Last Dance, Last Chance

die.
    “Stop bothering daddy’s friends. They don’t need you and your whore. You don’t deserve the Pignataro name.”
    Lena Pignataro told Anthony that she was writing him out of her will and that he was not to try to find out information about her buildings or even come to her funeral when she died. She planned to advise Debbie to sue him.
    “I never thought I would say it but I’m glad daddy’s gone,” she wrote to her wayward son. “He can’t see what you are doing to us.”
     
    Clearly, Lena’s approach worked. Anthony came by to see Debbie and the children in March. She described their meetings as “distant.” In April, he visited almost every day. To her surprise, they seemed to be getting along better. On April 21, she had a fifth surgery to relieve the pressure of a herniated disc in her neck. It eased her mind to know that Anthony was checking in on her and the kids.
    Anthony confided to her that he had received a death threat letter. He said he’d kept it from her because he didn’t want to upset her—but then he wanted her to know that they might all be in danger. Now Debbie wanted him to come back—she was so frightened.
    It was a decidedly odd spring in West Seneca. As the months eased toward summer, vandals attacked the Pignataro house and property. Someone wrote “KILLER KILLER KILLER” on the sliding glass doors that led to the patio on the back of their house and “DIE FUCKER!” on the fence.
    When Debbie told Anthony about the vandalism, he told her they had to take the threats seriously. It might just be stupid teenagers, or it might be someone with a more serious grudge against them. He said he had picked up the phone while he was there and heard someone who snarled “You will die!”
    It was frightening to think that even though Polo was there at the house, the vandals had managed to creep all the way to the patio door.
    Debbie felt safer when Anthony visited.
     
    Anthony applied for a job in Philadelphia. It was a position in a profession that Judge Tills had specifically ruled out in Anthony’s sentence after Sarah Smith’s death: the medical field.
    But Anthony had always abided by his own rules and no others. With the family, he drove to Philadelphia and had what he considered a most encouraging interview. On April 28, 1999, he wrote to the vice-president of a surgical care product line located in a veterans’ medical center.
    “I want to thank you and your board for the courtesy you extended to me yesterday. I truly enjoyed the opportunity to present myself and my credentials.
    “I also took the opportunity to take a short self-guided tour and talk with some of the staff. I was extremely impressed with the facility and its personnel. My family and I also enjoyed Philadelphia and the Zoo.
    “I truly hope that we will be able to pursue this position in the future. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
    “Respectfully,
    “Anthony S. Pignataro, M.D.”
     
    “We never went to the zoo,” Debbie remembered. “He was lying again.”
    He did not hear from the company about his application to become a manager. Although he intimated in his letter that he was new to Philadelphia, he had a rather unsavory history there from his days as a resident. He also added the M.D. to his name—a title he no longer was allowed to claim. In the era of computers, that would have been easy to check.
    In May, Anthony asked Debbie if he could stay overnight. Debbie felt protected when he was there, and she hadn’t been sleeping well at all with the stealthy attacks on their property during the night. She asked him if he was still seeing Tami, and he assured her that that was completely over. Debbie and Anthony slept together in their own bedroom, and to her it seemed right.
    Anthony reported the vandalism and threatening phone calls to the police. Although they failed to identify any suspects, they kept an open file on it.
    Oddly, the suspect the West Seneca police kept coming back to made no sense. Polo barked at any stranger who approached the Pignataro house, but there was one person the big dog adored and trusted even when it was pitch-dark out, even if that someone came upon him unexpectedly.
    And that was Anthony Pignataro himself.

15
    O n May 9, Debbie suffered such excruciating stomach pains that she had to go into the ER. The doctors felt that she was having an attack of acute pancreatitis. Her symptoms subsided, and she was allowed to return home.
    It wasn’t unusual