"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.
