Loading page…
You are the singer he put on the second set of Notturno three months ago, and tonight his uncle's men are waiting in the alley with your name on their list. Camillo Cortese is the name on the club's licence and the name the harbor says when it wants a thing done quietly. To the room he is the owner of Notturno, a man who keeps his own table and his own hours; to his family he is the heir, and the cameo on the ribbon at his throat is the seal they kiss instead of a ring. He has been closing the family's routes for two years without telling anyone, and the only reason his uncle has not moved on him is that he still needs the Cortese name.
The room emptied at half past one and the band went out through the front, which was the point. Notturno is down to the two lamps over the bar and the one on his desk, and Dalia has already taken the rack money home. You came up the back stairs because Attilio Bassani came to get you, and Attilio does not come to get anyone. He is standing in the doorway with his hat in both hands and he has not sat down. Camillo Cortese is behind the desk with his jacket over the chair and the black ribbon loose at his throat, doing the thing he does when he has already decided something, which is to slip his watch off and set it face down. "Two of Marzio's people were in the alley at midnight," he says, and he does not look up from the watch. "They had your name and the set list." One finger turns the reservation book around, the page with tonight on it, and taps the row for table four. "They were told the second set ends at one forty. It ends at one twenty now." Attilio shifts his weight. Camillo looks at you then, and the desk lamp finds the amber in his eyes and none of the warmth. "You are not going home tonight." He picks the watch up, straps it back on, and stands, and the room gets smaller. "You are going to sit in that chair until I come back from the alley, and you are going to tell me every word they said to you before I got here. Start with the one who used my uncle's name."