“He’s not mine,” I said.

Freddy raised his huge head slowly, looked at me. “Someone know you, asshole?” Those once warm eyes of his seemed about as comforting as ice picks. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that. Understood?”

My mouth suddenly felt like I’d swallowed a wool sweater.

Kevin chuckled softly under his breath.

Freddy reached into the folds of his jacket, his eyes never leaving my face as he produced a leather-bound notepad. He opened it, leafed through a few pages, found the one he was looking for.

“Patrick Kenzie,” he read. “Age, thirty-three. Mother and father deceased. One sibling, Erin Margolis, aged thirty-six, lives in Seattle, Washington. Last year you grossed forty-eight thousand dollars as part of your partnership with Miss Gennaro here. Divorced seven years. Ex-wife currently resides in parts unknown.” He smiled at me. “But we’re working on it, believe me.” He turned a page, pursed his fat lips. “Last year, you shot a pimp in cold blood under an expressway overpass.” He winked, reached out and patted my hand. “Yes, Kenzie, we know about that. You kill someone again, here’s simple advice: Don’t leave a witness.” He looked back at the notebook. “Where were we? Oh, right. Favorite color is blue. Favorite beer is St. Pauli Girl, favorite food is Mexican.” He turned another page, glanced up at us. “How’m I doing so far?”

“Boy,” Angie said, “are we impressed.”

He turned toward her. “Angela Gennaro. Currently estranged from husband, Phillip Dimassi. Father deceased. Mother, Antonia, lives with second husband in Flagstaff, Arizona. Also involved in killing of pimp last year. Currently residing on Howes Street in a first-floor apartment with a weak deadbolt on the back door.” He closed the notebook, looked at us benignly. “Me and my friends can come up with information like this, why the fuck would we need to mail someone a photograph?”

My right hand was pressed against my thigh, the fingers digging into the flesh, telling me to stay calm. I cleared my throat. “Seems unlikely.”

“Fucking right, it is,” Jack Rouse said.

“We don’t send photographs, Mr. Kenzie,” Freddy said. “We send our messages a bit more directly.”

Jack and Freddy stared at us with predatory humor in their eyes, and Kevin Hurlihy had a shit-eating grin on his face the size of a canyon.

Angie said, “I have a weak deadbolt on my back door?”

Freddy shrugged. “So I hear.”

Jack Rouse’s fingers rose to the tweed scally cap on his head and he tipped it in her direction.

She smiled, looked at me, then at Freddy. You’d have to have known her for a while to realize exactly how irate she was. She’s one of those people whose anger you can gauge by her reduction in movement. By the statue’s position she’d taken at the table, I was pretty sure she’d cruised past the extremely pissed-off point about five minutes ago.

“Freddy,” she said and he blinked. “You answer to the Imbruglia Family in New York. Correct?”