Friday, April 17

7:25 A.M.

"Knock, knock," Grace said, as they walked down Roberts Avenue.

"Who's there," Babsie said.

"Banana," Grace said.

"I've heard that one a hundred times," Babsie said. "Don't you know any other jokes?"

"Okay, let me think."

Matty Boland had called early that morning. Yuri Borodenko had been burning up the telephone on the flight home from Moscow. Whatever he'd said, the offices of both the Mazurka and Flushing Salvage were buzzing with activity. Babsie knew the investigators working the plant could hear only one side of the telephone conversations, mostly a series of grunted replies that meant Yes, Yuri; yes, Yuri. Both operations were fully in motion before dawn. So many half-assed mobsters were on the road, the task force couldn't follow all of them. That was part of the plan, Boland figured. Lose the Keystone Kops in the clown chase. In the confusion, one trusted associate hides the evidence, or plants the bombs. It would all be over before 2:00 p.m., when Borodenko landed at JFK. Boland told Babsie he'd prefer it if Eddie wasn't there.

She'd let Eddie sleep. He needed it, and she needed time to think about her own moves. Fifty years old, might be a little late for a new life. She'd been independent for too long. She owned her own house, had a good job with a decent pension right around the corner. Now this Eddie Dunne thing, happening too fast. The trick was not to jump too far. Eddie was great, but maybe she needed to keep an escape route open. She remembered an old Yeats poem an English teacher from Sacred Heart used to spout when he got his load on. Something about "never give all the heart." Always keep a little of yourself back. Good advice. Now how the hell do you do it? she wondered.

"I know a joke," Babsie said. "Your teacher's name is Rita, right?"

"Mrs. Coughlin is my teacher, but her first name is Rita."

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?" Grace said.

"Rita."

"Rita who?" Grace said, starting to laugh already.

"Rita good book and you'll learn something."

Grace laughed as if she were going to bust. Babsie never saw a kid who liked to laugh like this one. She brought out the comedian in everyone.

"I'll say that to my teacher today."

"Yeah, it'll go over big. Tell her your grandfather told you that one."

"Babsie, can I call you Grammy?"

Grace called her Grammy at the light at Palisade as a car came screeching around the corner. Babsie heard it before she saw it. Her instincts kicked in and she pulled Grace close to her. It was an old loud Camaro, coming straight at them. In one move, she scooped Grace under her arm and jumped backward, trying to put a parked car between them and the Camaro. She landed hard on her ass and elbows, her arms wrapped around Grace. The Camaro banged over the curb and stopped inches from the building. Zina had the window down, and the gun pointed. Babsie scrambled between parked cars and out to the road. The Camaro backed up, but Babsie had passed behind it and was running toward the North End Tavern, lugging Grace and her backpack. She could hear the loud Camaro engine accelerating behind her.

The first gunshots shattered the glass of McGrath Electric. The front doors of the North End Tavern were wide-open, blowing out the night's beer stink. Babsie made it in before bullets shattered their glass. Kevin Dunne came running from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. Babsie told him to stay the hell away from the windows and call 911. Babsie ran to the cellar steps, opened the door, and told Grace to get down there and stay. She slammed the door behind her. Martha came out of the kitchen and stood by Kevin, ready to give a piece of her mind to whoever had had the nerve to break her windows.

"Martha," Babsie said, "go downstairs with Grace."

"I'll do no such thing," she said.

The first grenade hit off a coat hook and bounded toward the empty booths. Babsie screamed at them to get down, but they stood there as if they were posing. The explosion rocketed up and out, debris releasing in a wide swath. Martha shrieked as Kevin fell to the ground holding his face, blood spurting through his fingers.

The next grenade came seconds later, as Babsie screamed at the police dispatcher: 'Ten-thirteen, ten-thir-teen." The dispatcher calmly asked, "Location?" The caller ID was unable to get an address from a cell phone. Babsie, who'd lived there all her life, didn't know the street number. "The North End Tavern," she yelled. "Palisade and Roberts. Ask one of the cops."

In the quiet after the second blast, she could hear Martha calling Kevin, repeating his name over and over in a detached and eerie voice. Babsie crawled through chunks of wet plaster and glass around the side of the line of booths until she reached a spot where she had a straight view of the front door. Water pouring from a broken pipe slapped off a table.

On her stomach, Babsie anchored her elbows on the floor and pointed the gun barrel at the light shining from outside. Zina would appear backlit, a decent target despite the smoke. The smoke was too thick to see the front clearly; she couldn't tell exactly where Kevin and Martha were. Just hang on for two minutes, she thought; the cavalry will be here. Two minutes. Her right hand was tightening up; her elbow felt swollen and numb. Eddie hurts his left; I do my right. Aren't we a goddamn pair?

Babsie heard footsteps walking on the glass, and no more sounds from Martha. The footsteps were slow and deliberate, not moving in a straight line. Pausing, moving, pausing, moving. From her shooter's spot, Babsie could see the front, but her view of the cellar door was from under a table. The heavy clouds lingered-the second grenade must have had a smoke component. Finally, she heard a siren in the distance.

The door to the cellar opened. From where she was, she could see only Grace's feet.

"Grammy," Grace called.

Babsie's hands slid on the wet glass and chunks of plaster. She rolled under the partition that separated the tables from the bar. The footsteps quickened.

"Honey," she said. "Go back where you were."

"I'm scared, Grammy."

Babsie got to her feet and ran toward the cellar door. Zina fired and missed. Babsie got to Grace first, picked her up, slammed the cellar door behind her. She ran down the steps as quickly as possible with wet shoes and the weight of a child in her arms. She knew if she could clear the steps and turn left, she'd be out of the line of fire; then she'd have the advantage. But the door opened as she was halfway down the shallow wooden steps that Kieran Dunne had built out of World War II ammunition boxes. She heard the gunshot, and made up her mind that a little bullet wouldn't be much more to carry. Then she heard a scream of pain. She turned, to see Zina clutching her thigh, then turning away, disappearing. Another shot was fired, then two more. Babsie hid Grace in a jumble of beer kegs and boxing gloves. She went back up the stairs quickly. Two more shots. Babsie kicked the cellar door open and moved into the open in the combat stance she'd been taught. Under a clock that Kevin had reclaimed from the demolished Yonkers Savings Bank stood a blood-soaked Martha Dunne, pointing a gun toward the front door. It was a gun so new, the price tag dangled from the trigger guard.

Zina was gone.

When Eddie arrived, only the medical personnel had finished their work. The Yonkers PD and FD, the NYPD and

ATF, and the FBI traipsed through the crime scene that had been the Dunne family bar. A tiny piece of shrapnel had pierced Kevin's throat; only the quick action of two Yonkers cops kept him alive. They'd carried him to their radio car and raced to St. John's Hospital.

A Yonkers Crime Scene team marked shell casings and traced the various blood trails. Kevin Dunne's blood was confined to one area at the window side of his prized mahogany bar. The telltale blood splatters that had dripped from the fleeing Zina Rabinovich indicated her route: from the cellar door, passing through the blood of Kevin Dunne, finally ending at the curb on Palisade Avenue. Technicians thought she'd been hit twice. A district attorney drove down from White Plains to decide how to handle Martha's unlicensed handgun problem. Martha was at St. John's with her husband.

"Kevin is going to be fine," Babsie said. "They got him there in time."

"How bad was it?" Eddie asked. He'd slept through it, not hearing of it until B. J. Harrington called him.

"Kev won't be singing 'Molly Malone' for a while," Babsie said. "Two or three little entrance holes. The one in his neck caused the major bleeding. It punctured something. He lost a lot of blood, but they got that under control. The rest is just sewing."

"My God," Eddie said, holding his face in his hands.

"He always wanted a battle scar anyway," Babsie said. "Now he's got it all: a war story to tell, a scar to point to. Couple a days, he'll be back here in bandages, holding court. A year from now, we'll be begging him to stop telling the story."

They were sitting in the "cheaters' booth." The one farthest back in the bar. It had been untouched. Grace sat on Babsie's lap, holding tight. They were waiting for her teacher from Christ the King to pick her up.

"Maybe we should keep her home," Eddie said.

"No," Babsie said. "She'll forget about this when she's with her friends."

"All because of me," Eddie said, looking at the ruined framed photographs, the plaques, the huge green-and-gold Sacred Heart banner that stretched almost the length of the shuffleboard table.

"Martha told me you'd say that," Babsie said. "Because you think the world revolves around you. She told me to tell you not to flatter yourself, that this was God's will, nothing more."

"I'm going to rebuild all of it," Eddie said. "I'll find somebody today to come in and clean up. Then we'll get a contractor in here. I'll make it better than it ever was."

"It's gonna cost," she said.

"I can find the money," he replied.

A pretty blond woman with a turned-up nose walked to the back with one of the Homicide cops. Eddie thanked her for coming.

"Ready, Grace," Rita Coughlin said.

"Go ahead, tell her," Babsie said.

"Knock, knock," Grace said, taking her teacher's hand.

After they left, Babsie went into the ladies' room to wash up. Her elbow continued to swell, her right hand getting stiffer as time went on. Eddie wanted to get to the hospital to see his brother. She could get it X-rayed at St. John's.

When she came out, Eddie was looking up at the walls. He'd taken down the picture of himself, the framed cover from Ring Magazine, and thrown it in the trash. Babsie heard a phone ringing.

"That's mine," she said. "Where the hell is it?"

She kicked stuff around the edge of the partition, where she last remembered having it. Investigators had moved the debris around, looking for shell casings and grenade fragments.

"That might be the hospital," Eddie said.

"Help me look," she said. The caller was persistent. Eddie dropped to his hands and knees to help her. They found it on the ninth or tenth ring.

"Boland," Babsie mouthed to Eddie. Then she turned her back on him and walked out of his hearing. Glass crunched under her feet. Her voice was a soft but intense murmur.

Eddie stayed on his knees amid the glass and wet plaster, examining the broken bits of his brother's dream. Sooner or later, the sins of Eddie Dunne devour everyone who loves him. Each one a victim of his careless life; all paying for the years he forgot about them, simply because the wine was flowing and the women were willing.

Babsie put the phone in her purse. Her complexion had turned a flushed red.

"Come on, get up," she said. "We're going to Coney Island Hospital."

"They find Zina?" he asked.

"No," she said. "They found Kate."