The Vig

“I am also very afraid.”

Angelo sipped his wine. He saw her lower lip begin to tremble, but she got control of herself quickly, taking a deep breath.

“There is nothing to be afraid of here,” he said.

She looked down at her lap. As though surprised to find the wineglass there, she raised it to her lips. “I want to pay you”-she hesitated-“but I must ask for, for arrangements to be different.”

Angelo was confused. After he had spoken to Joh

She shook her head, sitting now in silence. A tear formed in her swollen eye. “It is not the vig. I could pay a hundred a week for a few weeks. After that”-she paused, collecting herself-“I haven’t paid any vig. Joh

Angelo took a spotless white cotton handkerchief from his shirt pocket and touched it to her face. As he watched her try to collect herself, he was putting it together, feeling his rage. Joh

Doreen was sniffling now, wiping away the tears. “Mi scusa, Don Tortoni.”

Worst of all, Joh

Angelo moved closer to her on the couch. He knew the sunlight was now falling across his face. Doreen, embarrassed, looked down into her lap, his handkerchief clutched around the stem of the wineglass. Closer, he inspected the face, which now, even bruised, could, he thought, make the angels sing. The loyalty and love of a woman such as this was a gift from God. And he knew he could get it for nothing. Joh

He lifted her chin and drew her face to his. He kissed both sides of her bruised lips, then both cheeks. Gently, with his thumb, he rubbed a trace of a tear away from under her eye.

“Look at me,” he said.

She raised her eyes. Joh

He touched the corner of her mouth with a finger, lifting it as he would do to a baby. “A little smile,” he repeated.

She tried, and he pushed again at her lip, playfully. The smile, when it came, nearly broke his heart.

He would have to deal with Joh

Flo Glitsky and Fra

Now, of course, there was no chance at all, but the duplex was rent-controlled and they paid less than most everybody else they knew. Her own house was one of the dreams Flo wasn’t going to get, but she had her three healthy boys and her man who loved her, and if that was the trade, she’d take it any day.

“Are you really leaving?” Fra

It was all that had been on Flo’s mind for the last two days. She had never seen Abe this down. He had actually applied to the Los Angeles Police Department and was talking about moving there as if it were settled. All Flo knew about L.A. was that if Abe thought housing was high here, they wouldn’t stand a chance there. And she’d heard the public schools there were in bad shape-the teachers mere truant officers whose jobs were to keep kids off drugs and off the street until three o’clock. And not only didn’t Flo believe in private schools, she knew they wouldn’t be able to afford one anyway. And her boys were all smart.

Flo shook her head. “I’ll let Abe work out what he has to, and then I guess we’ll make some decision.”

“That’s how you do it, isn’t it?” Fra

Flo took the plate from her, starting to dry it. “How long has it been now?”

“Four and a half months.”

Flo, like the other cops’ wives Fra

“You’re holding up better than I would,” Flo said.

Abe kicked at the tanbark under the swing he and Hardy were on. His arms were looped around the chains and as he kicked he rotated from side to side, facing Hardy then turning away.

“How are you go

“How many guys care?”

Hardy waited on the rotation, until Abe was faced back toward him. “I think about four, but you were always one of them.”

Glitsky, spi

“And the brass decide?”

“Correcto.”

Hardy did a pull-up on the A-frame of the swing. He did another one, the two big guys playing on the monkey bars.

“Besides,” Abe said, “Lanier is handling it. They’ll pass off my cases to McFadden ’cause he’s the other solo, and Baker will go down like he should. Order will be restored to the cosmos.”

Hardy was hanging full-length from the frame. “You reading Shakespeare again?”

Glitsky stood out of the swing. “Criticism. The Tragic Fallacy by Krutch. You ought to check it out. Says there can’t be any tragedy unless there’s a Zeitgeist of ultimate order that can be destroyed and then restored.”

“Zeitgeist,” Hardy said.

“Kraut word. Means the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era, such as our very own, for example.”

“I know what the fuck it means, Abe. I’m a college graduate.”

“So that’s why we don’t have any modern tragedy. We don’t believe in the importance of any one individual anymore. Since nobody screwing up can destroy the order of the cosmos, then nobody getting enlightened can restore it, see?”

“I was just thinking about this yesterday.”

Glitsky cast a sideways glance at his friend. “So how’d we get on this anyway?”

“You said Louis Baker going down will restore order to the cosmos.”

Glitsky nodded. “Yeah, right. Let’s go get another couple of beers.”

They headed back to the house, but Hardy still couldn’t let it go. “But my problem is the blindside thing-it was like ‘what girl?’ ”

“Maybe he was concentrating on Rusty so hard he didn’t even notice Maxine.”

“You don’t notice a naked woman you have to shoot three times?”

Glitsky stopped again by the back door. They stood on a square of porch, hands in their pockets. The boys were playing somewhere within earshot, maybe around the front of the house. Hardy blew out, surprised to see a vapor trail. The chill had come in fast-a high-pressure cold that had wiped the sky almost purple.

“Okay, so he noticed her.”

“But, Abe, that’s my point. Baker said he had no idea what I was talking about when I said a woman had been killed at Rusty’s. And he sounded convincing, even to these ears.”