Chapter 1

Wednesday, June 21. Midmorning.

The barrel organ had two wheels and handled like a pushcart. Every part of it gleamed in the bright sunshine. Even the country scene painted on its side seemed to glow with its own light.
The man known as Antonio Cerasani rolled the mobile contraption over the broken cobble to the corner where Broome met Jefferson Street. Two other organ grinders played farther down Broome, but Cerasani calculated there was still money to be made.

He settled the cart as close to the curb as possible and in the least of the refuse that layered the streets in this section of the City. With the cart in place, he began to crank the organ. Music poured from the barrel with a sweet abundance, almost blocking out the sounds about him of babes howling, the crushing, scraping, thick shoes on the walk, metal-clad hooves and wheels clamoring on the cobblestones, passersby in screaming conversations. The noise of everyday life. But here the very intensity of it was an abomination.

Indifferent to the heat of the day, Tony wore heavy trousers, a vest, and a long brown coat. His shabby, dark brown hat sat atop his black hair. An enormous mustache hid his mouth. Only the wisp of smoke from the stub of the twisted black Italian cigar gave any indication of where it was. Contradicting his station of life was a gold ring with a cluster of diamond chips on his left index finger.

The bitter tang of the cigar almost wiped away the stench of horse shit. Almost. The Grinder hated the smell, from when he was a boy in Palermo and had to sleep in the stable of his father's padrone. New York was a giant stable full of horse dung, particularly in this neighborhood, where the White Wings, the street-sweeping brigade, seldom ventured.

It would be a miracle indeed if they came to clean the cobble road, let alone the asphalt pavement. Here, the roads were ankle high in dung and garbage, and the air, only barely perfumed by the salty smell of seaweed from the East River, was putrid with the rot of humanity.

"La donna è mobile" rolled from Tony's machine. To help make himself heard above the other grinders, he sang in a sweet tenor voice. "Women are fickle, like a feather in the wind."

"Women may be fickle but men are fools."

Recognizing the voice, he turned and nodded to the Neopolitan female he knew as Pancetta. She had a pig face and snout, and was always in black like the rest of the crones who populated Little Italy and the Lower East Side.

He did not stop grinding his tune as he said, "The men you're talking about are fools because they think with what's between their legs."

She touched his coat and recoiled in mock horror. "How can you wear that horse blanket in this heat? With your money, you should have better clothes."

"And are you some woman of fashion from the Ladies Mile that I should take your advice? You dress like the grave."

The woman waved her heavy arm, including him and the street in her gesture. "Why do you do this? Nonna pays you enough so you can sit in a saloon and drink grappa and smoke your stinker in comfort."

"And spend my money so I have nothing left for my old age. Who will take care of me then, huh? You?"

She smiled, showing two gold incisors, with two very pointy canines flanking them. "Would you like that? I could feed you, make you very fat."

"Basta."

"Is it done?"

"Done as a doornail. You have something for me?"

The woman reached into her overflowing oilcloth bag. "You have something for me?"

"No. She wore no jewelry."

"What?" Expelling raspy air, the fat one began to choke.

Tony eyed Pancetta dispassionately. "She didn't have it."

The woman now had control of her breathing. Her sallow complexion had changed to blood red. "Then I have nothing for you."

"Whore." The organ grinder pulled his hand back as if to strike.

Slanting her bag, the woman thrust it toward the man so he could see her hand holding the very large revolver. "Call me that again and I'll kill you. By the Madonna, I swear."

"It wasn't on the girl. But I did the job, I deserve to get paid."

"You did half the job. And you already got half the pay. You get the rest when you bring us what we want." She shifted her hand from the gun and brought out a length of sausage wrapped in paper. "You want pepperoni?"

"No." He could barely hide his disgust.

"Good. More for me." The woman unwrapped the pepperoni and gnawed at the sausage with her rat teeth.

Chapter 2

Wednesday, June 21. Midmorning.

Burning rage filled Tony's throat, but with a force of will he contained the anger until it cooled. Finally he turned away, spitting in the gutter. When he looked again, the pig woman was halfway down the block.

Once more the strains of "La donna è mobile" rolled from Tony's machine; he sang in his rich, full voice, "Women are fickle, like a feather in the wind."

The children on the street laughed as they danced haphazardly to the organ grinder's music. He was in no mood for them. What did it matter if pennies wrapped in paper dropped from those windows and fell at his feet? His luck was bad today. The way things were going it would be shit wrapped in the paper.

He searched the tenement windows, where once-white sheets, now grim dinge, stirred languidly in the tepid breeze. Several pennies landed at his feet.

The organ grinder tipped his brown hat to his benefactors, collected the coins, and dropped them in his coat pockets, continuing to grind out his music.

One lone coin lay just beyond Tony's stretch, but he did not want to interrupt the flow of music for the moment it would take to claim it, lest he lose further pennies. Tony cranked and Verdi gushed, but no more coins rained down on him.

The clamor broke through all other sound. Shouting, blaspheming. Pounding feet. Racing toward the organ grinder were four boys, their arms slender as the sticks they carried, their clothes ragged and dirty.

Tony knew these boys; they lived on the street. They would steal the nails from the Savior's cross. Immediately he stopped playing. The noise of the streets held sway again. He bent to retrieve the last coin, his coin. Suddenly, with a cruel twitch of his ass, the largest of the boys bumped Tony, knocking the grinder into his hand organ, setting it trembling, akilter. Grabbing at the cart for balance, Tony misjudged and sank to his knees in the gutter filth.

Screeching with laughter, Butch Kelly leaned over, scooping up Tony's errant penny. The runt of the lot, Patsy Hearn, stuck his tongue through his scabby lips and gave the grinder a razzberry tart.

Tony's hands began separate lives. His right felt for the coin, no longer there, his left worked at steadying the cart. He clambered to his feet and brushed what offal he could from his trousers.

Again rage surged, all but suffocating him. First Pancetta, now this. He shook his fist at the departing youths and damned them, their forms and faces indelible in his mind.

The fist relaxed, and his hand went back to his pocket, where it rested on the slender knife in the cloth sheath that was strapped to his thigh under his trousers. He loved his stiletto so much he had named her. Marie. But Marie was no virgin; she had tasted blood many times.

The organ grinder knew that just as he could not deal with Pancetta today, he could not pursue these filthy little devils. If he did, one would surely circle back and steal his organ. He was not so green a horn to let that happen to him. No. He clamped his jaw tighter on the twisted cigar.

Pancetta had insulted him. The boys had insulted him. All showed disrespect. Antonio Cerasani from Ciminna, a village on a hill in north-central Sicily, never forgot an insult. He knew where Pancetta lived. As for these four, he would meet them again.

* * *

Anyone watching the rude boys would have seen them running along Jefferson Street down to South Street. Here the East River and the docks stopped their straightaway rush. Nine or ten blocks farther south was the bridge to Brooklyn. It was their playground, all of it.

The four, all dressed alike, in raggy knickerbockers and vests and broken shoes wrapped with cloth and cord, ducked past horsecarts and drays, shouting to each other, snatching food from pushcarts, brandishing their broomsticks, sometimes jabbing at each other, sometimes threatening to jab passersby. Frequently they used their sticks to knock a hat or two from a head. They ran along the narrow, cobbled streets almost down to the East River.

South Street and the streets leading to it and the harbor were overlaid with a kind of sludge different from elsewhere in the City. This filth bore elements of tar and seawater, for the East River like its sister the Hudson over to the west, is not truly a river but rather a tidal estuary.

The East River is a saltwater strait that links Long Island Sound to New York Harbor. The river is fed by both the sound and the harbor. Tidal movements route ocean water from the harbor north into the river twice daily, while more saltwater from the sound flows from above.

At South Street, the pavement was broken, creating a channel that cut through the sidewalk and ran into an empty, filth-ridden lot on Jefferson.

Ships dotted the harbor. The boys could hear the water lapping at the docks, the noise and bustle of the sawmills at the lumber yards. Sawdust smelled sweet amidst the fetid, the salt and the tar. Stevedores unloading a ship shouted at each other and cursed the heat.

Butch threw a rock at a seagull, resting on a piling, and missed. The gull gave a raucous caw, flapped its wings, and flew away. "Shit. Seagulls make good eating."

"They're tough as an old woman's ass," Colin said, gnawing on the remnant of a potato he'd filched on the way.

"Yeah," Butch shot back, "your mother's."

It was Colin who finally broke the stare between them, saying, "Let's see if we can get some work on the docks."

Butch Kelly swung his stick. "Too hot to work." He pointed the stick into the lot. "Run out, Patsy."

Patsy made an ugly face.

"Run out."

Patsy Hearn shielded his eyes from the sun as he ran toward the heap of refuse near the back of the lot. Beyond it was some skimpy brush and, amid more garbage, a dying black walnut tree, its trunk slashed by lightning.

"Fecking Butch Kelly with his fecking games," Patsy muttered. Forever making Patsy the goat. When they played pitch and toss, Butch always cheated, stealing his fecking penny. Just like now with the dago's coin. Butch would pocket the money and never share. And when they played tag or hide-and-go-seek, Patsy was always It. Now this catstick game. Here Patsy was in the hot sun sweating buckets, while Butch was swinging his stick, mostly hitting the air, sometimes hitting the pussy, and Tom Reilly and Colin Slattery was up close and catching it. And dumb shit-ass Patsy was out here in the stinking wilderness being cooked by the sun.

Butch hit the pussy and it flew high, way over Tom's and Colin's heads.

"Open your eyes, Patsy." Butch's laugh was nasty.

Patsy ran like a greyhound. If he caught the fecking thing, maybe they could stop and get something to wet their throats. Nail some bloke toting the growler. Beer would taste good just about now. That's what he was thinking on when his wiry body slipped in the slimy runoff from the rotting waste. He took a header smack into the disintegrating trunk of the tree. Still, he reached up, and damned if the fecking pussy didn't drop right into his hand, like it was meant to.

"Hey, boyos," Patsy yelled, out of breath, brushing splinters from his hair. "I got it."

He leaned against the scarred trunk sucking in short gasps of air full of soot and ashes. His eyes wandered to the pile of refuse the other side of the tree, then focused on something among the rubbish that caught the sunlight. Something shiny.

A silver dollar maybe!

Or maybe just a tin can.

He moved closer, then stepped back.

"Holy Mary." The boy crossed himself, but he was not afraid. He was barely ten, and not even a year off the boat from Cork. Still, it was not the first dead body he'd ever seen.