They Crossed My Name Out of the Family Bible Chapter 07
Chapter 7 – The File Nobody Could Close
They gave me Greco’s caseload.
Falco slid the stack across the table without a word, which in this house is a coronation and a punishment at the
same time.
“Commander Marchetti, since this is your first Table, allow me to explain how the”
“Please proceed if it makes you comfortable, sir,” I said. “But I’ve read the arbitration statutes. If something’s unclear,
you’ll know, because I’ll ask.”
Cassio Vittorio put his hand over his mouth.
The old man opened the second file himself. “Then let’s start with the one that’s about to become a body count. Two families. One block. The Fioles and the Ardennes have been killing each other over a warehouse on Cross Street for two years. Four sit-downs. Both old men have refused every compromise the Table has offered.”
“Ricci’s unit worked it,” Falco said. “Twice.”
“We got nowhere.” Dante’s voice was flat with old frustration. “They won’t sit in the same room. Fiole’s put thirty men on the block. Ardenne’s put forty.”
“How long has the building been empty?” I asked.
“…Empty?”
“Unused. Nothing stored, nothing shipped. How long?”
Nobody answered.
“Second question.” I turned my palm up. “What reason has either family given for wanting it?”
Silence. Seven Capos and a king, all looking at each other.
The old man turned pages, slowly, one after another.
“There is no reason recorded,” he said quietly. “In two years, nobody asked.”
“Two years,” Nonna said, delighted. “Two years of grown men measuring each other’s fences, and not one of them said why.”
“Do you mind if I take a swing at it, sir?”
Chapter 7 The File Nobody Could Close
He handed me the file without a single question, and I watched six Capos register exactly what that meant.
Dante caught up with me in the corridor.
Up close he’s frankly absurd. Six-two, gray eyes, a scar through one eyebrow, and the particular stillness of a man
who has never once needed to prove he’s dangerous.
“You’ve been living on the other side of my wall for a year,” he said.
“You’ve been calling me he for a year.”
“In my defense, you never came out of your wing.”
“In my defense, one of your men’s first thought about my unit was to wonder how many of my women would be willing.” I kept walking. “Eleven forty-one a.m., the day of our oath, courtyard, by the fountain. Your man Renzo, and a tall blonde. You have a discipline problem, Capo. Fix it before I do.”
He stopped dead in the middle of the hallway.
“Oh, he’s very confused right now,” Nonna said happily. “He can’t decide whether to be furious or to marry you.”
“Neither. He’s a colleague.”
“Mm.”
Back in our wing, my unit was waiting on the top floor.
I told them about Greco. The room went silent, then Renata started to cry and Tomas put his forehead against hers
and Ines said, “You hit him?”
“I hit him.”
“In front of the old man?”
“The old man was extremely supportive.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said, when Renata tried. “That’s the job. All of you hear this: if anybody in this organization puts a
hand or a threat on you, you come to me first. Not after. First.”
Then I handed out files, and by that evening every Captain had matched their team to a case with a precision that made me stupidly, painfully proud.
We took Cross Street as a full unit.
Dara and Fabi dug on the drive. Two hours in, Fabi said, “Commander. That warehouse has been empty for
ninety-four years. No product, no rent, no permits, nothing. Both families signed a joint lease in 1931 and neither has
opened the door since.”
“1931,” I repeated.
Something moved at the back of my skull. A cold little finger down the neck.
Because in the house in my head there is a room, and in that room is a phone call I overheard when I was eleven years old, sitting under my father’s desk with a coloring book.
Rafael, I’m telling you, nobody touches Cross Street. Not for money, not for God. Let it rot. Let it stay exactly as it is.
“Fabi,” I said. “Was my father’s name anywhere in that lease?”
“No, Commander.”
“Check who witnessed it.”
We stopped at a diner an hour out. Gio, who has no instinct for self-preservation whatsoever, asked, “What were you like as a kid, Commander?”
I thought about lying. I told them the truth instead – the little desk in the corner of my father’s study, the phone I wasn’t supposed to answer and answered anyway.
“Hewwo. Marchetti house. Who you want?” I said, in a toddler pitch.
Gio’s jaw came off.
“It was the Don of Philadelphia. He laughed. I thought he was laughing at me, so I hung up on him.”
By the time I got to the part where my father banned me from the phone and I kept answering it for six more years,
half my unit was crying into their fries.
For about four minutes, I forgot I’d been thrown away.
Then we turned onto Cross Street at sunset, and there were seventy armed men on two sides of a road, in front of a
building nobody had opened since 1931, with their hands inside their coats.
I got out of the car and walked into the middle of it, alone.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “Two questions. Then everybody goes home.”
