he dove into a doorway and rolled out of sight.
In the confusion of the instant when the shooting started, the shouting kids, the cacophony of voices, came to a halt. The only sounds were the rush of water from the johnny pump and the loud clatter of gunfire as the commotion drew all eyes toward the green sedan and Richie Cabo's club, where the crudely made wooden lemonade stand splintered and collapsed to the sidewalk. A pitcher of water and bright yellow lemons shattered and spilled to the curb. Once the neighborhood grasped what was happening, the screaming and shouting from windows and the street and fire escapes and doorways almost drowned out the shooting. The girl in the yellow dress pushing the baby carriage howled and pulled a bloody infant out of the pram as she herself was shot and knocked sideways. Still, she held the infant and ran for a doorway, calling to her aunt. A boy of seven or eight lay bleeding on the sidewalk, his head on the blue slate curb. An even younger boy, maybe four or five years old, lay on his belly in the street. A woman ran to the older boy and cradled him in her arms. The younger boy in the street lay by himself trailing a wide stain of blood.
When the gunfire stopped and the green sedan started up the avenue again, still rolling slowly, only a few miles per hour, Loretto followed along on the sidewalk, trotting and then sprinting as he got a look at the driver. He recognized Frank Guarracie's pinched face and understood that it had to be Vince in the back seat doing the shooting. He couldn't see Vince's face. The guy had a fedora pulled down almost to his nose, and he was a head taller than anyone else in the car—But if Frank was driving, who else could it be but Vince? The mug alongside Frank in the front seat was probably Patsy DiNapoli. His clothes were rumpled, he wasn't wearing a tie, and his hat sat on his head like a shapeless lump—and that kind of slovenliness was typical of Patsy. He couldn't get a good look at the two mugs in the back seat with Vince, but he'd guess Tuffy and Mike. They'd both been running with Vince since they were kids.
Loretto stopped when Frank turned and saw him. Everyone else in the car was looking the other way, at the two boys on the street and the howling girl who had come out of a storefront holding the blood-soaked baby in her arms once the gunfire stopped and the sedan pulled away. Only Frank, bareheaded, driving slowly as a sightseer, looked the other way, across the street, and saw Loretto peering back at him. In Frank's eyes Loretto read a momentary confusion. A second later, Frank turned away, his narrow face once again an impenetrable mask of nonchalance, as if the gates of hell might swing open and unleash a monster and he would be neither surprised nor bothered.
By the time the sedan turned left on 7th Avenue and disappeared from sight, the wounded kids were surrounded by adults attending to them. The air was thick with the stink of cordite. The commotion of voices was deafening. Loretto found himself, as if he had been transported there magically, kneeling alongside a boy who was screeching in pain, issuing a high-pitched wailing that was a mix of terror and indignation as he tried to grab his leg and was restrained by a stout woman who was probably not related to him, given how calmly she was going about her business. Loretto helped the woman remove the boy's shoes and pants before he took off his own shirt and tried to rip it into strips for bandages. When he couldn't get a tear started, he pulled a stiletto from his pocket, snapped it open, and stabbed the white fabric. At the sight of the knife, the woman paused and then yanked the strips away from him. She took his hand roughly, pressed it to the bloody hole in the boy's leg, and shifted her body so that she was practically sitting on the howling child's chest as she wrapped and tied the bandages. When she was done she spit a few sentences at Loretto in Italian. He made out attraverso and vivra and took her to be saying that the bullet had gone clean through the child's leg and that he'd live, which Loretto had been able to see for himself.
"Good," Loretto said, meaning he was glad the child would live.
The woman glanced at him with a look of motherly disdain, as if he were a hopeless child, and then waved her hand over her head and shouted, "Lui è qui!" at the sight of a scrawny young woman approaching them slowly as if wading through snow. "Su' madre," the stout woman whispered and then lifted the weeping child in her arms and carried him to his mother, who watched speechless, her face white, her arms quivering. Others had joined them at this point, including a crowd of children. They followed the woman carrying the child to his mother and left Loretto alone with the sound of sirens wailing closer and then the first of a dozen green and white squad cars blocking both ends of the avenue and every intersection.
Loretto picked up his jacket and tie from the street. He noticed that the tie was bloodstained, and he crumpled it up and stuck it in the jacket pocket. Then he saw that the jacket was also speckled with blood. He folded the ruined jacket over his arm. Across the street Richie Cabo and his boys were watching him. He met Cabo's eyes and then looked himself over and realized he was covered in blood—his undershirt, his slacks, his hands and arms and shoes. He hadn't realized how badly the child had been bleeding, though he did remember blood squirting out of the hole in the kid's leg when he first pressed his bare hands to the wound.
Cabo and his men stepped out into the street and started for Loretto but were intercepted by a pair of uniforms who separated each of the men, moved them apart, and began asking questions. As cops hustled him back to a storefront, Cabo's eyes lingered on Loretto. Another copper, follow ing Richie Cabo's gaze, approached Loretto warily, his hand resting on the butt of his gun.
"And what would you be doing here?" The officer was burly and tall with a red face and a mop of dark hair pushing out from under a blue saucer cap. The armpits of his blue jacket were stained black with sweat.
"Non parl' inglese," Loretto answered and then followed with several sentences of gibberish in rapid-fire Italian.
"Stop the malarkey, Loretto," the cop said. "I remember you from when you were running away from the nuns. I'm asking again: What would you be doing here?"
"I live here," Loretto said. He pointed up the avenue. "Over there a few blocks."
"Would you have a driver's license on you?"
Loretto took his license from his wallet and handed it over.
The cop checked the address, looked up the block, and handed it back to him. "Can you tell me what you saw, then?" He laid a hand on Loretto's shoulder, suddenly friendly.
"Didn't see nothin'. I heard the shootin' and then . . ." Loretto pointed to the blood on the street where he had helped with the wounded child.
The cop looked to the blood and then back to Loretto. "And did you have anything to do with this?"
"Nah," Loretto said. "What would I have to do with a thing like this?"
"Is that so? Well, Richie Cabo seems interested."
"In me? I don't know what about."
The cop put his hands on his hips and stood his ground. Behind him a pair of ambulances were moving slowly along the street.
"Look," Loretto said. He gestured to his bloody clothes. "Can I go? I'd like to get washed up."
"How'd you get so much blood all over you?"
"Helped bandage one of the kids."
The officer glanced at the remaining tatters of Loretto's shirt in the street. "All right," he said. "Go on. Get out of here."
Loretto asked, "Are they going to be all right? The kids?"
The cop seemed mystifed by the stupidity of the question. He walked away without answering.
On the sidewalk, still more cops were busy erecting barricades to keep the growing crowd out of the street. Reporters were showing up, press cards sticking out of
