Toughs. Ed Falco

the gunfire stopped and the green sedan started up the avenue again, still rolling slowly, only a few miles per hour, Loretto followed along on the sidewalk, trotting and then sprinting as he got a look at the driver. He recognized Frank Guarracie's pinched face and understood that it had to be Vince in the back seat doing the shooting. He couldn't see Vince's face. The guy had a fedora pulled down almost to his nose, and he was a head taller than anyone else in the car—But if Frank was driving, who else could it be but Vince? The mug alongside Frank in the front seat was probably Patsy DiNapoli. His clothes were rumpled, he wasn't wearing a tie, and his hat sat on his head like a shapeless lump—and that kind of slovenliness was typical of Patsy. He couldn't get a good look at the two mugs in the back seat with Vince, but he'd guess Tuffy and Mike. They'd both been running with Vince since they were kids.

      Loretto stopped when Frank turned and saw him. Everyone else in the car was looking the other way, at the two boys on the street and the howling girl who had come out of a storefront holding the blood-soaked baby in her arms once the gunfire stopped and the sedan pulled away. Only Frank, bareheaded, driving slowly as a sightseer, looked the other way, across the street, and saw Loretto peering back at him. In Frank's eyes Loretto read a momentary confusion. A second later, Frank turned away, his narrow face once again an impenetrable mask of nonchalance, as if the gates of hell might swing open and unleash a monster and he would be neither surprised nor bothered.

      By the time the sedan turned left on 7th Avenue and disappeared from sight, the wounded kids were surrounded by adults attending to them. The air was thick with the stink of cordite. The commotion of voices was deafening. Loretto found himself, as if he had been transported there magically, kneeling alongside a boy who was screeching in pain, issuing a high-pitched wailing that was a mix of terror and indignation as he tried to grab his leg and was restrained by a stout woman who was probably not related to him, given how calmly she was going about her business. Loretto helped the woman remove the boy's shoes and pants before he took off his own shirt and tried to rip it into strips for bandages. When he couldn't get a tear started, he pulled a stiletto from his pocket, snapped it open, and stabbed the white fabric. At the sight of the knife, the woman paused and then yanked the strips away from him. She took his hand roughly, pressed it to the bloody hole in the boy's leg, and shifted her body so that she was practically sitting on the howling child's chest as she wrapped and tied the bandages. When she was done she spit a few sentences at Loretto in Italian. He made out attraverso and vivra and took her to be saying that the bullet had gone clean through the child's leg and that he'd live, which Loretto had been able to see for himself.

      "Good," Loretto said, meaning he was glad the child would live.

      The woman glanced at him with a look of motherly disdain, as if he were a hopeless child, and then waved her hand over her head and shouted, "Lui è qui!" at the sight of a scrawny young woman approaching them slowly as if wading through snow. "Su' madre," the stout woman whispered and then lifted the weeping child in her arms and carried him to his mother, who watched speechless, her face white, her arms quivering. Others had joined them at this point, including a crowd of children. They followed the woman carrying the child to his mother and left Loretto alone with the sound of sirens wailing closer and then the first of a dozen green and white squad cars blocking both ends of the avenue and every intersection.

      Loretto picked up his jacket and tie from the street. He noticed that the tie was bloodstained, and he crumpled it up and stuck it in the jacket pocket. Then he saw that the jacket was also speckled with blood. He folded the ruined jacket over his arm. Across the street Richie Cabo and his boys were watching him. He met Cabo's eyes and then looked himself over and realized he was covered in blood—his undershirt, his slacks, his hands and arms and shoes. He hadn't realized how badly the child had been bleeding, though he did remember blood squirting out of the hole in the kid's leg when he first pressed his bare hands to the wound.

      Cabo and his men stepped out into the street and started for Loretto but were intercepted by a pair of uniforms who separated each of the men, moved them apart, and began asking questions. As cops hustled him back to a storefront, Cabo's eyes lingered on Loretto. Another copper, follow ing Richie Cabo's gaze, approached Loretto warily, his hand resting on the butt of his gun.

      "And what would you be doing here?" The officer was burly and tall with a red face and a mop of dark hair pushing out from under a blue saucer cap. The armpits of his blue jacket were stained black with sweat.

      "Non parl' inglese," Loretto answered and then followed with several sentences of gibberish in rapid-fire Italian.

      "Stop the malarkey, Loretto," the cop said. "I remember you from when you were running away from the nuns. I'm asking again: What would you be doing here?"

      "I live here," Loretto said. He pointed up the avenue. "Over there a few blocks."

      "Would you have a driver's license on you?"

      Loretto took his license from his wallet and handed it over.

      The cop checked the address, looked up the block, and handed it back to him. "Can you tell me what you saw, then?" He laid a hand on Loretto's shoulder, suddenly friendly.

      "Didn't see nothin'. I heard the shootin' and then . . ." Loretto pointed to the blood on the street where he had helped with the wounded child.

      The cop looked to the blood and then back to Loretto. "And did you have anything to do with this?"

      "Nah," Loretto said. "What would I have to do with a thing like this?"

      "Is that so? Well, Richie Cabo seems interested."

      "In me? I don't know what about."

      The cop put his hands on his hips and stood his ground. Behind him a pair of ambulances were moving slowly along the street.

      "Look," Loretto said. He gestured to his bloody clothes. "Can I go? I'd like to get washed up."

      "How'd you get so much blood all over you?"

      "Helped bandage one of the kids."

      The officer glanced at the remaining tatters of Loretto's shirt in the street. "All right," he said. "Go on. Get out of here."

      Loretto asked, "Are they going to be all right? The kids?"

      The cop seemed mystifed by the stupidity of the question. He walked away without answering.

      On the sidewalk, still more cops were busy erecting barricades to keep the growing crowd out of the street. Reporters were showing up, press cards sticking out of their hatbands. Loretto's bloody clothes drew stares, and he wanted to get back to his apartment and take a bath. He'd only managed a couple of steps when Dom swooped down on him, linked arms, and pulled him away.

      Across the street, in front of the club, Richie Cabo's torpedoes were watching them. The cops had just finished questioning Cabo, and he was moving slowly toward his club while he took in the crowd in the street and on the opposite sidewalk. When he reached his boys, they pointed toward Loretto, and Richie joined them in staring across the avenue.

      "V'fancul'!" Dominic said. "What the hell happened?" He hurried up the block, away from Cabo.

      "Slow down," Loretto said. "Where we going?"

      "Getting the hell out of here." Dom pulled him along the sidewalk.

      "Wait, wait. Aspett'!" Across the street, a commotion caught first Loretto's attention and then Dom's. An old woman, frail and dressed in black, stood in a red doorway with a child limp in her arms. She seemed to be speaking, though neither Dom nor Loretto could make out what she was saying. In another moment she was surrounded, the child was taken from her, and the single word morto—dead—made its way through the crowd, traveling outward from the old woman in every direction and seemingly all at once. Frankie Scaletta, the kid whose lemonade stand had been shot up, pushed his way past a pair of coppers and crossed the street hurriedly with his head down.

      Loretto caught the kid's arm. "What happened over there, Frankie?"

      The kid wiped tears from his face with a furious swipe of his hand. He looked blankly at Loretto before he recognized him