Under a Gilded Moon(103)

Even as Sal and Nico had stowed away in a train car headed north, Sal had seen the face behind the lynchings: not so much John Parker, the mouthpiece of the riots who’d riled and rallied the mob, as Maurice Barthélemy himself, overseer of the tide of imports and exports that enriched the seaport’s salty lifeblood.

Barthélemy, whose greatest competitors there were the two powerful Italian families, the Provenzanos and the Matrangas, who battled for their own control of the wharves.

A man who stood to benefit more than any other if suddenly New Orleans despised and distrusted its Italian population.

Barthélemy, who would now dominate the waterfront, if no one suspected him. If Salvatore Catalfamo and anyone else who might point a finger at him could be found and silenced.

Maurice Barthélemy, whose daughter Sal could have taken revenge on. He’d lain awake thinking of this when she’d been only a name, only the idea of a daughter of the man behind so much death. He’d wanted to hate her as he did her father.

The daughter’s flirtations had probably been only a wild and dangerous gambit meant to distract and manipulate Sal—at first. But they’d quickly become something else for them both—a deadly pull, a kind of quicksand.

A key clanged in the lock of the cell. Nico pressed hard into his side, and Sal’s arm went more tightly around his brother as Wolfe shambled into the small space. His face, twitching and tense, was at odds with the casual way he was trying to walk.

Wolfe jerked his head down toward Nico. “Group of townspeople out there fussing how it ain’t right to hold a kid in jail. So I’ll be taking the boy now.”

“No.” Sal wrapped both arms around Nico. The boy buried his face in Sal’s chest.

“Relax. We’ll get him housed. Somewhere.”

“We will not let you do this.”

From outside the cell door, Leblanc appeared, smirking. “Good thing I hadn’t left town yet. Always like to be of service, even after I snag my man.” He leveled his revolver at Sal’s nose. “It’s not some eight-year-old kid I’ll be hauling back to New Orleans for a trial—assuming they don’t want you here for murder charges at the same time. It’s you, Catalfamo. Just you.”

Ignoring Leblanc, Sal appealed to Wolfe. “I beg you. My brother will not feel safe. Nico is used to me only.”

Wolfe reached to cinch Nico around the waist. And pulled.

Sal’s arms stronger than Wolfe’s, he held tight to Nico. “Please listen, please. My brother, he cannot walk right. He needs the help. Do not separate us!”

Nico reached for Sal’s face. “Ti amo.”

Leblanc sprang forward, punching Sal in the jaw.

Hunched sideways in pain, Sal clung to his brother. “Without me, he will not eat. Please—”

Leblanc raised his revolver again. Aimed this time at Nico’s head.

Sal saw Nico’s face turn toward the gun’s muzzle, his body suddenly gone still. His eyes held steady on Sal’s.

“Mi fido di te,” he whispered. I trust you.

“Best let go of the kid,” Leblanc spat, “or my next bullet’ll be to his head.”





Chapter 47

Anguished, Kerry stood over her father’s bed.

From the other side of the tick, Tully and Jursey watched her to gauge how they should feel. But Kerry herself could feel nothing. Except the sharp, torn edges around the hole where she ought to feel grief.

She should be in town at the jail to help the Catalfamos. She could picture little Nico, shivering, his frame already more bones than flesh, curled up on the cold floor.

Or she should be up at Barnard, her English lit professor expounding on the Romantic poets and their excess of emotion, Kerry writing down every word. Thinking how she came from people who let loose their sorrow and rage and desire only in lyrics and the keening draw of a bow over strings.

But here she stood instead, keeping watch over this man as he lay unconscious, a small moan every few moments. The father who’d wrung her mother dry. The turmoil he’d wreaked.

Kerry lifted her gaze from his face, gray and drawn, to the twins. Their eyes were a mirrored reflection, two sets of rounded blue pain.

“You said when you came to get me that you saw a change in him?”

“He’d got better,” Tully said. “Sitting up. Even spoke enough to wheeze out, ‘Get your sister.’”

“Tossing,” Jursey echoed. “Liked to stand up all by hisself.”

Kerry reached a hand to both of them across the bed. “I believe you. The final—” She stopped herself there. After all, she couldn’t be sure. “The stages of a sickness can be odd. You were right to come get me.”

The snap of twigs and a low rumble of voices from somewhere outside made them all spin toward the door.

With no windows in the barn, Kerry hurried to its entrance to see who was approaching. From behind her, Romeo growled, brown hackles raised.

Kerry slipped a hand to her right boot. There: the knife.

Jursey joined her at the door, his legs already spread out in the best mountain man stance a thirteen-year-old could manage. He glanced down at her hand. “You always could gig a trout in the gills from a good dozen foot back.”

It was an exaggeration, but they both took a moment’s comfort in it.