Best of all, I can hear the boss play.

I’d not heard a cat tickle the ivories before coming into the Don’s employ. The boss’s tail is muscular enough to join his paws and make chords on the keyboard of a 1920 walnut Italian Florentine baby grand. The boss only plays the music of Italian composers; he says playing anything else is a waste of time. He just finished the main theme from Giacomo Puccini’s

Manon Lescaut. Before that he performed a piece from the unfinished Turandot and a few dozen bars from La Boheme.

It’s like Heaven opening up when the boss plays, the rich notes swirling around the apartment and rising into my attic, consuming me and bringing tears to my eyes. No other sounds are so enchanting.

I live to hear the boss play.

He explained to me once that Italy gave the world the best composers and the best instruments, that piano is a short form of the Italian word pianoforte, which in turn comes from the original Italian term for the instrument-clavicembalo col piano e forte.

I couldn’t care less what you call the thing… I just love the way it sounds when the boss sets his paws and tail tip to it.

In the back of my mind I can still hear the notes. I’ve set my pads in time to the imagined music as I head down the street, looking over my shoulder once to see him looking out the window… not looking at me, but surveying his domain.

“Buon compleanno!” I hear him call to the long-legged Bengal on the sidewalk. Happy birthday.

“Congratulazioni!” he shouts to the Persian outside the used book store. I’d heard she’d recently had kittens.

Imparo I’taliano… I’ve been learning Italian ever since ingratiating myself with the boss, and I’m pleased that I’ve gotten quite fluent. Mi piacerebbe visitare I’talia un giorno di questi! Yeah, I would like to stroll down the sidewalks of Italy with the Don someday and sit high in a balcony during a performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment. He promised to take me and Guido next year if things work out all right.

I hear a shrill call, and my head snaps around. It’s Bianca, the beautiful bicolor Ragdoll I visit when I go to Madam Mariabella’s. I know that Bianca shares her affections with whoever meets the madam’s price at the cathouse, but she claims to have a special spot in her heart just for me. I’d love to take her to Italy with me and the boss, but I know it’s going to be a business trip, and so dalliances won’t be allowed.

I flick my tail at her in a friendly greeting and then pick up the pace. I’m not as fast as I used to be, but I can push my muscles when the need arises. You see, I’ve got quite a way to go on this particular mission, which is why I set out before sunset. It means I’ll be eating late when I get back; I’ve done that numerous times before, and so far it hasn’t upset my delicate digestive tract.

I smell things along the way-the trace of Bianca and the other females at the cathouse, some clearly in heat; the daily specials from the flower shop… so many scents I can’t differentiate one kind of bloom from another; the sharp and bitter pong of soap from the laundry; and rotting fish from the alley off S’hang’s Sushi Bar, which has no place being in Little Italy. The farther I get from the Italian restaurant, the worse things smell.

So I concentrate on the sights instead, the garish, clashing colors of window boxes and signs, the graffiti scrawled here and there, the freshest in day-glow green.

And I focus on the sounds… car horns blaring from blocks away, babies wailing, a boy hawking newspapers on a corner, the slam of a door. There’s music spilling out of an upper floor window, some rapper spitting out hippity-hop words like they are pieces of bad meat-Lay-Z or Forty-Cents, I can’t tell them apart. They’re certainly not in the class of the boss’s pianoforte playing, and so I ignore the thumping racket.

I stick to the shadows whenever possible-being dark has its advantages when you’re into a bit of skullduggery. And I continue on my way, remembering the boss’s gravelly words:

“Vada dritto! E poi giri a destra!”

Go straight-all the way down to the fire station-then turn right. It would be a whole lot of straight again after that-blocks and blocks and blocks of it.

The boss hadn’t needed to give me directions, as I’d been to the museum once before when I had a fling some years back with an Angora who lived in the area. Wonder what’s become of her? I shake my head to chase away the sweet memory.

I was proud that the boss had entrusted this very special assignment to me. It deserves all my attention.

“You get this for me, Vinnie, this one precious thing, and I’ll reward you well,” he told me this afternoon. “I have the other three. I just need the fourth to complete the set.”

I well knew that he had the other three; he’d shown them to me, taking them out of the chest and lovingly running his whiskers across the old paper before replacing them.

“I just need the fourth. The missing piece. You understand? It will complete the year.” His large, round eyes didn’t blink. This missing piece was terribly important to him.

I told him I understood.

“Buona fortuna, Vincenzo,” he said.

I don’t need luck, I’d mentally returned. I’d just need a big plate of pasta upon my return. Maybe I could order up something special-polpo alla griglia, octopus charcoal-broiled and dabbed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Yeah, that would hit the spot after a long mission like this.

The sun was all the way down by the time I’d left Little Italy behind and reached the museum. It was closing for the day, and I watched from behind a fir tree as the school groups and retired folks spilled out and down the steps. If I timed it right, I could snake my way between the young ones’ feet and slip inside the lobby. A good plan, I decided, but then I quickly dismissed it when I noticed there were two guards at the entrance, and one of them had a gun at his waist. Better not to take the chance that one might scoop me up or shoot me.

I hacked up a furball that had been bothering me and shimmied around the side of the monstrous building. Well, truth be told, it wasn’t that big a place, but it was the most imposing structure in this part of town, all cement and iron, ugly and drab. A monstrosity of a building would be a better term.

The sounds of the city intruded-more car horns, people shouting. I shuddered: There was a dog barking nearby. I hated dogs almost as much as I hated rap music. I heard a door slam, and then another, a van from the sound of it, and I poked my head around the back corner to see a cleaning crew getting out of a rust-dotted Chevy Econoline. There were four men, all dressed in gray coveralls, and after picking up buckets and boxes, and after the smallest perched a boombox on his shoulder, they headed across the employee parking lot and to the museum’s backdoor.

Buona fortuna was mine indeed.

I hurried, as much as I could because the trip here had winded me, and was just able to dart inside before the door closed. Lights still glared from the ceiling and bounced off a tile floor that, as far as I was concerned, didn’t need to be polished. No shadows to hide my furry sable self, I ducked into the first open doorway and discovered a janitor’s closet. This hiding place would do until they turned off some of the lights and the museum staff filed out. I just had to make sure no one shut the door on me.

As I rested and waited, I dreamed about Bianca and her pretty spots and about what I might have for dinner. An appetizer of vongole gratinate, juicy clams, would stop my belly from growling. I also thought about Italy, the real Italy that the boss would take me to, not the Little Italy we lived in. I heard music, muted, more of that rap crap, and the gentle shushing hum of what I guessed was a floor polisher or vacuum. The steady click of small heels in the hallway beyond this closet and the regular opening and closing of the back door told me the curators and secretaries and such were leaving.