hand.
The boy did as he was told and said, “A job, Papa?”
“Phut, it’s nothing,” he said, slipping the weapon inside the side pocket of his leather jacket. “Some foreign crazies making too much noise is all. One of the New York families, I think. You know the types. Wiseguys. Foreign bullies. Busybodies. Think they can waltz onto our turf and intimidate me.”
“Right,” the boy said, looking at Emile carefully. His father did dangerous things for dangerous people. He was an enforcer in the oldest and most feared crime family in all of France, the Union Corse. His father had been shot and stabbed many times in his long career. When they swam in the sea, you could see that his body had been—
“Well. How was the ferry over to Nice?” Emile asked. “A nice boat?”
“Ca va,” Luca replied matter-of-factly. And then, in English, he said, “I prefer horses to boats.”
So, Emile thought, casting a sideways glance at his son. The boy’s mother had been working on his English, eh? The child had a gift for languages. Hell, he had a gift for everything. Philosophy. Literature. A genius, some people even claimed. He’d always been the most curious boy. Always with his nose in a book. History. Art. Science. When Luca was seven, and just falling in love with his maps, a teacher had asked which he preferred, history or geography.
“They are the same,” the boy replied matter-of-factly, “geography dictates history.”
Hah! That was a good one. But, when he told it later that night, standing with his mates at the bar, they’d just stared at him blankly. Idiots. All his comrades were idiots. Campesinos.
And now, politics. The boy had drifted dangerously to the left for his father’s tastes. Writing fucking Communist manifestos. No way to make a living, pamphlets, that much was for certain. If Luca envisioned a career in politics, which he had confided to his mother that he did, he’d better start steering a middle course. That way, like any good politician, he could go whichever way the wind blew.
“So, you’ve been riding?” Emile said, not wishing to spoil the reunion mood. He slowed down and turned right into the rue George Balanchine. “That’s good. A man who cannot sit a horse well is not to be trusted. How is your dear mother, eh?”
“She hates you.”
“Ah,” Emile said, and made a sound like a wet finger touching a hot iron. “Love is like that.”
M. Bonaparte managed to find parking in the snowy street. A few minutes later, father and son were sitting at a small window table at the bistro Lilas. It had a narrow red facade on the street and the rear door opened onto the catacombs, a convenient exit when you needed it. Emile ordered for both of them, sliced Lyonnais sausages and roast Bresse chicken with cornichons.
The stained vanilla-colored walls and the big zinc bar gave the place a prewar feel that older Parisian cabbies like Emile enjoyed when they were feeling flush. He saw familiar faces, but tonight he kept to himself, delighted just to bask in the rays from his brilliant and newly prosperous son.
After they’d eaten, Emile ordered another demi of the delicious Chateauneuf-du-Pape to celebrate his son’s arrival. He refilled their glasses, hung a Gauloise from his lips, and said, “It’s good, eh, Lilas? The food? The wine? Like you remember it? Molto buono?” Emile, like many Corsicans, often switched seamlessly between Italian and French.
Emile was enjoying the expensive food and drink and seeing his handsome son all grown up, employed, picking up the tab. He’d even taken tonight off, called in sick. In addition to his taxi, Emile worked five nights as a security guard at the Hotel des Invalides, the massive old soldiers’ home that stood along the Seine. With the two incomes, he could afford to have a pretty good life here in Paris and still send enough to Corsica each month to help Flavia care for Luca.
“Alors. You’re all grown up now, eh? Fifteen.”
“Sixteen. Papa—who is that man?” Luca said. “Do you know him?”
“What man?” Emile replied, looking around inside the crowded, smoky bistro. There were few women in the place, many men. Which one—
“No. Outside. At the window. Staring at me.”
Emile looked around and saw a man standing just outside, his nose an inch from the glass. The stranger smiled at Luca, then blew a plume of cigarette smoke against the glass, hiding his face. Emile rapped the window sharply with his knuckles and the face reappeared. The man, he looked like a skeleton with black holes for eye sockets, turned his ugly smile on Emile and crooked his finger, beckoning.
“Some crazy,” Emile said to his son. He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Don’t move. I’ll go see what the devil he wants.”
“Be careful,” Luca said.
He watched his father take his brown leather jacket from the hook by the door and push through out into the snow. The face at the window disappeared once more into the snow. For a time, Luca sat blowing his warm breath against the glass and scribbling problematic mathematical equations with his fingertip. After some minutes, the garcon appeared. Where had his father gone? He wanted to know. Was he going to pay? Was something the matter?
The skeleton suddenly appeared behind the waiter, staring at Luca. He had a long red scarf wrapped around his neck and he had snow on his shoulders. His face was bright red from the snow and cold and his curly, wet yellow hair was plastered to the sharp angles of his skull.
“On your feet,” the soggy sack of bones said in American English to the boy.
“Who the hell are you?” Luca asked, loudly enough to be heard by the boisterous group at the next table. A few heads swiveled in his direction.
“Gimme the fuckin’ check,” the skeleton hissed at the waiter, eyeing the young Corsican for a few moments. The waiter went off and returned with the bill. The yellow-haired man pulled a wad of francs from his pocket and handed some to the waiter, who mumbled something and disappeared. Luca cast his eyes about the diners. No longer was anyone paying attention to him or the stranger.
“Where is my father?”
The man bent forward and whispered into Luca’s ear.
Luca made a face and nodded his head, then followed the stranger outside into the snowy street. No one inside had said a word.
There was a long black car parked at the curb. It wasn’t a French car, Luca saw, but an English one. A Rolls-Royce, a very ancient one with brass headlamps up front and a single violet carriage lamp mounted on the roof above the windshield. Like a hearse, he thought. Luca could see the black shape of his father seated in the rear between two large men.
The bony man opened the driver’s side door. There was another man on the passenger side, big, the collar of his black raincoat turned up. Luca could make out a shaved head, a bashed-in boxer’s face, and a close-cropped beard. The yellow-haired skeleton slid behind the big wheel, started the car, and turned on the headlights.
Outside, all was blurred white.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Luca said, turning to his father in the rear.
“Shut your piehole, kid,” one of the two men sitting in the rear on either side of Emile said. It was New York English, the kind you often heard in movies but seldom in Paris. They were wearing very colorful sport coats and Luca remembered seeing them on the platform at the station. His father nodded his head, staring at Luca, telling him to obey. Yes, he would be quiet all right. That would be best. In fact, no one spoke as the big car slid through the snowy streets and crossed the river at the Pont Neuf, some of the turns very tight in the great long car.
“Hey, Joe Bones,” the big man next to the window said in the thick accent of a movie gangster. “What’s wrong with this right here?” He spoke without looking over at the driver, pointing out the side window.
“I ain’t Joe Bones yet, boss. Just Mama Bonanno’s boy Joey.”
“You will be after tonight, kid, I’m telling ya. Make your frigging bones at last.”
“So, whaddya want me to do?” the skeleton behind the wheel said out of the side of his mouth.
“Pull over, for chrissakes. I want you should park it here. Nice and close. It’s fuckin’ freezin’ out there. Christ, snow in Paris? Who knew? Right here. Awright, Joey?”
“Whatever blows your hair back,” Joey said, and pulled the big wheel over to the right. The black Rolls
