“Yes,” Felix said, “but think of the satisfaction you’ll get, knowing someone who did you harm has been harmed in return.”
“Sounds Sicilian,” I said.
“Sounds human,” he replied.
A little while later there was a shout from upstairs, and Felix walked over to the foot of the stairs, yelled something up in Greek. He walked back to the kitchen. “Silly brothers wanted permission to move your bed.”
“Why?”
“Because they could,” he said. “They were making progress in cleaning your bedroom and thought your bed would be better next to the window overlooking the ocean.
“Great idea,” I said. “Except the wind and sand can cut through there when the weather is right, not to mention how bright the sun can be, coming up in the morning.”
“You’ve thought it through.”
“I did, during my first week here. Did you tell them not to move it?”
“You bet,” Felix said. “I told them you’d be embarrassed by all the skin mags they’d find between the mattresses.”
I changed the subject. “How goes your labors, tracking down the … local youths you encountered down in Lawrence?”
“Slow,” he said. “They’ve either scattered or have gone to ground.”
“Plus the cops are looking for them, both from here and from Massachusetts.”
“Yeah, there is that. But I’m not going to let the little bastards think they’ve gotten away with it.”
It was time, I thought. “This antique silver that belonged to your family. You said it was an old serving set, something like that.”
“Correct, sir.”
“Was it a plate? Or a platter? Or something on four little legs? With upturned sides?”
Felix had been making a salad over my sink and then turned. “It had four little legs. How the hell did you know that?”
I limped over, retrieved my laptop, brought it over, and put it on the counter, swung it around so the sun wasn’t washing out the screen. “Check it out,” I said.
Felix did that, leaning over, squinting his eyes. “Damn, that could be its twin.”
“If so, you’re one lucky guy.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because that one sold at auction two years ago,” I said. “For just over a half-million dollars.”
I had to give Felix credit because his thick eyebrows just lifted a bit, and he went back to preparing the meal. Using a thick pot holder, he took the skillet out, and the heavy aroma of the cooked steak filled the air. He removed the steaks with tongs, put them onto a dish, and covered the dish with foil.
“Five or so minutes in there, and it’ll be perfect,” he said. “People tend to forget it keeps on cooking if it just sits there, and this gives the juices a chance to stay inside.”
He worked in a flurry for a few minutes more, making a sauce with water, flour, a bit of wine, and some juices.
The steak was charred, crispy, and tasty on the outside, and tender and juicy on the inside. The sauce he drizzled over the filets was practically a meal unto itself. It was one of the finest dinners I’d eaten in a long time.
“What about your two men overhead?” I asked.
Felix was working on his salad. “What about them?”
“I’d think they’d be hungry.”
“Oh, they’ll be fine,” he said. “They ate before we got here. Filled up at a Greek restaurant in Newburyport.”
“You didn’t join them?”
Felix grimaced. “My father’s Greek. My mom was Sicilian. I can speak Italian fluently, and Greek passably. The Greeks gave us a lot of wonderful things, from great plays and epics to the concepts of philosophy and democracy. Just don’t ask me to eat their food.”
“All right, I won’t,” I said, and we continued eating until both of us were stuffed. Felix did some initial cleaning, and then one of the brothers—I couldn’t tell which one was Michael and which was Dimitris—came into the kitchen and started talking with Felix. It was more like talking at Felix, though, with plenty of raised voices and swinging arms. Felix gave back some of the same, and to add some emphasis, he picked up a carving knife and waved it around under Michael or Dimitris’s throat.
I was wondering what in hell was going on until, after a heavy pause, Felix laughed and the cousin laughed back and slapped Felix’s back cheerfully as he came around the counter.
“Michael’s going to clean the kitchen,” Felix told me, as he poured us two fresh glasses of Chile’s finest. “And then his brother is coming down to start in your living room. Let’s head out on the deck.”
I got off the stool, gasped when a bit of pain rippled along one of my drainage tube outlets. “All that discussion over who gets to clean the kitchen?”
“Sure,” Felix said, bending over to pull up the piece of wood blocking the runners, and then unlocking the door and sliding it free. “It’s a macho kind of thing. I told him I didn’t hire him to do dishes, and he told me that I had hired him and his brother to clean the house, and he said, expletive deleted, isn’t the kitchen part of the house? A few hundred words later, we settled things without blood being shed.”
“Enough blood’s already been shed in this house, thank you very much.”
It was a nice, sunny afternoon and we each took an Adirondack chair in the sun. Felix noted the slight breeze immediately and went back into the house to retrieve a wool blanket, which he draped over my legs.
“There you go, gramps,” he said.
“You keep that up and you’re out of the will.”
“Good,” Felix said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with all those damn books anyway.”
We each took a sip and I took note of the swells of the waves, the bright little dots marking lobster traps. I said, “That silver piece from your grandfather.”
“My great-great grandfather.”
“Any idea where he got it?”
“Stole it, I’m sure,” Felix said. “That’s my family’s M.O., going back centuries.”
“Gee, you sure sound shook up about it.”
“Instead of looking at Roman
