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stands and regular broads. I had lots of ‘em before I went to the big house, and you know how many came to see me? Nada.
     
    So, naturally I thought ahead. And the future didn’t look bright.
     
    Now, if Tony had his say, I’d be hitched up to one of those pretty little Scapone gals with the horse teeth. They already liked Tony, but that was only because they were part of the Family in the first place and seeing one of them came with worse strings than dinner with my brother probably did.
     
    I pushed all that out of my mind when I left the gym. I was only a little surprised when, on my walk to the bus stop, a black Lincoln pulled up to me. The passenger side window rolled down, and a mook that I kinda recognized but whose name I couldn’t remember craned toward me from the driver side. “Hey! Mikey Frazetta! Tony said you was out. How bout a lift?”
     
    Paranoid, though probably for no good reason, I looked up and down the sidewalk. This was the sort of thing cops took pictures of right here, and then trotted out in court six months from now as proof I was up to no good. No one I could see, though. “Tony send you?” I asked.
     
    “Nah, well… he said I should drive by about this time, and offer you a ride if you so happened to be leaving work. You was, so I did. You can walk if you want, though; no sweat off my back.” He slicked his hair back, shrugged and waited for an answer.
     
    I sighed, and nodded once. I got in the back; that was the way you did it, and he didn’t comment, just started chatting at me from the rear-view mirror. I tuned most of it out, and answered with one-word mutters. Yep. Nope. Uh-huh. Dunno. Sure.
     
    Twenty minutes of that, and he stopped in front of Tony’s place.
     
    Tony made good money, but his wealth was mostly in connections. His apartment had moved in the last four years—now it was at the top floor of an old tenement building; but at least it was the whole top floor. I took the elevator up, and had to steel myself against what was probably gonna be a non-stop sales pitch.
     
    Not that Tony didn’t miss me—I was sure he did—but he’d only really ever had one thing on his mind before I went in, and I doubted that had changed. This life was perfect for Tony, and he never understood why it wouldn’t be perfect for me. “It’s good money, good women, good everything! What’s not to like?” All arguments I’d heard a hundred times. To Tony, not wanting to get paid to hurt people as an enforcer for Don Luchese didn’t make any sense at all.
     
    But that was because hurting people came naturally to Tony. I had to work at it.
     
    I hit the buzzer to his door, and waited.
     
    Tony had gained a little weight in the last four years. He’d always had the same square, squat face with eyes that made it look too wide, but he hadn’t always had quite that chin. I guessed life was treating him good. Ma used to say a fat man was a happy man.
     
    “Mikey!” Tony bellowed when he saw me. He grabbed my face in both his big hands, one of them wielding a foot long knife, and laughed out loud. “You got big! Look at you!”
     
    “Yeah,” I muttered, and eyed the knife when he dropped his hands and urged me inside. “So did you, you fat fuck. What happened?”
     
    Tony snorted. “What, this?” He patted the growing paunch over his belly. “This is hard earned, Mikey. It’s all the red meat. Hey, watch this!” He pointed at the big screen in the living room.
     
    I shook my head, and barely saw what happened, but Tony barked a laugh. On the television was some old Looney Toons cartoon, Bugs Bunny and the bald guy with the speech impediment. Tony had loved that stuff since he was too young to walk. Ma used to say it was the only thing that kept him occupied, he could sit and watch the tapes they recorded off the TV for hours without moving. I wondered if that didn’t have something to do with what was wrong with Tony.
     
    Because I loved my brother, and he