Family Business

By Vincent Patrick

The most lovable family ever to live outside the law gives us a wild, funny, tough-talking, big-hearted novel. Between Grandpa Jessie, son Vito, and grandson Adam, the McMullen men represent a good portion of the ethnic groups in America—Cherokee Indian, Irish, Jewish, and Italian—but there's something "unadulterated" they all share—what Grandpa Jessie calls "the criminal gene." And Jessie intends to capitalize on it with one last big scam that will keep them in clover forever. Although Vito has long since sworn off partnering with Jessie in his outrageous schemes, when he learns that Adam is the mastermind behind this scam, Vito reluctantly joins in to look out for his son. From the drunken revelry of an Irish wake in Brooklyn to a backstreet bar in Hell's Kitchen, to a not-so-secure genetic engineering firm in San Jose, FAMILY BUSINESS abounds in streetwise wit, colorful characters, and crisp dialogue, with all the strains of love and loyalty that exist in every family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Patrick
• Release date: Nov 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9780990392378

Vincent Patrick

Vincent Patrick has a work background appropriate for a novelist’s book jacket. Born in the Bronx, New York, he finished both high school and engineering college at night and has had a remarkable range of jobs. He’s been a door-to-door Bible salesman, bartender, restaurant owner, Standard-bred Pacer owner, vice-president of an engineering consulting firm, teacher in a community college (writing fiction in the off-hours from his late teens.) After the publication of his first novel, The Pope of Greenwich village, he wrote screenplays for many years, including the script for the movie of Pope of Greenwich Village (with Micky Rouark and Eric Roberts) and for the movie of his second novel, Family Business (Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Mathew Broderick, Directed by Sidney Lumet.) He says that he wrote SMOKE SCREEN as 'a thriller with an emphasis on character, including the villain's.'

Book preview

PRAISE FOR FAMILY BUSINESS

AN EXCEPTIONAL BOOK. THE PLOTTING IS TAUT, THE DIALOGUE CRISP, AND THE CHARACTERS SO REAL AND INVOLVING THEY THREATEN TO JUMP OFF THE PAGE AT YOU. But be warned that this is more than just a quick read. Between the jokes, Patrick manages to insert some larger truths about loyalty and love and fathers and sons. Newsday

Stir a pinch of DOSTOEVSKY into a whiskey fizz, drop in a healthy splash of DAMON RUNYON, and you get some idea of a Vincent Patrick story. In this, his second novel, the acclaimed author of 'The Pope of Greenwich Village' has once more melded such lofty preoccupations of sin, fate and retribution with an engaging tale of colorful New York ethnics tripping into crime. Los Angeles Times/Book Review

'Family Business' works not only as A THRILLER BUT ALSO A WELL-WROUGHT AND AFFECTING NOVEL. The New York Times/Book Review

In the exuberant style of 'The Pope of Greenwich Village'… Patrick deftly intersperses humor with memorable dramatic scenes. Publishers Weekly

Rendered with a ROLLICKING SENSE OF HUMOR GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU LAUGH OUT LOUD… A stunning portrayal of generational conflict. Kirkus Reviews

A diverting caper novel… taking place in the New York City Vincent Patrick knows and describes with such admirable fidelity… Patrick is at his ethnic best… AS AUTHENTIC AS IT IS TOUCHING. Los Angeles Herald Examiner

A suspenseful, compelling and often funny novel. Book World

FAMILY BUSINESS

VINCENT PATRICK

Copyright © 1985-2014 by Vincent Patrick

All rights reserved

This edition published in 2014 by Vincent Patrick

All text is identical to the 1985 edition

Distributed by Smashwords

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Eric Bryant

Author Photo by Myron Miller

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Patrick, Vincent.

Family business.

I. Title.

PS3566.A7869F36 1985 813'.54 85-19151

ISBN: 978-0-9903923-2-3

A BONUS FEATURE IN THIS EDITION

The text of this edition of Family Business is identical to the text of the original 1985 edition of the novel. Because the 1988 movie of Family Business featured stars Sean Connery (playing Jessie), Dustin Hoffman (Vito), Matthew Broderick (Adam) and Director Sidney Lumet, I've been asked often by readers of the novel what it's like to write the screenplay for one's own novel, and what it's like working with Hollywood stars and studios. Film Buffs (and there are many) especially love to get an inside look at moviemaking, and so I've included, in the end-pages of this edition, a six page supplement:

RECALLING SOME TIDBITS OF MOVIEMAKING: 'FAMILY BUSINESS'

Books by Vincent Patrick

THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE

FAMILY BUSINESS

SMOKE SCREEN

FOR CAROLE

Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR FAMILY BUSINESS

A BONUS FEATURE IN THIS EDITION

Books by Vincent Patrick

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PRAISE FOR SMOKE SCREEN

REVIEWS FOR THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE

The tyrant and the mob, the grandfather and the grandchild, are natural allies.

— Schopenhauer

CHAPTER 1

THE NORTHBOUND TRAFFIC ON THE DEEGAN SLOWED TO A CRAWL AS VITO approached the lane feeding from the bridge. He worked the pedals of the borrowed Toyota with both feet, stop and go, his shoes rubbing against one another, and silently cursed the Japs for building dwarf automobiles. On his right, cars poured in from Jersey, filled with suburban, middle-class Jews, he thought, heading for Seders at parents' homes in Riverdale or lower Westchester. He swung quickly into the right lane by intimidating a late model Caddy with a Potamkin sticker on it then pulled off at the One Hundred Seventy-ninth Street exit and circled up behind the old NYU campus. People filled the sidewalks along Burnside Avenue, even in front of the burned-out buildings, but there were few cars on the street. Unless the Puerto Ricans and blacks had taken to celebrating Passover, he thought, there was little chance of running into a traffic jam in this part of the Bronx.

At Davidson Avenue he circled the block twice, then decided that one of the several spaces on Burnside would be safest for the car and for him and Elaine when they walked to it later. He pulled the beat-up Toyota into a spot near a Korean vegetable stand that put him directly under a streetlight and cut the wheels into the curb to account for the hill, wondering, as he felt the tire grab, whether people still cut the wheels into the curb on hills or was it one more sign of advancing age. A dozen teenage blacks lounged on the sidewalk, the boys wearing sneakers, the few girls with dread-lock braids. Vito took Julio's pocket comb off the dashboard and put it into the glove compartment; he remembered at age twelve smashing a car window with a garbage can for half a pack of Chesterfields on the driver's seat, more to impress his friends than for the cigarettes.

You used to be a tough guy, Vito, he thought, and kept his eye on the black kids as he locked the doors.

As he walked through the darkness of Davidson Avenue, as alert as an infantry point man, it occurred to him how crazy things had become. His own comfortable new Cadillac Seville, loaded with every option available, had been swapped for the night for the rusting Toyota that belonged to his employee, Julio; there was no practical way for Vito to bring the Caddy to this part of the Bronx. Something was seriously wrong in the world, he thought, and something was as seriously wrong with his aging in-laws for continuing to live in the neighborhood. He would say it to Nat and Rose at some point during the evening, as he did every year. They would ignore it, and he would talk about it with Elaine on the way home, as he did every year, and she would agree, then point out that they were her parents, not her children, and there was a limit to what she could do with them, being a daughter rather than a son.

He turned into the dark, litter-strewn courtyard and passed between the two chipped-down blobs of concrete that flanked the entrance, for fifteen years now unrecognizable as the two seated-lions they had once been.

Mugging victims, Vito thought. A couple of lions don't stand a chance on Davidson Avenue. As he climbed the four flights of dirty stairs he was even more alert than he had been on the street.

He was late. Elaine kissed his cheek and said that she and Adam had been there half an hour. Adam hugged him briefly and patted his back in the masculine way that he did since returning from his travels — five years ago he had considered any sign of affection to or from his father as childish.

Vito apologized for being late. Don't worry about it, Pop, Adam said. "Grandma put out a couple of gallons of knaidlach soup to hold us."

Traffic, Vito said, then walked into the bedroom and tossed his coat onto Nat and Rose's bed. He returned to the living room and said, "It looks like a scene from Exodus out there. There hasn't been a northbound movement of Jews like this in the Bronx since Co-op City opened."

His coat's hardly off and he's already starting in on the Jews, Nat said, and handed Vito a folded, white yarmulkah.

Vito read the label in it: THE BAR MITZVAH OF WAYNE GLASGOW 1976.

Who's Wayne Glasgow? he asked.

Nat shrugged. Who knows.

"He brings the koppels home from shul," Rose said.

Vito sat beside Elaine and set the skullcap on his head carefully, thinking that Nat and Rose must open this table into the living room only once a year now, for Passover dinner, the other three hundred and sixty-four days spent as infirm white prisoners in a black neighborhood. There seemed to be endless mahogany leaves that fit into it, leaves stored under their bed between Seders, that expanded it into a ten-person banquet table from a tiny side piece that all year long held framed photographs of himself as a fifties newlywed, pompadour in place, Elaine in an ornately framed eight-by-ten taken for her sweet sixteen party, highly colored and retouched by a long-defunct photographer on Fordham Road, and Adam in his Bar Mitzvah outfit complete with knitted yarmulkah. Adam's speech, given just when Saigon was falling, had been about the evils of Vietnam, Vito remembered — even then the kid knew what would sell in a synagogue of liberal New York Jews.

Vito looked across the table at Elaine and compared her to the smiling sweet sixteen in the photo, which, for the duration of the Seder, had been moved to the top of the television. In spite of the formal, three-quarter pose in which the photographer had her staring off at some distant horizon, Elaine's teenage exuberance came through in the eyes, the smile, the slight upward tilt of her head. She still had it, Vito thought, as a forty-four-year-old sitting beside her twenty-three-year-old son. She had grown into the earthy, attractive woman promised in the picture. Her hair was still as light an auburn as it was in the photo, maintained through weekly visits to what she continued to call, the beauty parlor, rather than the hairdresser. The tiny wrinkles around her eyes looked good to Vito. Sexy as the sixteen-year-old in the picture was, his forty-four-year-old, in-the-flesh wife seated across the table appealed to him even more at this point in his life. She was sure of herself — mostly, Vito thought, because she was pleased with the person she had matured into — so that even with the endless care that went into her appearance, she always looked comfortable and relaxed. Elaine was not trying to fool anyone, least of all herself. Her clothes and makeup made her attractive enough to draw whistles from a crew of young construction workers, yet the makeup never deteriorated into a disguise. She knew when a piece of clothing or a look simply was inappropriate for a woman of her age. It occurred to Vito that he was lucky, after twenty-four years of marriage, to find at the end of most days that his wife was the most appealing woman he had seen since leaving the house in the morning.

Beside her, Adam's head was bent toward the soup that remained in his bowl. He had his mother's high forehead and blue eyes but his hair color was Vito's, jet black. When he smiled — not often enough for a twenty-three-year-old, Vito thought — Elaine's exuberance animated his face. Perhaps he smiled more when he was not with his parents. This was only the third time that Vito had seen Adam during the six weeks he had been back in New York, and so he shouldn't jump to conclusions about his moods. Whatever conclusions Vito came to about Adam were based on very little current information; during the years of Adam's absence Vito and Elaine had seen him only once, at age eighteen when, having dropped out after a year and a half in college, he passed through New York from Cambridge en route to Berkeley for what he called, A little time to find myself. The little time had become five years of not only Berkeley but parts of Europe and Asia that had caused Vito to toss and turn often before falling asleep at night.

He broke into his own thoughts and looked at Nat.

What are we doing here still? Vito asked. Next year in Jerusalem. We all said it last year, Nat. We all say it every year, but every year we wind up on Davidson Avenue in the Bronx. Not even Flushing, where you wouldn't need grates on your windows, no less Jerusalem.

Nat ignored him and passed out the slim prayer books, most of them compliments of Mogen David wine. Vito's was a deluxe edition from Maxwell House coffee. Rose cleared a space in front of Nat and set out the compartmented dish of bitter herbs, hard-boiled egg, potato, karpas, and the lamb shank bone that always reminded Vito of an archaeological find, then placed two tiny bowls of salt water at each end of the table. The Seder was under way.

The old man had nearly finished saying Kiddush and Rose began to fill each tiny cordial glass with wine when Vito remembered the paper cup. Rose's hand trembled, as always. When she reached across to Vito she spilled perhaps a teaspoonful onto the once-a-year tablecloth and immediately uttered an expression appropriate to the accident.

Hab a zessin yur, she said, and filled Adam's glass. "Yiddish, Adam. A zessin yur. Means we should have a sweet year. Because we spilled sweet wine."

Adam smiled at his grandmother but said nothing. She expected no response from him.

There's more on the tablecloth than in my glass, Vito said.

Nat raised his head from the prayer book and peered from behind the thick cataract lenses, surveying the stain while he continued to intone the Hebrew prayer from memory. Without missing a beat he interjected, in the monotone he had used with his wife for sixty years, Rose, you spilled on the tablecloth.

Everyone ignored him.

Vito had never paid attention to the tablecloth before. Now he fingered it. It had to be one of the few family heirlooms, with some touching Isaac Singer story attached to it. Hand embroidered in the heart of the shtetl by the daughter of a famous Reb, then schlepped out by Rose's mother, the ever-present mounted Cossacks no more than twenty feet behind. Snow. There must have been lots of snow. The tablecloth could have inadvertently tripped a Cossack's horse, or hidden the famous Reb's firstborn male grandchild. Maybe even responsible for averting an entire minor pogrom. Whatever — this tablecloth would have done wonders for the Jews. He would ask Elaine about it when they got home — for sure it was one of the stories she had heard throughout childhood.

Vito studied the half mouthful of wine in his little cordial glass then reached into the side pocket of his jacket and withdrew the paper cup. He squeezed it into shape and rolled it gently between his palms while Rose, Elaine, and Adam watched. Nat too looked up and stared, his eyes enormous behind the lenses. He broke into the prayer for a quick aside to Rose in Yiddish. Vito guessed that it would translate close to, "Nu, what is the maniac son-in-law up to this year?" Vito dumped his cordial glass of wine into the paper cup, then held the cup up toward Rose.

Now would you please fill it, Rosie? Every year I ask for a real glass. He tapped the empty cordial glass. These... thimbles you use are not meant for wine.

He turned toward Nat, who had now assimilated it all and was about to speak. Paper, Nat. It's kosher. You've got no gripe here.

Rose spoke to Elaine, as though Vito was not there.

Only your husband can't sip wine like other people? He needs such a big glass?

Vito motioned for her to fill his cup.

Rose, three hours from now you'll do your little number and tell the table, 'Look, that's his fourteenth glass of wine.'

Last year was seventeen.

Seventeen tablespoons. Now I have my own, seven-ounce, kosher glass. Fill her up please, Rosie.

She reached across and tried to pinch his cheek.

And after twenty-four years it's still, Rosie? You wouldn't have a stroke if you said 'Ma.' Believe me.

She filled his cup and set the bottle out of reach. Vito took a long draft of wine and smacked his lips loudly.

I never really had one, Rosie. The last time I called anyone 'Ma' I was seven years old. It's a little late to start now.

She turned to Adam. Ice in the winter, your father gives.

And it's not twenty-four years, Vito said. "We're married twenty-four years. I've been coming here twenty-three." He turned to Adam.

For a year they didn't talk to your poor dad.

Don't live in the past, Rose said.

Was that a good year or a bad year, Pop?

Elaine glared at Adam. He sipped his wine.

Your son doesn't need a monster glass, Vito, Rose said. Look how nice he drinks his wine.

Elaine looked up from her soup. "Look how nice he drinks? He's twenty-three, Ma. He's not eight. She shook her head slowly. Jesus."

"A little respect please, while I'm davening," Nat said in the midst of the Hebrew. "Decorum. Let's keep a little decorum on Pesach."

I don't need a monster glass because I'm half Jewish, Grandma. It kills your taste for alcohol. Adam took the tiniest possible sip from his cordial glass. I do a lot of cocaine instead.

Please! Rose said. Not even a joke like that.

Some joke, Elaine mumbled, just as the telephone ring cut off Nat's last few lines of Kiddush.

They sat silently and listened to three rings. Nat brought his watch up close to his eyes.

Who could be calling?

Adam rose and went to the bedroom. He returned a minute later, the Seder at a standstill while everyone looked to him for an explanation. Adam stood quietly and let some tension develop, indulging his first whimsical mood of the evening, then turned to Vito.

Your father, Pop. He wanted to wish us all a good Passover.

Everyone looked puzzled.

That's Jessie for you. No? Adam said to Vito.

Vito nodded, still puzzled. That's Jessie.

*

Adam read the questions, nicely, Vito thought. Nat interrupted once to correct his pronunciation but Rose stopped him. Leave him alone, his Hebrew's better than yours. When he finished she asked, How do you remember so well? then turned to Elaine and shook her head slowly. "It's something the way that boy asks the questions."

You should have heard me read a few years ago in Berkeley. Knocked out the whole table.

"You went to a Seder? In California? Rose shook her head in mild disbelief. I thought you were being a beach bum out there."

Not a beach bum, Vito said. There's no beach in Berkeley.

I was crashing for a few weeks at a sort of commune right off Telegraph Avenue. Maybe fifteen kids sharing this huge old house. Anyway, six or seven of them were Jews. But California Jews, not for real.

Nat stopped praying.

Not real Jews? What kind of Jews, then?

"Grandpa, there're no real Jews raised in California. Real Jews are in New York. Out there the sun turns them into goyish Jews. Blond hair, surfboards..."

He knows a little Yiddish, too, Rose said.

"Well, the Jewish kids decided to hold a kind of half a hippy Seder. All the Christians, too. But done right — the bitter herbs, hide the matzoh — the whole ceremony. Everyone read from the books, but in English. Nobody knew two words of Hebrew. It came my turn to read and I rattled it off in perfect Hebrew. Knocked them out. No one knew I was half Jewish. Adam McMullen, that's all they knew. They kept pressing me for how the hell I knew Hebrew. I finally told them, 'You've heard how Jewish New York City is? Well it's so Jewish that everybody has to learn Hebrew in public school. Even the Christians. You're not allowed to graduate otherwise.'"

You don't tell people you're half Jewish? Nat asked.

Yeah. I hand out cards when I travel. My mother's Jewish and my father's Italian, Irish, and Cherokee.

Vito sipped his wine. You're listening to my father too much. His half Cherokee nonsense. Big-time warrior. I'm pretty sure Jessie's mother was a Digger. From California. They're closer to aborigines than American Indians. Whatever, it was some low-life tribe scrambling around in the dirt.

Cherokee sounds better, Adam said.

As Rose began to clear the empty soup bowls, Vito made eye contact with Adam and shrugged a silent question. Adam understood perfectly. He rolled his eyes upward, and Vito knew that Jessie's call meant trouble. He barely heard Rose talking to him.

Well, your son read it beautifully, she said, as she set out plates and filled them with pieces of roasted chicken and slices of pot roast. She paused after loading up Adam's plate.

"A college graduate couldn't say it any better, Adam. She found room on his plate for another slice of meat and a mound of carrots. And talking about college graduates..."

We weren't talking about them, Ma. You were, Elaine said.

"Somebody's got to. That a boy this smart never finished college is a shonda." She watched over him as he started to eat.

Please, Ma, Elaine said, don't tell us how beautifully he eats. We can see it for ourselves. Only twenty-three and he gets every bit of food into his mouth. All alone.

Adam looked up at his grandmother and mumbled through a mouthful of food, Delicious.

Rose continued to fill plates, happy.

*

After they had finished eating, as Vito started on his fourth paper cupful, Nat completed mumbling a section of prayer and said to Rose, It's time to let the angel in. She adjusted the extra cordial glass of wine that had sat in the center of the table throughout the meal, then walked to the door.

Keep the chain on, Grandma. You forget you're living in the Bronx.

Adam's right, Vito said. "Instead of Elijah, some great big shvartzer wearing sneakers is going to come in and mug us."

Elaine pressed the point.

"When are you two going to move out of here? There are three white families left in the building. There were empty beer cans all over the stairs coming up."

They're right, Adam said. Get the hell out of this place. You're too old to survive here.

He addressed Nat. Grandpa, how old are the two of you now? The truth.

Who kept records in our day? Rose said. There were no hospitals. No one knows.

About how old? Adam asked.

About means nothing, she said. You're as old as you feel.

They'll never tell, Elaine said. Some crazy superstition about telling their age. They won't even tell you their anniversary. But they're into their eighties. They must be.

Rose stood at the still unopened door and said, "Not such a crazy superstition. All these people... the kinder, the grand kinder, give them big golden anniversary parties at Areles. Marvelous. But whoever the party's for is dead a month later. They come from dancing the anniversary waltz at Areles, they drop like flies. You don't tempt God by bragging about your age."

Elaine turned to her father.

"You're only a few years younger than your brother David. And he admits to eighty-three. He's eighty-three, Daddy, isn't he?"

"I wasn't at his bris," Nat said, and returned to his prayer book. He began to daven again while Rose unhooked the chain, held the door open for a bit to let the angel in, then closed it and reset the chain. She turned toward Adam.

"This place you would like us to get out of, we've been here forty-two years. Your mother was raised in this apartment."

"Anyway, it's not all shvartzers," Nat said. There are plenty of Indians moving in.

Cherokees? Adam asked.

India Indians, Nat said. Hindis.

Nat, you sound like it's the Rockefellers and the Whitneys moving into the neighborhood, Vito said. "You think the real estate's going to soar up in the next few years because Indians are moving in?"

They're easier to live with than the blacks. These are not violent people.

Very nice people, Rose said. But they don't kill cockroaches. She seemed puzzled. How could people not kill cockroaches? We're overrun here.

Bad for their karma, Grandma. It messes up their roach karma.

"Even the shvartzers kill roaches," she said.

They kill old Jews, too, Vito said. When there's only a few left on the block.

Elaine stood and began clearing dirty dishes. They want to be the last, she said, and turned to her mother. You want me to promise we'll chisel it on your stone after the mugging? Rose and Nat Ruden, the last Jews on Davidson Avenue. I'll remember to have the rabbi say it at the unveiling.

Rose motioned with her head toward Nat. Tell him. He doesn't want to move.

Nat continued reading from the prayer book.

I can help you with the money, Vito said. All kidding aside, Nat. You're living in a slum and you don't know it.

If we move, we move with our own money, Rose said. We don't take from our children.

It's no big deal. Business has been decent. Vito winked at her. Believe me, you wouldn't have a stroke if you take a little help.

We're not people who take. We give.

Elaine shook her head at Vito. Drop it, she said. You can't deal with people who can't take.

There was a long silence, with only the sounds of Rose and Elaine scraping and stacking plates. Rose ran her finger across the wine stain and spoke to Vito.

"Did I ever tell you about this tablecloth?"

Don't tell me, Rosie. Just one question. Did your mother personally shlep it out of the ghetto?

"No, when we left Russia we had our luggage sent. Everybody in the shtetl had their luggage sent. What kind of a question. .

They were quiet for a while, then Adam broke the silence, in his first serious mood of the evening.

Well I don't care where the money to move comes from, I'm not coming to another Seder in this apartment.

Everyone looked at him.

"I mean it, Grandma. I won't climb over another empty beer can on the steps. I'm not going to walk through two dark blocks to the car with my mother and father, close to the curb so my dad and I have a shot at it if we've got to bust some junkies' heads, and I'm not going to go home and worry about you two getting mugged. You're like a couple of turkeys walking these streets. You ought to print up signs and hang them around your necks — mug me, I am a turkey. Well, the five years I've been gone the neighborhood's become a jungle. And I'm not coming to the next Seder unless you're living somewhere else."

Vito raised his eyebrows in surprised appreciation.

*

Nat insisted upon Adam searching for the matzoh and after a few minutes of refusing, Adam went at it with gusto. Everyone called out, Getting hotter, or, Cold, until he homed in on the sofa cushion where he had found the wrapped-up matzoh on every Seder night of his childhood. Nat tried to press a twenty-dollar bill on him, until Adam insisted that, If I'm willing to act like a little kid and hunt for the matzoh, then you've got to give me a kid's reward. They settled on a five.

Rose opened a box of Barton's kosher-for-Passover candy while Adam played Nat one game of dominoes on the oval coffee table. Vito occupied himself with straightening the half-dozen framed Chagall reproductions that hung in the living room. No one mentioned the move again but Rose seemed in a mild state of shock. She fished out only two newspaper clippings. Vito got a vitamin column. It claimed that excessive consumption of alcohol washed away the Bs and C, and that heavy drinkers should replenish them daily. Brandishing the second one, she interrupted the domino game to show Adam the most recent statistics on the relative lifetime earnings of college graduates and nongraduates. Five minutes later, Vito, Elaine, and Adam left Rose and Nat chained in their apartment.

*

They walked toward Burnside Avenue, pleased that there was enough of a chill in the air