A poor little girl was never supposed to enter the Moretti mansion, but when she found the Mafia boss struggling to breathe, she risked everything to save him—and her innocent question revealed a secret that made his most trusted lieutenant go pale.

The hotel in Scranton was called the Lackawanna Arms, though it had neither arms nor anything that could be described as lackawanna beyond the smell of bituminous coal dust that blew through the loose window sashes whenever the freight trains shunted three hundred yards away on the Delaware line.

Martha sat on the single iron bed, her coat still on, her fingers picking at the frayed edges of the five-hundred-dollar bills Lucas had given her.

"We can't stay here, Lily," she whispered.

Lily was standing on a stool by the bathroom sink, watching her own reflection in the mirror. The mirror was old; the silver backing had flaked away in the lower corners, leaving black, jagged spots that looked to the girl like the mold that grew behind the sink in their old flat.

"The mister was big," Lily said. She had her blue inhaler in her teeth, holding it like a pipe the way she had seen the old men do on the stoops on Tenth Avenue. "He had hair on his hands like the butcher."

"Don't talk about the mister," Martha snapped, her voice cracking with the hysteria she had been holding down since the bus station in Newark. "You don't say his name. You don't say the city. You don't say nothing to the lady at the counter downstairs. If she asks, your name is Susan. You hear me? Susan Miller. We come from Altoona."

"I don't like Susan," Lily said, her voice muffled around the plastic mouthpiece. "Susan is the girl with the squint who stole my ribbon."

"I don't care about the ribbon!" Martha jumped up from the bed, seized the girl by the shoulders, and pulled her down off the stool with a jerk that rattled Lily’s teeth. "You don't know what these men are, Lily! You don't know what they do! They don't put people in jail! They put them in the dirt! They put them in the swamp behind the turnpike where nobody ever finds their shoes!"

Lily looked at her mother’s eyes. They were wide, red, wet with the greasy grease of cold sweat. She had seen her mother like this once before—when the landlord had come with two men who smelled of kerosene and had started throwing the mattresses out the front window because the back rent had gone past forty days.

"He said thank you," Lily whispered.

"He’s a devil," Martha said, her face dropping into her hands as she sank back onto the thin mattress. "The whole lot of them are devils. The Romanos, the Morettis, the old men at the funeral home... they have the police in their pockets and the judges in their cellars. If that man with the yellow shoes finds out you spoke to the boss... if he finds out what you saw..."

A car door slammed in the alley below the window.

It wasn't a Scranton sound. Scranton cars were old Plymouths and rusted-out Dodges with broken mufflers that backfired like bird guns when they hit the grade on Lackawanna Avenue.

This was the heavy, muffled *thump* of a double-sealed door on a modern chassis—the kind of sound that cost five thousand dollars in an agency showroom in Manhattan.

Martha went rigid.

She didn't breathe. Her hands stayed frozen against her cheeks, her thumbs digging into the corners of her jaw until her skin went white.

Footsteps came up the rear fire escape: three slow, heavy treads, then a pause, then the faint, metallic *clink* of an iron bolt being turned with a pair of pliers.

"Lily," Martha breathed. Her voice had no sound in it now; it was just the hiss of air through dry teeth. "Under the bed. Back against the baseboard. Don't take the medicine. Don't make the puff. If you make the puff, he’ll hear the whistle."

Lily didn't move toward the bed. She had seen what lived under hotel beds in Scranton: the flattened beer caps, the dry gray balls of dust, and the brown things with many legs that ran when you pulled the valance back.

Instead, she stepped back into the bathroom.

The bathroom had no window. It was six feet of green-and-white hex tile, a clawfoot tub with rust stains around the drain that looked like dried liver, and a narrow linen chute behind the toilet where the maids dropped the soiled towels down to the laundry in the basement.

The handle of the linen chute was brass, polished smooth by fifty years of chambermaids’ knuckles.

The outer door to the bedroom didn't splinter; it clicked.

A key turned in the lock—the skeleton key the hotel kept on the peg behind the desk, the one with the brass tag marked *4B*.

The door swung inward four inches.

Through the crack, Lily could see the floor of the hallway. The carpet was green runner, threadbare in the center, tacked down with rusty staples.

Stepping onto the runner was a shoe.

It was tan Scotch-grain. It had small, decorative perforations across the toe cap in the shape of a bird’s wing. The leather was clean, free of the Scranton coal dust, polished until it took the yellow glare of the twenty-five-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling cord.

"Martha?"

The voice was high, smooth, carrying that pleasant, North Jersey lilt that sounded like a man offering to carry your packages across the street.

"Martha, you don't have to be scared. Lucas sent me. He was worried about you taking the bus in the rain. He’s got the big car down on the corner. We’re going to take you and the little girl out to the farm in Sussex. Nobody’s going to bother you there."

Martha didn't answer. She was standing by the dresser, her right hand hooked into the neck of a heavy ceramic water pitcher that sat on an iron tray.

"Martha," the voice continued, closer now. The shoe took another step. The second shoe followed. "Don't make this hard on the girl. You know how she gets when she’s nervous. Her chest closes up. You don't want her having an attack in the back of some dirty rooming house where there isn't an oxygen tank for ten miles."

Victor Romano stepped fully into the room.

He wasn't wearing his overcoat. He had on a dark gray cardigan—very soft, cashmere, with pearl buttons—and his linen shirt was open at the throat, revealing the gold chain and the small gold cross that rested against his collarbone. He looked like an uncle who had stopped by on a Sunday afternoon to drop off some bakery rolls.

In his right hand, held down against the seam of his trousers, was a small, flat automatic pistol—a .25 caliber Beretta with pearl grips that looked like a toy against his thick, hair-backed fingers.

"Where is she, Martha?" Victor asked gently.

Martha lifted the ceramic pitcher. Her arms were shaking so violently the water inside slopped over the lip, splashing against the faded wallpaper.

"Get out," she croeaked.

Victor sighed. He didn't raise the pistol. He just shook his head, his face full of that mild, patient disappointment he used when the warehouse inventory was short three cases of gin.

"You’re an idiot, Martha. You’ve always been an idiot. I told your brother four years ago not to hire you for the house. I told him you had bad nerves."

He took one step toward her.

The bathroom door was cracked two inches. Lily, her eye pressed to the gap beside the brass hinge, saw the man’s profile.

He didn't look like a devil. He looked like the man who sold the newspapers at the kiosk by the ferry—the one who gave her a stick of red gum whenever her mother had the exact change for the ledger.

She reached into her nightshirt pocket.

Her thumb found the chipped blue nozzle.

She didn't know about the five-hundred-dollar bills. She didn't know about the pier leases on Fulton Street. She only knew that when the man with the yellow shoes had knelt by the table in the big house, he had smelled like peppermints, and now the room smelled of peppermints again—strong, sweet, cold, like the water that comes out of the iron pump in the playground after the boys have been spitting in the trough.

"Mister," she said.

The sound was very small, barely louder than the squeak of the linoleum under her heel.

Victor’s head snapped toward the bathroom.

The smile on his face didn't drop; it merely set, like hot paraffin when the flame is blown out.

"Lily?" he said. His voice was lower now, sweet as syrup over cold griddle cakes. "Is that you, baby? Come on out here. I got something for your chest. A new one. Not the cracked one your mama gave you. A pretty silver one."

He took two steps toward the bathroom door.

Martha screamed.

It wasn't a word—just a high, animal screech that tore the wallpaper off the quiet of the room. She lunged from the dresser, the heavy ceramic pitcher swinging in both hands, her weight behind it, aiming for the side of Victor’s temple where the gray hair was combed back with pomade.

Victor didn't look back.

His left arm came up with the smooth, practiced ease of a man who had boxed four rounds a week at the Catholic Youth Center until he was thirty. His forearm caught Martha across the bridge of the nose with a dry, splintering *crack* like an axe hitting a birch limb.

The pitcher fell. It didn't smash on the rug; it hit the iron leg of the bed and shattered into three large, curved pieces that spilled gray water across the floorboards.

Martha went down without a sound, her head striking the baseboard, her apron bunching up around her thighs, exposing her thick, gray stockings and the red elastic garters that held them up.

She didn't move. A thin line of dark blood began to leak from her left nostril, creeping down into the corner of her lip.

Victor didn't look down at her. He wiped his forearm on the sleeve of his cashmere cardigan, checking the wool for grease or hair.

Then he reached out with his left hand, his fingers hooking into the edge of the bathroom door, and pulled it wide.

Lily was standing on the hex tile.

She wasn't crying. Her face was very white, the blue circles under her eyes looking like they had been drawn with charcoal from the coal grate.

She had the blue inhaler in her right hand, her thumb on the canister, her finger hooked under the nozzle.

"You got the yellow shoes," she said.

Victor smiled. His gold cross caught the light from the bare bulb in the ceiling.

"That’s right, sweetheart," he said, stepping into the bathroom, the Beretta slipping back into his cardigan pocket, his hands coming out toward her, palms up, fingers curved like two shovels. "I got the yellow shoes. Now give me the little tube, and we’re going to go for a ride in the big car."

Lily looked at the linen chute behind the toilet.

The brass flap was eight inches wide. It was meant for towels, pillowcases, the thin white rags the hotel used for bathmats.

She didn't drop the inhaler.