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terrible, by any means—he’d made the varsity baseball team, though most of his game-day participation was spent riding the pine. Still, his brother was college athletic scholarship material and he clearly was not. However, Giancarlo more than compensated with his musical abilities on a half-dozen instruments and superiority in academics. Zak struggled with his grades, mostly because of inattention rooted in a firm belief that he was headed for a pro football or baseball career.
    Both boys were movie-star handsome with the soulful brown eyes and black curly hair from their Italian mother’s side of the family. Zak was a little more rugged and already waking up with a five o’clock shadow, while Giancarlo’s features were more delicate. Neither had their father’s height, or his Slavic facial characteristics and gray, gold-flecked eyes. There was even a long-running and mostly good-natured argument between their parents about whose athletic genes Zak inherited.
    Back in the day, their father was a highly recruited high school basketball player who’d been compared to former Celtic great Bob Cousy when he starred in his freshman year at the University of California–Berkeley. However, a freak knee injury during practice ended his college, and potential pro, playing careers, relegating him from then on to pickup basketball games and first base for the New York County District Attorney’s Office softball team. He worked out on weights and swam when his busy schedule allowed, which wasn’t often, and tried to get in quick-paced walks when his bum knee cooperated. But even he admitted that his cardio conditioning wasn’t all it should be.
    Meanwhile, the boys’ mother, Marlene Ciampi, was no slouch as an athlete. A fit, lithe woman even into middle age, she’d grown up wrestling and boxing with her brothers, as well as running trackand playing basketball and tennis for the women’s teams at Sacred Heart High School in Queens and then in college at Smith. After quitting the District Attorney’s Office, she kept herself in shape throughout motherhood and beyond, when her career path led to creating a security firm for VIP clients, as well as working as a sometimes confrontational advocate for abused women. Now as a defense attorney and private investigator, she still put in fifteen to twenty miles of running per week, swam, and played tennis and racquetball. Several times this afternoon she’d easily sidestepped her husband’s rush attempts (after he’d counted “one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi”) and passed the ball to Zak, who did the rest by eluding his brother on his way to four touchdowns.
    Giancarlo had resigned himself to there being no hope of winning the game, which meant listening to his brother gloat for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Still, Zak was so competitive that one score would dampen his enthusiasm for rubbing it in, and he might even take it so hard that he’d go into a sulk and not speak for hours. So with that one small hope to cling to, Giancarlo turned back to where the football lay on the grass waiting for him to hike it to his dad.
    â€œCome on over here, Butta-fingas,” Zak taunted his brother in his best faux Bronx accent.
    â€œYeah, let’s see whatcha got there, Noodle Arm!” Marlene yelled at Karp.
    The boys squared off. Marlene got into a sprinter’s pose, ready to run her husband down like a dog as soon as she counted off her third Mississippi. Karp looked around as if he was Joe Namath looking over the Baltimore Colts defense. He noticed the plainclothes cop, J. P. Murphy, an unwanted but necessary accoutrement of being the district attorney of New York County, standing over on the sideline, watchful but enjoying the warmth of an Indian Summer day. All around the edges of the Central Park meadow, elms, maples, and oaks were hitting their stride withthe season’s