Vicki Pettersson - The Given

And just like that, the tension eased from the room. Dennis’s hunched shoulders dropped, and the hardness left his gaze so that he looked both younger and more himself. Kit let out an audible sigh next to Grif.

“And now that we’ve got that settled,” Kit said, which was clearly what she’d intended all along, “let’s eat.”

Breaking bread with another person went a long way toward smoothing over old hurts. What started out as a tense reunion between Kit and the two men who had most defined her personal life over the past year gradually eased into an amicable evening. Following up that broken bread with seared filets; fat, round wines; and tableside Bananas Foster settled both bellies and old grudges for good, and Kit smiled to herself as she leaned back in the booth, mentally patting herself on the back.

The stop at the Golden Steer had been a spontaneous but inspired bit of theater. However, her gut had told her they all needed it. There were bad things coming in the next few days—Kit could feel it even without Barbara’s death or Grif’s sudden reappearance in her life—and her gut also whispered that she was going to need both Grif and Dennis working as a team if she was to survive the forces she’d put into motion by visiting Barbara in the first place. There were more balls to juggle now that her unlikely team also included Zicaro and Marin, but she’d acted as ringmaster in this sort of circus before.

And if grilled meat in the belly and burned sugar in the air were needed to keep the lions tame, then so be it.

Otherwise, it was a hell of an almost-last supper.

“Schwear to God,” Zicaro was saying, spilling gin over the lip of his martini glass for a half-a-dozenth time, “I saw Monroe sitting right in this very booth. Saw her with my own eyes. She was with DiMaggio, though they were already divorced. And she was throwing her head back, opening her mouth with that wide, beautiful smile. Showing her neck . . .” He threw his head back to demonstrate. Grif and Dennis both cringed. “But when she stopped laughing with him, man, she was looking right at me.”

“Bullshit,” Grif snorted, looking relaxed for the first time since Kit had seen him. He’d taken off his jacket and hat, and had one arm flung over the back of the red leather booth, his shirtsleeves rolled, candlelight sparkling in his stubble. “You were even a scrawnier sonna bitch then than you are now, and Monroe liked ’em beefy.”

“How do you even know that, Shaw?” Dennis asked, while Zicaro scowled into his drink. Fortunately, Dennis was no longer entirely sober, either, and scoffed as he said it.

“I know that because this old stringer was a reckless fabulist. He’d catch scent of a story and run it down like a bloodhound, often to the same effect.”

“I told the stories everyone else was afraid to tell!” Zicaro said defensively, then waved his spotted hands in the air with practiced drama. “I brought things that were festering in darkness right into the glare of the neon-splattered night!”

Grif raised one dark eyebrow. Dennis just continued staring at Zicaro as he rolled a toothpick between his fingers before turning to Grif.

“Is that why you’re carting him around hours after you were supposed to have returned him to an assisted-care facility where a man the size of a freight train is waiting for him?”

Zicaro, belly full and tongue loose, came to life. Bringing his fist down on the table, and spewing a string of profanity that was nothing short of astonishing, Zicaro alone managed to bring Dennis up to speed. Kit listened, sipping her after-dinner cappuccino.

“Lemme get this straight,” Dennis said, throwing his arm over the back of the booth when Zicaro had finished. “You were taken from your room in the middle of the night, questioned to the point of exhaustion, and then relocated and held against your will by the men I met today?”

“Poor guy,” Kit said, earning a soulful look from Zicaro.

“And they were questioning you about Barbara? Of the old DiMartino gang?”

Zicaro’s thin lips pursed into a solid line at the doubt underscoring Dennis’s words. Sure, the criminal element was alive and well in Vegas. But Italian mobsters? Those days had died with Spilotro . . . and Dennis said as much.

“Here’s what you greenhorns can’t seem to understand,” Zicaro said, and hiccupped before he continued. “A made man can’t just jump into normal life like the rest of us schleps. They operated outside of normal for so long that living by the law would be akin to living on the moon. And that goes for the women, too. The woman who died yesterday was Barbara DiMartino long before she was Barbara McCoy.”

“So?”

“You don’t know anything about the DiMartinos, do you?”

Dennis shrugged.

“They ran the Marquis, best hotel and casino in town. But they weren’t the only outfit here.”

“The Salernos owned Vegas Village,” Grif put in.

“And old Nick Salerno was after more,” Zicaro said, nodding. “He began running chip hustlers and card counters through the Marquis, bragged about it, too. That’s when things got nasty.”

“What happened?” asked Dennis.

“It was never proven, but rumor was Sal DiMartino retaliated by donning a ski mask, walking into the Vegas Village at the height of midday, and holding up the cage himself. But unlike old man Salerno, he didn’t flaunt his take. Instead, he bought his wife, Theresa, a gift with it.”

Dennis held up a hand. “Wait, I thought Barbara was his wife.”

“Theresa was his first wife,” Grif told him. “Love of his life.”

“She died in nineteen sixty-one,” confirmed Zicaro. “He married Barbara in ’sixty-two.”

“Fast,” commented Kit.

“Can I finish my story here?” Zicaro said, glaring until the table was silenced. “So Sal spends every stolen dollar on this necklace he had designed for Theresa. Lemme tell you, it could rival anything in the Queen Mother’s jewels. Three perfect diamonds, each the size of a silver dollar. He then parades her around in it at the city’s annual Fall Festival. Really stuck it to the Salernos, right in public. As you can imagine, this doesn’t go over well with Nick. So Sal DiMartino gets a phone call. ‘You take something precious from me, I’ll take something precious from you.’ “ Eyes gleaming, Zicaro leaned forward. “The call comes at the exact same time DiMartino’s twelve-year-old niece, Mary Margaret, is abducted from his front yard. I believe this is where you come in.”

Feeling Dennis’s frown on him, Grif just shrugged. “Sure, I’ll tell the rest of the story, but it’s real basic. The Salernos kidnapped little Mary Margaret. The DiMartinos got her back. End of story.”

“Except it’s not,” Zicaro argued. “These families are like the Montagues and the Capulets . . . except for the lost love. There’s none of that. But there is a code.”

Grif nodded. “You don’t mess with a Family’s children.”

“So the feud hinges on this: The DiMartinos say the Salernos planned the attack, but the Salernos maintain that someone inside the DiMartino home told them there was a way to get their diamonds back. She—and they were clear it was a woman—told them when to be in front of the DiMartino estate. She said ‘a little doll’ would appear, and to take it. So Mary Margaret showed up, and they did.”

“Who did the DiMartinos trust with their children?” Kit asked, wondering about Barbara. If she married Sal DiMartino within a year of Theresa’s death, then she’d been around before then.

“Just one person. Gina Alessi, Mary Margaret’s longtime nanny. But Gina disappeared right after Mary Margaret’s return, and for years everyone thought Sal showed her the back door . . . and not in a good way.”