“I mean I can’t do it, ever.” He struggled to make eye contact with Frankie, and couldn’t pull it off. His uncle’s right ear became his focus. “I’m out. I quit.”
“Quit?” His voice was so loud. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Matty didn’t know what more to say. The government is on to me? They can track me? They can
“You can’t quit,” Frankie said. “You’re a Telemachus. We don’t quit!”
“I know, I know.” But wasn’t quitting what they were most known for? The Amazing Telemachus Family had walked offstage and into mediocrity. Frankie gave the benediction years ago at the Thanksgiving table: We could have been kings.
“I’m sorry,” Matty said. He was tearing up. He didn’t want to cry in front of his uncle. “I’m sorry.”
Frankie kept talking, cajoling and shaming and pleading in fast-paced combinations, like a bantamweight working the heavy bag. Matty weathered the blows, unable to speak, unable to move. He wanted to disappear. He wanted to fly out of the top of his head and let his body flop onto the driveway like a bag of wet grass. But that was exactly what he could never do again.
12 Teddy
Love was waiting for him in the mailbox, coiled like a rattlesnake. A plain white envelope. He knew what it was even before he saw his name in Maureen’s razor-sharp cursive, and in a trice the old, sweet poison raced to his heart.
Oh, my love, he thought. You knock me out, even from the grave.
The letters were coming more frequently now, and he had no idea why. There’d been a flurry after she died, then a tapering off, so that for years at a time he’d thought they’d finally stopped. But this was the second one this summer. Was it a sign of the end-times? He
“Are you all right?” Irene asked. She was twenty feet away, standing by the car. Too far away to see the handwriting on the envelope.
“Paper bullets,” he said. He tucked the envelope into his jacket pocket. There’d be time to look at it later. “Straight to the brain.”
“How are you getting mail on a Sunday?”
With anyone else he would claim that it was misdelivered and a neighbor must have put it there—but this was Irene. His only choice was to dodge the question entirely. “Let’s go,” he said. “Graciella’s waiting.”
Irene made no move to get in the car. “We have a deal, right? If I go with you, no matter what happens, you’re watching Matty for me.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Four days, next Thursday through Sunday.” He’d made the mistake of giving her the keys so she could get the air-conditioning going, and now she was holding them ransom. She stood by the driver’s-side door, one hand drumming the roof. He winced to think of her rings scratching the paint. She said, “And you will
She would
Irene groaned, but surrendered the keys.
She managed to sit in silence until the third stoplight. It was more than he could have hoped for.
“Do you trust this woman?” she asked. Meaning Graciella.
“Do
“She’s using you,” she said.
“I
“She’s not a friend if she’s after your money.”
“Money? What money? I’m on social security, for Christ’s sake.”
“This car’s a year old. You get a new one every eighteen months.”
“That’s just good sense. New cars are dependable. You break down on the skyway, you’re likely to get killed.”
“And the suits? And the watches?”
He took a breath. How to phrase this, for a woman who can smell a lie? “Just because I don’t dress like a hobo doesn’t mean I’m rich.”
“I know about ATI, Dad.”
He pretended to concentrate on the traffic in the side-view mirror. “What’s that now?”
“Checks were coming to the house all through high school, and they’re still showing up.”
“You’re going through my mail?”
“Don’t have to. I can see the envelopes. Advanced Telemetry Inc.’s a privately held electronics company, but there’s suspiciously little on file.”
“You investigated me?”
“Them, Dad. Turns out they’re some kind of consulting business.”
“You’re a snoop. It’s your greatest failing.”
“I’m sure you’ve got a list. So what is this, Dad? Are you a consultant? Is this a holdover of what you and Mom did?” Her eyebrows rose. “ATI is the front that Destin Smalls uses to pay you, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m just worried, Dad. I don’t care about the money, but I don’t like that this woman is taking advantage of an—of you.”
“Of an old man. Say it.”
“Don’t have to. It’s obvious you’ve gone senile.”
“She doesn’t need my money. She’s mob royalty.”