Tempted by the Sinner

When I was finished, I grabbed my backpack and the suitcase. I cleaned a few of the dishes as fast as I could so they didn’t rot in the sink while I was gone and I threw out anything perishable from the refrigerator. When that was done, I took the trash to the curb, and caught Vince looking at his phone. He flashed me a smile as I hurried inside, grabbed my backpack and suitcase, and came back out.

He helped me put them into the back then opened the passenger side door.

“Should I expect this level of service during my stay?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “And interesting word you just chose.”

“What, service?”

He nodded. “Do you know what goes into the blood oath every member of the family takes?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, nothing more than what I’ve seen on TV.”

“The TV version is more or less accurate,” he said as he drove back toward Old City, away from West Philly where I lived. “In the ritual, the Don pricks your finger with a needle, and a drop of blood falls onto a card depicting Saint Francis. The card’s then set on fire and passed around a circle of your future brothers. As it burns, the Don makes you take an oath.”

“Dramatic,” I said.

“Very,” he said. “But effective. There’s something about a ritual like that, it stays with you, even if it’s just a bunch of superstitious bullshit.”

“But what does service have to do with it?”

“Service is a key part of the oath,” he said. “You pledge your life to serve the family, to serve the Don and your new brothers. You pledge to embrace omerta, to never speak, no matter the consequences. Every made man in the family is pledged to serve, for his entire life, until the day he dies.”

“Dramatic,” I said again.

He laughed and gestured with his hands. “What can you do? It’s an old-world thing, but it’s effective.”

“You really think so?”

“Definitely,” he said. “Think about all the secret societies around the world. They all have initiation rituals, and they’re all closely guarded secrets. There’s something about having a ritual, having a secret, and taking an oath.”

“But you just told me the ritual,” I said.

He laughed. “It’s on Wikipedia,” he said. “So it’s not really a secret anymore. Even still, we talk about it in hushed tones, like the world doesn’t already know. Symbols, ideas, rituals, they all have power.”

I looked at the shape of his jaw, at his hands gripping the steering wheel. He looked like a thug, a handsome thug, but still. He was a mobster, but there he was talking about ritual and service and meaning like a college professor. It made me shake my head in disbelief.

I didn’t know this man, didn’t know him at all. But I could be sure of one thing, he wasn’t stupid.

If he was doing this, if he was bringing me into his life, he was going to be careful.

I was a journalist, and he had secrets to protect, secrets with power. He was more or less telling me that straight out. Maybe he wasn’t saying it in so many words, but I could read the unspoken truth.

If I wanted truth, I was going to have to keep looking for something unspoken.

We drove through the city, through quiet, shady neighborhoods, past row home after row home with brick facades and gray concrete stoops, until he pulled down a particularly nice Old City street. He pulled the black SUV over to the curb and parked in front of a house with a black door, black shutters, and little other ornamentation.

“Here we are,” he said and got out.

I followed as he pulled out my bags. I went to take them but he waved me away. He walked to the stoop, carried them up, then unlocked the door and pushed it open.

I followed him inside and sucked in a breath.

The walls were painted a pale olive green. The couch was low and mottled gray and white in a Midcentury Modern style with thin tapered legs. A flat screen hung on the wall across from it, and beyond that was an open kitchen and dining room area. A large midcentury table dominated the space with seating for eight. The kitchen had all granite countertops, and the refrigerator looked like it was straight out of the 1950s, big and oblong and teal, with a long handle and a gleaming silver GE badge in the front.

“Okay,” I said as he put down my bags. “I didn’t expect this.”

He tilted his head. “Didn’t expect what?”

I gestured around me. “This. It’s really…”

“Nice?” he asked.

“Nice,” I said and laughed. “Sorry. Maybe that’s mean.”

“I get it,” he said. “I’m a mobster. You expected ratty leather couches, crosses on the wall, maybe a dead body or two and some cocaine on the coffee table.”