Sean
Ihave been watching my older brother's chest for forty minutes.
Alessandro is alive.
The shoulder reconstruction took four hours.
The surgeon came out and said the words surgeons say.
Clean repair. Eight to ten weeks. He was lucky.
Alessandro was not lucky. Alessandro was the lead element in a breach he did not have to be in and got hit because that is what lead elements do, and he is alive because Matteo dragged him into cover before the second round found him.
Matteo is in the chair on the other side of the bed.
Neither of us has spoken for twenty minutes. There is a coffee on the side table next to him that has gone cold. There is a coffee on the side table next to me that has gone cold.
We are the kind of tired men who become after spending thirty sleepless hours within the same eighteen blocks of Manhattan.
Alessandro makes a small sound in his sleep.
Matteo's head comes up.
We both watch him.
He goes still again.
Matteo looks at me.
"He does that."
"Does what?"
"That noise. In his sleep. His whole life. Since he was a kid. He used to do it across the hall, and Mom would get up to check on him and find him fine."
I do not say anything.
I do not say anything because Matteo has just told me something about my brother that has been mine without my knowing it.
I watch Alessandro's chest rise and fall.
"He thinks nobody knows."
"You know."
"I know."
"Mom knew."
"Mom knew, for sure."
"Don't tell him you know."
Matteo's mouth does the small thing it does when it is about to admit it is amused, and is going to refuse to admit it is amused.
"What kind of guy do you think I am, Moretti?" I say.
Matteo's mouth gives up.
He laughs.
It is small. Quiet. The laugh of a man who has not laughed in a hospital room since 1997 and has just remembered that laughter is a thing rooms permit.
I laugh too.
Matteo looks back at me.
"Christ, Donovan."
"What?"
"You sound like a guy from Queens."
"I am a guy from Queens."
"I know. But hearing it out loud." He shakes his head. "I have been pretending you weren't."
"Weren't from Queens?"
"Weren't from Queens. Weren't a cop. Wasn’t the guy from the diner who knew your egg order. I have been pretending the version of you I had in my head was the real version."
"What was the version?"
"Operational. Italianate. Aristocratic in a way that explained why he was the one Kostas wrote a war for."
"Matteo."
"Yes."
"You are describing a guy who does not exist."
"I know that now."
"What do I look like?"
"You look like a Queens cop who wandered into the wrong fairy tale."
I laugh harder than I have laughed in a long time. A real laugh. The laugh of a man who has been the wrong thing in the wrong room for the entire week and has just been told, by the only person who could tell him, that the wrongness is the funny part.
Matteo laughs with me.
We both look at Alessandro.
Alessandro is going to be furious that he missed this.
Matteo's face goes flat.
The flatness is a Matteo thing. The face of a man who has made a decision and is now executing it.
"Sean."
"Yeah."
"I am going to tell you a few things. While my older brother is asleep. Because I need to say some of them out loud, and I am not going to say them in front of him."
"Okay."
He breathes.
"I am sorry, I did not know you were alive.
If I had known, I would have come for you.
I would have spent the trust Vittorio left for me.
The whole trust. The parts that were not mine to spend included.
I would have told Alessandro to come and stop me.
I would have sent men I do not respect to do work I would not write down.
I would have burned half the Stavros estate to find one Italian kid in an Irish house in Queens. "
He pauses.
"Frank Donovan raised you. Vittorio raised me.
Frank was, by every account I have read, a decent man.
Karen Donovan was decent. They wanted you.
Vittorio was Vittorio. We do not have a father-of-the-year contest in the family for a reason.
You may have drawn the long straw, Sean. Do not feel guilty about it."
He glances at the bed.
"One more thing."
"Yes."
"You were born a Moretti. Frank renamed you.
He kept none of it. He had his reasons. The man raised you, and the man got murdered for it.
He earned the right to call you whatever he wanted.
But your father's name was Vittorio. The name has been in the family.
If you ever want to give it to one of your children, the name is yours to give. "
He is quiet for a second.
"And one more thing."
"Yes."
"You were born first. By nine minutes."
I look at him.
I do not move.
"I have been the older twin my whole life. By default. The job has been mine because no one else was available to take it. It is yours now. If you want it."
I think about the answer.
In the long second, I am thinking about every minute Matteo has spent since 1988 carrying a job that was supposed to be mine.
About Maria looking at him like a ghost, because every time she looked at him, she was looking for the boy who was not there.
About Matteo, at seventeen, taking the candle from Alessandro and lighting it every February 12, because the lighting was the only thing he could do for his brother, who was not in the room.
The job has been Matteo's for thirty-eight years.
He is offering me a job that he has been doing on his own for his entire life.
"You can keep it, Matteo. I have not earned it yet."
"You earn it by accepting it. The job is yours. You can be bad at it for a while."
"How long is a while?"
"As long as you need."
"That's generous."
"It's the deal."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"I am, as it turns out, more comfortable being the younger brother."
"Yeah?"
"The younger brother gets to be funny. You are not funny, Matteo."
"I am about to be."
"I will believe it when I see it."
He smiles.
The smile of a man who has just put down a thirty-eight-year weight and is feeling, for the first time, what his shoulders are without it.
"Do not tell Alessandro that either. He thinks I am insufferable as the second-born. He has not begun to imagine what I will be like as the third."
I laugh.
The second real one of the afternoon. The second one of my life with a brother in it.
Alessandro does not stir.
He is going to wake up tomorrow morning to two younger brothers, and one of them is going to tell him he was relegated overnight, and Alessandro is going to be furious in the specific Moretti way. Quietly and at length.
I look forward to it.
We sit for another minute.
The monitor ticks.
The light through the blinds has gone from orange to something darker.
Matteo reaches into his jacket and sets a car key on the chair between us.
"She's at the federal building. They have her until ten. Then she's free. There's a black SUV downstairs. Plate ends in 4 7 1. The address is on a napkin in the cup holder. She does not know I gave it to you. She would not be surprised."
I look at the key.
"Matteo."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For not telling Alessandro."
"He's going to find out."
"Yeah."
"Good luck."
I pick up the key.
Matteo is looking at the cuff of my coat.
"Donovan."
"Yeah."
"You have a dead man's blood on you, Detective."
"Ah, hell."
I look at the cuff. The blood has dried into the dark wool and has been hiding there for thirty hours. It has stopped hiding now that someone has named it.
I do not take the coat off.
Matteo watches me not take the coat off.
"You are going to wear that coat to her apartment."
"I am."
"You are going to wear a coat with a dead man's blood on it to the apartment of the woman you love."
"It seems that way."
"Donovan."
"Yes."
"That is the most Queens cop thing I have ever seen."
"What would you do?"
"I would change my coat."
"That is the most SEAL thing you have ever said."
He laughs.
I laugh.
Alessandro does not stir.
I leave.