“CALVI,” I SAID.

“Who was you expecting?” said Calvi, the cigar remaining clamped between his teeth as he spoke. “Herbert Hoover?”

He was a thin wiry man with bristly gray hair and hollowed cheeks and a bitter reputation for violence. The word on Calvi was he talked too damn much, even with that voice scarred painful and rough by decades of rancid tobacco, but Calvi didn’t only talk when there was a more efficient way to communicate. Once, so the story went, he had drilled a man who was skimming off the skim, drilled him literally, with a Black & Decker and a three-quarter-inch bit, drilled him in the skull until the blood spurted and the dumb chuck admitted all and pled for mercy. The downtown boys, they laughed for weeks about that one, but after that one no one dared again to skim the skim from Calvi.

“I heard you called,” said Calvi. “What was it that you wanted, Vic?”

I glanced at Cressi, pointing his gun now at my face, and realized in a flash that I had been all wrong about everything, had trusted wrong and suspected wrong and now was face to face with the man who was behind all the violence that had been unleashed in the past few weeks. Calvi had returned to Philadelphia to wrest control of the city from Raffaello and the one man who could pull me out of what it was I had fallen into, Earl Dante, knew exactly how wrong I had been.

“I just called to say hello,” I said. “See how the weather was down there.”

“Hot,” said Calvi. “Hot as hell but hotter.”

“So I guess you’re up just to enjoy the beautiful Philadelphia spring?”

“I always liked you, Vic,” said Calvi. “I could always trust you, and you want to know why? Because I always understood your motives. You’re a simple man with a simple plan. Go for the dough. The world, it belongs to simple men. I send a guy to you I know he stays stand up and does his time with his mouth shut. No question about it because you know who is paying and it ain’t him, it’s me. And you know what, Vic? You done never let me down.”

“How’s my case going?” asked Cressi. “You got it dismissed yet?”

“That was a lot of guns you were buying, Pete,” I said. “And the flamethrower doesn’t help. But I’m moving to suppress the tapes and whatever else I can.”

“Atta boy,” said Peter.

“You know why I’m here, don’t you, Vic?” said Calvi.

“I think I do.”

“I want to apologize about you being in the car with that thing on the expressway. It couldn’t be helped. But you understand it was only business. No hard feelings, right?”

“Could I afford hard feelings right now?”

“No,” said Calvi.

A gay, friendly smile spread across my face. “Then no hard feelings.”

“You’re exactly what the man, he meant when he said the simple will inherit the earth,” said Calvi. “Let me tell you, when my turn comes, it will be very very profitable. And you, my friend, will share in those profits. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So I can count on you?”

I looked at Cressi with his gun and smiled again. “It sounds like a lucrative arrangement.”

“Exactly what I thought you’d say. And I’m taking that as a commitment, so there’s no going back. Now I understand you’ve been in touch with that snake Raffaello.”

“It was only because he was checking up on me after the thing with the car,” I blurted. “I don’t know where he is or what he is…”

“Shut up, Vic,” said Cressi with a wave of his gun and I shut right up.

“We need to meet, Raffaello and me,” said Calvi. “We need to meet and figure this whole thing out. Can you set up this meeting for us, Vic?”

“I can try.”

“Good boy, Vic,” said Calvi. “We’re not animals. If we can avoid a war all the better.”

“I think that’s what he wants too,” I said. “He told me he’s ready to step aside as long as there’s no war and his family is guaranteed safety.”

“He’ll turn over everything?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Everything?”

“So long as you give the guarantees.”

Calvi took the cigar out of his mouth for a moment and stared at it and for the first time a smile cracked his face. “You hear that, Peter,” he said. “It’s done.”

“It’s too easy,” said Cressi, shaking his head.

“I told you it would be easy,” said Calvi. “This never was his business. He was a cookie baker before he came into it. He never had the stomach for the rough stuff. He had the stomach he would have killed me rather then let me slink off to Florida like he did. I ain’t surprised he’s on his knees now. You’ll set up the meeting, Vic.”

“Now?”

“Not yet,” said Calvi. “I’ll tell you when. Sit down.”

“Why don’t you let her go while we talk,” I said, gesturing to Caroline, still standing behind me, quiet as a leg of lamb. Her face, when I looked at her, was transfixed with fear and I couldn’t tell just then if she was more terrified of the sight and size of Cressi’s gun or of the cat lying atop the metal box.

“She stays,” said Cressi.

“We don’t need her to speak to Raffaello,” I said.

“She stays,” said Calvi. “No more discussion. Sit down, missy. We all got to wait here some.”

Cressi gestured with the gun and I pulled out two chairs from the table, one for Caroline and one for me. Carefully I placed her in the chair to the left and sat in the chair directly across from Cressi. Calvi was to our right and the metal box from Charity Reddman’s grave was on the table between us. The black cat jumped off the box and high-stepped to the end of the table, sticking its nose close to Caroline’s face. Her body tense and still, Caroline shut her eyes and turned her face away.

“What, missy, you don’t like my cat?”

Caroline, face still averted, shook her head.

“She has a thing about cats,” I said.

“It’s a good cat. Come on over, Sam.” The cat sniffed a bit more around Caroline and then strolled over to Calvi, who stroked it roughly beneath its neck. “I named it after a fed prosecutor who’s been chasing me for years. I named it Sam, after the fed, and then took him to the vet to get his balls cut off. Very therapeutic.”

Cressi laughed.

“While we’re waiting,” said Calvi, “maybe we can take care of some unfinished business.”

Cressi leaned forward and lifted the lid off the metal box. “Where’s the rest of the shit what was supposed to be inside here?”

Caroline, her face still tense with fear, looked up with surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever it is I’m talking about I’m not talking to you,” snapped Cressi. “Vic knows what I’m talking about, a smart guy like him. Where’s the rest of it, Vic?”

“I don’t understand.”

Cressi reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. “A certain party what had been paying us for our services has requested we recover this here box and its contents, which are listed right here in black and white. The photographs and documents about some trust and old pieces of diary, they’re in here, all right. But the piece of paper, it lists other stuff that ain’t and so maybe you know where that other stuff, it went to, Vic.”

“Who’s the certain party?” I asked, wondering who would be so interested in the contents of the secret box of Faith Reddman Shaw.

“Not important.”

“It’s important as hell.”

“Give him what he wants, Vic,” said a scowling Calvi, his voice ominously soft. The cat’s black fur pricked up and it jumped off the table. It hopped to one of the couch cushions on the floor and curled on top of it. When it was settled it watched us with complete dispassion. “Give him the hell he wants and be done with it.”

“There’s a doctor’s invoice of some sort,” said Cressi, reading from the list.

I looked at Cressi and his gun and nodded. “All right,” I said. I stood and went over to the corner and found my briefcase among the scattered contents from the closet, the case’s sides slashed, its lock battered but still in place. I opened the combination and took out the invoice and handed it over.