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“And you, too? We left guards outside your house!”
I shrug, hugging Otto’s cage to my chest. “Siobhan is very persuasive.”
“Wanna ’stacio?,” Otto squawks, and I nearly burst into tears.
“Oh, my sweet boy, I promise you all the pistachios your little birdy heart desires when we get home. Heck, I’ll build you a pistachio palace if that’s what it takes.”
Gustavo blurts out, “Enough with the bird reunion.”
Mr. Fiorentino holds up his palm and Gustavo backs away. Then he turns his attention to Sawyer. “Now, Mr. O’Malley, shall we get down to business? Where are the assets we’ve been so patiently waiting for?”
Sawyer gestures around the warehouse with a sweep of his arm that’s probably meant to look cool but comes off more like he’s doing the YMCA dance. “Right here, as promised.”
Mr. Fiorentino raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Open them,” he commands, his voice a velvety whisper.
The goons spring into action like overeager puppies, crowbars appearing out of nowhere. With a series of creaks and groans, the crates pop open.
I hold my breath, half-expecting priceless Fabergé eggs or glittering jewels.
Instead, out tumbles…matryoshka dolls?
Spilling out of the crates are a sea of adorable, hand-painted Russian nesting dolls, staring up at us with their cute little painted faces.
The goon looks as confused as I feel. Gustavo pulls out a particularly chubby matryoshka and shakes it like it might magically turn into something else.
Mr. Fiorentino’s face is cold as stone, almost expressionless. “What,” he says, his voice dangerously low, “is this?”
More crates are opened, and more dolls appear. There are little wooden bears, brightly painted horses, and enough nesting dolls to stock a small toy store.
How cute. It’s the entire cast ofAnastasia!
Otto squawks, “Did you poop?”
Mr. Fiorentino’s lips twitch in what might be amusement. “Charming creature,” he says dryly.
Sawyer glances at Uncle Whitey, who shakes his head and shrugs, then he looks back at Mr. Fiorentino. With a genuinely perplexed look in his eyes, he says, “Isn’t this what you were expecting?”
“We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.”
— HENRY YOUNGMAN
26
SAWYER
There’s this movie by Robert Rodriguez calledThe Mariachi, about a musician wearing his all-black mariachi costume, carrying his guitar from bar to bar, just trying to pick up a few gigs.
My demented high school Spanish teacher made us watch it. It’s so bloody, I don’t know what she was thinking, playing it for a classroom full of easily excitable fifteen-year-olds.
Anyway, the poor musician somehow gets mistaken for another guy—also wearing all black and also carrying a guitar case—but that guy had something other than a guitar inside, if you catch my drift. Ultimately, our mariachi gets accidentally involved in a cartel war, and things happen etcetera, etcetera.
(The director eventually made a sequel with Antonio Banderas where the guitarist takes down the bad guys with a little help from his mariachi network of friends, who suddenly appear out of nowhere with guitar cases that are actually machine guns. But I digress. That’s not important right now.)
My point is, I feel just like that mariachi guy, just trying to mind my business, trying to live in peace, playing hockey…but here I am, swept up on the crazy bus with not one, not two, but three mob gangs.
This Italian mob boss…this Mr. Fiorentino…with his crisp suit and perfectly styled hair…he’s not like the rest of them. His calm is more terrifying than Gustavo’s tough-man threats. He studies me with a cool, calculated glare. I think he might be trying to figure me out, trying to determine if I’m telling the truth or if I’m in cahoots with whoever his enemy is.
My dad. His enemy is definitely my dad.
