"I never lied to your father, Roberto," she said. "Tonight was the first time."

"Relax, Mom," Bobby said. "It's gonna be over soon. We pay them the money and then we go home."

"It's never over, figlio figlio," Beatrice said. "As long as you buy what they sell."

"Mom, please," Bobby said, zipping up his green army jacket. "No lectures, okay? It's bad enough we gotta sit in the cold and pay these dirtbags off."

"You took your father's heart," Beatrice said, looking at her son, a hand on his right leg, which was jiggling nervously from the cold and the need for a fix. "You kill him a little bit each day. Every time you put that stuff inside your arms."

"It's my life, Mom," Bobby said, throwing a glance up and down the street, concern etched on his face.

"It's our our life," Beatrice said. "And it's a wrong life right now." life," Beatrice said. "And it's a wrong life right now."

"I'm gonna quit," Bobby said, turning to look at his mother, seeing the tears welling in her eyes. "I promise you. I don't like this any more than you do."

"You know, I was sixteen when I first met your father," she said. "I looked and I fell in love. I love him even more now. And I can't let him die and leave behind a junkie for a son. I can't live with that shame."

"What about me?" Bobby asked, sadness wrapped around the question. "You still love me?"

"I'm here, no?" Beatrice said. "To give strangers money your father works in a hole to earn."

"I'll pay you back," Bobby said. "I swear it."

"Don't pay me with money," Beatrice said.

"What, then?"

"Walk away from this life for good," she said. "From the drugs and these b.u.ms who sell them to you."

"I said I was gonna quit," Bobby said. "This'll be my last payoff."

"If you can't do that," Beatrice said, cupping his chin, "then take enough to kill yourself."

"You want me to die?" Bobby said slowly. "That's what you're tellin' me you want?"

"You're dead now, Roberto," Beatrice said. "You walk and talk, eat and drink, but inside you're dead. So, make it simple. For everybody. Stop what you're doing or let me have a grave to pray over."

The dealer came up out of the shadows to stand by Bobby's left, a long, dark raincoat b.u.t.toned to his neck. The thin brim of a gray fedora shielded his eyes and hid his face; his hands were covered by thick black gloves. He was in his mid-twenties, long blond hair rubber-banded into a ponytail.

"Hey, Ray," Bobby said in a startled tone, standing when he saw the dealer. "I didn't hear you coming."

"You got my money?" Ray asked, his tired voice sprinkled with venom.

"This is my mom," Bobby said, pointing down toward Beatrice, who stayed in her seat, staring at the dealer with contempt.

"I don't give a f.u.c.k who she is," Ray said. "You got my money?"

"Most of it," Bobby said, looking over Ray's shoulders, spotting the car waiting by a fire hydrant, smoke filtering out of the exhaust.

"I didn't ask for most most of it," Ray said. "I want of it," Ray said. "I want all all of it. of it. Now. Now."

"I brought five hundred," Beatrice said to the dealer in the strongest voice she could muster. "It is all we have left."

"You're a thousand short," Ray said.

"I'll have the rest in about a week," Bobby told him.

"How you gonna do that, High School?" Ray said. "Mama already gave you everything she's got, and she's all you know that's got money."

"It's my problem," Bobby said. "I'll figure it out."

Ray jumped off his stance and pounced on Bobby. His two gloved hands grabbed hold of the front of the zippered army jacket, lifting Bobby several inches off his feet.

"It ain't just your your problem," Ray said. "It's problem," Ray said. "It's my my problem now. And I gotta solve it." problem now. And I gotta solve it."

He let Bobby go, pushing him back toward his mother, who sat rigid in fear, her hands locked across her face. Ray walked past the boy, stopping in front of Beatrice. He crouched down, his eyes meeting hers, two hands on her knees, and smiled.

"You tellin' the truth?" he asked her. "Five hundred's all you got left?"

Beatrice nodded, too frightened to speak.

Ray took a hand off her knee and put it in his pocket. He leaned closer to Beatrice as the hand came out holding a black Indian-point switchblade. He pressed on a thin b.u.t.ton at the bottom edge of the handle, releasing a seven-inch knife, sharp enough to cut through wood.

"I want all my money, Bobby," Ray said, his eyes still on Beatrice, his face close enough for her to smell his drink-stained breath. "So I'm gonna ask you again. You got it for me?"

"Give me one more day." Bobby moved two steps closer, trying not to sound as panicked as he felt. "I'll get you the rest tomorrow. I swear it."

"When tomorrow?" Ray ran the edge of the blade up the front of Beatrice's coat.

"I'll meet you here," Bobby said. "Same time."

"You think your little junkie's tellin' me the truth?" Ray asked Beatrice.

"My son is a junkie," Beatrice said, putting a hand on Ray's raincoat, bunching a small corner into a ball. "But you are much worse. You live off junkies. And that makes you nothing but an animal."

"This is between us, Ray," Bobby said. "Keep her out of this. Please."

"You're the one that brought her," Ray said.

"Take your blood money." Beatrice pulled out the envelope with the five hundred dollars from her coat pocket, then shoved it against Ray's chest. "And go."

Ray took the envelope with his free hand, stood up, put it in his pocket, and turned to look at Bobby.

"Forget the rest of the money," Ray told him. "After tonight we're even, you and me. You want any fresh s.h.i.t, you hustle it someplace else. Anyplace but me. Deal?"

"Deal," Bobby said, nodding his head. "Thanks, Ray. I appreciate it."

Ray smiled at Bobby, turned back to Beatrice, grabbed her hair, and pulled it back with a hard snap, waiting until he saw her neckline under the glimmer of the overhead light.

He brought the blade down next to Beatrice's throat, his eyes gleaming, a relaxed smile on his face. He ran the blade against her neck, one long cut from the edge of the left ear across to the bottom of her right jaw. He watched the blood gush out in thick rolls and held on to her hair until he saw the life float from her body. He watched Beatrice slump down the side of the park bench.

Ray Monte cleaned the sides of the knife against his victim's coat, snapped it closed, and walked off into the night.

"My pleasure," Ray said to Bobby, leaving the young boy with his dying mother.

Bobby cradled Beatrice in his arms, letting her blood flow over him. He didn't cry, didn't speak, just held her close, head against her heart, rocking slowly back and forth. He hadn't touched her in years and couldn't remember the last time he told her he loved her. And yet he knew she would forgive him anything, even her own death.

He put his head down against the side of hers, his lips close to her ears and whispered the words to "Partira," the Italian ballad she had sung him to sleep with when he was a little boy.

They stayed that way until the dawn broke and the police arrived.

BOBBY S SCARPONI BURIED his drug habit alongside his mother. He stayed clear of the streets and worked hard in school. He fought off the nighttime urges when he hungered for a needle bubbling with heroin, for an escape from the life around him. his drug habit alongside his mother. He stayed clear of the streets and worked hard in school. He fought off the nighttime urges when he hungered for a needle bubbling with heroin, for an escape from the life around him.

He lived with his father in a silent house. Albert Scarponi said good-bye to the only woman he ever loved, then turned his back on his only child. They shared a home but never spoke, the older man living quietly with his grief and anger, unable to forgive Bobby for leading his mother into the path of a dealer's knife. Albert's hatred was further fueled by his son's refusal to identify his mother's killer.

Ray Monte had walked free.

"Don't get any ideas about doing this on your own, Bobby," one of the detectives told him. "He'll kill you just like he did your mom."

"The dealer didn't kill my wife," Albert said, looking up at the detective. "He only held the knife. She was brought there by her son. Her own blood."

"You get a change of heart," the other detective told Bobby, placing a card in the napkin holder in the center of the table, "give us a call. Day or night."

The two detectives left through the back door of the wood-shingled house, leaving Albert and Bobby Scarponi behind, alone in their two separate worlds.

FROM THEN ON, Bobby Scarponi kept track of Ray Monte.

He would see him occasionally walking the streets of his Queens neighborhood, drinking coffee and pushing drugs, never far from a new car with a running engine. Bobby finished a two-year army tour while Ray sat out the calendar in a Comstock cell, doing three to five on an a.s.sault charge. They were discharged two weeks apart.

Ray Monte returned to the streets, ready to move back into the prime arena of the drug trade. He teamed up with an Irish crew working out of Forest Hills and set up shop on 168th Street in Jamaica, handling heroin and cocaine for the posses wresting control of the drug action from the old-time Italians. He took a cut from all the pot and illegal prescription sales generated in the area, and contracted out members of his outfit for hits on anyone who objected.

And he never carried a gun. Only a knife.

BOBBY S SCARPONI SAT across the desk from a detective with a long scar across his face, its edges brushing the lid of his right eye. The detective lit a cigarette and sat back in a creaky wooden swivel chair. across the desk from a detective with a long scar across his face, its edges brushing the lid of his right eye. The detective lit a cigarette and sat back in a creaky wooden swivel chair.

"Why you telling me all this now?" the detective, Sal Albano, asked. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

"I wanted to see if I could make it through the Academy," Bobby said. "If I didn't, n.o.body needed to know."

"How long've you been off the s.h.i.t?"

"Eight years this March," Bobby said. "Shot three speedb.a.l.l.s on my sixteenth birthday. Two nights later, my mom got killed."

"You ain't the first cop that ever took a hit on the hard stuff," Albano said. "s.h.i.t, these days, I think half the f.u.c.kin' guys in uniform are buzzed out of their skulls."

"So I don't get booted?" Bobby asked.

"You're the best pure cop I ever trained," Albano said, "and I've been doing this long enough to know good when I see it. You stay clean, you've got no beef with me."

"I asked to be put in a precinct in my old neighborhood," Bobby said, sitting back in his chair, muscular frame relaxed, the once-dead eyes now clear and lucid. "Any chance of that?"

"I'll make some calls," Albano said. "Shouldn't be a problem. But don't get used to it. Guy like you ain't gonna be in uniform long. An old friend of mine in Brooklyn needs a good young cop to work decoy. Told him about you. Expect a call in about six months."

"I won't need that long to do what I have to do," Bobby said, standing and reaching over to shake Albano's hand.

"Which is what?" Albano asked.

"Look up an old friend," Bobby Scarponi of the New York City Police Department said.

THE HEAVY A APRIL rain pounded the squad car as it circled the empty South Jamaica streets, fog lights on, wipers slapping aside thick streams of water. Bobby Scarponi kicked up the sound on the police radio and turned the window defogger k.n.o.b down. He was starting his fourth month as a street cop and had already made a dent in cleaning up his old neighborhood. He had nailed four mid-level drug dealers and had taken down an armed felon hiding in a public school science lab. He reintroduced himself to the local merchants, many of whom remembered him as the drug-crazed teen who shoplifted from their stores. Now he was there to protect them. rain pounded the squad car as it circled the empty South Jamaica streets, fog lights on, wipers slapping aside thick streams of water. Bobby Scarponi kicked up the sound on the police radio and turned the window defogger k.n.o.b down. He was starting his fourth month as a street cop and had already made a dent in cleaning up his old neighborhood. He had nailed four mid-level drug dealers and had taken down an armed felon hiding in a public school science lab. He reintroduced himself to the local merchants, many of whom remembered him as the drug-crazed teen who shoplifted from their stores. Now he was there to protect them.

The street kids, aware of Scarponi's past, called him Rev. Jim, after the brain-frazzled character portrayed on the hit television series Taxi. Taxi. The name made its way into the halls of Bobby's precinct and stuck. Scarponi didn't mind. It helped give him a street ID, a name they would remember, a key first step toward being a cop they would turn to for help. The name made its way into the halls of Bobby's precinct and stuck. Scarponi didn't mind. It helped give him a street ID, a name they would remember, a key first step toward being a cop they would turn to for help.

The pa.s.sing years had failed to soften the frost between Bobby and his father. They still shared a roof, but nothing more. Not even the first sight of Bobby in a policeman's uniform could shake loose his father's hate.

Bobby Scarponi understood.

He had resigned himself to his culpability in his mother's death, fighting daily to control the emotions boiling beneath his calm exterior. He knew those emotions would eventually need to be set free to exact their toll. Only then, perhaps, could he work toward building a peace with the man whose house he occupied but whose love he long ago lost.

Bobby Scarponi also knew that when the day came for him to open that emotional cage, the beast it unleashed would be aimed at Ray Monte.

BOBBY PULLED THE squad car directly behind the parked Mercedes and shoved the gear stick into park, letting the motor idle. He put on a pair of thin black gloves and grabbed a brown nightstick, twisting the cord around his knuckles. squad car directly behind the parked Mercedes and shoved the gear stick into park, letting the motor idle. He put on a pair of thin black gloves and grabbed a brown nightstick, twisting the cord around his knuckles.

There were four men around the Mercedes, all dressed in long gray coats and brown fedoras, brims folded down to catch the rain. They separated when they saw Bobby approach, smiles on their faces but menace in their eyes.

Ray Monte stood in the middle, right leg up against a rear hubcap, thin cigar in his mouth.

"You know the world's a f.u.c.ked-up place," Ray said, "when they go and give a junkie a gun and a badge."

Bobby walked closer, taking small steps, measuring the men, knowing they were all armed and backed up by a small crew drinking in the dimly lit bar behind him.

"Rain like this must cut into business," Bobby said, his eyes on Ray.

"A junkie ain't no weatherman," Ray said. "All he cares about is the fix. Shouldn't have to be tellin' you that."

"I remember," Bobby said.

Bobby and Ray had not talked in the years since the murder, but they were keenly aware of each other's activities. Bobby watched as Ray grew his drug business, earning thousands a day as he fed the increasing neighborhood demand for cocaine and heroin. For his part, Ray Monte knew enough about Bobby Scarponi to understand he was not the type to let a blood murder sit. He watched him clean up his life, kick his habit, and then wait for his opportunity, patience his only partner.