Only Child

“Good,” I said.

“Good? What’s good?”

“You’re good,” I told him. “A lot of guys would’ve lost it over something like that. Chased the jerk in the ’Vette down and—”

“—and what, grabbed a fucking bat out of the trunk and crunched him? I’m a businessman, not some stupid cafone, throw my life away over shit like that.”

“That’s what I mean; good. Something like...something like what we’re doing, a short fuse could knock it off the rails.”

“What do you want to ask me?” he said, finally getting it.

“You know anything about Vonni besides what her mother told you?”

“I...No, I guess I don’t. You’re not asking me if I ever saw her alone, or anything?”

“I’m asking you what I asked you, Giovanni. This isn’t some grand-jury perjury trap.”

“I know she was—”

“You know if she was gay?”

“What?!”

“Did her mother ever tell you Vonni was—?”

“No,” he cut me off, face so tight I could see the skull beneath the skin. “Her mother never fucking told me Vonni was anything. Just what she was...doing, like. Sometimes. Where’d that come from?”

“The stab wounds,” I said. “So many of them. The...you know, the way she was...mutilated. You’re convinced that proves it was a message to you. But nothing I’ve come up with makes that work.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I conceded. “There’s a bunch of other stuff, stuff I can’t make anything out of yet. Or, maybe, there’s nothing to make out of it. But when the cops find a guy hacked to pieces in his apartment, the first thing comes to their minds is, did he have a boyfriend? That kind of rage...”

“Yeah, sure. And so? How’s a sixteen-year-old girl going to have that kind of...thing in her life, and nobody knows about it?”

“I think that’s true, what you just said. And I also think, if she was...anything, it wouldn’t matter—her mother would have told me. She’d love that girl if she was a mass murderer.”

He stared at me, as if his eyes could decode my words. Said, “So why’d you ask me?”

“Sometimes, a kid will tell a stran— someone she’s not close with, things they wouldn’t tell their own mother, right?”

“I told you, I never spoke to her in my whole life. Not even on the phone,” he said. A vein throbbed in his temple.

“Hi, Gio,” said the dark-eyed girl with a Bronx accent, a lot of lipstick, even more mascara, and still more hair. She looked up at him from behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Hey, Angel. How’s my girl?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “How is she?”

“Don’t be like that, baby,” Giovanni said, taking her hand and kissing it.

“Oh, don’t play with me,” she said, pouting her lips. “You’ve got so many women, I’m surprised you can remember my name.”

“I’m going to surprise you good, one of these days,” he said, smiling.

“I wish!” the girl said. “I know he’s waiting for you. Wait, I’ll go back and tell them.”

I guess she could have used the phone on her desk. But then Giovanni wouldn’t have gotten such a good look at what he’d been passing up.

“Uncle T!” Giovanni crossed the room to where the remnants of a man sat in a wheelchair, his wasted frame propped into position with carefully wedged pillows. Giovanni bent to kiss the old man. “You look a hundred percent better than the last time.”

“Who’s your friend?” the man said, his voice sandpapery but clear.

“Uncle T, this is Nick. Nick, my Uncle T.”

“I’m honored,” I said, offering my hand.

“You Irish?” the man asked.

“Me? No. Why?”

“The Irish, they got that bullshit thing down perfect. Or maybe you seen too many movies, huh? You so ‘honored.’”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” I said tightly. “Giovanni told me you were a very important, very special man. I didn’t think he brings just anyone here to see you; that’s all I meant.”

“Yeah?” he said, making no secret of studying my face. “But I don’t know you, right?”

“No. You don’t know me. And I don’t know anybody you know, either.” I looked over at Giovanni, said, “You want me to wait outside?”

“Stay right here,” he said. “Uncle T, he’s just looking out for me. Like he always does.”

“Sit down, sit down,” the man said, gesturing to a pair of pinkish side chairs. “Don’t pay no attention to my bad temper; it’s the fucking chemo—takes all of the sugar out of your blood.”

“But it’s working,” Giovanni said. “That’s the important thing.”

“It’s not working, Little G,” the man said, sad and loving, the way you tell a kid Christmas is going to be lean that year. “What it’s doing, it’s keeping the lupi back in the hills, that’s all. They’re just waiting for the right night. That’s when they come, you know. In the night.”

“Hey! You don’t know—”

“I know,” the old man said. He turned to me. “You think I care about who you know? Like your bloodlines? Where you come from? You know how I get my name? Little G, he give it to me. When he was a baby, he couldn’t say my name, ‘Carmine.’ What he says, he says ‘Tarmine.’ What kind of name is that? So we made it into ‘T,’ just for him.”

The old man shifted his head slightly, making sure he had my eyes.

“Little G called me ‘Uncle,’” he said, “because he couldn’t call me ‘Pop,’ the way he always wanted to. You getting this?”

“I got it,” I promised.

He read my face for a full minute. Then he nodded.

I looked over to where Giovanni was sitting. His thumb was pressed against the wall, making a screw-driving motion.

“Anyplace you can smoke around here?” I asked.

“Outside,” the old man said. “They got a little patio thing. Ask the girl out front.”

I gave them a half-hour, most of it spent with Angel pumping me about whether Giovanni was married. Or, even if he was, did he ever...?

When I came back into the room, Giovanni was next to the wheelchair, whispering in the man’s ear. He saw me standing there, gave his uncle another kiss, got up to leave.

“Be careful,” the old man told him.

“Uncle T’s not what you think,” Giovanni said, on the drive back.

“How do you know what I think?”

Giovanni made a bent-nose gesture. “Right?”

“How would I know if a guy’s made?”

“Made? Forget that. Uncle T, he was never in our thing. He was a craftsman, you know what that means? A shoemaker. Not some fucking flunky, puts on soles and heels, like in Grand Central. I mean, he could make shoes, starting from scratch. Custom. He had a little shop on Broome Street. Everybody with coin went there.”

I didn’t say anything; sometimes, that’s the only way to keep the tap open.