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The shadows on the hillside began to spread out from beneath the trees, crawling toward the coming night.
    “Tell me about New Orleans and everything else you know about him.”
    “I don't know much about New Orleans, except that he was there and that he had to leave. All the immigrants to this country—the Irish, the Italians, all the people that came here the end of the last century—everyone thinks they all came through Ellis Island and that half of them were given new names because the names they had were too difficult to pronounce in English. But our grandfather—Leonardo Caravaggio—didn't have his name changed and so far as I know never got within a thousand miles of New York. He landed in New Orleans, a boy of five or six, with his parents, from somewhere in Sicily, in the late 1880s or the early l890s. After slavery was abolished, white southerners had to find another source of cheap labor. That's how we happen to be born in America: because our great-grandfather, whose name we don't even know, agreed to do the work the slaves had done in exchange for free passage from Sicily and barely enough in wages to keep himself and his family alive. There wasn't much difference in the way they were treated, either. If they got out of line, did something they weren't supposed to do, there was about as much chance being found guilty of murder for lynching an Italian as for hanging a black man. That's why Grandpa left New Orleans. He did something, or he was suspected of doing something—what it was, I could never find out, but it was something serious. Somebody once told me they thought he had killed someone, but I don't know if that's true or not. All I know is that the night he found out the police were after him, he left New Orleans and never went back. He knew if he stayed, he'd be caught; and he knew if he was caught, he'd be dead.”
    Bobby leaned closer, mischief in his eyes. “How does it feel to find out you're the descendant of a runaway slave, chased out of New Orleans by a lynch mob?”
    “Do you think he could have killed somebody?”I asked, juxtaposing in my mind the two pictures I had of him: an old man sitting in his chair and a strong, energetic young man filled with fear running for his life.
    “Sure, why not?”Bobby replied with a quick, emphatic nod. “I heard a lot of stories about him growing up. He wasn't someone who would have backed down.”
    Bobby nodded a second time and gave me a look that seemed to signify he knew it was true about our grandfather because he knew it was true about himself. Certain of his own reaction, he assumed his instincts were inherited and had come to him from at least a generation back.
    “If someone had come after him, he would have known what they were going to do before they did. Were you ever in a fight when you were a kid? One that started with an argument, and you knew—just a split second before the other kid knew—that he was going to throw a punch at you, and you hit him first, because it was the only way to defend yourself? That's what he was like, I think. Whoever came after him—I don't think they would have had a chance to do anything. He was too quick, too smart, to give anyone that chance. Yes, he could have killed somebody; but it would have been somebody who wanted to kill him first.”
    “I wasn't much of a fighter,”I admitted.
    “You were too smart,”said Bobby with a distant smile. “You could see it coming in time to avoid it altogether.”
    “That's the kindest definition of cowardice I think I've ever heard,”I said, laughing softly.
    Bobby put down the bottle of beer, got to his feet, and stretched his arms.
    “I don't know how he got to San Francisco, and I don't know what he did when he got here.”
    Bobby stared down at his socks, a pensive expression on his face. “But during Prohibition he controlled most of the liquor brought into the city and he was one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco, worth millions. Then someone