“I didn’t know it was stolen.”
“Did you ask him?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Where did you think a crackhead got a Greek ring from the second fuckin’ century B.C....”
“He said it was Roman.”
“... if he didn’t steal the fuckin’ thing? Tell me that, Sal.”
“I don’t know where he got it. I didn’t ask him where he got it. I didn’t ask him where he got the gun, either.”
“Where’s the gun now?”
“Gone with the wind.”
“Are they gonna trace that back, too?”
“Nobody’s tracin’ nothin’ back, Andrew.”
“How do you know that gun wasn’t used in a fuckin’ murder someplace?”
“The gun is in some fuckin’ African country by now, don’t worry about the gun.”
“All I have to worry about is the ring, right?”
“You don’t have to worry about the ring, either. There’s no trouble here, Andrew, believe me. The gun’s gone, and I’ll take the ring off your hands. There’s nothin’ to worry about, okay?”
“Just don’t ever bring me anything else you know is hot!”
“I didn’t know it was hot. But I’m sorry.”
“You want to have stolen goods traced to you, fine. Just don’t get me involved in it.”
“I’m sorry, Andrew, I didn’t know it was stolen.”
“Here, take your fuckin’ ring back.”
“Yeah, thanks. I’m sorry about this, I really am.”
“You owe me five grand.”
“What?”
“Five grand, Sal. For the ring.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what the ring’s worth, five thousand bucks. That’s what the Jew appraised it for, and that’s what I want for it. For all the trouble you caused me.”
“Hey, come on, Andrew, give me a...”
“Five grand, Sal. By tomorrow morning.”
“Jeez, Andrew...”
“So I can buy a ring doesn’t have a pedigree.”
“I really didn’t know the fuckin’ thing was...”
“Goodbye, Sal.”
“Jesus.”
The snow started on Saturday morning and did not end until Sunday sometime. Everyone was calling it “the storm of the century,” though she seemed to recall heavier snowfalls when she was a child. She and Michael took Mollie to the park, and they sledded all afternoon and then had dinner at Fazio’s on Seventy-Eighth, one of the few places open for business that weekend. The streets, the sidewalks, the entire city looked clean and white. Tomorrow the snow would turn gray, she knew, and in the days after that a sooty black. But for now, the city was a wonderland, and she wished she could be sharing it with Andrew. She felt certain tomorrow would be declared a snow day. Could she possibly get away to meet him? Would Michael’s office be open, or would he be home, too? When would the streets be cleared of snow? When would traffic start moving again? Would Andrew be able to send the car for her on Wednesday? If not, would the subways be running? She could not bear the thought of a blizzard preventing her from seeing him as usual this week.
When the phone rang on the Monday night following the weekend storm, Andrew knew at once that something was wrong. Oddly, the first thing he thought was She told her husband.
“Hello?” he said.
The digital clock on the nightstand beside the bed read 11:50 p.m. He was more than ever convinced that Sarah had broken under fire.
“Andrew?”
He recognized the voice at once. His cousin Ida. Uncle Rudy’s daughter. Oh, Jesus, he thought.
“What is it?” he said.
“Honey,” she said, “my father is dead.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he said out loud. “What do you mean? I thought...”
“Not from the cancer, Andrew. He died of a heart attack.”
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital. The emergency room doctor told me two minutes ago. You’re the first person I called,” she said, and suddenly she was crying.
“Ida?” he said.
Sobbing uncontrollably now.
“Sweetie?” he said.
“Yes, Andrew. Yes.”
Still sobbing. Her voice overwhelmed by tears.
“Where’s Bobby?”
“Here with me.”
“Put him on.”
“Are you coming here, Andrew?”
“Yes. Put Bobby on.”
Bobby Triani came on a moment later.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What happened?”
“He went to bed right after supper, woke up around nine thirty with first a pain in his arm and his shoulder, and then chest pains, and like he’s burping, you know? Something’s repeating on him. He called Ida, told her what was happening, but he figured it was something he ate. A little acida, you know? Anyway, Ida got worried, you know how she’s been about him ever since her mother died. She tells me get dressed, we’re going over his house. This is now around a quarter to ten. We went there, the pains are really serious now, he tells us it’s like an elephant is standing on his chest. So I called the ambulance, and they took him straight to the emergency room. They were working on him for almost an hour, Andrew, but they couldn’t do nothin’, this stuff they gave him couldn’t dissolve the clot, the strepto whatever they call it.”
“How’s Ida taking this?”
“Hard.”
“Tell her I’ll be right there.”
“I will, Andrew.”
“Tell me what hospital you’re at.”
He debated calling Billy at home, figured by the time he got to Great Neck with the Lincoln, he could already be oh his way in the Acura. He was out of the house in ten minutes flat.
The Cross Island was empty at this hour of the night.
Snow was banked high on either side of the narrow cleared lanes. His headlights threw long bright tunnels into the darkness.
In many respects, he’d always been closer to Ida than he had to his own sisters. Angela was four when he was born, and Carol was two. A sort of twinship existed between them before he arrived on the scene, and although they lavished hugs and kisses and cuddly language on their cute little baby brother, he found it difficult to break into their cozy little gang when he was older, and seeking true companionship.
Ida, on the other hand, was born two months after he was, and she was the one who became his constant playmate and confidante. Uncle Rudy and Aunt Concetta lived close by, and the two brothers and their families were constantly in each other’s houses. On Sundays, too, the entire family gathered in the big old house on Long Island’s North Shore, where Grandma and Grandpa had moved when they closed the bakery in Coney Island. Andrew’s sisters secretly signed with their hands in the deaf language they’d learned from the encyclopedia, but Andrew didn’t care because he had Ida.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed Ida, who resembled her father more than she did her mother, with the same nose Andrew later saw on paintings made during the Italian Renaissance. Andrew was still a blond little boy at the time — his hair didn’t begin turning first muddy and then chestnut brown till he was twelve or thirteen — but Uncle Rudy used to call them “Ike and Mike,” and then invariably would add, “They look alike,” though they didn’t resemble each other at all. He was referring to their closeness, Andrew later realized.
He’d lost touch with Ida over the years.
As he sped through the night to where she now waited for him at the hospital, he remembered the time she broke his head with a pocketbook when they were both six and he’d been teasing her about something. Wham, she’d swung her little red leather bag at him, and the clasp hit him on the back of the head and drew blood.