In Fair Haven, shortly before the Venture building was located by Frank Sumner, another unfolding had occurred. "Marcus! Gimme a kiss. Come in, come in." The house was a mix of tidy hominess and working artist's clutter. Easels, long work tables and stacked sketch pads dominated not because they were the most prominent features inside, but because they were the most unusual. "What's got you here? Shouldn't you be working? Come-on, sit down. You don't look good. You're not sick?" She moved a large quilt in progress from the couch and pulled up a cozy chair opposite leaning in close, uneasy at his demeanor. She didn't pester him too far, very uneasy of his eyes. Chances are, had he said nothing and left, she would have known quite a bit from the look in those eyes alone.

"No. I'm not sick. I'm.. weary, confused. Sis, I've been doing some serious thinking. I have come to the conclusion that half of my life makes no sense. You are all protecting me. There have always been these bits of queerness here and there, but in small doses, you know?"

"I know."

"You do? Sembro io essere come innocente come ero come un bambino?"

"Marcus, noi tutti devono crescere su. Noi perdiamo la nostra innocenza."

"Sis, cosa accade se Lei si spoglia via innocenza e Lei trova un mostro? Siamo noi una famiglia di bestie?"

"Marcus! What a strange question! Our family is the purest, most decent.."

"The bigger family! Sis. You are protecting me. Why?"

Sissy shuttered as she saw what his countenance had become. It wasn't age, or worry, or sleeplessness. It was who he had become. Subtle facial nuances and gestures. Italian? Marcus never talked to her in Italian! Did anybody in the family even know that he had learned it? When? Odd, but this look he had, he was not to be trifled with. She tested slowly. "You were always so pure. So sweet. You were the healer that daddy promised. We all knew that. God, we're so proud of you." Her eye caught the fig around his neck and she involuntarily pulled her head back.

"Sis, that's it! What the hell is that all about? Who the hell are we? I've been ripping my mind apart every single night for months. I solve medical problems of immense complexity, every day. Yet, I can't figure ME out! Things just don't gel," shaking his head in his hands, obviously troubled.

"When are things ever completely clear?" Sissy side stepped.

"Sis, bad men are trying to harm my children, through me." She sat there, squinting her lack of comprehension then raised one gesturing hand of question." He touched her knee, "I just killed three men.. " Sissy gasped, pallid, crossing herself with her hand coming to rest over her mouth in a tight grip of grim recognition. ".. and Christ, it was easy," he continued with his face directed at the ceiling. "It's as though I've been practicing all my life."

"Oh dear God. Who? I'll call.."

"Don't call anybody! Sissy, who are we? Why was dad able to come and go anywhere he pleased? Places nobody would dare to go even once, let alone over and over? Everybody fears Nino. He's, what, eighty four years old? Why does an old enforcer, I figure that much, why does he take a liking to me? Because I look like mom? Hell, I don't look like mom. Anyway, what's mom to Nino? Why do strangers tell me more about my family than I know? Why are they always there, everywhere? Who are we? Why are these ass holes after me?"

"Honey, one thing I can be totally sure of, they are not after you because of your family. In fact, if they even had the slightest idea.. oh.. I mean.. no way!"

Nevertheless, the shell was broken. Ignorance may be comforting to a point, but it can also be lethal. She knew and so she told this story. "Honey, I wasn't hit by a car. I was hit by a car door. It was blown from a car that exploded. Me and baby Chucky were in the yard when our parents car, my parents car - not yours - blew up. It was a bomb." Marcus jolted to the recollection of Chucky's singular admonition. "Jazz Man and Emily took two of us in, but only two. There were four of us. Our dead father was Nicholas Nalletto. He was a short time protegee of Nino and later an enforcer for the Brooklyn arm of the syndicate. Nicky played both sides of the fence, police and syndicate. Boom. It was inevitable."

"Nalletto? Nails? The brothers?"

"My other two brothers, I'm ashamed to say. Total monsters."

"Nu-mommy," Marcus mulled quietly.

Sissy made a sweet groping gesture for the right words. "New mommy. Emily was childless. She and Jazz Man were, and still are, decency to the extreme. What better safe haven? Off limits to mob vendettas. Even so, we were split up. Mr. Prio didn't want the other two. He saw, even as young as we were, that two of us were no good. He called them blighted fruit, and passed them off."

She continued, "Your brother Aldo was the son of Augustus Olefsen, lawyer to the De Lucas who were under Sabia - the fat man. Augustus was hit in a machine gun attempt on Sabia that was messed up. Olefsen and his wife took the first instead of the second car. Simple luck spared the baby. Must have been a million bullets in that car. Father Joe arranged all the new identity birth certificates through Sisters's of Mercy Hospital. Mommy went there, and was actually admitted, while they made papers for us."

"Aldo. Blond hair. Of course. Aldo know this?"

"No, not really. He doesn't know about our real parents. He knows we're odd, though. He's sure we're adopted. He suspects about you."

"Me?"

"Well, mommy was sterile, honey. You too."

"Oh, Jesus, I'm probably the Lindbergh baby."

"Mommy got very sick in the sweat shops. She nearly died there. They didn't let her go when she was hurting. She wound up with peritonitis. Back then nobody survived that, nobody. Daddy saved her. He gave himself to God. So did Father Joe. They're a team. Two for one. Daddy promised his own life, he would dedicate his own life to help others if God would spare her. He sealed his promise to Joe who sealed his own promise to him. Honey, they had nothing. The best they could give was what they gave, themselves. Daddy got her out. He never left her side. Even when she finally recovered, there were the adhesions which weakened her for a long time. Her music was heavenly, but there was no way she could survive the jazz circuit on her own, not in those days. He physically carried her. They would introduce the band and he would carry her to her piano. Everybody thought it was polio. There was a lot of that too back then.

She got stronger and began to hold her own. But daddy knew her pain continued. She was told she couldn't have children. So daddy spoke to God again, with Joe as his witness. Daddy promised one of his sons, to come, to a life of healing, just as God gave his own son, Jesus. The car had blown up about a week before. Joe told daddy that maybe we didn't need God for this one, then sought out Louis Prio on his own. Louis first sought the counsel of Grandma Franchesca. They had toasted with her in her wine cellar once before to put a seal on the marriage of her son. Now they met to discuss her daughter and the possibility of children from a bad family. The wine must have been pretty good. So, of course, we were adopted. The question was, what was more important, the seed or the soil? Maybe both. Chuck was no healer. But he was a good boy, good as gold. Jazz Man taught him propriety and decency more than the rest of us. He feared that the uncontrolled blood of the Nalletto's might boil up in him. He was true as true can be, but no healer. Chucky had his real father's fire power but daddy's trajectories."

"Aldo?"

"Same thing. Had his real father's blood. But he, too, acquired daddy's values, as did we all. Aldo was a talker, a dealer, not a healer, a natural lawyer. He still faints when blood is drawn. He almost didn't get married because of the blood test."

"But Aldo knows something about this?" Marcus pressed.

"He suspects, especially about you. I'm sure he knows about himself," Sissy reflected.

"Yes. He must know that we are all adopted, he's such a detail stickler," Marcus concluded.

"Oh that? Sure. I didn't mean that. He was old enough to notice that mommy never looked pregnant, even though she went away for three weeks to bring you home. Aldo wasn't troubled by this when he was little. He was young enough to be fooled. But his memories are sharp. He got more suspicious as he got older. He just never vocalized it much. Probably didn't really want to know."

Feeling very uneasy and downright shaky, Marcus pressed, "Then what DID you mean?"

"Its kind of complicated. Nino had a son. He never married, but he had a lady, a very special lady, the only one. Zora. Zora Terrell. One second." Sissy got up and left the room. A few drawer noises followed. "Here."

"Whoa! A looker! Nino had a babe."

"Pretty, huh?"

"Man, I'll say. I would have never thought..."

"You and everybody else. Nino did not mix with the human species, you know? God he was scary. He still is. He's ancient and still feared. Zora was a torch singer who traveled in and out of daddy's jazz crowd. As you can see, she was the prettiest woman, not just the prettiest black woman. She was simply the prettiest woman around. But it was her sad music. Nino was drawn to her by her soulful singing. I'm sure her looks didn't hurt. I don't think he ever got near another human being, not in that way. They had a son and that was a problem. Nino knew exactly who he was and how that would weigh on any child. Then the were the dangers. It might have gone otherwise had she lived."

"She died? Of what?"

"Maybe today this makes no sense, you know? Frank, Prio's son, died of blood poisoning from a stupid splinter. That was only a few years earlier. Those days - you know? Nobody was vaccinated. There were no antibiotics. But Zora, Nino's only cultivated connection to humanity, the prettiest girl in his world, after a trip to the cemetery to place flowers on young Frank's grave, died of asthma. They had just cut the grass."

Grass! Marcus's mind was reeling. Grass. Holding his temples with both hands, "Grass!" The words Nino spoke so long ago were now ringing in his ears as his head was throbbing, "You looka you mama. She wasa the prudiest agirl inna dis town." Marcus's mental swirling sped and broke into lakes and eddies of sub-thoughts connecting and cross-referencing years of odd memories. New cups were on the ground. But the chaos passed as the soft edges of unclear recollection became jagged perimeters of truth, now so sharp and cutting. The penetrating edges of all the pieces - fit. There was, again, that voice within. Jazz Man yelling his lungs out, "A MASK! You were supposed to be the smart one!" Connections. Crystallization. Reflections righting themselves. From the liquidity of this flow of cross association, a strength up welled from his darkness, flowing up, up and ever up. Growing wildly, a metamorphosis of the inner beast brought on a never before appreciated sense of strength and clearness. He was standing erect with clenched fists at his sides and he growled, "Who are these demons who cross my lines?" Sissy was shaking and genuflecting and crossing herself to a bowling trophy. It was the best she could do on no notice.

When she composed herself, Sissy gave him some papers in a box. "Daddy gave me this, for safe keeping." There were notes, photos, and details of the branches of this family tree, the family, Prio, Nino, Zora, Frankie, Rose, Emily, the Mafia orphanage called Jazz Man, and original family documents. A few magazine clippings collected by Jazz Man were in there as well.

Marcus Macaluso had a few more calls to make, and old some acquaintances to meet. His hands felt strangely heavy, like steam shovel scoops. He turned like a wrestler, hugged his sister, and leaving quietly - said good-bye rasping a phrase that brought terror to her, "They're not done!"