Chapter 6 - Shadows on the Wall
The cabin of the *San Matteo* had never been designed for family reunions.
It was narrow, smelling of wet wool, diesel oil, and the dry, metallic tang of forty-year-old brass. When the door at the top of the companionway opened, Clara did not move from her seat on the vinyl bench. She held the half-eaten orange in her lap, her gray eyes fixed on the man who stepped down the three ladder rungs.
Julian stopped on the lowest step.
His head was ducked to clear the teak carlin; his hair was wild, salted with dried marsh reed, and his oilskin coat was torn at the elbow. He looked like an apparition scraped off the bottom of the bay.
"Clara-bear," Julian said.
His voice was barely a croak.
The orange rolled from her lap. It hit the carpeted deck with a soft, dull *thump* and rolled three inches before stopping against the toe of Julian’s boot.
She didn't run. She didn't cry. She stood up on the bench, her small boots leaving wet marks on the vinyl, and reached out her arms with the fierce, unhesitating demand of a child who had never once doubted that she was owned by someone.
"You smell like the mud," she said into his neck as Julian scooped her off the seat, his face burying itself in the hollow between her shoulder and her jaw.
Julian didn't answer. His shoulders shook twice—short, violent spasms that he choked down before they could become sounds. His good hand pressed her small head against his collarbone, his fingers tangled in the dark plaits Teresa had straightened four hours earlier.
Adrian stood by the galley bulkhead, his back against the small sink, watching them.
His face was carved out of slate. He held a mug of black coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes ago, his thumb rhythmically circling the black onyx stone on his finger.
Behind him, Teresa stepped out from the tiny aft berth. She didn't look at Julian’s face. She didn't offer a dramatic Italian lamentation. She simply reached out with a linen dish towel, took Julian’s bloody left hand, and began unwrapping the foul, yellowed gauze from his knuckles.
"Stupid boy," she muttered under her breath, the dialect sharp and ancient. "Always the left hand. At seven years old with the cellar door, at fourteen with the bicycle. Always the left."
"Teresa," Julian whispered, his voice cracking.
"Shut up," she said, her eyes bright with tears she refused to let drop onto the wood. "Hold the child. Don't bleed on her sweater. It took me two hours to get the grease out."
Adrian set the coffee mug down.
"The two boats behind us have stopped," Adrian said, his voice cutting through the small cabin like a cold draught from an open cellar. "They’re holding at the mouth of the canal. Waiting for the light."
Julian lifted his head from Clara’s hair. The emotion that had softened his features vanished, replaced by that narrow, calculating squint Adrian had known since they were boys stealing tires off delivery trucks behind Penn Station.
"Salvatore isn't on those boats," Julian said.
"I know," Adrian replied. "Salvatore doesn't get his trousers wet unless the money is already in the trunk. He’s at the fertilizer dock."
"He has twelve men with him," Julian said, his voice dropping so Clara wouldn't hear the specifics, though the girl was already staring at the map pinned above the table with an eerie, detached curiosity. "Two on the roof of the chemical sheds. Three on the pier head with the automatic rifles they bought from the Greeks in South Philly. The rest are inside with Elena."
"Where is she?" Adrian asked.
"The testing lab," Julian said. "The old brick building behind the ammonia tanks. It has three-foot walls and only one door facing the water. Salvatore thinks he can hold it until the morning shift starts at the cargo port. Once the longshoremen are on the piers, we can't use the heavy stuff without bringing the federal marshals down from Wilmington."
Adrian pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat. Five-twenty in the morning.
"The sun comes up at six-forty," Adrian said. "We have eighty minutes."
He looked at Clara.
The girl had reached out from Julian’s arms and was touching the small scar on her father’s jaw—the fresh one that ran down into his neck.
"Did the bad men give you that?" she asked.
"No, *piccola*," Julian said, the lie smooth and gentle. "A blackberry bush jumped out at me in the woods."
"Blackberry bushes don't have knives," she said matter-of-factly.
Julian looked at Adrian over her shoulder. "She’s six going on forty."
"She’s a DeLuca," Adrian said. "It’s a design flaw."
He turned toward the companionway. "Marco. Come down here."
Marco descended the steps, his leather jacket reeking of salt water and grease. He carried a long, rectangular olive-drab crate stenciled with yellow Cyrillic letters—surplus from an old friend who ran a cargo line out of Antwerp.
He set it on the dining table, flipped the two wire latches, and lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled in dark, oil-soaked horsehair, were three short-barreled FN-FAL battle rifles, their metal finished in non-reflective black phosphate, along with ten twenty-round magazines and four fragmentation grenades with their safety pins wired flat for boat carry.
Julian’s eyes widened slightly. "You brought the 7.62s?"
"The chemical sheds have corrugated sheet-iron walls," Adrian said. "A nine-millimeter bounces off them like hail. The Belgian rounds will punch through the iron, the machinery inside, and whatever Moretti soldier is hiding behind the drums."
He picked up one of the rifles, pulled the charging handle back half an inch to check the brass in the chamber, and let it snap home with a sharp, heavy *clack*.
"Teresa," Adrian said without turning around.
"Yes, Don Adrian."
"You take the child into the bilge lazarette. There is a steel bulkhead between the fuel tanks. If you hear wood splintering, you turn the valve on the sea-cock three turns to the left."
Clara looked at him, her gray eyes narrowing. "Why?"
Adrian bent down until his face was six inches from hers. For the first time, he did not look like an uncle; he looked like the man who had ruled three waterfront wards for twenty years without losing a foot of concrete.
"Because, Clara," Adrian said softly, "DeLucas do not sit in Moretti cages. Not you. Not your father. Not me. Understand?"
The girl stared at him for four seconds. Then, slowly, she nodded once.
"The water is cold," she said.
"It is," Adrian agreed. "So we make sure the other people go into it first."
He stood up, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and climbed toward the gray light of the deck.
May you like
Julian followed him, holding the second FN-FAL in his uninjured right hand, his gray eyes fixed on the northern sky where the lights of the Wilmington industrial port flickered like dying coals through the coastal fog.
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