“Did you know the guy?” Fat Artie Scotto asked.

“What’s to know? He wants to get his lights turned on. He tried to put the arm on me.”

“On you?”

“Yeah. His head wasn’t wrapped too tight.”

“What’d you do?”

“Eddie Fratelli and me got him over in the ghinny corner of the yard and burned him. What the hell, he was doin’ bad time, anyway.”

“Hey, whatever happened to Little Eddie?”

“He’s doin’ a dime at Lewisburg.”

“What about his bandit? She was some class act.”

“Oh, yeah. I’d love to make her drawers.”

“She’s still got the hots for Eddie. Only the Pope knows why.”

“I liked Eddie. He used to be an up-front guy.”

“He went ape-shit. Speakin’ of that, do you know who turned into a candy man…?”

Shop talk.

Michael grinned at Jennifer’s puzzled reaction to the conversation and said, “Come on—I’ll introduce you to Papa.”

Antonio Granelli was a shock to Jennifer. He was in a wheelchair, a feeble skeleton of a man, and it was hard to imagine him as he once must have been.

An attractive brunette with a full figure walked into the room, and Michael said to Jennifer, “This is Rosa, my wife.”

Jennifer had dreaded this moment. Some nights after Michael had left her—fulfilled in every way a woman could be—she had fought with a guilt that almost overpowered her. I don’t want to hurt another woman. I’m stealing. I’ve got to stop this! I must! And, always, she lost the battle.

Rosa looked at Jennifer with eyes that were wise. She knows, Jennifer thought.

There was a small awkwardness, and then Rosa said softly, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Parker. Michael tells me you’re very intelligent.”

Antonio Granelli grunted. “It’s not good for a woman to be too smart. It’s better to leave the brains to the men.”

Michael said with a straight face, “I think of Mrs. Parker as a man, Papa.”

They had dinner in the large, old-fashioned dining room.

“You sit next to me,” Antonio Granelli commanded Jennifer.

Michael sat next to Rosa. Thomas Colfax, the consigliere, sat opposite Jennifer and she could feel his animosity.

The dinner was superb. An enormous antipasto was served, and then pasta fagioli. There was a salad with garbanzo beans, stuffed mushrooms, veal piccata, linguini and baked chicken. It seemed that the dishes never stopped coming.

There were no visible servants in the house, and Rosa was constantly jumping up and clearing the table to bring in new dishes from the kitchen.

“My Rosa’s a great cook,” Antonio Granelli told Jennifer. “She’s almost as good as her mother was. Hey, Mike?”

“Yes,” Michael said politely.

“His Rosa’s a wonderful wife,” Antonio Granelli went on, and Jennifer wondered whether it was a casual remark or a warning.

Michael said, “You’re not finishing your veal.”

“I’ve never eaten so much in my life,” Jennifer protested.

And it was not over yet.

There was a bowl of fresh fruit and a platter of cheese, and ice cream with a hot fudge sauce, and candy and mints.

Jennifer marveled at how Michael managed to keep his figure.

The conversation was easy and pleasant and could have been taking place in any one of a thousand Italian homes, and it was hard for Jennifer to believe that this family was different from any other family.

Until Antonio Granelli said, “You know anythin’ about the Unione Siciliana?”

“No,” Jennifer said.

“Let me tell you about it, lady.”

“Pop—her name is Jennifer.”

“That’s not no Italian name, Mike. It’s too hard for me to remember. I’ll call you lady, lady. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jennifer replied.

“The Unione Siciliana started in Sicily to protect the poor against injustices. See, the people in power, they robbed the poor. The poor had nothin’—no money, no jobs, no justice. So the Unione was formed. When there was injustice, people came to the members of the secret brotherhood and they got vengeance. Pretty soon the Unione became stronger than the law, because it was the people’s law We believe in what the Bible says, lady.” He looked Jennifer in the eye. “If anyone betrays us, we get vengeance.”

The message was unmistakable.

Jennifer had always known instinctively that if she ever worked for the Organization she would be taking a giant step, but like most outsiders, she had a misconception of what the Organization was like. The Mafia was generally depicted as a bunch of mobsters sitting around ordering people murdered and counting the money from loan-sharking and whorehouses. That was only a part of the picture. The meetings Jennifer attended taught her the rest of it: These were businessmen operating on a scale that was staggering. They owned hotels and banks, restaurants and casinos, insurance companies and factories, building companies and chains of hospitals. They controlled unions and shipping. They were in the record business and sold vending machines. They owned funeral parlors, bakeries and construction companies. Their yearly income was in the billions. How they had acquired those interests was none of Jennifer’s concern. It was her job to defend those of them who got into trouble with the law.

Robert Di Silva had three of Michael Moretti’s men indicted for shaking down a group of lunch wagons. They were charged with conspiracy to interfere with commerce by extortion and seven counts of interference with commerce. The only witness willing to testify against the men was a woman who owned one of the stands.

“She’s going to blow us away,” Michael told Jennifer. “She’s got to be handled.”

“You own a piece of a magazine publishing company, don’t you?” Jennifer asked.

“Yes. What does that have to do with lunch wagons?”

“You’ll see.”

Jennifer quietly arranged for the magazine to offer a large sum of money for the witness’s story. The woman accepted. In court, Jennifer used that to discredit the woman’s motives, and the charges were dismissed.

Jennifer’s relationship with her associates had changed. When the office had begun to take a succession of Mafia cases, Ken Bailey had come into Jennifer’s office and said, “What’s going on? You can’t keep representing these hoodlums. They’ll ruin us.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ken. They’ll pay.”

“You can’t be that naive, Jennifer. You’re the one who’s going to pay. They’ll have you hooked.”

Because she had known he was right, Jennifer said angrily, “Drop it, Ken.”

He had looked at her for a long moment, then said, “Right. You’re the boss.”

The Criminal Courts was a small world, and news traveled swiftly. When word got out that Jennifer Parker was defending members of the Organization, well-meaning friends went to her and reiterated the same things that Judge Lawrence Waldman and Ken Bailey had told her.

“If you get involved with these hoodlums, you’ll be tarred with the same brush.”

Jennifer told them all: “Everyone is entitled to be defended.”

She appreciated their warnings, but she felt that they did not apply to her. She was not a part of the Organization; she merely represented some of its members. She was a lawyer, like her father, and she would never do anything that would have made him ashamed of her. The jungle was there, but she was still outside it.

Father Ryan had come to see her. This time it was not to ask her to help out a friend.