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seersucker pants suitable for Miami, not for the Massachusetts winter. “I don’t think Rita would like you asking me these things. She told me what she does is none of your business.”
    “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Gardella said, and Alvaro shrugged, undaunted. “You speak English okay. Where’d you learn it?”
    “Harvard.”
    Gardella flushed. “You’re a wise little prick.”
    “I learned it like you did. I was a baby when I came to the States.”
    “What are you, Puerto Rican? Mexican?”
    “I’m Cuban, like you didn’t know.”
    Gardella’s eyes veered up. His sister came halfway down the stairs and clutched the rail, hovering in a robe that didn’t fit her, her face sour from sleep and her eyes feeble from too little of it. He viewed her with momentary disgust. With effort, she came down the rest of the way and said, “You haven’t asked him what he does for a living. Tell him, Alvaro.”
    “I’m a towel attendant at the Sonesta.”
    “You’re what?”
    “You heard him.”
    Gardella frowned with an air of sadness. He remembered when she was less large and more secure, though never reasonable, always self-indulgent in her rash choices of companions and self-destructive to a degree that never ceased to disturb him. At the same time, because she was of his blood, she was the only person in the world he totally trusted.
    Alvaro made as if to leave them alone, and she said, “Stay!”
    Gardella said, “Go. I want to talk to my sister.”
    Alvaro vanished, with a small fatalistic smile. Gardella led his sister into her living room, where they remained standing, facing each other in a solemn way, all disagreements cast aside. With care and delicacy he briefed her on the funeral arrangements and added that the caskets would be closed. Her eyes filled as she confronted feelings mostly buried until now.
    “That means I don’t even get to say good-bye to them.”
    “You say good-bye at the church,” he murmured. “That’s where we all say it.”
    “I’m going to miss them so much,” she said hopelessly. “I was Pa’s angel.”
    “You broke his heart a hundred times.”
    “Don’t be tough with me, Tony.”
    He didn’t mean to be and didn’t want to be, not at this time, and he placed an arm over her shoulders. He was fourteen years older than she. She had been his angel too, and he her hero. His voice dipping, he said, “Is it forever, Rita, this way you feel about the spic?”
    “Nothing’s forever, Tony. I’m smart enough to know that.”
    “Good,” he said. “Then I can live with it.”
    • • •
    Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia of the Boston Police Department personally directed traffic, and four white-helmeted officers manned motorcycles to lead the procession of more than fifty cars. The cars wormed their way through constricted North End streets from Ferlito’s Funeral Home to St. Leonard’s Church on Hanover Street, which had been scraped of snow. It was a cold, brittle day, which did not prevent a crowd from gathering. In the forefront, conspicuously displaying themselves, were Supervisor Russell Thurston and special agents Blodgett and Blue. Thurston was nettled. “Look at those cops on bikes. Like an honor guard.” Blodgett agreed with an epithet. Blue said nothing. He scanned the crowd, his the only black face in a neighborhood that tolerated none.
    “Who’s the coon?” Rita O’Dea whispered as she struggled out of a limousine. She was wearing mink and stood voluminous in it. “He’s cute.”
    “He’s a fed,” her brother said harshly, shading his eyes. “Feds you expect, a spade you don’t. It’s an insult.”
    Victor Scandura sidled up. “The tall one’s Thurston. I had him pointed out to me once.”
    “I’d like to squeeze his throat.”
    “One thing at a time,” Scandura advised.
    A seemingly endless line of mourners filed into the church for the solemn high mass, family members sinking into front pews. Gardella’s older son,