glad you’re here. Fab’s glad.’ A break in Risa’s voice. The tears apparent in her words.

‘What is it, sweetie?’ Giulia says. She stands, Fab in her arms, and walks over to Risa at the stove, holding Fab to her chest with one arm, while reaching out with her other and touching Risa on the shoulder.

‘You came here because you need help, not to help me,’ Risa says.

‘I’m fine. It’s nothing, really. It was just time to move on. What’s happening?’

Risa uses a dish towel to dry her eyes and attempts to compose herself. ‘Sit down and eat,’ she says. ‘Please. I’m gonna make you a plate.’

Giulia nods and takes Fab back to the table.

Risa met Sav in the summer of 1983 on the beach in Coney Island. Only three years ago, but it feels like another lifetime. She was twenty-five and mostly happy. Sav approached her and her friends Marta, Lily, and Grace on the sand not far from the boardwalk that day. What did she see in him? He was a year younger than her. Wiry. He seemed a little dangerous, the kind of guy her father had warned her about, and she liked that. She thought he looked like Ralph Macchio in The Outsiders, which she’d just seen at the movies – she’d read the book in high school, and Johnny was her favorite then. She liked Sav’s voice, sticky with the syrup of the neighborhood, part concrete and part muscle car. She liked his laugh, the way it flattened everything in front of it. They’d gotten married fast and moved into this walk-in apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street between Bath Avenue and Benson Avenue in a three-family house that Sav’s parents, Frank and Arlene Franzone, still own. The Franzones lived in the house until Sav was in high school, then they bought a new place on Eighty-Second Street and started renting this one out as three separate apartments. Sav’s older brother, Roberto, occupied this unit for a while until he robbed Jimmy Tomasullo’s trophy shop and split town for greener pastures with Jimmy’s wife, Susie. Roberto was a neighborhood legend in his time – smarmy and charming in his way, a guitarist in a few bands that played at L’Amour, prone to breaking rules and laws – and Sav always seems like he’s aching to be his brother.

Sav had revealed himself as a bad man soon after they were married, but it’d been worse since Fab was born and tonight had been the worst of all. The things he’d say and wouldn’t say to her, the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes, his quiet menace, the way he’d slap her and toss her around – all of it just a boiling prelude to what had happened a short time ago at the very table where Giulia’s now sitting with Fab. Sav’s friend Double Stevie was there and so was Chooch, Sav’s oldest friend from across the street. Sav took out a gun he’d bought on the sly at the Crisscross Cocktail Lounge and was showing it to Double Stevie. Risa told him to get out. He pointed the gun at her and Fab, smiling, and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. She’d nearly puked up her heart. Her body’s still buzzing. Thank God Fab doesn’t understand what his father’s done.

At the table now, Risa gets Fab situated in his high chair and then sets Giulia up with a plate of cutlets and some semolina bread. To drink, there’s wine or water and not much else. Giulia opts for wine, a tall glass filled to the brim. Risa says that the wine’s from their former neighbor a few doors down, Mr Evangelista, who died recently. She says it’s strange to have a bunch of wine bottled by a man who’s dead. Giulia agrees but drinks it down. ‘It’s good,’ she says. ‘And the cutlets are great. They remind me of Mama’s.’

Risa thinks of their mother’s kitchen, oil bubbling on the stove, Mama’s hands covered in breadcrumbs and eggs, the apron she always wore. She remembers piping hot cutlets on pink plates. Savoring each bite. She remembers helping Mama. Learning. She has always been interested in the ways of the kitchen. She kept all their mother’s and grandmothers’ recipes on index cards in a tin. Things were easier when they were kids at that table with their pink plates. She didn’t yet know the sad terrors of the world.

Giulia reaches out and tweaks Fab’s cheek. He smiles at her, one of those sweet baby smiles. The way he beams with his whole face. His eyes. Such light.

Risa picks up a napkin from the table. She looks at Giulia and then at Fab and then looks away, at the wall, at the kitchen, at anything other than them. She’s on the verge of tears again. She uses the napkin to blot her eyes. She’s turned to the side, faced away from Fab, as if she doesn’t want him to see her.

‘It’s okay,’ Giulia says. ‘You let it out.’ She gets up and comes over to Risa, squatting at her side and placing a hand on her back, palm flat against her spine at first, eventually falling into a rhythm of patting her gently.

Risa can smell the cutlets all over herself. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it,’ she says.

Giulia looks like she wants to say something, but she hesitates and holds back. ‘Whenever you want to tell me what that bastard did, I’m here,’ she says.

Risa leans into Giulia, putting her head on her shoulder, sobbing steadily now.

Giulia pulls her into another hug. Fab’s watching them, smooshing his thumbs against the tray on his high chair, delighted. ‘We’re gonna take care of each other,’ Giulia says. ‘That’s what we’re gonna do.’

As a girl, Risa had daydreamed about being a nun, about helping the sick and poor, about finding real meaning in life. She imagined herself dabbing the heads of dying patients with a wet washcloth, saying not to worry because God was with them. She imagined everyone calling her Sister Risa, which had a nice ring to it. She imagined keeping all her thoughts about God and the world in a journal, all her doubts and fears, everything beautiful and frightening, and she’d write it all down by candlelight in this simple marble notebook with a freshly sharpened pencil. She could have lived a ‘meditative life of purpose,’ as her favorite nun ever, Sister Antonella from Our Lady of Perpetual Surrender, would have said.

That dream faded. After high school at Lafayette, where she’d gone instead of Bishop Kearney because her folks couldn’t afford the tuition there, she’d attended Staten Island College, getting mostly Bs and Cs in general studies classes, but decided not to go back for her junior year and to forget about her degree. After dropping out, she worked at Villabate Alba for a few years – her father was friends with the owner. It was tough, especially on Sundays and holidays, early mornings and very long lines, people anxious for their cannoli and sfogliatelle and every other beautiful thing behind the gleaming glass in those display cases. If she’d been smarter sooner, perhaps she could have gone down a different road – nurse, social worker, law clerk – but she’d allowed herself to drift until she met Sav that day on the beach. She’d had boyfriends before him but nothing serious, so she didn’t know the pitfalls and the signs of serious trouble. She liked that he liked her. If she’d never met Sav, she’s not sure where she’d be – maybe still living at home with her folks – but she’d be better off in many ways.

In the last seven months, since watching the Challenger blow up on television while home alone with Fab, she’s fallen into crying fits daily. Thinking about that poor teacher. Christa McAuliffe. A mother herself. The squiggle of smoke the spaceship made in the Florida sky. Fab was only a few weeks old at the time, but she’d shielded his eyes from the disaster. Maybe they’d happened before, these crying fits, but something about the Challenger really set her off. The impermanence of existence. The realization that nothing’s promised. Thinking about the tragedy’s impact on her makes her feel guilty, but she can’t help it.

She’s tried so hard to figure out how she and Fab can leave Sav, but every scenario ends badly for them. Alone, tired, with no help. Her father saying it’s her duty to stay with her husband, no matter that she’d chosen the wrong guy. The problem, he’d say, was back when she was doing the choosing and not now when she has no choice. He’s very old-school, her father. Look at how he’s handled Giulia, disowning her when she was seventeen after he walked in on her having sex with her high school boyfriend, Marco LaRocca. One less daughter, no biggie. He’d be angry at Risa for talking to Giulia, let alone knowing she’s given her black sheep sister a place to stay. Risa doesn’t understand her father. His version of God seems to have nothing to do with love and everything to do with shutting the door.

Risa again looks at Giulia holding Fab. Playing with him. She’s such a sweetheart. It’s brought her comfort to have her sister’s company for this bit of time. It’d be nice if it could be this way all the time. The three of them. Some joy in the room. None of Sav’s poison.

Risa dreads Sav returning. She hates to think like this, but she wishes he would stay out. She knows about the other woman, the regular one. Sandra Carbonari. Sav should just stay with her. Risa’s not sure why he’s so intent on maintaining the facade of their marriage. She hopes he gets arrested. Maybe she’ll let him rot in jail. She even thinks – God forgive her – how much easier her life would be if he was dead. She remembers watching that TV movie The Burning Bed with Farrah Fawcett a couple of years back. Based on a true story. Fawcett plays an abused wife who has nowhere to look for help. One night, she reaches her breaking point and sets the bed on fire with her husband in it, escaping with the kids. Risa wishes she had that kind of courage.

She appreciates that Giulia hasn’t pushed talking about Sav, especially after her almost instantaneous breakdown. In that moment, she’d felt relief from Giulia’s mere presence but also got hung up thinking about how quickly time was passing, how Fab was being raised in an apartment that was half suffused with love and half suffused with hate. She’s choking on the idea of talking about what happened earlier with the gun.

‘When you were small, I’d pretend you were my baby,’ Risa says. ‘I wasn’t that much bigger than you, but I’d get you in my lap and feed you your bottle and sing to you.’

Giulia makes googly eyes at Fab, burying her face in his neck and giving him a slobbery kiss. ‘What’d you sing?’

‘“Puff the Magic Dragon.”’

‘I knew you’d always be a natural as a mother. You were the best big sister.’

‘When do your memories start?’ Risa’s asking because she wants to know if it’s likely that Fab’s first memories will be of Sav’s tangled face as he yells. Her own memory kicks in at three. She remembers sitting in a high chair while her mother prepared Sunday gravy – the smells, the sounds, the dancing blue flame of the stovetop, playing with a wooden spoon Mama had given her to occupy herself. She’s heard others say five or six.

‘My first vivid memory is from kindergarten,’ Giulia says. ‘I remember Sister Bernadette scolding me in the hallway. Something about my skirt.’

‘What an old witch.’

‘I mostly remember feelings. I remember fearing Pop. I remember feeling loved by you. You know, at church, I used to look up at the stained glass, and I believed that the one of the Virgin Mary was you. I remember thinking, Wow, they made a window out of Ris.’

‘That makes me happy.’

Giulia suddenly looks like she’s got something she wants to say again but is afraid to say it. She nuzzles Fab and then passes him back to Risa. She stands and walks over to the china closet, pausing to consider the dusty plates and knickknacks behind the glass. Their grandma on their mother’s side had handed down the china closet and everything in it. Nana Candido. She’d given whatever there was to give to Risa. Giulia got nothing. Risa wonders if that’s what she’s thinking about now as she stares through the glass.

When Giulia turns back to her, there’s a different kind of concern on her face. ‘I’m not sure if I should say anything,’ she says.

‘What is it?’ Risa asks.

‘Before I came here, I stopped at the Crisscross.’

Risa knows where this is going before Giulia even says it. She’d bet anything Sav was carousing with Sandra. Risa’s seen Sandra around plenty. She lounges in the front yard outside her building on Benson Avenue on a lawn chair in her bikini, taking the sun. Boys watch her from their windows. She has dark hair and wears hot pink sunglasses. When she’s not in her bikini, she’s dressed in some skimpy outfit or another. A real airhead. Hair high and hard from spray. A loosey-goosey strut. The kind of girl who blows on a stranger’s dice. There’s no one she hasn’t gone around with. There’s even a rumor that she made time with Religious Pete from upstairs the week he fell off the wagon the previous November. Everybody remembers that week because Religious Pete transformed into a madman, turning over garbage cans in the street, getting into brawls at the Crisscross. Risa remembers even more clearly because she was eight months pregnant and watching the action on the block like a TV show. Sandra cooled Religious Pete down with her drunken flirting. Risa remembers seeing them outside the gate, getting a glimpse of how Sandra operated. The touching, the laughing, the shimmying. She’s what Sav deserves. Risa doesn’t even want to call Sandra the nasty names that are running around her head. Anyway, Sandra is who she is. That’s her life. Risa blames Sav, not Sandra. ‘He was with her, wasn’t he?’ she says.

‘Who?’ Giulia says. ‘No, it wasn’t… he did say… it was…’

‘It’s okay,’ Risa says. ‘You can tell me.’

‘I did see Sav. He was with Chooch and some other meat-head.’

‘Double Stevie Scivetti.’

‘His name’s Double Stevie?’

‘Some dumb neighborhood thing. There was a First Stevie and a Triple Stevie, too.’

‘They came into the bar for a sec. Sav had a quick beer and a shot. I saw that he had…’ Giulia trails off, afraid or reluctant to say whatever it is she needs to say.

It hits Risa that Giulia saw the gun. Now she’ll have to admit that her husband, the man she’d chosen to marry, to spend her life with, had pointed that very weapon at her and their baby. Forget all the other lines he’d crossed. This was way beyond any of that. She’d seen it in Chooch’s eyes too, the recognition that his oldest friend, his buddy from the block, had become a new kind of monster. Doesn’t matter that the gun wasn’t loaded.

‘The gun,’ Risa says.

‘You know about it?’

Risa nods. She bites her lower lip. She pulls Fab closer to her. She wants to tell Giulia what he did, but she can’t make the words. She starts and stops a few times.

It doesn’t take much for Giulia to guess what’s going on. ‘He threatened you with it, didn’t he?’

‘He was fooling around. He pointed it at me and Fab. He pulled the trigger. It wasn’t loaded.’

‘Jesus Christ, Ris.’

‘He’s never had a gun before.’

‘This just happened?’

‘A couple of hours before you got here.’

Giulia gets up, comes over, and squats at Risa’s side. She hugs her and Fab like it’s the last hug she’s ever going to give them. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry?’ Risa’s crying again. Fab’s touching the tears on her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry that it happened. I’m sorry you got stuck with Sav. I’m sorry I made this all about me and my problems.’

‘He wasn’t so bad when we first started going together.’

Giulia pulls away and stands. ‘We should go. Pack a bag for you and Fab. You can’t stay here.’

‘Go where?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.’

‘I can’t leave. All Fab’s stuff is here. Our whole life’s in this apartment.’

‘You can come back and get it another time. You know Dolly Parente from up the block? Her husband Dickie’s a cop. Maybe he’ll help. You can leave Sav. It’s 1986, not 1886.’

‘I can hear Pop now: “You made your bed, Ris. Now lie in it.” Marriage is a sacrament.’

‘Fuck Pop,’ Giulia says, almost growling, ‘and fuck the sacraments. Guys like Sav, they start out small with the abuse and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Guys like Sav kill their wives all the time. I’m not trying to scare you. It’s the truth.’

‘He wouldn’t kill me.’ Risa says it, but she’s not sure she believes it.

‘You don’t know what he’s capable of. Please, pack a bag and let’s go. I don’t care where. You got Dolly’s number?’ Giulia hustles over to the phone and picks up the receiver.

‘This is all happening too fast,’ Risa says. ‘Let me think for a sec.’

‘What about Lola?’

‘Marco’s mother?’

‘Yeah, she’s right up the block. She’d happily put us up for a few days while we figure things out, I bet. She’s got loads of extra room. You know, she called me for months after Marco broke up with me. Just to check in. We even had coffee a few times. No way Sav will think to look for you there.’

‘I don’t know.’ Lola’s one of the few people on the block who’s gone out of her way to be kind. She brought over a gift when Fab was born, a package of onesies, and she made Risa a lasagna and brought a tray of cookies. She wonders if they’d have to tell Lola why they’re hiding out. Would Lola be okay with that? Risa’s mind turns to Chooch for a moment. He’s decent. Sav’s his only real friend. She thinks he’s the one Sav will wind up hurting the most. Probably get him killed in some mess of a situation. She wonders where Sav and Double Stevie dragged Chooch with that gun in tow. Maybe she should have Giulia call the police.

‘What do you think?’ Giulia asks, trying to prompt her to act.

Risa imagines how it might all go. Cops showing up, asking questions. Dickie Parente. Lola. Mama and Pop getting involved. Sav and Double Stevie holding up a store on Eighty-Sixth Street with ski masks on, pressuring Chooch to keep watch outside. This twisted, confusing life. She cradles Fab in her arms and rocks him, singing ‘I Won’t Last a Day Without You.’ She loves the version by the Carpenters most of all, but Paul Williams wrote it and did his take too, and Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross also have renditions. It always makes her happy to sing it for Fab. It’s their song, even though it’s not a song about mothers and sons.

‘You have the prettiest voice,’ Giulia says.

Risa sniffles, swipes at her cheek with her hand to catch a stray tear. ‘We’ll be fine here,’ she says. ‘We can’t go anywhere.’

When Giulia’s done eating, Risa takes her plate into the kitchen and washes it. She pours her sister more wine. She contemplates taking a drink herself. She’s never been a big drinker, but she’s still nursing Fab and thinks it’s a bad idea to even sip a little wine. It’s after 11 p.m. and she knows she should put Fab down, though he seems wide-eyed. He did take a long nap earlier. Either way, she should get sheets on the couch for Giulia. Maybe they’ll watch late-night television. She’s still shaky at the notion of Sav waltzing in, but more and more she thinks it’s likely he won’t bother coming home. Giulia called before he left, so he knows she’ll be here and will want to avoid seeing her. He’s always hated Giulia, even back in the early days when Risa didn’t fully realize who he was yet. He always says she’s a bad influence and a bad sister, the way she goes around with so many different guys. Sav is, among other things, despite his overall repulsion toward Risa, also deeply possessive and controlling. He desires saintliness from her but claims that she’s too prudish. This is what happens, she thinks. He’s got her mind wrecked.

A car pulls up outside now, its lights flashing through the front window. She comes back to the table and takes Fab from Giulia.

‘He’s home already?’ Giulia asks.

‘Can’t be,’ Risa says.

They hear a car door open and voices chattering and then the door slams shut. The lights move across the apartment as the car pulls away. The sound of feet on the concrete in the front yard. A few seconds pass. The screen door whines. A chill goes through Risa. She recognizes the sound of Sav, drunk, trying to nudge his key into the lock. Giulia reaches out and takes her hand. ‘We’ll leave,’ Giulia says. ‘You say the word. He won’t stop us.’

The main door to the apartment is flung open, the knob slamming hard against the wall.

It’s hot in the apartment, and Risa feels her skin flush suddenly. A wave of nausea overtakes her. Sav’s drunk and he’s got the gun, unless – fingers crossed – Double Stevie took it home. Giulia was right – they should’ve left, gone wherever. Anywhere’s better than here.

Sav stumbles down the hallway, his hands on the wall. She half expects him to be wearing different clothes, but he’s still in his jean shorts with frayed edges and his favorite Iron Maiden muscle shirt. A mummy busting through some kind of ancient wall with hieroglyphics on it. He’s bedraggled, his hair glistening with sweat, his fly undone. After a minute, he notices them. ‘Look who it is,’ he says. ‘The famous Taverna sisters.’

‘Why don’t you go back out?’ Giulia says.

Sav stops moving, falling into a sloppy leaning position against the wall. He’s maybe six or seven feet away, but Risa can smell him. The alcohol seeping from his pores. The kind of funk that comes from being in a club packed tight with bodies. ‘I’m gonna go out for good,’ Sav says, trying to work his lips into a smile. ‘Me and Sandra. Just like my brother. I only came home to pack my shit.’

‘Do it and get the fuck out,’ Giulia says.

Risa’s mind is spinning with possibilities. A little part of her is sickened by the notion of him running away with Sandra, but mostly she feels relief. Maybe the church will see fit to annul her marriage, though he’ll have to stay gone. What if he comes back, broke, Sandra having run off, and acts like he wants to reconcile?

Sav trudges forward and pulls out the chair across from Giulia at the table, its legs screeching against the floor. He sits. ‘Don’t rush me,’ he says.

‘Enough, Sav,’ Risa says, her hands quaking. ‘I’m done. Just go.’

‘Tomorrow, I’ll be on a plane, headed to a beach somewhere.’ He plucks some cash out of his pockets. A couple of hundred-dollar bills. Drops them on the table. ‘Had a windfall.’

Risa carries Fab into the living room and puts him in his playpen, setting him up with a couple of toys and his pacifier. He’s on his back, lolling about, oblivious, pawing at a soft red block with the letter F stitched on the side. She thinks about him growing up fatherless. She thinks about what Sav’s abusive behavior has done to him already – even if he doesn’t have any idea what’s going on, it’s seeping in. The way she cries in front of him. He knows. He’ll carry that. She thinks of ways she might free him from it. She can’t erase Sav, though she wishes she could. If only she could go back and tell her younger self not to see in him whatever she saw, to hold off for another guy, a decent and kind guy, because this future she’s living in is too painful. She approaches Sav and says, ‘Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you go with, I don’t care. I want you gone from my life and from Fab’s life. I want an annulment.’

Sav reaches under his shirt and takes the gun from where it’s tucked into his waistline. He sets it on the table.

Giulia gets up and scrambles into the kitchen. She grabs a bread knife from the knife block on the counter and holds it up, her fingers grasped around the wooden handle.

‘Giulia, don’t,’ Risa says.

‘Take it,’ Sav says to Risa, nodding in the direction of the gun. ‘Let’s see what kind of guts you got. Shoot me.’

‘Shut the fuck up and go,’ Giulia says.

‘Put the knife down,’ Risa says to her. She looks at the gun on the table next to the crumpled hundreds Sav scattered there and doesn’t reach for it.

‘No guts,’ Sav says, standing. His knees hit the edge of the table, nearly toppling the chair as he pushes it back.

In his playpen, Fab starts crying, his face going red and scrunchy.

Sav kicks the chair and continues: ‘I’ll be out of your hair forever, don’t worry. Do me a favor and shut the kid up.’ He lumbers toward the bedroom, reaching out for the wall to stop himself from falling. He passes over the threshold, runs into something, probably the edge of the bed frame, and curses. He proceeds to slam around in there. The sound of drawers being yanked open, the closet door rattling off its track.

Giulia sighs. She holds the knife down at her side and comes over to Risa. ‘You okay?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know anymore,’ Risa says, her voice breaking, full of emotion. She’s aching to move toward Fab – still crying, his face pressed against the mesh wall of the playpen, his nose smushed – to comfort him.

‘Let’s hide the gun. He’s so out of it, maybe he forgets.’

Risa nods in silent agreement.

Giulia keeps the knife in one hand and moves to the table, scooping up the gun by its grip, holding it so it dangles from her hand barrel-down like something diseased. She looks around desperately for somewhere to stash it. A few steps back into the kitchen. She opens the freezer door, finds a half-full bag of frozen peas held shut with two clothespins. She sets the knife down on the edge of the freezer door for a second, takes the clothespins off and buries the gun in the peas and then crinkles the bag shut and puts the clothespins back in place. She nestles the bag behind some steaks from Meats Supreme and a massive box of fish sticks and a stack of Tupperware containers full of frozen food for Fab. She grabs the knife again. Risa nods and then goes to Fab in his playpen and picks him up. The poor kid stops crying instantly.

Sav’s really making a racket now. Tangling with the closet door. Lots of slamming noises. When he comes out of the bedroom, he’s got a backpack slung over his shoulder, only partially zipped, clothes spilling out.

Risa stands by the table with Fab in her arms. ‘Don’t you want to say goodbye to your son?’ she asks, but she regrets the words as soon as they escape her mouth. It’s exactly what her mother would do, trying to lay a guilt trip on him. She wants him gone, why prolong this?

‘I’ll skip it,’ Sav says. ‘Never wanted to be anybody’s old man. Or husband. Happy to give Giulia a kiss goodbye, though.’ He flings his backpack to the ground and tumbles toward Giulia, wrapping her in an embrace, nuzzling her neck, laughing. The knife is in her hand, but she’s immobilized.

‘Get away from her,’ Risa says. She retreats to the playpen and dumps Fab there again. Much to his dismay. The wailing starts over, leveling up the tension.

But then Sav does back off. Not because of Risa’s words, though. Because he notices the blank spot on the table where his gun had been. He approaches it and swipes his hand against the tabletop, as if he’s hallucinating that it’s missing. ‘Where is it?’ he asks.

‘It’s gone,’ Risa says.

He fumbles around, looking for it. Fruit bowl. Hall closet. Countertops. ‘Where the fuck you hide it?’ He’s talking to Giulia. He comes back to her. She’s waving the knife at him. He grabs her wrist until she drops it. The knife clatters against the floor. Fab’s crying so hard it turns to choking.

‘I took it outside and threw it down the sewer,’ Giulia says.

‘You didn’t have time,’ Sav says, slurring his words. He moves his right hand up over her belly and chest, pawing at her throat, beginning to squeeze like he plans on strangling the answer he wants out of her.

Giulia’s shocked and trembling, her eyes half-shut.

Risa scurries into the kitchen and gets the cast-iron pan from the stove. Protecting Giulia is on her mind, but so is freedom from Sav. She comes up beside him, moving in step with Fab’s cries. Gripping the pan tightly by the still-warm handle with both hands, she rears back and swings it at Sav, thwacking him across the side of the head. The sound is awful. An echoey thump. He falls back, smacking his head on the edge of the table on the way down and then sprawling on the floor between them.

Risa drops the pan, breadcrumb-spattered oil puddling on the linoleum. Sav’s out cold. He’s got a big gash on his forehead where she hit him, and another – one that’s almost like an indentation – on his temple where he clipped the table. He’s bleeding a lot. The blood is edging up against the oil. Risa steps over him and hugs Giulia, who’s trying to catch her breath. Risa’s thinking now about destiny, how a series of things happened that led to this moment, and she’s wondering what decisions she’ll have to make, what price she’ll pay. She imagines herself having to help Sav, calling an ambulance, the cops questioning her and Giulia. She imagines a jail cell. She imagines, too, letting him die, letting the blood ooze from him until the whole apartment is flooded red. She imagines setting fire to the apartment, letting him burn up inside like that movie. She looks over at Fab, his anguish having melted into confusion, and gives him a sweet little wave.

2

Giulia goes straight for the wine. She sits at the table and slugs from the bottle. Risa walks into the living room and picks up Fab and nurses him on the couch. Giulia can hear the slurping sounds. Sav’s just a body on the floor, blood pooled under his head and back. The pan is right there next to him. Some of the oil has browned the blood. They don’t know how bad it is yet. Seems like he’s still breathing. Giulia’s not sure what to do. She’s a runner by nature. Part of her wants to just take off and let her sister figure this out. But she’d never do that to Risa, who she loves more than anyone. Sav will probably get up and zombie-march out of the apartment, gashes in his head and all. Got what he deserved, anyway. She can still feel his hand closing on her neck. ‘Jesus Christ, Ris,’ Giulia says finally, letting out a nervous little laugh. ‘That was some swing.’

‘What are we gonna do?’ Risa asks, adjusting Fab in her lap.

‘Dig a hole in the backyard. Make it deep.’

‘You don’t think he’s really dead, do you?’

Giulia senses an edge of desperate excitement in Risa’s voice.

‘It was just a pan,’ Risa continues. ‘I had to do it.’

‘He hit his head, too.’ Giulia nods toward a thick smear of blood on the edge of the table, one of his dark black hairs curled in it. ‘I hope the fucker’s dead. Must’ve felt good to whack him.’

Giulia had never been sure why Risa married Sav. As a girl, Risa would spend hours drawing birthday and holiday cards for Giulia. She’d always buy her some thoughtful little gift from one of the stalls on Eighty-Sixth Street – earrings, a bracelet, magnets, stuffed animals, toys that danced, stickers for her sticker book. She was the kind of girl who’d bring Giulia tea and soup in bed when she wasn’t feeling well. The way she said things, she was never critical, always supportive. Even after everything went bad with Pop, Giulia always felt like Risa was on her side. Risa even believed in God and went to church in a way that seemed sincere to Giulia, who’d given up on all that shit long ago. That was Risa in a nutshell. Always thinking about how she could make others happy. Everything from the heart.

Sav, on the other hand, Giulia pegged as trouble from day one. Her ex-boyfriend from high school, Marco LaRocca, grew up right here on the same block as Sav, so she’d seen him around a little, heard a few stories. The way he wore his clothes, the way he walked, the way he did his hair, the swagger and indifference, his voice. It was all right there in his eyes – he was searching to take advantage of people and situations, hustling, filled with aimless rage, always walking on ledges. Sure, he’d gotten worse, but he was never good to start with. There’s that old saw about opposites attracting, but there’s a difference between opposites and people who are just flat-out wrong for each other.

The night before Risa and Sav’s wedding a couple of years back, Giulia was sitting with her sister at a table in a bowling alley in Bay Ridge called Yellow Hook Lanes. That was what Risa had wanted to do the night before her fucking wedding – go bowling in Bay Ridge with her maid of honor and bridesmaids. Giulia was her maid of honor, of course, and her girlfriends Marta, Lily, and Grace were her bridesmaids. There was a lot of cackling. They actually bowled. It was a night full of gutter balls, which seemed appropriate in hindsight. Giulia drank cheap beer, whatever swill they had on tap, and Risa and her girlfriends drank soda like teenagers. They were in their mid-twenties, but no one wanted hangovers, except Giulia, who couldn’t imagine being at the wedding without a hangover for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it’d be the first time she was in the same place as her father in about five years. After a few plastic cups of beer, Giulia pressed her sister to reconsider this whole fucking marriage-to-Sav thing. ‘He’s not a good guy,’ Giulia said, slurring her words.

‘Don’t say that,’ Risa said. ‘You don’t know him the way I do.’

‘What do you know that I don’t?’

‘He can have a sweet side.’

‘I know his type. He’s a loser. He’ll go through bad jobs, he’ll stay out every night, he’ll cheat, he’ll be mean as shit.’

‘My wise old little sister.’

‘I’m not kidding.’

‘Why does everyone expect certain things from me?’ Risa asked. Like everything with her, it was a sincere question. Giulia could only guess at the time that marrying Sav served as some sort of quiet rebellion against such expectations. Everyone thought she’d find some sweet soft guy at a church mixer, but she went for a neighborhood scoundrel who loved heavy metal and occasionally stole cars for joyrides and dragged around poor Chooch from across the street like a pet.

No surprise, Giulia had gotten him exactly right. In the last couple of years, as Sav showed Risa how terrible he could be, Giulia tried her hardest not to say I told you so. She hated seeing her sweet sister suffer, especially during her pregnancy and after Fab was born.

Giulia looks at Risa, watches as she strokes Fab’s head as he nurses. She’s shaking, that much Giulia can tell. The reality’s sinking in.

‘I need a cigarette,’ Giulia says. ‘You got any?’

Risa shakes her head.

‘Sav doesn’t have any around?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘You mind if I go get some? Widow Marie sells them at the bar.’

‘Right now?’

‘I’ll be back in five minutes. Give us time to think.’

‘What if he wakes up?’

‘Put Fab down, pick up the pan, and hit him again.’

Giulia gets up and leaves the apartment. A family called the Coluccis – husband, wife, two kids – lives upstairs, and a guy everyone knows as Religious Pete is on the floor above them. Giulia looks up and around, as if someone is watching, as if someone knows what’s happened inside, as if they can see Sav or smell his blood.

On the brick wall next to the door is a sad and half-busted mailbox, franzone scrawled beneath the lid in white paint marker. Sav’s last name. Giulia can’t think of it as Risa’s last name. She’ll always be a Taverna.

The yard’s all dead grass and concrete and dried-up plants she doesn’t know the names of. The ones that usually have those sleek, curved leaves, but now they look like fountains of burnt brown confetti.

She takes a deep breath and opens the front gate. She’s shaking, too.

It’s a short walk to the Crisscross Cocktail Lounge, which is right down the block on the corner. Giulia looks up at the street signs on the light post – saint of the narrows st and bath ave., white letters crowded on the green aluminum – and then at the blue script neon sign over the bar’s front door, the cursive after the final e transformed into a two-headed arrow with its points aiming in opposite directions. She stopped in on her way to Risa’s after ditching Richie and had a beer and a shot. That was when she saw Sav with the gun. She knows the bar well, used to go in all the time with Marco when they were underage.

Giulia’s a minor celebrity at the Crisscross. Marco LaRocca’s ex-flame. Marco has gone on to become the most famous guy born in the neighborhood. No one expected it and then everyone changed their tune and said they knew he was born for big things. She goes through waves of missing him. She guesses most people feel that way about their high school sweethearts. He’d been tender if not always faithful. He’d written her songs and poems. There was nothing she’d liked more than lying tangled with him on a bed listening to records and smoking. They broke up after graduation, and he moved to the East Village with his friends Kirk, Sammy, and Gabs. They’d been a band in high school called Metric Ton and played a few basements and local bars, but they became the Kickbacks in the city and started playing real shows at CBGB and the Ritz. Joey Ramone was at one of the gigs and liked what he heard. The rest happened fast – opening for the Misfits, a record deal, music videos, fame. Giulia couldn’t believe it. She’d figured Marco would struggle with music for a few more years and then give it up and go work at his cousin’s pork store on Avenue U. But he’d become a fucking rock star. And here she is, years later, having cycled through losers, stuck in a nightmare situation now with her sister’s loser husband, finding respite in a dive on Marco’s old block, yearning for what they’d had in high school. She wonders if Marco ever gives one small thought to her, like he’s about to start playing on a stage in Paris or Rio de Janeiro, and he remembers her hair or her smell or the way she touched him or the way they sang along to records in his room. There’s a signed picture of him up on the wall behind the bar. It always makes her heart hurt to see it.

Inside, Marie Agostara – aka Widow Marie – is still behind the bar. She’s a short woman, maybe five-one, and she wears a sweatshirt even in the dead of summer. She has a black wig on because her real hair’s thin and she’s got bald patches. Giulia’s been in before when some drunk or another’s plucked the wig from her head and tossed it up on the pool table light. ‘Look who’s back,’ Widow Marie says.

‘Can I have a pack of Marlboro Reds?’ Giulia asks.

‘Nothing to drink?’

‘Okay, I guess. Give me another shot.’

Widow Marie slops some Jim Beam – she knows Giulia’s drink without asking – into a shot glass cloudy with age and plucks a pack of cigarettes from a carton next to the register. She brings the whiskey and cigarettes over to Giulia and tosses her a matchbook with the two-headed arrow logo above the striker.

Giulia drops a five on the bar, puts back the shot, and rips the cellophane off the smokes, using a match to light one. She’s feeling a little drunk now, lost in the surreal swirl of the night, how quickly things went down. She takes a deep drag and looks around the place. Marco’s picture. The register. It’s mostly empty in the bar. There’s an old-timer, Bernadine, whiskers on her chin, rotten teeth, skin flushed red. Another woman, about Giulia’s age, who everyone calls Jane the Stain, is on one side of Bernadine. Jane has the look of a distinguished alcoholic – her drink is vodka and ginger ale – even though she’s still young. They’d both been here when she was in earlier. Now Jimmy Tomasullo sits on the other side of Bernadine, shelling peanuts and drinking whiskey in a pint glass. A big, oafish bastard. Pit stains and bags under his eyes and his shirt buttoned wrong. Been a couple of years since Sav’s brother, Roberto, robbed Jimmy’s trophy shop and left town with his wife.

Jimmy downs his whiskey. He knocks the bowl of peanut shells off the bar and staggers into a standing position. Widow Marie curses him for making a mess. Jimmy groans and walks unsteadily toward Giulia, getting right up in her face. ‘I heard your brother-in-law was here before,’ Jimmy says.

‘Yeah, so?’ Giulia says.

‘Tell him I gotta ask him something.’

Giulia nods, blows her smoke away from him. Yeah, I’ll do that if the fucker makes it through the night.

Jimmy stumbles to his stool.

It’s then that Giulia notices a little horseshoe-shaped spot of blood on the sleeve of her shirt. She dabs it at with a cocktail napkin, darkening it into the blue of her shirt. She scrunches up the napkin and stuffs it in the tight pocket of her jeans. She’s not sure how she could’ve gotten Sav’s blood on her, especially there. She kept her distance from what she remembers. She worries that someone might’ve noticed the blood, that – later – it’ll occur to them to be a significant detail. They’ll say she was acting twitchy, that something was off, that someone showing up with blood on their clothes always means trouble. Shaking a little, she rolls up her sleeves and cuffs them above her elbows.

After a long minute, she thanks Widow Marie and stands, tucking the pack of Marlboros into the breast pocket of her shirt, and drifting out of the bar.

If she had guts and they had money and passports, she’d try to convince Risa to get a cab to the airport and hop on a plane to Italy. They went once as girls to visit their cousins, and she’s always longed to go back. They could have a new life in Naples.

Out on the sidewalk, she takes in a soft summer breeze that seems to waft up the avenue. The smell of salt. The bay’s not too far. She finishes her cigarette as she walks and then flicks the butt into the street as she goes in through the gate.

Back inside, everything’s the same, except Fab’s in his playpen again, having been nursed to sleep, and Risa’s put some dark towels over the blood. She’s sitting at the table now.

‘I’m sorry,’ Giulia says.

‘He’s gonna get up, right?’ Risa says.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m gonna call the cops. Tell them he got violent, and it was self-defense.’

‘That’s what you think’s best?’

‘What if Sandra comes looking for him? He said he was going to meet her.’

‘You don’t think she’d really have the balls to show her face here, do you?’

‘We need help. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Say he goes into a coma, or he dies, what then?’ Giulia says. ‘This time we’re wasting looks real bad. His mother, his father, you’re gonna have to face them.’

‘Maybe Chooch can help us,’ Risa says. ‘He’ll understand. He knows how Sav’s been. He saw what happened with the gun.’

‘We can trust him? He’s Sav’s friend.’ Giulia knows Chooch a little, knows he adores Risa and Fab, but how’s he going to react to this situation?

‘We’re family to him. He’s not like Sav. He got stuck the same way I did. I trust him.’

‘I hope so,’ Giulia says.

‘Stay with Fab,’ Risa says, slipping on her shoes. ‘I’ll be right back. Don’t answer the door or the phone. If Mr Colucci comes down from upstairs, just tell him Fab’s sick.’

‘Why would Mr Colucci come down?’

‘He’s always got his nose in everybody’s business. Sometimes he checks in on me when he hears Sav yelling.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I’m sorry, Giulia.’

‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’

‘If Fab wakes up, there’s a bottle of apple juice in the fridge. He’s okay with that if I’m not around to nurse. Hopefully, I’ll only be a minute.’

Risa kisses Giulia on the head and checks on Fab, picking up the soft block that’s beside him in the playpen, and then she scrambles out of the apartment, closing the door lightly behind her.

Giulia takes the package of cigarettes out of her pocket and puts it on the table. She strikes a match and lights one. She walks close to Sav, toeing the blood line, careful not to step in it. She investigates him for movements. The blood seems like it’s in Technicolor. She thought it’d be darker. ‘Looks like it’s just me and you now, fucko,’ she says, ashing on his body.

3

Chooch is sitting at the desk in his room working on one of his collages. He cuts up magazines and catalogs using a penknife he got at an art supply store on Eighty-Sixth Street and glues them to a square of cardboard. Then he puts some Scotch tape over the whole thing, making it almost look like it’s behind glass. There’s really no rhyme or reason to the choices he makes. He just cuts out images he likes – faces, bodies, fields, mountains, planets, products, food – and he combines them in a way that’s random. A floating head next to a field of corn and an ad for a fancy little statue of Marilyn Monroe. He’s never shown them to anyone. He barely looks at them himself once he’s done. The one he’s working on now, it’s angry. He’s cutting out images of burned-out tenements from an old issue of Life and he’s pasting them next to pictures of devastation from some war magazine he scored in the waiting room of the urology office in Dyker Heights where he works as a file clerk four days a week.

He’s got the window open in his room, but it’s still hot. Doesn’t help that he’s wearing jeans and a heavy black T-shirt. His Walkman is on, headphones over his ears, listening to his White Lion Fight to Survive tape. Just the act of doing this work brings him some peace.

And he needs some peace after all that happened tonight.

Fucking Sav.

Chooch and Sav go back to day one of kindergarten at Our Lady of Perpetual Surrender when they discovered they lived on the same block. Sister Bernadette was their teacher. She had tight, wrinkled skin, and wore long brown dresses and clean loafers, and she was famous for twisting the ears of children who talked back to her. Sav got put in the corner one day and Chooch got put in the other corner and then Sav whispered they were block brothers and corner brothers so that sealed the deal.

That was twenty years ago. They’ve gone through a lot since then. All of Our Lady of Perpetual Surrender. Sav and his family moving a few blocks away – might as well have been miles. High school at Lafayette. Sav getting married to Risa and moving back to the block and having Fab. Sav treating everyone like shit. Chooch hanging around because he’s loyal.

Chooch’s given name is Christopher. Sav branded him Chooch in second grade. He lives in a frame house across the street from Sav with his mother, Vi. Even she calls him Chooch. His dad died when he was thirteen. Just a face in crumbling photo albums now. They have a country house up in Sullivan County they stopped going to when his dad passed. Their summers there live in his memory as the happiest time of his life. Swimming in the Delaware River. Having a bonfire in the yard. Walking through the woods. Driving curvy roads and watching hawks in the sky. Eating dinner at the Western Hotel, big bowls of stew chased with cherry 7 Ups in pint glasses, his dad gambling away on a slot machine in the secret room behind the freezer. It’s the only time Chooch ever spent away from the city.

Sav grew up in the house where he lives now, though the whole place used to be his family’s. They still own it, but his parents are in the house they moved to on Eighty-Second Street, and they rent out the two upstairs apartments here on Saint of the Narrows and let Sav, Risa, and Fab live rent-free in the ground-floor apartment. There were times when the ribbons of blacktop and concrete that separated them felt like sacred ground, but that’s changed.

What Sav did to Risa and Fab tonight was a new low. Sav has been a lot of things, but he’s never been a gun guy. Chooch left with him after that to be his conscience. He saw big trouble coming, and he was trying to talk sense. Turns out he wasn’t wrong. It was like dominoes. After the gun incident, Chooch had trailed Sav and Double Stevie Scivetti to Gilly the Gambler’s house up the block. Gilly’s in Atlantic City, and they’d somehow overheard at the Crisscross where he leaves his key in the yard for someone to come in and feed his cats. They’d also heard the rumors that Gilly, a widower who likes his blackjack and poker and betting on the horse races, keeps a stash of cash in his attic. So, they went inside and ransacked the attic, Sav knocking over and destroying a crate of old seventy-eights, black shellac splintered everywhere on the wood floor. Finally, they found a tool chest with six grand in it. Then Double Stevie drove them over to L’Amour, the metal club on Sixty-Second Street where they’ve been regulars for years. A bunch of good acts playing. Sav hooked up with Sandra Carbonari and almost immediately got into a brawl with this guy Squidge over Sandra. Sav showed the gun again. Squidge backed down. That was when Chooch took off. He’d had enough.