The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

New Neighbor

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1975.

“Each of us lives in one world only,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “the singular world within the skull. No two are alike. Who can possibly imagine some of the dark phantasms within the worlds other than one’s own?”

Isadora, old, gray, spindly, gnarled, more friend and companion than servant, drifted to Mrs. Cappelli’s side. The two women were of an age, in the autumn of their lives, with a close bond between them. The years had touched Mrs. Cappelli with the gentler brush. She was still trim; her face had not entirely surrendered its youthful lines; her once-black hair was braided in a coil atop her head, a silver tiara.

The two stood at the window of Mrs. Cappelli’s slightly disarrayed and comfortably lived-in bedroom and looked from the second-story window at the youth in the back yard of the house next door.

“A strange one,” Isadora agreed.

He was lounging on a plastic-webbing chaise, indolent, loose, relaxed, calmly pumping a pellet rifle. In scruffy jeans and T-shirt, he was long, tanned and lean, slightly bony. Even in repose he was a suggestion of quick, whip-like agility and power. His face was cleanly cut, even attractive, his forehead, ears and neck feathered with very dark hair. Idly, his gaze was roving the bushes and trees, the pines at the corners of the yard, the avocado tree, the two tall, unkempt palmettos.

He lifted the gun with a casual motion and squeezed the trigger. A bird toppled from the topmost reaches of the taller pine tree, the small body bouncing from limb to limb, showering a few needles, hanging briefly on a lower limb before it struck and was swallowed by the uncut grass along the rear of the yard.

The youth showed no sign of interest, once again pumping the gun and stirring only his eyes in a renewed search of the trees.

Mrs. Cappelli’s thin figure flinched, and her eyes were held by the spot where the bird had fallen.

Isadora touched her arm. “At least it wasn’t a cardinal, Maria.”

“Thank you, Isadora. From this distance the details weren’t clear. My eyes just aren’t what they used to be.”

Isadora glanced at the face that had once been the distillation of all beauty in Old Sicily. “I think we could use some tea, Maria.”

Mrs. Cappelli seemed unaware when Isadora faded from her side. She remained at the window, as hushed as the hot Florida stillness outside, looking carefully at the young man on the chaise.

Mrs. Cappelli had been delighted when the house next door was rented at last. It had stood vacant for months, a casualty of Florida overbuild. Dated by its Spanish styling, it was nevertheless a sound and comfortable house in a substantial and quiet older neighborhood where urban decay had never gained the slightest foothold.

Mrs. Cappelli had expected a family. Instead there were only the mother and son arriving in a noisy old car in the wake of a van that had disgorged flimsy, worn, time-payment furniture. Mrs. Ruth Morrow and Greg. A lot of house for two people, but Mrs. Cappelli supposed, correctly, that the age of the house and its long vacancy had finally caused the desperate owner to offer it as a cut-rate bargain on the sagging rental market.

After a settling-in day or two, Mrs. Cappelli saw Mrs. Morrow pruning the dying poinsettia near the front corner of the house and went over to say hello.

It was a sultry afternoon and Mrs. Morrow looked wan and tired, with hardly enough remaining strength to snap the shears. Mrs. Cappelli wondered why Greg wasn’t handling the pruning tool. He was at home. Who could doubt it? He was in there torturing a high-amplification guitar with amateurish violence. His discordant efforts were audible a block away.

“I’m Maria Cappelli,” Mrs. Cappelli said pleasantly. “It’s very nice to have new neighbors.”

Mrs. Morrow accepted the greeting with hesitant and standoffish self-consciousness. Her glance slipped toward the house, a silent wish that her son would turn down his guitar. She was a thin, almost frail woman. She needs, Mrs. Cappelli thought, mounds of pasta and huge bowls of steaming, mouth-watering stufato.

Mrs. Morrow remembered her manners with a tired smile. “Ruth Morrow,” she said. She glanced about the yard. “So much to do here. Inside, the place was all dust and cobwebs.” Her gaze moved to Mrs. Cappelli’s comfortable abode of stucco and red tile. “You have a lovely place.”

“My husband built it years before his death. We used to come here for winter vacations. To me, it was home, rather than New York. I love Florida, even the heat of the summers. My son was born in the house, right up there in that corner bedroom.” Mrs. Cappelli laughed. “Shortest labor on record. Such a bambino! When he decided to make his entrance, he wouldn’t even take time for a ride to the hospital.”

Mrs. Cappelli’s unconscious delight in her son brought Ruth Morrow’s fatigued and hollow eyes to Mrs. Cappelli’s face. Mrs. Cappelli was caught, held, and slightly embarrassed. Such aching eyes! So many regrets, frustrations and bewilderments harbored in their depths... They were too large and dark for the thin, heavily made-up face that at one time mast have been quite pretty.

“My son is named Greg,” Mrs. Morrow murmured.

“Mine is named John. He’s much older than your son. He has a wife and five children — such scamps! — and he comes to see me now and then when he can take the time. He is a contractor up north, always on the go.”

“He must be a fine man.”

Mrs. Cappelli was urged to say something comforting to the wearied mother before her. “Oh, John sowed an oat. I guess they all do, before they settle down. Nowadays John is always after me to sell the old antique, as he calls the house. Come and live with him, he nags. I tell him to peddle his own papers. This is not the old country where three or four generations must brawl under one small roof.”

Mrs. Morrow nodded. “It’s been real nice of you to say hello, Mrs. Cappelli. I do have to run now. I work, you see. At the Serena Lounge on the beach, from six in the evening until two o’clock each morning. I always have a good bit to do to get ready for work.”

“The Serena is an excellent place. John took Isadora and me there the last time he was down.”

Ruth Morrow punched the tip of the pruning shears at a small brown twig. “Being a cocktail waitress isn’t the height of my ambition, but without professional training, it pays more money than I’d ever hoped to make. And God knows there is never quite enough money.”

It might ease the situation, Mrs. Cappelli mused, if her boy dirtied his hands with some honest toil. She said, “The honor of a job is in its execution, and I’m certain you’re the best of cocktail waitresses.”

The sincerity of Mrs. Cappelli’s tone brought the first touch of animation to the tired face with its layered icing of makeup and framing of short, dark brown hair. Before Mrs. Morrow could respond, the front door of the house slammed, and Greg was standing in the shadow of the small portico. Both women looked toward him.

“Greg,” Mrs. Morrow called, “this is Mrs. Cappelli, our next-door neighbor.”

“Hi,” he said, bored. He gave Mrs. Cappelli a single glance of dismissal, dropped to the walk with a single smooth stride and headed around the house.

“Greg,” Ruth Morrow called, “where are you going?”

“Out,” he said, without looking back.

“When will you be home?”

“When I’m damned good and ready!” He rounded the corner of the house and was out of sight.

Mrs. Morrow’s face came creeping in Mrs. Cappelli’s direction, but her eyes sidled away. “It’s just his way of talking, Mrs. Cappelli.”

Mrs. Cappelli nodded, but she didn’t understand. How could Mrs. Morrow accept it? Parental respect was normal in a child, be he six or sixty.

A car engine was stabbed to roaring life and Greg raced down the driveway. He cornered the car into the street with tires screaming.

“I really have to go now, Mrs. Cappelli.”

“It was a privilege to meet you,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

“Well?” Isadora asked us soon its Mrs. Cappelli stepped into the house.

“She is a poor woman in the worst of all states,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “a mother with a cruel and unloving son.”

Isadora crossed herself.

“He is killing his mother,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

Greg was an immediate neighborhood blight, a disease, an invasion. The Ransoms’ playful puppy bounded into the Morrow yard and Greg broke its leg with a kick, claiming that the flop-eared trusting mutt was charging him. He hunted chords on the thunderous guitar at one o’clock in the morning, if the mood suited him. Many evenings he was out, usually returning about three a.m. with screaming tires and unmuffled engine. Frequently he filled the Morrow house with hordes of hippies for beer and rock parties.

Neighbors grumbled and swapped irate opinions of Greg among themselves over back-yard fences and coffee klatches. Lack of leadership was a stultifying, inertial force, and nothing was done about Greg until about two, one morning, when the biggest blast yet hit the peak of its frenzy in the Morrow house.

Mr. Sigmon (the white colonial across the street) decided he just couldn’t stand it any longer. He threw back the cover, sat up in bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and dialed Information on his extension phone. Yes, Information informed, a phone had been installed at the Morrow address. Mr. Sigmon got the number, hesitated for a single minute, then dialed it.

The Morrow phone rang six or seven times before anyone noticed. Then a girl answered, giggling drunkenly. “If this isn’t an obscene call, forget it.”

“Let me speak to Greg,” Mr. Sigmon said, the phone feeling sweaty in his hand.

The girl screeched for Greg, and he was on.

“Have a heart,” Mr. Sigmon pleaded. “Can’t you tone things down just a little?”

“Who’s this?” Greg asked.

“I... uh... Mr. Sigmon, across the street.”

“How’d you like a fat lip, Mr. Sigmon-across-the-street?”

“Now look, Greg...” Mr. Sigmon gathered his courage. “All I’m asking is that you be reasonable.”

“Go cram it!”

A burst of anger burned the edges from Mr. Sigmon’s timidity. “Now look here, you young pup, you quiet down over there or I’ll call the police.”

For a moment there was only the noise of the party on the line, the wild laughter, the shouted talk, the overpowering background of hard-rock rhythm. Then Greg said, “Well, OK, pops. You don’t have to get so sore about it. We’re just having some fun.” The party cooled and Mr. Sigmon stretched beside his wide-awake wife with a feeling of being an inch taller for having put a tether on Greg.

Two days later Mrs. Sigmon got out of her station wagon with a bag of groceries, crossed to the front stoop, and dropped the groceries with a thud and clatter. She put her knuckles to her mouth and screamed. Against the front door lay her cat, stiff and lifeless, its head twisted so that its muzzle pointed upward away from the shoulders.

That night Greg hosted another party, the loudest one yet.

To Mrs. Cappelli it was as if a dark presence had come among them. It wasn’t the same warmly quiet old street. It was like a sinister urban street where the aura urged the hapless pedestrian to hurry along after dark with ears keened for the slightest sound.

“Perhaps the Morrows will move on,” Mrs. Cappelli said at breakfast.

“Yes,” Isadora agreed. “They are Gypsies. But when? That’s the question. Next month? A year from now? Before the youth does something even more dreadful?”

“That poor mother.” Mrs. Cappelli flipped an egg in the pan “If she moved around the world, she would not have room for her problem.”

Later in the day Mrs. Cappelli carried her afternoon tea up to her bedroom. She put the steaming cup on a small table and crossed to the side window. Outside, on a level with the sill, was a small wooden ledge. Two sparrows were hopping about on it, pecking bits of food from cracks.

“Hello there,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “you’re early for dinner. You must be hungry, going for those leftovers.”

She turned to the bureau and picked up a canister. The sparrows fluttered away as she opened the canister and reached out to spread a feast of seeds and crumbs on the ledge feeder.

The sparrows had returned by the time Mrs. Cappelli fetched her tea and settled in the wooden rocking chair near the window. Other birds arrived, more sparrows, a robin, a thrush, a tiny wren. They were a delight of movement, color; they were so naturally happy, so easy to please.

The daily bird feeding and watching was silly, perhaps — the whim of an old woman — but the birds rewarded Mrs. Cappelli with a quiet pleasure in a sometimes endless day. Therefore, she inquired of herself, isn’t it a most important thing?

She wondered if the Prince would come; and then he did. Gorgeous. Regal. The most beautiful cardinal since Audubon. He had been a daily visitor a long time now. He always came to rest on the edge of the feeder, proud head lifted and tilted as he looked in at Mrs. Cappelli.

She leaned forward slightly. “Hello there,” she said softly. “Is the food up to your kingly taste today?”

She couldn’t quite delight in the words or in the sight of Prince and his friends. No, not anymore. She sat back, fingers curled on the arms of the chair. Today, more than yesterday or the day before, she was aware of depleted joy. She’d tried not to admit the awareness, but now, in the ritual of the birds, was a hint of anxiety, even fear in her heart. She couldn’t entirely free her mind of the memory of the youth next door with his pellet gun. Pump, pump, pump... his strong hand working the lever while his eyes roamed the trees for an innocent, unsuspecting and helpless target, and a feathered body twisting and turning as it plunged headlong to the ground.

Perhaps, Mrs. Cappelli thought, she should stop feeding the birds while the air gun is over there threatening them...

As the thought crossed her mind, she saw a sudden puff of red feathers on the cardinal’s breast. The bird was gone. That quickly. That completely. The other birds scattered in sudden flight.

Mrs. Cappelli sat with a hot dryness blinding her eyes, then she snapped from the chair and hurried down through the house. With late sun searing through the cold film on her flesh, she searched along the driveway and through the shrubbery growing against the house. The cardinal’s body was not to be seen, and she was sure that Greg had run over and picked up the evidence before she’d got out of the house.

She thought of him watching the ledge, seeing her birds, hearing the sound of her, perhaps, drifting from her open window as she’d chatted at the cardinal. A dark instinct had risen in him, a hunger, and his devious mind with its unknown depths had schemed. He’d waited, like a beast savoring the anticipation of the kill. Then he’d felt the thrill of pulling the trigger at last and seeing the cardinal fall.

Mrs. Cappelli turned slowly, and he was there, standing near the front walk of the Morrow house, the air gun in the crook of his arm. Tall. Lean. Young. Challenging her. Baiting her. His lips lifting in a smile that sent an icy shard through her.

She turned on stiff legs and went into her house.

The policeman’s name was Longstreet, Sergeant Harley Longstreet. He was tall, strapping, with a pleasantly big-featured face and lank brown hair.

With the drapery pulled aside in the living-room, Mrs. Cappelli watched him come from the Morrow house. He stood a moment, looking over his shoulder, a loose-leaf pocket notebook in his hand. Then he came across to the Cappelli front door.

Mrs. Cappelli opened the door while he was still a few feet away and stood aside for him to enter. With a glance at his face, she suspected that he hadn’t been very successful with Greg Morrow. He was a nice young policeman. He’d responded quickly to her phone call. He’d heard everything she’d had to say. He hadn’t thought a bird’s death unimportant — not when it was coupled with the circumstances. He’d attached considerable meaning and importance to it. He had gone over to the Morrow place almost an hour ago. Now he was back.

Mrs. Cappelli stood with her fingers on the edge of the opened door. “I think I understand, Mr. Longstreet,” she said with no accusation or rancor.

“He simply denies killing the bird, ma’am. Did you actually see him kill it?”

“I didn’t see him pull the trigger.”

“Well, you see, Mrs. Cappelli, the law is black print on white paper. Mrs. Morrow isn’t home. No one else is out and about the houses close by. Without a witness or some tangible evidence I’ve done about all I can.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Longstreet.”

He hesitated, tapping his notebook on his thumb. “He says you are a crotchety old lady who doesn’t want young people in the neighborhood.”

“He’s a liar, Mr. Longstreet. I delight in reasonably normal young people. Do you believe him?”

“Not for a moment, Mrs. Cappelli. Not one word.” He flipped his notebook open. “I checked the records briefly when I got your call, to see if he was in any of the official files. We have computers nowadays, you know. I can push a button and tell whether or not he’d been recorded in any city or county agency.”

She closed the door finally and stood leaning the back of her shoulders against it. “And what did your computer tell you?

His sharp eyes flicked between her and the notebook. “He spent two years, our Greg Morrow, in a correctional institution for maladjusted teen-agers. Committed when he was sixteen. Released on his eighteenth birthday, which was eighteen months ago. Prior to the action that put him away, he had a record of classroom disruption, of vandalism in his schools, of shaking down smaller classmates for their pocket money. He was finally put away after he assaulted a school principal.”

“The principal should have given him a sound thrashing with a strong hickory switch,” Mrs. Cappelli said. “But in that event it would have been the principal who went to jail.”

“It’s possible,” Longstreet agreed. He tucked his notebook in his hip pocket. “We’ve had complaints about Greg almost from the day he was let out, in various neighborhoods where the Morrows have lived. But other than a suspended sentence for trespassing, after a house was vandalized, nothing has stood against him in court.”

Mrs. Cappelli moved slowly to a large chair and sank on its edge, hands clasped on her drawn-together knees. “Mr. Longstreet, Greg Morrow is not merely a mischievous boy. He is the kind of force and fact from which those fantastic and gory newspaper headlines are too often drawn.”

“That’s very possible.”

His tone caused her to glance up, and she caught the bitterness in his eyes. Her sympathy went out to him for the hardness of his job.

“Don’t feel badly, Mr. Longstreet. I thank you for coming out and talking to him. Perhaps it will frighten him for a little while and help that much.”

“We simply can’t lock them up without evidence of the commission of a crime. Sometimes, then, it’s too late.”

“After the commission of a crime, Mr. Longstreet, it is always too late.” She rose to her feet to see him out.

He stood looking down on her, the small sturdiness of her. “I’ll have the police cruiser in this area increase its patrols along your street, Mrs. Cappelli. I’ll do everything I possibly can.”

“I’m sure of that.”

“Good day, Mrs. Cappelli.”

“Good day, Mr. Longstreet.”

She watched him stride down the front walk and get into the unmarked police car parked against the street curbing. He sat there for a brief time after he started the engine, looking at the Morrow house; then he drove away.

As she turned, Mrs. Cappelli saw Greg. He was standing in the Morrow yard, thumbs hooked in his belt, watching the police car move toward the intersection and turn out of sight.

Mrs. Cappelli started to close the door. Then, with a sudden impulse, she went outside and walked across to the driveway that separated the two properties.

“Greg... may I speak to you?”

He moved only his head, turning it to stare at her. “Why should I talk to an old bitch who sics the fuzz on me?”

She whitened, but held back the swift heat of anger. “I thought we might have a civilized talk. After all, Greg, we do have to live as neighbors.”

“Who says? Somebody around here could die. Old biddies are always popping off, you know.”

She drew a difficult breath. “A bit of reasonableness, Greg. That’s all I’m asking. I was happy when you moved into the neighborhood, so young and vigorous. I looked forward to some youthful activity next door.”

“Old creep. You called the fuzz.”

“You know why, Greg. Somehow I must impress on you that there are limits. Why can’t we discuss them? Observe them? Live and let live?”

He looked at her with studied insolence. “You made a bad mistake calling Longstreet, old lady. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I won’t forget it, either.”

Her voice rang with the first hint of anger. “Are you threatening me, Greg?”

“Who says? Can you prove to Longstreet that I am? Just your word against mine. I know how the law works. I know my rights.”

“I don’t think this is getting us anywhere, Greg. I regret having come out and spoken to you.”

He drifted a few steps toward her. The dying sunlight marked his cheekbones sharply. His body was tense, as if coiled inside. “You got a lot more regrets in the future, old lady. You better believe it. Think about it. You won’t know when, how, or where. But I don’t like people trying to throw me to the fuzz.”

“I hope this is just talk, Greg.”

He laughed suddenly. “That school principal — the one who got me sent up. Know what happened? About a year after I got out, a hit-and-run driver marked up the punk principal’s daughter, that’s what. She’ll be a short-legged creep the rest of her life. Sure, the fuzz questioned me — but they couldn’t prove a thing.”

She could bear it no longer. She turned and started toward her front door with quick steps.

“Don’t forget to think about it, old lady,” he called after her. “And remember — nobody ever proves a thing on Greg Morrow.”

Three passing days brought Mrs. Cappelli the faint hope that Greg had thought twice and again. Perhaps his insults and threat had sufficed his ego. Usually, such fellows were mostly talk. Usually.

The fourth night Mrs. Cappelli stirred in her always-light sleep, dreaming that she smelled smoke. She murmured in her half-conscious state; and then she had the sudden, clear, icy knowledge that she was not asleep.

She flung back the sheet, a small cry in her throat, and stumbled upright, a ghostly pale figure in her ankle-length white nightgown.

“Isadora!” she cried out as she hurried into the hallway. “Isadora, lazy-head, wake up! The house is on fire!”

Isadora’s bedroom door flung open and Isadora appeared, gowned like her mistress, her iron gray hair hanging in two limp braids across her shoulders.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Isadora chattered, her eyes bulging. She glimpsed the faint reddish glow in the stairwell and began crossing herself again and again. “Oh, heaven be merciful! Mercy from heaven!”

Together the two women stumbled in haste down the stairway. The fiery reflection was stronger in the dining room.

“Quickly, Isadora! The kitchen!”

They ran across the dining room, wavering to a halt inside the kitchen. Mrs. Cappelli s quick glance divined the situation. The curtains over the glass portion of the outside door had caught fire first. They were now remaining bits of falling ash and embers. The flames had spread easily to the window curtains along the rear of the kitchen, and were now gnawing at the cabinetwork, fouling the air with the stench of burning varnish.

Isadora dashed into the pantry, knocking pots helter-skelter as she grabbed two of the larger ones. Mrs. Cappelli was more direct. She pulled the sink squirter hose out to its full extension, turned the cold water on hard, and fought the flames back until she had drenched out the last flicker.

With wisps of smoke still seeping from the cabinetwork, Mrs. Cappelli groped for a kitchen chair and sank into it weakly. She matched long breaths with the gulps Isadora was taking, and strength began to return.

“How horrible it might have been,” Isadora said through chattering teeth, “if you hadn’t awakened.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

Isadora gripped the kitchen table to help herself out of her chair. “We must call the fire department to make sure everything is out.”

“Yes.”

“And the police.”

“No!”

Isadora looked at Mrs. Cappelli, wondering at the sharpness of her tone. “Maria... we know who did this. We know he has been planning, waiting, thinking and deciding what to do.”

“Yes, and tonight he made his move.” Mrs. Cappelli’s gaze examined the fire-blackened kitchen door and paused at its base. She got up, crossed to the door, and knelt down. She touched the ashes at the base of the door. “And so simply he did it,” she said. “Not all these ashes are from burned fabric. Some of them feel very much like brittle burned paper. So easily, without breaking in or leaving marks on the kitchen door, he simply slid strips of paper underneath the door until he had a sufficient pile inside. Then it remains for him but to light the tail end of the final strip and watch the tiny flame creep along the paper under the door and ignite the pile inside. Soon the hungry flames reach up to touch the curtains...”

The two women were an immobile tableau — Isadora standing beside the table, Mrs. Cappelli kneeling at the door, looking at each other.

“Yes, I see,” Isadora said. “It’s all very clear. It would be clear to the police. But they cannot make the youth confess. They are not permitted. And he will have an alibi, someone to swear that he was far away from this street tonight.”

A small sob caught in Mrs. Cappelli’s throat. “How much can we endure, Isadora? Call the firemen quickly. Then I want the phone. Late as it is, I want to hear the sound of John’s voice.”

At ten o’clock the following evening an airport taxicab deposited John in front of the Cappelli house.

“It’s he!” Isadora said, watching him pay off the taxi and get out his single piece of luggage.

Beside Isadora, the giddy center of a little vortex of excitement, Mrs. Cappelli nudged hard with her elbow. “Quickly, Isadora! The table... the dinner candles.” Isadora darted from the front door, leaving Mrs. Cappelli there alone to watch the approach of her son.

He wouldn’t have eaten on the plane, she knew. Mama always had one of his favorite meals waiting, whatever his hour of arrival. Tonight Mrs. Cappelli had centered the dinner around arosto di agnello, and already she could imagine him filling his mouth with the succulent lamb and blowing her a kiss of approval from his fingertips.

“Ah, John, John!” Her wide-flung arms enfolded his dark, towering, masculine strength and, as always, she wept joyously.

He picked her up, almost as if he would tuck her under his arm, and kissed her on both cheeks.

“What is that I smell? Not roast lamb as only mia madre can make?”

“But yes, John! How was the flight? Isadora, wherever are you? Quickly, Isadora! The most handsome boy on earth is famished!”

Arm linked with her son’s, Mrs. Cappelli strolled into the dining room, questions tumbling about her daughter-in-law, her precious grandchildren.

All was well up north, John assured her. All was going beautifully.

He sat down at the head of the old hand-carved walnut table, an inviting array before him, snowy linens, bone china, crystal and sterling, tall candles in beaten silver holders, fine food in covered dishes.

Isadora and Mrs. Cappelli were content to sit on either side, near the head of the table, watching him eat and anticipating his every wish from the serving dishes.

Then at last he could eat no more, and he rewarded his mother with a loving wink and appreciative little belch.

He laid his napkin on the table, pushed back his chair, and lifted one of the candles to light a thin black cigar.

Mrs. Cappelli was at his side as he walked to the windows in the side of the room and stood there looking at the lights of the Morrow house.

“Now, Mama,” he said quietly, “what’s this trouble?”

She told him every detail from the moment Greg Morrow had moved next door. She acquainted John with Greg’s every habit, the identity of Greg’s closest friends, the make, model and license number of the Morrow car. It took her several minutes; she had accumulated a great deal of information during the time Greg had been a neighbor.

When Mrs. Cappelli finished speaking, John slipped his arm about her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Mama,” he said quietly. “It will be taken care of. The young animal will stop killing his mother. He will kill and maim no more animals. He will hit-run no more children. He will light no more arsonist fires. It will all be taken care of very soon, when the first proper moment arrives.”

Looking up at him, Mrs. Cappelli knew it would be so. In her, regrettably, Greg Morrow had made the biggest mistake of his life.

She thought of John’s grandfather and his father and of Cappelli men from Sicily to San Francisco. In all the Mafia — and it had been so for generations — there were no better soldiers than Cappelli men. They enforced Mafioso law without fear or regard — and none was more stalwart than the loving fullness of her heart, her John.