Chapter 1 - The Price of a Meal
Mister, can I shine your shoes for a meal?
The voice was small, but it cut through the Taylor Street traffic like a dropped coin on marble.
Gabriel Santoro had just stepped out of the town car in front of Alberto's, the oldest red-sauce restaurant in Little Italy, where his family had owned the corner table since before he was born. Tommy Bruno held the door. Two men in dark overcoats watched the sidewalk with the bored vigilance of professionals. It was nineteen degrees. The wind off the lake smelled like snow and car exhaust.
None of them had noticed the girl until she spoke.
She knelt on the frozen concrete beside a battered cigar box fitted with a leather strap. Her green parka was too big, the cuffs folded back three times. A mustard-yellow scarf was wound twice around her neck, with a dropped stitch near the end that someone had never fixed. Her braids were tight and a little crooked. She could not have been more than seven.
Tommy took a step toward her. Kid, move along.
Tommy. Gabe did not raise his voice. He rarely needed to.
Tommy stopped.
The girl hadn't flinched. She had folded her mittened hands on the lid of the box and was waiting, chin level, eyes fixed on Gabe's shoes. Her cheeks were chapped raw. She wasn't holding out a hand or a cup, and she wasn't pleading. In thirty-six years Gabe had learned to spot a hustle at fifty feet, and this wasn't one. She was applying for a job.
Why a meal? he asked. Why not money?
The kitchen on Halsted closes at four, mister. And Grandpa says you shouldn't ask for what you didn't earn. She considered him. He's sick. We haven't eaten today.
Gabe crouched, slowly, so his long black coat wouldn't loom over her. What's your name?
Nora Quinn.
Can you do oxfords, Nora Quinn?
Yes, sir. Calfskin? She glanced at the toe. Then black cream, not wax. Wax cracks in the cold.
Tommy made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh. Gabe set his right shoe on her box.
She worked the way surgeons work. First the dry cloth, three passes, heel to toe. Then the cream, no more than a pea's worth, rubbed in small circles with two fingers. Her flannel rag had once been a man's shirt. When she brushed, she brushed in one direction only, and the leather came up dark and deep as a pond at night. Gabe watched her small chapped hands and thought, absurdly, of his father's.
Who taught you?
Grandpa. He used to fix shoes. And locks. And pretty much everything, till his heart got bad.
She finished the left shoe, tapped his ankle politely, and sat back. Done. That's five dollars.
He gave her a twenty. She looked at it as if it might bite. Then she dug in her pocket, produced three crumpled ones and some coins, and held them out. I don't have change for that.
Keep it.
Then I'll do the other shoes again. Twice. Her jaw was set. I don't take what I didn't work for.
Gabe's chest did something odd and unfamiliar. He had spent most of his life among people who took everything and called it respect.
Nora!
A man was coming out of the narrow alley beside the shuttered florist, holding a paper bag of day-old bread against his chest. He was tall once, and thin now, in a gray coat buttoned wrong. A steel brace showed under one trouser leg. His face was the color of putty. I told you not to go past the lamppost.
I stayed in the light, Grandpa.
The old man opened his mouth to apologize to the stranger. Then his eyes dropped to Gabe's shirt cuffs, and the bag slipped from his fingers.
Gabe wore his father's cufflinks every day. They were a matched pair of brass skeleton keys, each no longer than a thumbnail, worn smooth by a man he had buried at twenty-two.
Enzo, the old man breathed.
Every muscle in Tommy's body shifted. Gabe lifted one finger without looking. Enzo Santoro was my father.
The old man crossed the sidewalk faster than his brace should have allowed and gripped Gabe's sleeve with both hands. His fingers were ice. He said you'd come. He said you'd be wearing the keys. His pale eyes searched Gabe's face. Boy, who is waiting for you inside that restaurant?
My uncle. Salvatore Ferraro. We have dinner the first Friday of every month.
The old man closed his eyes as if he'd been struck.
Then Enzo was right, he whispered. Don't go in there. And ask me about the clock. Not here, not where they can hear.
May you like
Gabe turned his head.
Through the frosted front window of Alberto's, beneath a gold lamp at the corner table, Sal Ferraro had lifted his wineglass in greeting. He was smiling. And he was looking not at Gabe, but at the old man.
