The kid was getting tripped up in his own melodrama.
“Okay, son, I’ll bite — who are you?”
Teeth were bared in the almost-handsome face like a wolf getting ready for a meal. With exaggerated, stupid deliberation, he said, “You are looking at Sam DeStef-ano.”
Michael frowned. “The hell...?”
Kid smacked his chest with a fist made from his free hand. “Antonio DeStefano — Little Sam, they call me. Sam was my uncle. And you fucking killed him, you rat fuck bastard...”
“Step away!”
Goddamnit! Just what Michael feared...
The door had swung open without either him or Little Sam seeing, and framed there in a pink-and-blue floral nightshirt that ended at her knees, nipples perking the cotton accusingly, hair an endless dark tangle, stood tight-jawed Anna with the long-barreled .38 in her two clutching, aiming hands — the Smith & Wesson that Michael had plucked from the belt of Inoglia, her mother’s murderer, back in Arizona.
If the kid had known what the hell he was doing, he would have fired the gun in Michael’s neck, then swung it around and used the shock of the moment to blow the girl away, too.
But the kid was, well, a kid, inexperienced, afraid, in way too deep here, and reflexively jerked away, scrambling to his feet, lurching from the bed to thrust the gun toward Anna.
Thank God neither fired!
The two children weren’t three feet away from each other, now — the weapons aimed at each other’s young faces.
“Back away, bitch,” Little Sam snapped. “This isn’t your fight!”
“Not yours, either,” she said coldly.
Michael eased out of bed and positioned himself alongside them, a referee trying to break up a fight on a basketball court. He was so close to them both he could hear Anna’s slow steady breathing and the boy’s heavy ragged variation; but these kids were facing each other, and to throw himself between them risked a stray bullet finding Anna, even making its way through her father’s body into hers.
“Anna,” Michael said, “don’t do anything. Antonio, you have to listen to me.”
Through clenched teeth, the wild-eyed kid said, “Fuck I do!” the mane of curly black hair catching the alley light in a shimmer, a side effect of how bad the boy was shaking.
“Son...”
“Don’t call me that!”
Michael raised two surrendering palms. “Mr. DeStefano, I know all about family loyalty. And can give chapter and verse on revenge. I could tell you it’s a dead end and you’d never believe me...”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“...But you need to know a couple of things before you take this any further, starting with I didn’t kill your uncle. Sam Giancana did.”
The kid shook his head, and sweat flecks flew. “You’re a liar! You’re a goddamn liar!”
His voice as calm as young Sam’s wasn’t, Michael said, “You are looking at the two people who killed Giancana, just last night — because my daughter lost her husband, and she and I lost her mother, when Giancana framed me for killing your uncle, and the DeStefano crew came looking for us.”
He shook his head, a dozen spastic times. “You’re not telling the truth! Why should I listen to this shit...?”
“Because you’re about to lose your life, or maybe take a life or two, for the wrong reason. The man who killed Mad Sam DeStefano was Spilotro — the Ant? I’m sure you know that charmer, and he did it for himself and for Giancana.”
“...The fuck, you say.”
“I can prove it.”
“Fuck you can!”
“You followed us here from the Temple, right?”
“What if I did!”
“Because a bent marshal dropped the dime. Guy named Hughes... Only he’s dead now.”
The boy’s eyes somehow got wilder. “Who says he’s dead! And so what if he told me!”
Patting the air, just a little, Michael said reasonably, “I knew that, only because I also knew this same bent cop sicced your DeStefano guys — and some Giancana crew, too — on me and my family. It was part of the same damn frame.”
Spittle flitted. “Talk till you’re fuckin’ blue, you still killed my uncle!”
“Are you Mario’s boy?”
“No! He’s my other uncle...”
“Mario was in it with Spilotro.”
Little Sam seemed about to cry, the gun trembling in his hand, but still pointed right at Anna’s face. “...Why should I believe you? You wanna send me off to kill somebody else? What kinda putz do you take me for?”
Anna said, “Is that a trick question?”
“Shut up, bitch!”
“Anna... please... Antonio, I am not suggesting you go after your uncle and that crazy asshole Spilotro... You’ll really get yourself killed, then. But you need to know who you’re defending. Your father was Angelo, right?”
His chin quivered; his eyes were moving side to side. “What, what are you bringing up that ancient hist—”
“You never really knew him, though. Your father. He’s been gone a long time.”
Little Sam’s voice seemed small, now, though the gun remained big enough. “What does that have to do with shit?”
“Did you know he was a drug addict?”
The voice grew large, again. “What the fuck business is that of yours! You are so going down...”
“You must have been told that your father was murdered.”
“...That, that, that’s the kind of business we’re in, Satariano. You know that!”
“What you don’t know is, your beloved Uncle Sam? The man everybody but you called ‘Mad Sam’?... killed your father. And everybody but you knows it.”
Little Sam’s face whitened, and his eyes grew big. But the voice was back to small. “...You’re lying. That’s crazy. You’re lyin’, that’s crazy horseshit...”
“Everybody knows Sam was ashamed of Angelo — considered him an embarrassment, a burden. Mad Sam stabbed your father to death, in a car, and then he took him somewhere and washed him clean. Your uncle bragged about it. Told people he wanted to make sure his brother went to heaven with a clean soul. That’s why your father was found the way he was — naked... dead... freshly bathed. In the trunk of a car, right?”
Little Sam was shaking, head to foot, including the .38 in his grasp. “...My uncle... my uncle wouldn’t...”
“How well did you know your uncle, son? Did you ever see his private workshop? With the ice picks? What kind of life advice did he give you? Do unto others? Fuck them before they can fuck you, maybe?”
The boy swallowed; he was breathing very hard now, tears streaming down his face in glistening ribbons. He began to hunch over, the revolver limp in his hand.
“I’m going to take that, son,” Michael said, stepping forward, holding his hand out for the gun.
“You’ll... you’ll shoot me... you’ll... shoot my ass...”
But the boy allowed Michael to take the revolver from him, and Michael said, “No, Antonio, I won’t shoot you. Anna, put that gun down. Get our guest a glass of water, would you?”
She looked at her father as if he were crazy, but the unspoken “Huh?” did not come out.
“Anna? Please?”
Into the kitchenette she went, smirking and shaking her head, but obviously relieved, though her definition of putting the gun “down” was aiming it at the floor, and not setting it anywhere. She switched a light on.