The candle and incense, the darkness and thick, plague-infested air, the piled pillows at the head of the bed, the racking cough, the specter of death crouching like a gargoyle on the thin, aged chest.

“You want cup coffee, Victor?”

“No thank you, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“I’ll shout down to Thalassa, she brew pot. Insipid what she brews, more like spit than coffee, what with her using the grounds over and over, but still you can have.”

“Really, I am fine.”

“Come close, then. Sit. We need talk.”

I came close, I sat. She reached her hand to my cheek. I tried not to flinch at the feel of her oily skin, the waft of her breath.

“You been on TV. My Charlie, he’s become a celebrity because of painting. Which is funny, since my Charlie, he couldn’t draw a dog.”

“Someone else went to the press about the painting.”

“Not you, Victor? You seem to enjoy it so. Then who?”

“I don’t know, but once it was out, I thought giving the interviews was the best thing for Charlie. But it might not have worked out that way.”

“What’s matter, Victor? You have problem?”

“Charlie does, yes,” I said. “I need you to get him in touch with me.”

“Of course. But tell me first, what is trouble?”

“I really need to talk to Charlie about it,” I said. “He’s the client.”

“But he’s my son, Victor. I know what he needs. It always was such, and is no different now. None of us ever change, and Charlie, he changes less. You tell me his problem, I tell you how to solve.”

“I’m not sure I can do that, ma’am.”

She made some sort of hacking sound, and then the coughing began, great heaping coughs that brought her body into spasm. In the middle of it all, she raised her right hand, let it hover in the air for a moment, and then slapped my ear, hard.

“Ow.”

Her coughing subsided as quickly as it began. “Don’t tell me ‘can’t,’” she said. “You have obligation.”

As I rubbed the side of my head, I said softly, “What obligation?”

“Whether you know or not, it wraps round your neck like snake and it is alive. So don’t say ‘can’t’ to me, Victor. You have good Greek face, but you not Greek enough down there to say ‘can’t’ to me.”

“What favor did you do for my father?”

“Why you ask me? Ask him. Or are you afraid of him, too?”

“Not afraid, exactly.”

She barked out a laugh, bitter and understanding all at once. “I wouldn’t want to have to call your father again. It upsets him so to hear from me.”

“I bet it does.”

“So now that this nonsense is finished with, tell me about my Charlie.”

“There are a couple things. A reporter wants to interview Charlie. I thought it might help prod the government.”

“No. What else?”

“This reporter seems sincere, and I’m not sure how it can hurt.”

“It is reporter. They can always hurt. And remember what I tell you about my son? He’s fool. You think anything he say can help, maybe you fool, too. What else you got?”

“It’s not going to be as easy as we thought getting him home.”

“Tell me.”

“First, it appears, even after fifteen years, Charlie is still in danger. I received a visit from Charlie’s old gang. The visitors roughed me up a little and then said worse would come Charlie’s way if he came home.”

“Okay, no problem. Lean close. This is what we do. We don’t tell Charlie nothing about this.”

“I can’t do that, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“You can and you will. Charlie is coward. He was afraid of bath, he was afraid of girls, he shakes in terror from his own shadow. It is why he ran so long ago. We tell him this, he disappear for good. You no tell him. Better we protect him when he comes.”

“They’re going to kill him if he comes home, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“Pooh, Victor. They just talking. Big talkers, all of them. They want to come, they come to me, right? I’m reason for my Charlie to come home. And when they come, I show them something.”

She sat up, reached over to a table by her bed, opened a drawer, pulled out an obscenely huge gun that glittered gaily in the candlelight.

“Gad, Mrs. Kalakos. That’s a cannon.”

“Let them come. I blow holes in them size of grapefruits. You hungry, Victor? You want grapefruit? I’ll call down to Thalassa to bring you grapefruit.”

“No thank you, ma’am, no grapefruit. Do you have a license for that?”

“I’m eighty-nine years old, what I need piece paper for?”

“You should get a license for the gun.”

“Be like that, Victor, and I won’t tell you what else I have for those skatofatses.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to know. I’m going to have to tell your son about the threats, Mrs. Kalakos.”

She waved the gun a bit before shoving it back into the drawer. “Do what you must. But you tell him, too, that I take care of it for him, I protect him if police won’t. What next?”

“There’s a federal prosecutor who is causing problems. She’s the key in allowing Charlie to come home without being thrown in jail, but she is refusing to do anything unless Charlie gives her what she wants.”

“And what is it she wants?”

“She wants him to talk. To tell her everything.”

“No problem. I make him talk.”

“But she doesn’t want him to just talk about the Warrick Brothers Gang. She wants him to talk about before that, about what went down when that painting was stolen thirty years ago.”

She looked at me for a long moment, her moist eyes glittering in the sputtering candlelight. “Ah, yes,” she said finally. “That might be problem. You have friends, Victor? Old friends, from when you were child, friends that are closer than brothers, closer than blood?”

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“Too bad for you. I had friends like that in old country, and Charlie, despite himself, he found such friends here. When they was just toddlers, they ran around with each other in the blow-up pools. Five closest friends in all the world. My Charlie, and Hugo, always running around like a crazy boy, all legs, he was, and Ralph Ciulla, big like man already at twelve, and little Joey Pride. And then, of course, Teddy, Teddy Pravitz, who was leader. Five neighborhood boys, always together, always. Once – and I tell you this so you know what it was – once a group from the Oxford Circle – you know this place?”

“Down Cottman?”

“Yes, exactly. Once a group boys came into our neighborhood looking for trouble. This was when my son Charles was in high school. The Oxford boys found little Joey Pride. Joey was a nice boy, but black and with a mouth on him, and they beat him bloody. Just for the sport of it, Victor. Animals. The police threw up their hands. What was to do? But Teddy, he knew what to do.”

“What was that, Mrs. Kalakos?”

“You want tea? I call down to Thalassa.”

“No thank you, ma’am. Really, I’m fine.”

“No, we need tea.” She opened her mouth wide and shrieked, “Thalassa. Come now.”

There was the sound of something dropping onto the floor below, a rustle, a sigh, weary footfalls rising up the stairs. The door creaked open, a withered face appeared.

“Victor, he wants tea,” said Mrs. Kalakos.

Thalassa turned her head to me, stared with unalloyed hatred.

“He likes sugar with his tea,” said Mrs. Kalakos. “And those round cookies.”

“Really, I’m fine,” I said.

The face slipped away, the door creaked closed.

“She good girl. Alas, her tea, it is thin like her blood. She saves her tea bags from cup to cup, as if tea were gold. We still have tea from when Clinton was president. Ah, Clinton, he was part Greek, he didn’t know it, but I could tell.”

“What did Teddy do after the beating?”

“Teddy, he was such a beautiful boy. So clever. He came to me, asked for keys to my car. I knew what he wanted, and so I gave to him. That boy was Greek where it counted. Off they went into the night, even Joey with his arm in sling, the five of them with their blood hot and their baseball bats, off they went. And they took care of it, Victor. It didn’t even matter that he was wrong boy. Those animals from Oxford Circle, they not come round no more. The boys protected each other, you understand? Such bond survives the years.”