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In the first decades of the twentieth century, Chick Tricker ran Manhattan's Lower West Side. Tricker was a saloon keeper who found hiring out thugs as collectors an easy route to a more lucrative lifestyle. So while an army of hardworking men headed home each night to soak aching muscles, wondering aloud if an honest life was worth living, Tricker stood behind the wood of his bar, a bottle of his finest to his right, and counted his haul, at peace with his place in the American Dream.
        Paolino's remaining nights were spent in a little West Twelfth Street slaughterhouse killing, skinning and slicing pigs and sheep for morning delivery to the area meat markets. Not lost on him was the irony that whereas in Italy he once tended to the needs of a flock, he was now here, in America, slicing open their throats. With this job, he was allowed to keep all the money he earned, working straight twelve-hour shifts in near-darkness and unsanitary conditions bordering on the criminal. In addition to his six-dollar salary, Paolino was given two lambs' heads a week, which Josephina would marinate in red wine vinegar and crushed garlic and then roast over a tin wine barrel. Those Sunday afternoon meals were as close to heaven as Paolino Vestieri was meant to find on this earth.
        The long hours he worked and the small sums of money such jobs produced left Paolino not just broke but broken. And it made a hard impression on young Angelo. I watched him come home at night and I'd pretend to be asleep, he told me, tending with care and patience the long rows of olive trees that took up three acres of his Long Island estate. He looked so beaten, so powerless. He'd sit on the edge of his bed and hang his head, too tired to even take his clothes off. At first I felt so sorry for him. But with time sorrow turned to pity. I knew I could never lead his life. Even death would be a better option.
        Paolino didn't have much social life. He had a few male friends who, on occasion, would get together for brisk games of briscola or sette bello. On summer days, he sometimes walked alone at the edge of the West Side piers, the harsh glare of the sun turning the Hudson into a long sheet of blue glass, and thought about his second son. Was such a cold country the place for a frail boy to find and make his way? Would he have the courage to deal with the challenges his father envisioned him facing? And would he amount to more than what Paolino saw in himself--a man of simple dreams living a life of wasted wishes.
        On rare occasions, Paolino pictured himself married again, a woman at home to supply warmth and comfort and a smiling face to a tired man. Despite his weak financial status, Paolino was still considered a worthy catch among the middle-aged widows and old maids of the neighborhood. But those visions were fleeting, leaving in their wake only the warm memory of Francesca secure at his side. His mood was laced with sadness as he wandered on his walks, wondering whether there had been any point in his leaving Italy. There was, after all, little difference between paying tribute money to the camorra of his homeland or to the Irish thugs of NewYork.
        As he walked home, Paolino almost always thought of Carlo, the son he had murdered. His guilt had grown in the years since the shooting, and it brought along with it the burden of doubt. He was no longer convinced that his action had been the right one, his time in America stripping him of the moral high ground he had easily walked for so many years. He would close his eyes and try to erase the image of the bleeding boy lying dead in the hot, airless room. But he could not. That picture was forever seared into his memory. The void in the center of his stomach told him he would need to live the rest of his life in step with an irrepealable wrong. And for a man like Paolino Vestieri, struggling to make ends meet in a new land, the lethal combination of doubt and guilt could simply