He walked in his regular gait to the couch. He had planned to sit behind his desk, but after seeing her, he did not want any artificial separation between himself and this woman.
The room was kept dark by slatted wooden shades over all the windows. He reached up and opened one column of slats, and horizontal shafts of light painted the rug on the floor like some luminous ladder. Motes of dust twinkled through the rays. He raised his hand and motioned for the woman to approach.
She got up and knelt on one knee before him, picking up his hand and kissing the back of it. She had clearly been well brought up.
They spoke in Italian.
“What is your name?”
“Doreen Biaggi.”
He patted the couch next to him and she sat and arranged herself, half-turned to him. The light missed her, slicing the air between them. Tortoni reached up a hand and ran a finger along her face from her chin to her eyebrow.
“Who did this to you?”
There was a knock on the study door. Angelo sat back. “Vieni.”
Pia entered with a bottle and two glasses. He let her set the bottle onto a silver-ridged coaster on his desk. She, correctly, poured only one glass, offering it to him, but he gestured with his left hand and she handed the glass to Doreen. After pouring his, she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her.
Angelo held his glass out between them, and she raised hers to touch his. Prisms from the cut crystal danced around the room. They each took a small sip. He noticed the way she held the glass on her lap, one hand on the stem, the other on the bowl. She did not look down at it.
“I ask you to forgive me for bothering you on the Lord’s day.”
Angelo waved that away. “How can I help you?”
“I owe you money, and I owe you my gratitude.”
He nodded. It was a good start. She wasn’t just coming here to whine about her vig.
“I am also very afraid.”
Angelo sipped his wine. He saw her lower lip begin to tremble, but she got control of herself quickly, taking a deep breath.
“There is nothing to be afraid of here,” he said.
She looked down at her lap. As though surprised to find the wineglass there, she raised it to her lips. “I want to pay you”-she hesitated-“but I must ask for, for arrangements to be different.”
Angelo was confused. After he had spoken to Johnny he had been confident things would get straightened out. “The vig is too much?”
She shook her head, sitting now in silence. A tear formed in her swollen eye. “It is not the vig. I could pay a hundred a week for a few weeks. After that”-she paused, collecting herself-“I haven’t paid any vig. Johnny LaGuardia”-she looked up, her large brown eyes now liquid-“Johnny…” She broke, crying aloud.
Angelo took a spotless white cotton handkerchief from his shirt pocket and touched it to her face. As he watched her try to collect herself, he was putting it together, feeling his rage. Johnny had been scamming other clients to cover Doreen’s short. When she couldn’t make the hundred he upped somebody else on his own-maybe the mysteriously disappeared Rusty Ingraham-and started taking Doreen’s vig out of her ass.
Doreen was sniffling now, wiping away the tears. “Mi scusa, Don Tortoni.”
Worst of all, Johnny had been keeping Doreen Biaggi a secret. A woman like this, in her situation, she could be priceless to Angelo. Not directly, perhaps, she might be too classy for that. But certainly a woman of her grace and breeding, her looks and substance, could be used somewhere-to bind an allegiance, to weaken an enemy, to blind a competitor in legitimate business. Perhaps even to marry a son.
Angelo moved closer to her on the couch. He knew the sunlight was now falling across his face. Doreen, embarrassed, looked down into her lap, his handkerchief clutched around the stem of the wineglass. Closer, he inspected the face, which now, even bruised, could, he thought, make the angels sing. The loyalty and love of a woman such as this was a gift from God. And he knew he could get it for nothing. Johnny had already paid enough of her vig to cover her principal-he would hardly even lose any money.
He lifted her chin and drew her face to his. He kissed both sides of her bruised lips, then both cheeks. Gently, with his thumb, he rubbed a trace of a tear away from under her eye.
“Look at me,” he said.
She raised her eyes. Johnny had nearly broken her. Angelo smiled. “Will you eat with my family today?” He moved his hand down over her neck, her shoulder, coming to rest under her arm, feeling the full curve of the side of her breast as he moved her back away from him as though trying to get her into focus. “As of this moment,” he said, “you owe me nothing except a smile from your beautiful face.”
He touched the corner of her mouth with a finger, lifting it as he would do to a baby. “A little smile,” he repeated.
She tried, and he pushed again at her lip, playfully. The smile, when it came, nearly broke his heart.
He would have to deal with Johnny LaGuardia.
Flo Glitsky and Frannie Cochran were doing dishes together. They watched Dismas and Abe walking in the small playground that bordered the backyard the Glitskys shared with their neighbors downstairs. They had moved into the duplex when O.J. was born, unable then, as they still were, to afford their own house on Abe’s salary in San Francisco.
Now, of course, there was no chance at all, but the duplex was rent-controlled and they paid less than most everybody else they knew. Her own house was one of the dreams Flo wasn’t going to get, but she had her three healthy boys and her man who loved her, and if that was the trade, she’d take it any day.
“Are you really leaving?” Frannie asked her.
It was all that had been on Flo’s mind for the last two days. She had never seen Abe this down. He had actually applied to the Los Angeles Police Department and was talking about moving there as if it were settled. All Flo knew about L.A. was that if Abe thought housing was high here, they wouldn’t stand a chance there. And she’d heard the public schools there were in bad shape-the teachers mere truant officers whose jobs were to keep kids off drugs and off the street until three o’clock. And not only didn’t Flo believe in private schools, she knew they wouldn’t be able to afford one anyway. And her boys were all smart.
Flo shook her head. “I’ll let Abe work out what he has to, and then I guess we’ll make some decision.”
“That’s how you do it, isn’t it?” Frannie said. “That was always it with me and Eddie. What he wanted and what I wanted, back and forth, until we got somewhere together.” She wiped at a soapy plate. “I’ve gotten out of that habit. I miss it, I think.”
Flo took the plate from her, starting to dry it. “How long has it been now?”
“Four and a half months.”
Flo, like the other cops’ wives Frannie knew, didn’t let herself think too often about losing her husband. It was a possibility that came with the territory, and you accepted it and went on if you wanted to stay together.
“You’re holding up better than I would,” Flo said.
Abe kicked at the tanbark under the swing he and Hardy were on. His arms were looped around the chains and as he kicked he rotated from side to side, facing Hardy then turning away.
“How are you gonna be a good cop anywhere if you don’t care?”
“How many guys care?”
Hardy waited on the rotation, until Abe was faced back toward him. “I think about four, but you were always one of them.”
Glitsky, spinning now on the swing, shook his head. “Now I’m a professional policeperson. I go where they pay me to. Enforce the law.”
“And the brass decide?”
“Correcto.”
Hardy did a pull-up on the A-frame of the swing. He did another one, the two big guys playing on the monkey bars.