Someone to Watch Over Me

“Don’t bother looking through those pears; we got better in the back. Falco will bring them.” Raising her voice, she called to Falco in Italian.

A few moments later, Falco emerged from the storeroom, wearing a stained apron over his shirt and jeans and carrying a small bag. He walked past Leigh without a glance and gave his mother the bag, from which she extracted two large pears. “These are for you,” Mrs. Angelini told Leigh. “These are the best of all.”

Leigh retrieved her heated pizza from the microwave, slid it back onto its cardboard dish, and covered it with its original plastic wrapping; then she headed for the cash register, where she properly admired pears so shiny that they looked polished. “You’re always so nice to me, Mrs. Angelini,” she said with a smile, trying very hard to convey some sort of warmth and cheer to the long-suffering woman. Mrs. Angelini’s oldest son, Angelo, had been killed in a gang fight long before Leigh moved to the neighborhood. Her youngest son, Dominick, was a thoroughly likeable, gregarious young man who used to help out in the store all the time, but then, one day, he disappeared. Mrs. Angelini said Dominick was away at school, but Leigh’s roommate—a native New Yorker—said that in their neighborhood “away at school,” meant “away at Spofford,” New York’s Juvenile Detention Center, or away at one of the state prisons.

Soon after Dominick “left for school,” Falco started working in the store, but the only thing Falco Angelini had in common with his outgoing, younger brother was a record—and not at Spofford, either. Based on what Leigh’s roommate overheard in the store one day, Falco had spent several years in Attica for killing someone.

Even if Leigh hadn’t known that, Falco would have made her extremely uneasy. Silent and forbidding, and over six feet tall, he moved through the store like a towering specter of impending doom, his expression ice cold and distant, his powerful shoulders seeming to crowd the narrow aisles. In jarring contrast to his thick black eyebrows and full beard, his skin had a ghostly pallor that Leigh’s roommate said was from being in prison. His voice—on the rare occasions when he spoke—was hard and brusque. He made Leigh so uneasy that she actually avoided looking at him whenever possible, but there were times when she caught him watching her, and it made her even more uncomfortable.

Mrs. Angelini, however, seemed almost comically unaware of Falco’s fierce features and intimidating demeanor. She called orders to him like a drill sergeant and referred to him affectionately and possessively as “my Falco,” and “my caro” and “my nipote.” Leigh figured that since she had already lost two of her boys, it was probably natural that Mrs. Angelini would treasure the remaining one, regardless of his very obvious character flaws and social shortcomings.

As if Mrs. Angelini knew what Leigh was thinking, she smiled sadly as she counted out Leigh’s change. “If God had given me a choice,” she confessed with a nod toward the front of the store, where Falco was stocking shelves with canned goods, “I think I would have asked Him for daughters. Daughters are easier to raise.”

“I’m not sure most mothers would agree with you,” Leigh joked uneasily. She was uncomfortable with the topic, sad for Mrs. Angelini’s sadness, and eternally disconcerted by Falco Angelini’s presence. Picking up her purchases, Leigh politely said good-bye to Mrs. Angelini, then she called a hesitant good-bye to Falco—not because she wanted to speak to him, but because she was a little afraid of snubbing—and therefore offending—him. Leigh was from a quiet, small town in Ohio, and she had absolutely no experience with ex-convicts, but it seemed to her that deliberately offending an ex-convict—particularly one who’d been in prison for killing somebody—was probably an unwise, even dangerous, mistake.

She was preoccupied with those thoughts as she walked out of the market and started down the street, so she was taken completely by surprise when two menacing-looking young men materialized from the shadows and stepped purposefully into her path. “Well, well, look what came out of the market,” one of them said as he reached into his jacket pocket. “You look good enough to peel and eat.”

A knife! He had a knife! Leigh froze like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Her one idiotic thought was that she mustn’t be killed now, not now when she’d just found Logan. Suddenly, Falco Angelini erupted from the market behind her and began taunting the youth holding the long, thin blade. “Do I see a knife?” he jeered. “Do you know how to use it, shithead?” Opening his arms wide, Angelini invited Leigh’s would-be attacker to lunge at him. “You can’t earn your bones cutting up little girls. Try cutting up a grown man. Cut me up. Come on, asshole, try it!”

Mesmerized, Leigh saw the second youth pull a knife out of his pocket just as the first one lunged. Angelini sidestepped the attack, grabbed the assailant’s arm and yanked it back over his shoulder with a sickening bone-breaking sound that sent the youth stumbling backward into the alley, howling in pain. The second attacker was more skilled, less rushed, than his companion, and Leigh watched in paralyzed horror as he circled Angelini in a half-crouch, his blade flashing beneath the streetlamp. Suddenly the blade shot upward, Angelini stepped back, and the older boy screamed in pain and fell to his knees, clutching his groin. “You sonofabitch!” he whimpered, glaring at Angelini, trying to roll onto his side and get up.

While he was trying to get to his feet, Falco grabbed Leigh’s arm and yanked her unceremoniously backward, into the doorway of the market. She stayed there, frozen, until both youths had taken off down the street and then disappeared into an alley. “We—we—we should call the police,” she stammered finally.

Angelini scowled at her and pulled off the apron he’d been wearing. “Why?”

“Be . . . because we might be able to pick out their pictures. I’m not sure I could do it alone, but between the two of us, we might be able to identify them.”

“All punks look alike to me,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t tell one from another.”

Rebuffed, Leigh leaned forward and peered apprehensively in the direction of her apartment building. “I don’t see any sign of them. They’re probably a mile away by now.” She glanced awkwardly at Angelini, trying to hide her fear of walking home alone. “Thank you for coming to my rescue,” she said, and when he didn’t reply, she stepped out of the doorway.

To her vast relief, he stepped forward, too. “I’ll walk you home.” He waited a moment for her to react and mistook her nervous silence for a dismissal. “Maybe you’d rather walk alone,” he said, turning away.

Completely unnerved, Leigh actually clutched his arm to pull him with her. “No, wait! I’d like you to walk with me! I just didn’t want to cause you any more trouble, Falco.”

Her involuntary gesture seemed to amuse him, or perhaps it was what she’d said that amused him. “You haven’t caused me any trouble.”

“Other than almost getting you killed back there.”

“I was not in any danger of being killed by those—” Whatever profanity he’d had in mind, he checked the words.

Encouraged by the communication they’d established, Leigh said, “I really think we should call the police.”

“Suit yourself, but leave me out of it. I don’t have time to waste on cops.”

“How do you expect the police to protect us if citizens won’t cooperate? Among other things, it’s every cit

izen’s duty . . .”

He shot her a look filled with such withering disdain she felt like sinking into the sidewalk. “What planet are you from?”

“I’m from Ohio,” Leigh replied, so completely off balance that she could not form a better reply.

“That explains it,” he said flatly, but for the second time in the last few minutes, she thought she heard a glimmer of amusement in his voice.

He walked her to her building, up four flights of stairs to her apartment door, and left her there.

HER NARROW ESCAPE from violence that night put a permanent end to Leigh’s solitary nocturnal trips to Angelini’s Market, but she continued to go there during the day for her groceries. On her next visit, she told Mrs. Angelini about her brush with danger, but instead of being proud of Falco, the poor woman was upset. “Ever since he was a little boy, he finds trouble and trouble finds him.”

A little taken aback, Leigh looked around for her rescuer, and spotted him just inside the storeroom at the back of the store, stacking boxes. “I wanted to thank you properly,” she announced, coming up behind him. He stiffened, as if startled; then he turned slowly and looked down at her, his black brows drawing into an impatient scowl, his thick black beard concealing the rest of his expression. “For what?” he said shortly.

He seemed somehow more distant and daunting than ever, his body taller and more massive than before, but Leigh was determined not to let any of that faze her. Ex-convict or not, he had risked his life to save hers, and then he had walked her home to make certain she got there safely. That was true gallantry, she thought, and as the word popped into her mind it crossed her lips. “For being so gallant,” she explained.

“Gallant?” he repeated ironically. “Is that what you think I am?”

Despite Leigh’s determination to stand her ground and not be thwarted in expressing her gratitude, she took a tiny, cautious step backward before she nodded emphatically. “Yes, I do.”