Four years ago, after a particularly lucrative case involving insurance fraud and white-collar extortion, I went to Europe for two weeks. And what struck me most at the time was how many of the small villages I visited—in Ireland and Italy and Spain—resembled Boston’s North End.

The North End was where each successive wave of immigrants had left the boat and dropped their bags. So the Jewish and then the Irish and finally the Italians had called this area home and given it the distinctly European character it retains today. The streets are cobblestone, narrow, and curve hard around and over and through each other in a neighborhood so small in physical area that in some cities it would barely constitute a block. But packed in here tight are legions of red and yellow brick rowhouses, former tenements co-opted and restored, and the odd cast-iron or granite warehouse, all fighting for space and getting really weird on top where extra stories were added after “up” became the only option. So clapboard and brick rise up from what were once mansard roofs, and laundry still stretches between opposite fire escapes and wrought-iron patios, and “yard” is an even more alien concept than “parking space.”

Somehow, in this, the most cramped of neighborhoods in the most cramped of cities, a gorgeous replica of an Italian village piazza sits behind the Old North Church. Called the Prado, it’s also known as the Paul Revere Mall, not only because of its proximity to both the church and Revere’s house, but because the Hanover Street entrance is dominated by Dallin’s equestrian statue of Revere. In the center of the Prado is a fountain; along the walls that surround it are bronze plaques testifying to the heroics of Revere, Dawes, several revolutionaries, and some lesser-known luminaries of North End lore.

The temperature had risen into the forties when we arrived at noon, entering from the Unity Street side, and dirty snow melted into the cracks in the cobblestone and puddled in the warps of the limestone benchtops. The fresh snowfall that had been expected today had turned into a light drizzle of rain due to the temperature, so the Prado was empty of tourists or North Enders on their lunch breaks.

Only Manny and John Byrne and two other men waited for us by the fountain. The two men I recognized from last night; they’d been standing to my left as John and I dealt with Officer Largeant, and while neither was as big as Manny, they weren’t small either.

“This must be the lovely Miss Gennaro,” Manny said. He clapped his hands together as we approached. “A friend of mine has a few nasty welts on his head because of you, ma’am.”

“Gee,” Angie said, “sorry.”

Manny raised his eyebrows at John. “Sarcastic little strumpet, isn’t she?”