One Night with the Mafia Don

Hill, a gray stone mansion with twenty rooms and not one of them lookin

rrow bed, a window onto the garden, and a lock on the outsid

he mumbled. "It's for.

fort

kno

most was someone to dust. Mrs. Pellegrino, the cook, a wary woman with forearms like a baker, gave me a tray of silver

r did the

nd the next morning there was

That nobody ever entered Adrian's study, not even to clean, and that he came home late

my brother's face on that tablet kept looping behind my eyes. At three in the morning I picked it with a ha

as alrea

on, his tie hanging open, looking at nothing. For a moment I thought he had

to say it

r in it. Only tiredness so complete it seem

no's cupboard, a spoonful of honey, a stick of cinnamon, my mother's recipe for the nig

people," he said. "I told

's

face went quiet. He drank. For a while we said nothing at

t. "Every night after dinner. I used to thin

d n

one hand. "I haven't slept more than three hours sin

before I could stop

his eyes were very steady

ound four, with his head tipped against the high back of the chair and his hand still wrapp

aid it over his arm. I stayed in the chair

doorway with his gun hand loose and his mout

, and went away, and when he returned an hour later wit

e said finally, low and

at the clock with an expression I cannot describe, an

oon, a visi

kindly grandfather and the unhurried walk of someone who has owned every roo

she said, wit

kled. He wore black leather gloves despite the warmth of the house. "And you must be the young lady.

ir

"Adrian is grieving, and grief makes the strongest of us suspicious. I'll tal

wept. Somebod

in a room. I only knew that after days of locked doors and

t, warmed through, almost light-headed with relief, and that w

hone. It had not bee

ANYONE. Wednesday, midnight, Dempsey's Gym on