Shallow Graves

finishing with a dying fireworks glow at the back of the tongue.
    I said, “The best.“
    Danucci said, “It is.“
    This time he just looked at Zuppone, who nodded and headed toward a door that turned out to be the kitchen.
    “I gotta say. I’m lucky, Mr. Detective. I can still enjoy the wine and the food. I just gotta drink and eat a little early. Otherwise, I taste the spices a second time in my sleep, you know?“
    “Actually, I’m not a detective, Mr. Danucci.“
    He didn’t say anything.
    “Detectives are on police forces. I’m just a private investigator.“
    The blood rose up his neck, stopping just as it flushed his jaw but not his cheeks. Very quietly, Danucci said, “I’m an old man, Mr. Detective. Indulge me, eh?“
    I decided I would not much like Tommy the Temper to get mad at me.
    Zuppone came back in with a course of sausage and pasta in small bowls, one for each of us.
    Danucci said, “I cook for myself, now. My Amatina was alive, I never thought about it. But I talked with her friends, they told me some of her secrets in the kitchen. I tried this and that, found a couple that reminded me of her.“
    I sampled the sausage first. Sweet, delicate. Then the pasta. Like cotton candy melting in the mouth.
    I said, “Your daughter-in-law told me she learned a lot from your wife.“
    Danucci paused, his fork not quite lifted clear of his bowl, then put it back down. He paused again, then drank the rest of the wine in his chalice, Primo refilling without needing to be prompted.
    When Zuppone had set the decanter back on the counter, Danucci said, “You and me, we don’t know how to talk to each other, do we?“
    I stopped eating.
    “What I’m saying here, you don’t want to say nothing wrong, you don’t want to offend me you don’t have to, but you just don’t know what’s what, am I right?“
    “That’s right.“
    “Can’t blame you, Mr. Detective. I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t know what the fuck’s going on, either. Enjoy your dinner, the hospitality of my table. You don’t got nothing to worry about. You might be the only detective in the city got nothing to worry about. Let me talk to you some, you don’t even got to worry about answering, eh?“
    “All right.“
    Danucci did another curt nod, but more to himself than a signal to Zuppone.
    “Here’s the way it is. Twenny years ago, my son comes back from the war, he has this—what I thought at the time, this pregnant squaw, only she’s Oriental. He has this Oriental with him, he says to us, ‘This is my wife.’ Just like that, no letter, no phone call, just cold fucking conks us with it. My Amatina, she’s a saint, she says to him, ‘Joey, your wife is my daughter,’ like that. I can’t see it, I can’t see the mixing of the blood, what it’d do to Joey’s prospects. In the business, I mean. Our business.
    “What I’m doing here, Mr. Detective, I’m collecting the story—no, fuck, that’s not it. Primo?“
    “Like ‘collapsing the story,’ Mr. Danucci?“
    “Right, right. Like making a long story short. Well, six, seven years ago, my Amatina gets sick, Mr. Detective, bad sick, never-get-better sick.“ Danucci reached for the wine glass. “Primo says you lost your wife young.“
    “Primo’s right.“
    “I don’t know what that must be like. Losing your wife before you have the life that gives you memories. But I know what it’s like to lose her after the memories, after all the things you done together, you thought you’d be talking about them forever. So, anyway, my son, he comes back from the war with this wife and then she has the baby, and you only got to take one look . .
    Danucci’s voice caught. I glanced at Zuppone, who just watched the man, no expression. I looked back to Danucci and waited him out.
    “You only got to take one look at Tina, you see the eyes. My Amatina’s eyes. I don’t know how it’s possible, but there they are. So I don’t accept that too good. And the child grows up in my son’s house as my granddaughter, the best because my Amatina, she’s so in love with the grandchild, her only one, you see what I’m saying here? Tina gets everything, but me, I’m siciliano, eh? I can’t accept her.“
    “Then my Amatina, she gets sick. And the ‘Oriental,’ the one I thought was a ‘pregnant squaw,’ she takes my wife into her home, because Claudette says, ‘It is not right for the mother of my husband to be in the hands of strangers.’ This woman, she lost