“Buon giorno, Gualtieri,” said Raffaello in a voice that echoed from the gray metal hulls of the boats surrounding us. “I’m saddened that it is you, old friend, who has betrayed me.”

“You should never have sent me off to Florida,” said Calvi.

“I thought you’d like the ocean,” said Raffaello. “I thought the salt air would act as a balm on your anger.”

“It’s hot. Hot as hell but hotter. And you know when they eat dinner down there? Aaah, forget about it. Don’t get me started on Florida. Is that it in the bag?”

“As I promised.”

“I will care for it with honor and devotion. I want you to know, Enrico, that I have nothing but respect for you.”

“That is why you shoot up my car on the Schuylkill Expressway and start a war against me?”

“It was business, Enrico, only that. Nothing more. Nothing personal.”

Raffaello stared hard at him for a moment and then he shrugged. “Of course. I understand.”

“I knew you would,” said Calvi. “You are a man of honor. Lenny, your performance in the car after that thing on the expressway was exemplary. It would be a privilege to have you drive for me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Calvi,” said Lenny in his thick nasal voice, “but I got granddaughters living in California, not far from Santa Anita. If you’ll allow, I’ll retire along with Mr. Raffaello.”

“As you wish,” said Calvi. “Get the bag, Anton.”

Anton, with his hands in the pockets of his long black leather jacket, walked slowly toward Raffaello. As he approached, the weightlifter, his pinched nose flaring, took a step forward. Dante put a restraining hand on the weightlifter’s arm and he stepped back. Anton halted before Raffaello and stared at him for a moment. Then his gaze dropped with embarrassment. Anton reached down for the black leather satchel in Raffaello’s hand. Raffaello stuck out his jaw and shook his head even as he let go. Anton Schmidt, with bag in hand, backed away a few steps before turning around. He brought the black bag straight to Calvi. Without looking inside, Anton opened it.

Calvi examined the contents for a moment before reaching into the bag and pulling out what at first looked to be a small metallic sculpture two feet high. The metal was dented and scratched but it had been cleaned and polished so that it gleamed even in the morning shadow. The dark wooden base of the object supported a large brass cup atop of which crouched the figure of a man, his front knee bent, his rear leg straight, his right arm hoisting a shiny metal ball. A bowling ball? I realized only then that this was a bowling trophy. Calvi held the trophy high, examining it as if it were a priceless jewel, and his face glowed with a satisfaction as bright as the polished brass. Then he placed the trophy back into the leather bag. Anton closed it. With the black satchel tightly in his grip, Anton regained his position at the end of our line.

Calvi took a cigar and a gold lighter from his inside jacket pocket. He flicked to life a flame and sucked it into the tobacco until a plume of smoke was born. “And so it is done,” he said.

“I have a home in Cape May,” said Raffaello. “I was planning to retire there and spend the last years of my life painting the ocean in all four of its seasons.”

Calvi sucked on his cigar for a moment before saying, “Too close.”

Raffaello nodded and gave a grudging smile. “I understand. You need freedom from my influence. You are showing your wisdom as a leader already, Gualtieri. Maybe I’ll go to Boca Raton, in your blessed Florida.”

“Too close,” said Calvi.

“I have relatives in Sedona, Arizona. The desert too can be magnificent on canvas.”

“Too close.”

“Yes,” said Raffaello, nodding again. “This country is maybe too small for us together. I have not been to Sicily since I was a boy. It is time I return. The light there, I remember, was unearthly beautiful.”

Calvi took another suck at his cigar and let the vile smoke out slowly. “Too close.”

“Tell me, Gualtieri. What about Australia?”

“Too close.”

Raffaello leaned toward Calvi and squinted his eyes as if peering at a strange vision. “Yes, now I see. Now I understand fully.”

“You should have killed me when you had the chance, Enrico,” said Calvi. He took a step forward and raised his arms and shouted as if in invocation to the heavens, “A-whore-a!”

I cringed from the fusillade I expected to thunder down upon the four men and the Cadillac but instead of thunder there was a towering silence.

Calvi looked up to the decks of the carriers, first to his left then to his right, again raised his arms and shouted, “A-whore-a!”

Nothing.

Calvi turned to Anton, who shrugged. Peter Cressi, next to me, stepped back and stared up. The Cuban looked around, dazed.

“Now, you idiots!” shouted Calvi. “Now!”

A sound, a dragging scraping sound, came from the flight deck of the Saratoga to our left and when we looked up we saw someone, finally, but he wasn’t standing, he was falling, slowly it seemed, twisting in the air like a drunken diver, spinning almost gracefully as he fell until his body slammed into the cement surface of the pier with a dull, lifeless thud, punctuated by the sudden cracking of bones.

Another scraping to the right and a body rolling off the deck of the Forrestal, like a child down a hill, rolling down down, arms flailing, legs splitting, back arching from the fall and then the cracking thud, followed by another, softer sound from the body returning to the pier after its bounce. And even before that second soft sound reached us with all its portent, another scraping and another body falling, the feet revolving slowly to the sky and the head dropping until its dive was stopped by the urgency of the pier and this time there was no bounce.

From the left another body, from the right another, this one hitting not cement but water, and from the hammerhead crane behind the Cadillac still another, all falling lifeless to the street, with thuds and cracks like chicken bones being broken and sucked of their marrow, or into the river with quiet splashes, and soon it was raining bodies on Pier Four and in the middle of this storm of the macabre, Raffaello, still leaning on his cane, said in a soft voice that cut like the tone of a triangle through the strains of death, “You’re right, Gualtieri. I should have killed you.”

Suddenly a pop came from the hammerhead crane behind the Cadillac and the Cuban’s throat exploded in blood and he collapsed to the cement like a sack of cane sugar. Before I could recover from the sight another shot cracked through the sound of breaking bodies and Anton Schmidt lay sprawled on the pier beside Calvi, the black satchel still gripped in his pale hand.

After the two shots the sounds of falling corpses and breaking bones subsided and there was a moment of silence on Pier Four.

Calvi reached a hand into his raincoat before shrugging. “Maybe the thing on the expressway, it was a bit much, hey, Enrico?”

“You could never have handled the trophy, Gualtieri,” said Raffaello. “You’re too small. You’re a midget. Even on top a mountain you’d still be a midget. But think of it this way, you greedy dog. Whatever hell we’re sending you to, at least it’s not Florida.”

Before Calvi could pull the pistol out of the raincoat, gunfire erupted from the Saratoga and the Forrestal and the crane and Calvi’s chest writhed red as if a horde of vile stinging insects were struggling to escape the corpse as it fell.

I couldn’t even register all that was happening right next to me on the pier before I felt an arm wrap with a jerk around my throat and a gun press to my head. The arm tightened and I was pulled backward.

Peter Cressi, his breath hot and fast in my ear, shouted, “You take me then you’re also taking Vic.”

I was so stunned by the maneuver it took me a moment to realize I couldn’t breathe. I started yanking at the arm around my throat but it was like steel.