“I hardly think that’s likely to happen,” I said, smiling at her naïveté. Sid and Gus lived as a couple right across the street from us, but then I hadn’t taken in the truth about their relationship when I first met them either. Such things had been outside of my sphere of experience too.

Darkness fell early with wind moaning through the chimney. I prepared our evening meal and put Daniel’s chop out, ready to grill, in the hope that he might be home for dinner, just this once. Then about six thirty my wishes were answered. The front door opened, sending a blast of cold air right down the hall to us, and Daniel came in, his cheeks red from the wind, clapping his hands together.

“It’s like winter out there again,” he said. “Luckily the rain has eased off. I thought I’d get drenched on the way home.” He looked around the kitchen. “Where’s my favorite son?”

“Aggie’s just putting him to bed,” I said.

“Good. I hoped I’d catch him awake for once.” He unwound his scarf, dropped it on a chair, and then bounded up the stairs. I heard his big voice and a baby’s squeal of delight and smiled to myself as I put his chop on the stove. By the time he reappeared his dinner was ready.

“What a splendid sight,” he said as I placed the plate in front of him. “It feels like the first decent meal I’ve had in weeks.”

“You’ve never been home to eat,” I said.

He nodded, his mouth full. “It’s been a rough time,” he said at last.

“Difficult case?”

“More like a war than a case,” he said. “The commissioner decided the time had come to take a stand against the Italian gang that is terrorizing the Lower East Side.”

“The Cosa Nostra, you mean?”

“That’s what they call themselves, yes. And we thought the Eastmans were bad news. The Eastmans are child’s play compared to these new boys. Protection rackets, extortion—all the usual stuff—but done with such incredible violence and ruthlessness. Anyone who betrays them is found with his throat slit from ear to ear. And they don’t hesitate to take revenge on anyone who stands in their way.”

“How do you plan to stop them?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know that we can. We can slow them down, but new Italian immigrants keep pouring into the city, so they’ll have keen new members all the time. But the commissioner says we must shut them down before they become too powerful, so try we must. We’ve got their big cheese behind bars now and I think we’ve enough on him to make a conviction stick, in spite of the dearth of witnesses willing to testify against him. We’ll see if he manages to wriggle out of it.”

And he went back to his eating.

“I had two letters today,” I said, trying to change the subject to more cheerful matters. “One from your mother—you’ll never guess what she’s up to?”