“Son of a bitch,” Lisa Livia said again, but she sounded tired now, and when Shane pulled a chair up to the table for her, between the newly scrubbed Venus and Joey, she came in and sank down into it and just stared at her father, sad and lost.

“I’m sorry, Livie,” he said, but he sounded more uncomfortable than sorry.

“Between you and my mother-” Lisa Livia just shook her head.

Shane cleared his throat. “I suggest we put the guns away. There are a lot of secrets here. And I’m tired of them.”

Frankie nodded at him, keeping his gun out. “So, you know about your parents?”

“What about my parents?” Shane frowned as Frankie looked at Joey. He caught Joey glaring, raising the gun a little, and he stiffened, but Frankie spoke again.

“You know. That I’m your uncle Frankie. Your good uncle, not your lying snake of a shit-head rat-fuck uncle, the Don.”

“Jesus, you’re a bad liar,” Shane said, and Frankie started to swing the gun his way, and Joey raised his even more, and Carpenter said, “Guns away, gentlemen,” from the doorway, in that deep voice that brooked no argument, and then Agnes came around the counter, her arms full of food, looking like she had every dish in the refrigerator, and dumped it all on the table between them.

“This is my kitchen,” she said, an edge of hysteria in her voice, “and enough goddamn people have been shot in it. You are my family, you’re the only family I’ve got, so you’re going to put those guns away and eat something right now. Or there’sgonna he hell to pay.”

She slapped a loaf of bread down on the table and looked at them both, blood in her eyes, and Joey and Frankie both hesitated. “You do not want me angry,” Agnes said, and they both nodded once and, like the unhappy, dysfunctional family they were, they put the guns away together.

Rhett sighed and went to sleep.

“And now you’re gonna eat,” Agnes said.

“What’d you come back for, Frankie?” Shane said as Joey began to help Agnes take the covers off the dishes.

“My granddaughter’s wedding, of course,” Frankie said, craning his neck to look into the bowls. “I read about it in the paper and I thought it would be nice. Hey, are those ribs-?”

“Cut the crap,” Shane said. “Where’s the five million? And what score are you settling with the Don?”

“I was wondering about the five mil myself,” Agnes said as she slung plates around the table like she was dealing cards, clearly still mad as hell. “And the necklace. That was a lousy thing to do to me, Doyle.”

“Aw, Agnes,” Frankie said.

“I mean it. I worried about you, I fussed over you. I fed you-” She smacked the container with the ribs down in front of him hard. “Darlin’, I know it-”

“And you put a necklace on my dog and almost got me killed.” Agnes finished almost throwing his plate at him. “What the hell was that about?”

Frankie looked shamefaced but relieved, Shane thought. Doesn’t want to talk about the Don.

“That was just a joke,” Frankie told Agnes. “Justice for Brenda. I been knocking around all over the world while she stayed here livin’ the good life, never paying for half-killing me, never losing one night’s sleep over it, so I thought, ‘That bitch needs some payback.’ So I put the necklace on Rhett so she’d see it and start to worry-”

“Jesus.” Lisa Livia sighed and look the cover off the turkey bowl. “You are a piece of work.”

“What?” Frankie said, picking up a rib. “I just-”

“Because of you,” Agnes said, her voice like cut glass, “Four Wheels sent his grandson here to die. Because of you, Four Wheels came here and died. Because of you, Brenda thought there was five million dollars here and hired hitmen to kill me.”

“What the hell?” Frankie said, jolted. He looked at Joey, who nodded. “That bitch hired those hairballs?”

“Because of you, she got so desperate, she killed Taylor tonight with a meat fork,” Agnes went on savagely. “I don’t even know what the collateral damage is, what happened when Shane went to Savannah that got blood all over my fondant, or if that body bag over Carpenter’s shoulder is part of this-”

“No, no, this is professional,” Carpenter said.

“-but your joke killed at least five people-”

“Six,” Shane said, thinking of Rocko.

“-so forgive me if I’m not slapping you on the back right now.”

“Aw, hell,” Frankie said, waving the rib at her. “I didn’t kill them, Brenda did.”

“You’re missing the point, Frankie,” Shane said, thinking it probably wasn’t the first time. “But I’m a lot more interested in your first lie.”

“Hey,” Frankie said, and bit into the rib.

“The one about how you came back for Maria’s wedding.” Shane met the old man’s dark shark eyes, hooded now as he bent over to demolish the rib. “You didn’t come home for the wedding; you came home to turn state’s evidence. You came home to roll on the Don. Which means you’re the one he hired Casey Dean to hit.”

“Ah, fuck.” Frankie dropped the stripped rib bone on his plate, annoyed. “Goddamn Wilson must be getting old, he leaks stuff like that.”

Silent Carpenter got more silent as Shane shut down any reaction he might have had, to say, “He is.”

Frankie reached for another rib, shaking his head, and Lisa Livia got up and headed for the microwave with the entire bowl of gravy.

“Save some for me,” Agnes said, dropping into the chair on the other side of Joey.

“Get two straws,” Lisa Livia said, and slung the bowl into microwave.

Shane turned to look at Carpenter. Fucking Wilson knew. Carpenter met his eyes for a long moment and then nodded and headed for the basement with the body bag, moving past Frankie without looking at him.

“That means that body bag over Carpenter’s shoulder is your fault,” Shane said. “In fact, we can pretty much trace the entire body count back to you.”

“Now wait just a fuckin’ minute,” Frankie said, trying to look indignant with barbecue sauce on his face.

“So now you make it up to us,” Agnes said quietly from her seat beside Joey.

Frankie said, “Huh?” and Shane almost did, too, but Joey just put his hand on the back of her chair, one hundred percent behind her as always.

“We have many problems, Frankie,” Agnes said, calmer now. “I need this wedding to happen tomorrow. Shane needs to take out Casey Dean. Lisa Livia lost everything she had and more when Brenda emptied the accounts she managed.” Frankie turned to LL as she sat down with her hot plate and heated gravy, but Agnes kept on talking. “And Brenda needs to go down for Taylor’s murder. So you’re going to help us with all of that.”

“How?” Frankie said, mystified but not unwilling.

“You’re going to give the bride away tomorrow,” Agnes said.

“Yeah?” Frankie brightened. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“That should slow Brenda down long enough that with any luck she won’t kill anybody during the ceremony,” Agnes went on. “If we get real lucky, she’ll have a heart attack.”

“Hell, yes.” Frankie wiped his fingers on the napkins Lisa Livia had dumped by his plate. “You got a tux for me?”

“You can use the Don’s,” Joey said with an undercurrent in his voice that Shane knew was important, but not as important as the fact that Wilson was lucking them over for some reason.

The son of a bitch had known all along. What else had he known? What other games was he playing? And why was he playing games at all?

“Plus if you show up in the open as Frankie Fortunato,” Agnes went on, “that’ll draw Casey Dean out in the open, too, so Shane can care of him, so that’ll finally be done.”

“Good,” Frankie said, nodding as he reached for the turkey. “That’s good.”

Agnes was on a roll. “Of course you might get shot, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” She handed him a plate of deviled eggs. “Have one.”

“Hey,” Frankie said, frowning.

“And as for Lisa Livia, what did you do with the five million, Frankie?” Agnes asked, an edge in her voice Shane had never heard before. Maybe something about fathers lying to daughters, he thought now, maybe something about too many lies. “Because Lisa Livia needs some of it and you’re going to give it to her.”

Lisa Livia sat very still across from Frankie, watching, her fork poised above her plate.

“The five million. Oh, that’s a sad story,” Frankie said, mixing Irish and Jersey and sounding like a lying bastard.

Rhett lifted his head and barked at the back door.

“Already I know you’re lying, Frankie,” Xavier said from the doorway.


An hour later, Agnes looked at the group crowded around her kitchen table stuffing their faces on a week’s worth of leftovers and thought, The Gang That Could Shoot Straight. One cop, two hit men, two mobsters, a mob princess, and a food columnist, plus an ancient bloodhound for a mascot; if Evie showed up, they could do Eight Is Enough. Without Evie, lucky seven. Please God.

Shane pushed his plate away and then caught sight of her face. “Agnes?”

My team. My family. “You okay?”

“I’m thinking.”

Frankie had spun them the sad story of how he’d lost the five million trying to swim across the Blood River in his escape from Brenda and her frying pan. He tried to make it an epic story of one man’s struggle against the flood, but it was basically one cheating goombah’s story of how his wife tried to kill him and he hit the road with five mil, which he lost because he couldn’t swim very well. The only thing that kept Agnes from killing him was that he was eating the entire time. You couldn’t kill somebody who was eating your food. There were rules about things like that.