Page 97 of The Furies

On the other hand, he had cause to want Angioni out of the way. He’d asked for something to be done, but the Genoveses weren’t about to rein in their golden boy in western Massachusetts, not while he was earning for them. In that situation, a man might be tempted to take matters into his own hands. Was that what happened? they asked Mattia. Did you try to talk to Alessandro? Except maybe he didn’t listen. They could understand that. Alessandro didn’t listen to most people, and barely paid attention to the bosses if he thought he knew better. He had a way of raising a man’s temperature, of turning a conversation into a confrontation. You couldn’t throw a stone in parts of the Northeast without hitting someone who was taking blood pressure medication because of Alessandro. They’d made efforts to warn him about it, encouraging him to modify his behavior. His provocations were low-level, not enough to invite punishment, but if Alessandro didn’t get a handle on them, they threatened to escalate. So his bosses could appreciate how someone like Mattia, a mature individual with a reputation for restraint, might have felt forced to deal with him, because even the fucking Dalai Lama would eventually have resorted to kicking the shit out of Alessandro, and Buddha himself might have been tempted to take a crowbar to him. Did it play out that way? they asked. Did you start by talking, and next thing Alessandro was pushing you, getting in your face? You hit him and he went down, banged his head on the sidewalk and started bleeding from the ears. Or did you think, you know, fuck it, and shoot him? God knows, you wouldn’t have been the first to consider it. If you tell us the truth, we can work something out: reparation, whatever. You must have money put aside. You can take the hit. How about it? Come clean, and we can all go home.

But Mattia didn’t come clean. He stuck to his story. He didn’t know anything about what might have happened to Angioni. He hadn’t seen him in weeks, didn’t want to see him. The guy was an asshole. They’d said it themselves.

They told him his car had been spotted in Springfield. He told them it couldn’t have been because he hadn’t been anywhere near Springfield. Didn’t he want to know who saw it? they asked. No, said Mattia, because if he wasn’t in Springfield, they were mistaken. Whatever, or whomever, they thought they’d seen, it wasn’t his car, and it wasn’t him.

So where had he been? they asked. Where had he been when? he replied. If they wanted to know everywhere he’d gone, and everyone he’d spoken to, since Angioni dropped off the map, they might as well shoot him now because he didn’t keep a diary. If the feds were going to lock him up, he’d make them work for it. He wasn’t about to leave a confession on his desk.

Everyone laughed at that, then someone hit him again.

It went on for a day and most of a night. It was still dark when they eventually returned him to his home, but there was light in the east. They helped him from the van, and two of them made sure he could stay upright unaided before they rang the doorbell. Amara answered within seconds, because someone would have made a call: Dante, probably, telling her not to worry, it was just a conversation, though she’d have known better. Amara wasn’t dressed for bed, and he guessed that she’d slept on the couch in the living room, if she’d slept at all. She wanted to be ready in case she got another call, in case he never came home. But now he had been returned to her, and she held him close, burying her face in his neck, his chest, smelling blood, sweat, and worse. She didn’t care. He was hers, and he was back in her arms. She helped him up to the bathroom, took off his clothes, dressed his wounds, and dosed him with ibuprofen, whiskey, and a sleeping pill, to hell with the potential risks of mixing them. Her face was the last thing he saw before his eyes closed, and it was all that he could do not to weep.

The next day, for reasons he could never explain, he bought his first pack of gum since childhood, and he hadn’t stopped chewing gum since.

* * *

AMARA HAD GUESSED. OF course she had. From the moment questions started being asked about Alessandro Angioni, she’d made the connection. The way she looked at Mattia changed. She saw what he’d done, because no one fathomed him as she did, but nothing needed to be said, and nothing ever would. Even in the years since, the dead man’s name had never once come up between them. Angioni’s fate remained unknown, and Mattia thought that even Dante Vero had only fleetingly, and halfheartedly, suspected him of involvement. Mattia had been offered up to the Genoveses more as a gesture of appeasement than anything else, and he had come through, which was why no one objected when he announced his intention to walk away and make a new life in Maine. Mattia Reggio had been a stand-up guy. He’d done the right thing.

But he knew the truth, and his wife knew it. And here was the other thing, the worm that twisted in Mattia’s belly: the investigator named Parker knew something of it, too.

Mattia kept a relic of Padre Pio in his car. It was a fragment of cloth from one of the saint’s robes, sealed in a small brass locket attached to a chain with a crucifix. It had been a gift from Leo Sirola, Donna’s father, and was one of the few physical objects treasured by Mattia, who was utilitarian about possessions. Padre Pio, it was said, could see into the hearts and souls of men, particularly during the examination of conscience required by the sacrament of confession. No sin could be concealed from him, and therefore no forgiveness was possible through him without complete honesty.

Parker, Mattia believed, possessed some version of the power of divination, because when he looked at Mattia, Parker perceived his sin; not every detail of it, nor the identity of the victim, possibly not even the exact nature of the crime, but he was aware that Mattia was engaged in an act of deception, one that involved violence and death. It was as though his gaze contained UV light, so that blood, or the faded stain of it, appeared to him as a kind of adumbration. It was the private investigator’s gift, rendered sharper by the blood Parker himself had spilled, and the secrets he kept.

The result was that, for the first time since the night he had killed Alessandro Angioni, Mattia felt the urge to confess. He wanted to tell Parker what he had done—not for absolution, but for understanding. This was why Parker’s rejection pained Mattia so much. Parker didn’t trust him, but if he knew what Mattia had done, and why, he might change his mind. Parker, Mattia believed, saw only the shadow, not the reality of the man who cast it, not the truth of him.

But Mattia could not tell Parker about Angioni’s death. If he had not shared the facts of it with his wife, he would not do so with a stranger. Rather, he was determined by his actions to prove Parker mistaken, to show him that he was worthy of his confidence, his respect, even his friendship. This was why, at Parker’s instigation, he had reached out to his old comrades, men whom he had studiously avoided since retreating to Maine. He would do the right thing, and in doing so would earn Parker’s respect.

Mattia Reggio believed himself to be a good man, but one who had committed a single terrible act—even if, when his time came, he would stand before God and tell Him that not to have acted, not to have intervened, would have been much worse. Mattia would call God on this. Because how often had He disdained to intervene, failing to stop innocents from suffering? God, Mattia thought, had spent too long without someone to criticize His behavior. It was Mattia Reggio’s opinion that a lot of the tribulations in the world would have been solved if God had a wife.

Parker might have understood, had Mattia been able to open up to him. Parker did not stand by. Parker intervened. Perhaps when they grew closer, and Parker learned to trust him, Mattia would speak with him of what he had done. He would tell Parker of Donna Sirola’s children, how she was married now, but still teaching. Mattia had seen pictures of the kids, twin girls. Leo Sirola had emailed some images to him shortly after they were born. Afterward Mattia had called Leo from a pay phone and warned him never to make contact again. He didn’t care what Leo knew, or thought he knew, or even if he didn’t think or know anything at all. The Genoveses were always alert, always listening.

This, too, Parker might have understood.

CHAPTER XXX

I answered Reggio’s call.

“I got word to Dante,” he said, “and he got word back to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He wants to meet, in person.”

“Mattia, there’s a clock ticking on this.”

“It’s how Dante does business. He’s not going to talk about Nate Sawyer over the phone, not even on a burner.”

“Then where and when?”

“He’s prepared to split the distance: Portsmouth. There’s a bar called the Hitch Knot. It’s run by a friend. He can be there in two hours. So can I.”

The prospect of a rendezvous in a bar run by a friend of the Office didn’t exactly fill me with happiness, not if Dante Vero’s people were involved in the shakedown of Sarah Abelli.

“I think you should stay away from this, Mattia. You’ve done enough.”

I meant it, and still I detected hurt in his silence.

“But tell Dante I won’t be coming alone,” I said.

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