"Nose?" Bubba asked.

She nodded. "One tap."

"Lawsuit?"

She snorted. "He can try. I went to my own doctor and she took a photo of the bruise."

"She photographed your a.s.s?" Bubba said.

"Yes, Ruprecht, she did."

"d.a.m.n, I woulda done it."

"Me, too."

"Oh, thanks, guys. Should I swoon now?"

"We need you to call Grandpa Vincent," Bubba said abruptly.

Angie almost dropped her c.o.ke. "Are you doped to the gills or something?"

"No," I said. "Unfortunately, we're serious."

"Why?"

We told her.

"How've you two managed to stay alive this long?" she asked when we finished.

"It's a mystery," I said.

"Stevie Zambuca," she said. "Little homicidal wack-job. He still have the Frankie Avalon 'do?"

Bubba nodded.

Angie swigged some c.o.ke. "Wears lifts."

"What?" Bubba said.

"Oh, yeah. Lifts. In his shoes. Has them done special by this old cobbler in Lynn."

Angie's grandfather, Vincent Patriso, had one (and some said still did) run the mob north of Delaware. He'd always been one of the quiet guys, never mentioned in the papers, never labeled Don Don by anyone in the legitimate press. He'd owned a bakery and a few clothing stores in Staten Island, sold them a few years back, and divided his time between a new house in Enfield, New Jersey, and one in Florida. So Angie knew her way around the cast list of Boston wise guys pretty well-could, in fact, probably tell you more about most of them than their own capos. by anyone in the legitimate press. He'd owned a bakery and a few clothing stores in Staten Island, sold them a few years back, and divided his time between a new house in Enfield, New Jersey, and one in Florida. So Angie knew her way around the cast list of Boston wise guys pretty well-could, in fact, probably tell you more about most of them than their own capos.

Angie hoisted herself up on the counter, drained her c.o.ke, brought one leg up on the counter, placed her chin on her knee.

"Call my grandfather," she said eventually.

"We wouldn't ask," Bubba said, "except, like, Patrick's real scared."

"Oh, sure, blame me."

"Crying on the way over," Bubba said. "Blubbering, really. 'I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die.' It was embarra.s.sing."

Angie tilted her chin so that her cheek rested on her knee and smiled at him. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Bubba looked at me. I shrugged. He shrugged.

Angie lifted her head and lowered her leg. She groaned. She ran her fingers back along her temples. She groaned again.

"All the years I was married and Phil beat me, I never called my grandfather. All the scary s.h.i.t," she looked at me, "that you and I have gotten ourselves into, I've never called my grandfather. This"-she raised her tank top and exposed the puckered scar of a bullet that had torn through her small intestines-"and I never called."

"Sure," Bubba said, "but this is important."

She hummed her empty c.o.ke can off his forehead.

She looked over at me. "How serious was Stevie?"

"As the plague," I said. "He'll kill us both." I jerked a thumb at Bubba. "Him first."

Bubba snorted.

Angie stared at us both for a long time and her face gradually softened.

"Well, I don't have a job anymore. Which means I probably can't afford this apartment much longer. Can't hold on to a boyfriend, and I don't like pets. So, I guess you two morons are all I got."

"Stop it," Bubba said. "I'm getting all choked up and s.h.i.t."

She dropped off the counter. "All right, who's driving me to a safe phone?"

She used one off the lobby of the Park Plaza Hotel and I gave her plenty of room, wandered around the marble floors, admired the old elevators with their bra.s.s doors and the bra.s.s ashtrays standing to the left of the doors, wished it was still cool to wear fedoras and knock back scotch for lunch, light wooden matches with your thumbnail, and call people "mugs."

Where have you gone, Burt Lancaster, and why'd you take most of the cool s.h.i.t with you?

She hung up the phone, walked toward me, completely out of place among the bra.s.s fixtures and red Orientals, marble floors and people in silks and linens and Malaysian cotton, in her faded white tank top, gray shorts, and Nike thongs, no makeup, smelling like Murphy's Oil Soap, and all she had to do was give me that loopy grin she was giving me now, and I was pretty certain I'd never seen anyone look half as tremendous.

"Looks like you'll live," she said. "He said to give him the weekend, steer clear of Stevie till then."

"What'd it cost you?"

She shrugged, started heading for the exit. "I got to make him a plate of chicken piccata next time he's up this way and, oh yeah, make sure Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes."

"Every time you think you're out," I said.

"They pull me back in."

24.