Chasers by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page A

Pelfrey’s direction. “As fucked-up as he is, even he knows a good plan when he hears it.”
    “Well, go ahead then, you think it’s so fuckin’ easy,” the first cheap suit said. “Take down that undertaker and make your score. But don’t you forget to come back here and square us a few rounds on the arm once you do.”

    Andy Victorino was in the spacious and elegantly furnished third-floor dining room, helping his mother arrange cups and plates on the thick, hand-carved table. It had, down the years, evolved into a family tradition shared by the three of them each evening: a hot cup of espresso and two chocolate biscotti when Francesco closed up shop for the night and made his way up the hall steps. It gave them a chance to reflect quietly on the day or discuss a variety of matters big or small that pertained to all three, but mostly school or recreational activities built around Andy’s often overloaded schedule. On a few of the nights, they would just sit through dessert in silence, each lost in his own world of thought.
    “Papa is running late,” Andy said, glancing at the wooden clock positioned in the center of the wall just above an antique hutch filled with silverware and dishes. “As usual.”
    “He loses track of time,” Lucia said with an understanding shrug. “He concentrates on his work, not on the hour.”
    “Should I go down and get him?” Andy said, this time looking at his mother and giving her a wide smile in anticipation of the answer he knew he would get.
    “Go,” Lucia said with a wave of her right hand. “And don’t you keep him too long. Help him clean up, and then you both get back here before my coffee tastes like old rubber.”
    Andy had already made a hard dash out the door and was halfway down the hall stairs by the time she had finished her admonitions. Lucia slid a chair from the table and sat down, her slippered feet folded one over the other. She shook her head, the rich dark strands of her black hair coating the sides of her face, and smiled. This time of the night, long after the mourners had left the parlor and the house was as quiet as a country morning, belonged to her son and her husband. The special few minutes the two shared in the basement, their evening talks covering a wide variety of topics, further cemented the cast-iron bond that existed between them. “They are so very much alike,” Lucia once told her best friend in the city, Angelina Cortese, a widow who owned the florist shop across from their parlor. “It’s as if they were one person. Andrew is so driven—sometimes I think too much so—but then so is Francesco. And both treat work as if it were its own reward. Andrew asks his father hundreds of questions, and each one is patiently answered. And if Francesco doesn’t know or isn’t totally sure, they both make their way to the library and don’t come back until they have the answer they need.”
    “Does Andrew want to be an undertaker like his father?” Angelina asked.
    “He wants to be a doctor,” Lucia said with a glint of pride. “He respects the work his father does, but he would much rather save a life than prepare it for its departure. Still, the time spent down in the mortuary with his father will serve him well once he’s in medical school. He has already seen the dead, and learned that from them he has nothing to fear. It’s the living who give us all our grief.”

    Francesco Victorino turned when he felt the shadow descend. He looked at James Pelfrey, saw the shaky smile on the thin man’s face and the large blade of a knife hanging from his right hand. He saw the violent tremors in the legs and upper body, and the lost look embedded in a set of eyes the color of old chalk. Francesco Victorino had seen more than enough bodies in his life, both living and dead, to know what the one now standing before him had come to do.
    Bring his dream to an end.
    “Give me the money,” Pelfrey stammered, his voice sounding as if it were