The glass between the bear and the party guests shattered. Two bullets pierced Rocco’s chest and another whizzed through his trachea. He staggered, blood rushed from the hole in his neck, and Ambruzzo sprayed again, this time blowing away a good portion of Rocco’s skull while bringing down two Wall Street executives and a tenor for the New York Metropolitan Opera. Briolli’s men returned fire on the bear, detaching the front legs and ripping into the stuffing. The bear collapsed onto its mate. Broken glass covered the marble floor, and the patrons rushed for the exits, seeking cover in Africa and the Pacific Islands. Ambruzzo took a glass of champagne and walked steadily up the stairs and past the dinosaurs on his way out. He regretted the tenor.

Waiting for nightfall underneath the low branches of a forsythia, Ambruzzo began to question his existence. He trained his scope on a young man and woman, light brown and orange M&M’s. They were having a picnic. A bottle of wine was propped between the young woman’s legs. There were sandwiches on rye and small jars of honey mustard and green tomato chutney on the blanket.

When Ambruzzo returned from training camp in Bologna, he asked Nonna what it was like to love. She was wearing slippers and rolling gnocchi for dinner.

“My hands are old,” she said. She held them out; her forearms were thick and covered with moles. She turned them over. She sighed. “Love is like dying, like saying good-bye.”

Sometimes he will think about the person he is killing. Sometimes he will not.

The young couple spread cheese onto crackers. Ambruzzo watched the girl wipe crumbs off the young man’s lips with a piece of napkin. He was amazed that grown people did this for each other. It was common, he realized; he had seen it through his scope at other times: a smudge of chocolate, a dribble of tomato sauce, a mustache of Hawaiian Punch.

He waited for them to finish dessert. Seedless grapes and Chips Ahoy! cookies. The young woman began to pack the cooler. He shot her as she was closing a Ziploc baggie. He could see pickle juice spilling over the lawn. She crumpled so quietly that the young man, shaking out their blanket, did not notice. Ambruzzo got him before he did.

The Spordonza family was booming. Martin congratulated himself on his foresight and gave Ambruzzo a plaque engraved HIT MAN OF THE YEAR. He considered moving to Montana and taking up fly-fishing. With the fiscal goal of his retirement on the horizon, Spordonza slipped Ambruzzo another green M&M.