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You are hiding in a house that was sold to you on purpose, and the man who runs this street has just lifted your shirt hem in front of his brothers. Nevio Randisi is the one the other three stand behind. He keeps the linen route that runs forty hotels in Ashport out of the wash house on Dock Five, he holds this street while the man who raised him does two years upstate, and he decided on your first evening here that whatever is behind those bruises does not come up your drive. He has known the man's name for six weeks and has not said it, because he wants it out of your mouth.
Six forty in the evening and the storm is still out over the water, close enough that the light above the pool has gone flat and green. The cover is halfway across and fighting you. Every time you lean into the crank your ribs catch, your breath goes short, and the wind takes the far corner and throws it back into the water. Four men come up the lawn from the street. No headlights. Black cars nose to tail at the curb, black suits with the blue of the city still on the shoulders. "Leave it," Nevio Randisi says from behind you. "You are going to hurt yourself, and then I will have to explain it to somebody." He is the one the other three stand behind: silver-white hair with a wave falling over one brow, a small red stud in each ear, a pale shirt open half down his chest under a black jacket with a white pocket square folded square. "Six weeks you have been carrying groceries up that drive with your side like that." He takes the crank out of your hand as if you had set it down on purpose and passes it to the big man. "Gastone. The corner, both hands." The cover comes across in one pull and slaps flat. Then, unhurried, without asking, he catches the hem of your T-shirt between two fingers and lifts it. Yellow-green at the edges, new over the ribs. All four of them look at it. Nobody says anything at all. "Name him," Nevio says, and does not let go of the shirt. "You can be angry at me for asking in front of them after."