I can’t stop thinking about last night. About what she said. She’s right. This is us. I will always take. And she will always be made to give.
“Exit’s coming up,” Rafa says beside me.
I nod, slowing the Bugatti down as I exit the highway and turn onto the smaller streets into Syracuse. I used to come here a lot growing up and know the streets pretty well. Avoiding the busiest part of the city, I make my way to the Greco house. It’s in one of the poorer neighborhoods, which doesn’t surprise me.
“Remind me again why do you want to do this?” Rafa asks me casually as we park outside the small, shabby house.
“Just want to hear for myself,” I answer.
I found the man Gabriela recognized. I found his family. I expected them to be from Taormina, but it bodes well for my uncle that they’re not.
“I already talked to them. There’s nothing to hear, Stefan. His grandmother’s an old woman who’s now stuck raising two kids both under six. They don’t know anything about Danny Greco. All they know is he’s been gone for a while, which apparently isn’t unusual for him.”
Danny Greco is the name of the man who sideswiped Rafa’s car. Who was one of the men at the house in Pentedattilo.
“Sounds like a class act.” I get out of the car and look at the house. The plot is mostly sand, no grass, and the two trees are half-dead with thirst. Laundry blows in the hot wind on a line in the backyard which butts up to a crumbling concrete wall that divides it from the train running behind it.
All of the windows are open—I would be surprised if they had air-conditioning—and patterned curtains keep the sun and insects out.
This is poor Sicily. Where I live, how I grew up, I’m in the minority.
“Stef come on. We don’t even have soldiers.”
I look back at him. “Are you afraid of an old woman and two kids under six?”
He purses his lips and I get the feeling he wants to say something but decides to keep his mouth shut, which is a good thing.
I make my way up the street to the front door of the house and ring the doorbell. Here, too, a worn curtain with the same floral pattern billows. It’s tucked into the locked metal gate that serves as a door.
It’s two more rings before I hear little feet running toward us, kids speaking in rapid Italian, the one telling the other they’re not supposed to open the door.
A moment later, two heads peer out from around the curtain. A boy and a girl.
“Is that your car?” the little boy asks. He appears to be the younger of the two.
Rafa chuckles.
I crouch down. “Yes, that’s my car,” I answer.
The boy whistles appreciatively. “A Bugatti. I prefer red. A real sports car.”
“Do you?” Mine’s black. I smile, straighten. “Is your grandmother home?”
The girl looks to her brother, then at me. She tries to shove him behind her and shakes her head in response to my question.
“She’s at the market,” the boy says, peering around her.
“Maybe we can wait for her out back.”
“One minute,” the girl says, then drops the curtain.
I stifle a laugh as they argue behind the curtain if it’s wise or not to let us in. A few minutes later, the boy’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “I’ll open the garden gate.”
“Good idea,” I tell him, nodding.
“I think it was the Bugatti that got you points,” Rafa says as he lights up a cigarette.
“When did you start smoking again?” I ask. He’s quit several times, but the habit always manages to creep back up. I hate it, hate the smell of it.
He shakes his head like it’s nothing and we walk around to where the boy opens the rickety fence and invites us into the backyard.
Two trains pass loudly by as we wait for the grandmother to return and the boy peppers me with questions about the car while the girl watches us with suspicion. Smart kid. It’s when the third train is roaring past that the old woman returns pulling a trolley of food behind her. The moment she sees us, she stops dead, her face losing what little color it had.
I notice her glance settling a moment longer on Rafa than me and I step backward so I can see my cousin.
He busies himself with lighting another cigarette and the little girl yells at him to pick up his matches and the cigarette butt he already discarded.
I go to the woman, smile, introduce myself. She doesn’t do me the same honor, but I let it go.
I take the trolley from her and drag it toward the house, noticing the broken wheel.
She takes it from me when we get inside.
I look around the small room. It never fails to shock me how poor poor can be. But then I see a photograph on the wall. I turn to her.
She shifts her gaze to Rafa who’s hulking in the door.
“He’s not here,” she says before I even ask the question. She knows exactly why we’re here.
“Who’s not here?” I ask.
“Danny.”
“This is Danny?” I ask, pointing to the photo.
She nods, looks me over in my suit. I know she wants to tell me to get the hell out, but she’s smarter than that.
“Where is he?”
“Work.” She puts a hand to her forehead and I see the worry in her eyes. “He didn’t come back this time.”
The kids come rushing in screaming about an ice-cream truck coming down the street and can they have a few dollars to buy one.
The grandmother starts to rush them back outside, away from us.
“Rafa, go buy the kids an ice cream.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Watch your mouth.” I gesture to the kids.
“No,” the old woman says. “They don’t go anywhere with either of you.”
I stop her when she tries to grab the kids.
“They’ll get ice cream. That’s all.”
She just glares at me and I gesture to Rafa to go ahead. He shakes his head but goes. The kids follow him, all smiles and excitement as they discuss which they’ll choose.
I watch the old woman’s eyes follow them.
“Do you know him?” I ask, gesturing to where Rafa just stood. I release her only when I’m sure she’s not going to run after them.
She turns to me. Doesn’t answer.
“Did Danny know him?” Better question, maybe.
“He dropped Danny off here a few times. I saw him in the car.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember. The children—”
“They’re safe. You have my word.”
She sighs, nods.
“Who was Danny working for?”
“I don’t know. But that man,” she shakes her head, makes the sign of the cross, then looks at me, makes it again. “Go. Please. We don’t know anything. I haven’t said anything. No police. The children, they’re just children.”
“I’m not here to hurt you or them,” I say, processing what I’ve just learned.
“My son,” she starts, shaking her head and pulling a chair out from the table. She sits down and I think about the amount of pressure she must be under. “I told him it was no good. Told him to get a decent job.”
I don’t care about her son. He hurt Gabriela. Put her in that well. But the children.
“How do you feed them?” I ask, looking around the kitchen.
She gives me a weary glance. “We manage.”
I take out my wallet, pull out some bills and set them on the table.
She looks at the stack, then up at me and shakes her head. “Mafioso. I don’t want your money.”
“But you need it, so you’ll take it.”
We both hear the kids and I see the effort it takes her to school her features, to take the money and tuck it into the pocket of her dress and stand as the kids run in with their giant popsicles and huge smiles and hand her an unopened one.
“It’s your favorite,” the boy tells the old woman.
“Let’s go,” I tell Rafa, not missing how the woman looks at him. “You were right. Waste of time. She doesn’t know a damn thing.”
I don’t even look back as I say it.
“Those kids need a fucking bath,” Rafa says.
I get into the Bugatti and look over at my cousin.
He turns to me. “Let’s get a drink. I’ll call Clara.”
“Don’t call. We’ll surprise her,” I say, glancing in the rear-view mirror at the woman’s face in the window as I pull away.