the first time Dominick had ever seen him smile at her, then he stepped around the dining table and moved toward Dom.
Dominick Bertolini was ready. He wasn't nervous. His voice hadn't quivered. His hands weren't shaking. He'd been preparing for this in his mind since he was a small boy. He wanted it, wanted it now, and as he took his first step toward his father, he knew that he would cherish this moment for the rest of his life.
Cower and die. Or fight and live. He'd made his choice. From now on, things would be different. Things would be better. It was time to win for the first time in his life. Not just win a fight but win a war. Win forever.
Unfortunately, Dominick was too young to have realized there were choices beyond the ones he'd envisioned. Yes, stay silent and suffer was one choice. And fight and win was another.
But so was fight and lose.
Which is what happened that night.
Anthony Bertolini moved slowly and deliberately at first, until he was two short steps away from Dominick. Then he attacked quickly. And viciously. He had palmed his drinking glass, which he now slammed into the side of his son's head. A deep gash opened up over Dominick's eye and blood poured out of the wound as if it were thick paint being dumped out of a can. Without giving him a chance to retaliate, Anthony picked up a chair and brought it down over Dominick's head. The wood splintered and the noise was like that of the sweet spot of a baseball bat meeting a fastball and sending it four hundred feet. Then Anthony's right leg swung back and the hard point of his shoe cracked into Dom's throat. The boy made a sad, gurgling noise, which only seemed to motivate the enraged father. The leg swung back several times and the shoe found the neck again, and then the ribs. The punching and the kicking went on long after Dominick lost consciousness. And then Anthony turned back to his wife.
This time he did not, as promised, beat her to within an inch of her life. He beat her to death.
When Dominick woke up, nearly two days later, he was in the hospital, his mother was buried, and his father was in prison. Anthony spent four years there for murdering his wife. When he got out, he never tried to find or contact his son. Even he understood that he would not survive the next meeting.
It didn't take long for the teenage Dom to find his calling. Within a year he'd had six amateur fights, winning them all easily. He turned pro. Over the next few years, he fought regularly, touring the clubs up and down the East Coast, and won always. At twenty-two, he was ranked number twelve. He would have been higher but no one in the top ten wanted to get in the ring with him. Until his manager came to him and said they'd gotten a fight with the number six contender, Sweet Lenny Sweets. If Dominick won that, he'd get the number one or two. And if he won that, he'd get a chance to fight for the title. He had no doubt that soon he would be champ.
Then, several days before his fight with Sweets, Dora got the word. He was supposed to lose. He wasn't naive and he hadn't been so protected that he didn't understand the ways of the fight game in those days. But he was arrogant and sure of his own toughness and, when he climbed into the ring, he knew one thing and one thing only: he was not going to lose.
He didn't. He knocked Lenny Sweets out in the seventh round.
A week later he was in his apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Not the one in which he'd grown up; after he'd gotten out of the hospital he never set foot in that apartment again, leaving everything he owned behind, even his clothes. There was a knock at the door; he got up from the kitchen table, opened the door. After that, it all happened very fast.
There were three guys. Fat, strong, slow, but slow didn't matter, the apartment was small, there was no room to move. Two of them held him down. One of them had a butcher's knife. Huge and gleaming.
'You got a good fuckin' right, don't you?' one of them said. 'You're pretty proud of that fuckin' right.'
Dom didn't say anything. Even when the cleaver came slashing down and cut through the bone of his right arm, severing it at the forearm.
The only thing he heard after that, right before he passed out, was 'You two-bit piece of shit. Don't think you'll be usin' your fuckin' right much anymore.'
– '-'-'CAROLINE HAD STOPPED walking for the last part of the story. She was leaning against a lamppost, one hand clenched around it, gripping it so tightly her fingers were white and blotchy.
'Oh my God,' she said. She said it several times.
'I told you.'
'You told me it was a different world.'
'It is a different world.'
'It's a different universe.'
'Do you want me to stop?'
'There's more? That's not the end?'
Jack shook his head.
Her eyes closed for a moment. Then opened. 'Tell me the rest,' she said.
So he did. He told her how Dom recovered over the next few months, his ring career over. When he was strong enough, he got a job as a butcher. It was a deliberate choice – the career somehow seemed fitting to him after what had happened. He worked at a butcher shop for a couple of years, learned the ropes, started saving to open up his own place. During that time, he asked questions, kept his eyes and ears open. A little over three years after that night in his apartment, he finally found the three men who had paid him a visit. Now he paid them a visit. Two of them were together and he picked them up when they came out of a bar not long after midnight. Dom came up close behind, never identified himself, shot them while they were walking down the street. It took him ten more days to find the third man. But he did. Waited in the hallway of the guy's apartment building. This time he was going to identify himself but he didn't have the opportunity. The moment the guy saw Dom's arm he turned and ran. But he didn't get far. Before he could take two steps, Dominick Bertolini put a bullet through the back of the man's head.
Caroline was pale now and looked a little unsteady on her feet. 'Did he go to jail?' she asked.
Jack shook his head. 'No proof. And no one looked too hard to find any. The victims were not exactly what you'd call model citizens.'
'But if everyone knew that Dom-'
'No one knew. Maybe some people suspected, but he didn't broadcast it. That's not what it was about. He only told the people he trusted. Even now, I don't think there are more than five people who know what happened.'
'How… how is he going to feel about the fact that… that…'
'That I told you? I told him yesterday I was going to tell you.'
'What did he say?'
'He didn't say anything. He trusts me.'
Caroline exhaled a long, deep breath. 'This man… he raised you?'
'I'm here because of him. And whatever it is I am, I mostly am because of him.' He waited but she didn't seem to have any more questions. 'Do you still want to meet him?' he finally said.
She nodded.
'What's the matter,' he smiled, 'can't talk?'
And when she shook her head, she was, for the first time since he'd met her, not smiling back.
He led her into the meat market, watched her eyes take in the carcasses and the blood on the floor and the men with their big bellies and greasy hair lugging meat. He watched, too, as she zeroed in on Dom. When he glanced up, noticed that they were there, Dom didn't move. He looked at Caroline as if waiting to see what she'd do. She went straight over to him, didn't wait for an introduction. She took his good hand in hers, leaned over, and kissed him gently on the cheek. As she did, she whispered something in his ear. Dom turned red, as if embarrassed, but he didn't pull his hand away. Letting her hold it, he stood there, remarkably at ease, asked her a few questions. Where you from? How'd you get to New York? What are you doin' with – a jerk of the head toward Jack – a lug like him? Then he said, apologetically, I gotta get back to work.
He gently pulled his hand away, turned, and headed toward the huge walk-in refrigerator. But before he got there, he stopped, twisted his head toward Jack, and nodded his approval.
When Jack tried to get out of her what she'd whispered to him, Caroline wouldn't say. It wasn't until later, when he called Dom, that he found out.
'What's the matter?' Dom said. 'She won't tell ya?'
'No,' Jack admitted. 'All she'll say is that it's up to you.'
'Ain't that somethin',' Dom said.
