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bingo! I recognize him. Robert Rintrona. Okay? I’ve known he was a witness for more than a year. And someone else knew about Troy—my ex-assistant chief who reviewed police logs from around the state. He told me with pleasure what I already knew—that the spoiled son of Silvio Conte, so forth and so on. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. I’m telling you all of it up front and you think I’m behind the attempt on his life? I wait a whole fuckin’ year to eliminate a threat of that magnitude? Use your fuckin’ head, Professor. Use your fuckin’ head because you’re so smart.”
    “You came here armed.”
    “Because I know the levels of rage you can go to. What you did on the train.”
    “You blew that bastard away, Antonio.”
    “Which you wanted. Stop bullshitting yourself. He was abusive to his child on the train, which is how you see yourself in a fucked-up way, as an abusive father. You abandon your babies, when they’re two and three, and eventually they die because you’re not there. I kill the animal you see as your double and you don’t have to kill yourself.”
    Conte feels the urge to leap over the table and strangle. He fires a piece of tomato pie off Robinson’s chest.
    Robinson does not react.
    “You played a key role in my father’s plot. You helped engineer a triple murder.”
    “Did you just say the words ‘my father’? He took me in when I was eight without a father. I just about lived with you and Silvio. He loved me. You know he did.”
    (Pause.)
    “He did. Silvio loved you, Robby. Maybe more than me.”
    “And I agreed to help him take down all that Mafia scum because he gave me life. Where were you? When we did it? When I did the right thing because the Barbones were about to destroy our father? Where the fuck were you, the beloved biological son?”
    (With averted eyes:)
    “In Austria. Taking in the Salzburg Festival.”
    “You fuckin’ opera queen.”
    “You’re not one too?” (They almost smile.)
    “Austria, on your father’s money. All that boring Mozart.Who bought this house for you when you abandoned the West Coast, broke? Daddy. Who remodels it? Daddy. The son who gives him such a hard time, but thanks to Daddy you live in a small jewel, the only bungalow on Mary Street. Now with the inheritance you’re free to pursue your literary proclivities. The White Whale. The Scarlet Cunt. That faggot in disguise, Homo Hemingway. I did murder so you could be spared our bloody life, is how Silvio and I thought of it. So you could be spared for literature. Literature. The word makes me puke. You think I was behind the attempt on Rintrona today?”
    Conte pauses.
    “Not really.”
    “What does ‘not really’ mean? What do you mean by ‘really’? That the jury in your head is still out?”
    “No. The jury is not out.”
    “Why not?”
    Conte pauses.
    “You never killed anybody. Until that night. For once in your life—for once you went against yourself to do violence—on behalf of our father. Our father.”
    “El, this is getting too hard for me.”
    “If not you, Robbie—”
    “If?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Do I, El?”
    At the door, Robinson says, “Everything I told you about Homeland Security?”
    “Total bullshit, I gather?”
    “Every word—totally true.”
    “Including your speculations?”
    “Don’t go to the mosque on Sunday, El. Uh, El, may I take a slice of the tomato pie with me?”
    Conte nods with a small smile. Robinson leaves. Conte collapses on the couch. An ashen Catherine Cruz emerges from the spare room. She stands before him in cold fury:
    “Eliot. Do you know who I am? Don’t respond. I’ll tell you when you may. I am an officer of the law who you just made a witness to my chief’s confession to several murders. You were an active accomplice. You summoned Antonio Robinson to do murder. Now I either go to the D.A. or I swim in this sewer with you. You wanted me here to hear it all. Why? Do not respond. I’m not finished.