Saul started paying more attention to his and Joey’s monthly meetings with Tommy Fianzo. On his way into the building he would count the men he saw posted casually around—two smoking outside the front, one standing in front of Tommy’s office door. Once he got home he would scribble down every detail he could remember. Different men in front this week but same guard in front of T.F.’s door. Office window has clear view west but obstructed by stack of shipping crates to the southwest. If occasionally a flicker of guilt arose—Joey’s face, offering Saul wisdom, a job, his daughter’s hand in marriage; or Sofia, wide-eyed and beaming on the day Julia was born; or Julia herself, the warm, savage heart of her, exploding across the living room to hug Saul when he got home—Saul tamped it down, reminding himself that the Fianzos were villains for the Colicchio Family too. I’m helping them. He can almost convince himself.

Of course, Saul’s new side job doesn’t just put him at risk. It risks destabilizing the peace Joey Colicchio has upheld since 1930. It risks starting a lethal turf war between Eli Leibovich and the Sicilian Families. It risks the very lives of everyone Saul loves.

Each month, Eli Leibovich receives Saul’s scraps of information warmly, invites him for supper. At first, Saul declined; it felt unsafe, it felt disloyal. But curiosity and Eli’s genuine charm won out. Eli’s mother, who now lives in her own wing of Eli’s sprawling apartment, hugged Saul the first time she met him. A beautiful boy, she called him, and Saul blanched and felt his heart and his stomach switch places; such was the power of being hugged by a mother who shares some inarticulable spirit with his own mother.

How simple family seems, from the outside. How desperate Saul becomes about the state of his own.

—

At home, Saul has started picking fights. Small ones, about Sofia’s work hours. Julia’s puzzles and playing cards, crusted in sugar or snot, abandoned on the living room rug. Why can’t we eat together like a normal family? he asks one evening, sharp and dismayed. Julia, reading at the table as she balances steamed carrot slices on her fork, and Sofia, who has just run in, late again, look at Saul in surprise. Sorry, they say, which is unusual, because both of them are fighters, and Saul wonders what is so unstable about him that he has surprised them into apology. I made chicken, he says, by way of explanation. It gets cold.

—

Tonight, when Saul reaches the pay phone, he very consciously stands up straight and strides into the stall and pulls the sliding door shut behind him. The booth smells like hot trash and concrete. Saul pulls out his handkerchief and wipes the earpiece of the phone before sliding his dimes into the slot and dialing.