I turned around and went back to Park Street. There were lots of stores with writing on the windows. None of them had the name Luigi Pierano. But one was bigger than most. I went in.

Rows of shelves from floor to ceiling brimmed over with food. A line of bins held spices. I stood over the one with the seeds I knew so well-anise-and breathed deeply. Mamma's scent. For an instant the room swirled and my head went light.

A woman clamped a hand around my upper arm and steadied me. She said something in English, then in some Italian dialect, "Are you ill?" I smiled to reassure her. She walked on.

A man behind the counter was making gigantic sandwiches. A card taped to the front of the counter read 25. Twenty-five cents? Was it a lot?

"Can I do a chore for you?" I asked the sandwich maker.

"Get out of here." He didn't even look at me. His tone was final.

I went outside. A crowd had gathered at the foot of the next street. I crossed Park and worked my way between the adults to the inside of the circle. An organ grinder played music and a monkey on a chain took off his cap to people in the crowds.

The woman beside me put a coin in the monkey's cap. The monkey's tiny, long fingers clasped around her thumb for a shake. She gasped. The monkey chattered, showing sharp teeth. His eyes darted around with a quick intelligence that made my stomach sick. He knew he was a prisoner and he hated all these people; I could have sworn it.

Everyone took out coins; they all wanted to shake the monkey's hand.

I pushed my way back through the people, bursting free onto the street, and ran the path I'd already traveled twice that day, back toward the boy with the triangle. He was still on the corner. "How much have you gotten?" I asked.

He turned his back to me.

I moved around in front of him. "I asked how much you've gotten."

"So what."

"Listen, Tin Pan Alley, I'll do it. I'll play the triangle."

Tin Pan Alley put his hand in his pocket and counted the coins. "Thirty-two cents," he said. "You have to make sixty-eight more. Then we split the last twenty. Promise?"

"I promise." I took off my shoes; then I suddenly clutched them to my chest. "If you run off with my shoes, I'll catch you," I said. "I'm fast."

"If you run off with my triangle," he said, "my padrone will catch you. You can't hide from him."

"I don't steal," I said for the third time that morning.

"You think I do?" Tin Pan Alley stiffened.

I shook my head. He was too proud to steal. I handed him my shoes.

He handed me the triangle. "You smell like oranges." His face looked wistful for a moment. "Play."

I tapped the little metal rod against the triangle. Most people walked by quickly, not looking at me. But whenever someone looked, I smiled big, and, more often than not, they dropped a coin in the tin cup.

Tin Pan Alley sat with his back against the nearest lamppost and kept an eye out. If he saw his padrone coming, he was going to jump up, throw me my shoes, and grab the triangle. I was supposed to run as fast as I could. And if the padrone caught me, I was supposed to tell him I worked for someone else; no padrone would beat a boy who belonged to another. Instead, he'd take whatever I had and send me on my way with a warning.

The very idea of his padrone made me queasy. But I didn't want to be alone again that night, and I didn't see any other way of getting four pennies for Gaetano.

Every so often Tin Pan Alley came over and emptied the tin cup. It had to stay close to empty or no one would give.

People ate as they walked along-ugly meat sticks that Tin Pan Alley called wienerwursts-German food. Sometimes the meat was covered in a stinking rotten cabbage. And they ate sandwiches, much smaller than the ones back in the store on Park Street.

The tomato and the orange half had made me hungrier. The sun was hot. The rumble of horses and carts hammered in my head. I felt woozy and smiled weakly at everyone, whether they looked at me or not.

Tin Pan Alley jiggled his cup in my face. "Ninety-eight cents already. You're good at this, and you don't even whistle. Usually it's slow on Saturdays."

Saturday. It was Saturday. The Sabbath. Jews didn't work on the Sabbath.

But I'd already arranged the fruit. That was work, because the man had paid me.

In fruit, not money. That's not really pay-that's not really work.

And playing music, that wasn't really work, either. It was entertainment. So long as I didn't pocket any of the money. "I'm stopping," I said.

"You look sick." Tin Pan Alley counted out nine coins. "Here's your nine cents."

I shook my head.

"That's half of eighteen," said Tin Pan Alley, "which is what's left over after I pay my padrone. I'm not cheating you. You'd have had to get a whole dollar to earn ten cents."

"I told you, I can count," I said.

"So you're trying to cheat me now, is that it? And I thought you were okay. Well, you can't have ten cents. You can't cheat me."

"I'd never cheat you," I said. "I keep a promise. Look, how about you do me a four-cent favor."

"What's that mean?" asked Tin Pan Alley.

"Come with me to Mulberry Street to give a boy four cents."

"Why don't you give him four cents yourself?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to tell you."

Tin Pan Alley looked at me with troubled eyes.

"Come on, Tin Pan Alley. If you do this, you get to keep my other five cents."

Tin Pan Alley put the coins back in his pocket. "Let's hurry. If my padrone passes and finds I'm missing, he'll be mad."

I thought of the welts on the neck of the boy who played the harp in Chatham Square. "How often does he come by?"

"Most days not at all. Other days he'll come a few times. But never early in the morning. Besides that, you can't predict. That way he keeps us honest."

"Mulberry isn't that close," I said. "It'll take time."

"I know where Mulberry is."

"Look, let's not risk trouble with your padrone. Just keep the money."

"What, are you feeling sorry for me? Don't waste your time. I'm going to earn back what my padrone paid for my passage over and then I'll find a regular job and I'll send to Italy for my aunt and my cousins on Vico Sedil Capuano. We'll all have the good life." He started up the road.

Vico Sedil Capuano. I knew that street. Tin Pan Alley's family was practically my neighbor. What had happened to his parents?

"Come on," he called to me. "A deal's a deal. You think you're the only person in the world who can keep a promise?"

We went to Mulberry Street, to the alley where Gaetano had shown up before, and waited.

"You got the four cents?"

I turned around. Gaetano stood there. Tin Pan Alley put four cents in Gaetano's hand.

"Wait a minute," said Gaetano. "I've got a treat in mind, and it's four cents just for the two of us. I'm not paying for this mook."

"I don't take nothing from no shark," said Tin Pan Alley.

I didn't know what a mook or a shark was, but I could tell they were insults. "Tin Pan Alley," I said quickly, "meet Gaetano. He's my friend. Gaetano, meet Tin Pan Alley. He keeps his promise."

"Oh, another good boy, like you," said Gaetano. "A beggar, huh?"

Tin Pan Alley spat on the ground.

I moved between them. "He's a musician."

"A musician? Not a beggar, just a really skinny musician." Gaetano blew through his lips, making a horse noise. "Well, come on, then." He walked and talked, pointing as we went. "This is Baxter Street. Lots of people from Napoli live here. Like on Mulberry and Mott Streets. But the people from Genova live here, too. And the best ice cream vendor in all of Five Points is here." He led us past grocery stores with wooden barrels of dried fish-delicious baccala-and up to the ice cream vendor. He put the four pennies in the man's hand.

"It's a penny a serving," the man said in his dialect. "You want three extra-large servings for four cents?"

"No. Tw o doubles," said Gaetano, talking in the samedialect the ice cream vendor used, "for me and the little squirt." He jerked his elbow toward me. "Nothing for the mook."

"One double," I said. "And two regulars."

The ice cream vendor raised his eyebrows at Gaetano. Gaetano gave me a look of disgust. "I had a big lunch, but I guess I can stuff down a triple serving," he said to the man. "Give the squirt one regular serving, then."

The man took out a bit of brown paper and put a dab of ice cream on it and handed it to me. He gave three dabs to Gaetano.

What Gaetano had done was lousy.

I ate half the ice cream as slowly as I could. It was creamy and cold and not nearly enough. "You could buy a serving," I said to Tin Pan Alley. He had fourteen extra pennies in his pocket, after all-his nine and my five.

"It's not your business what I buy or don't buy," said Tin Pan Alley.

There must have been days when he didn't take in eighty cents. When extra money saved from a good day could spare him a beating.

I handed the paper to Tin Pan Alley.

He ate the rest of the ice cream in one bite and licked the paper clean. Then he turned and walked down Baxter toward Park.

"Bye," I called.

In answer, he looked back over his shoulder at me.

"Where'd you pick him up?" asked Gaetano.

I shrugged. "What's a mook?"

"An idiot."

"He's not an idiot."

"He's got a padrone, doesn't he?" asked Gaetano. "Any kid who's owned by a padrone is an idiot. If you weren't one to start, you become one fast."

"What's a shark?"

"A boss."

"It can't mean just that," I said. "A boss isn't something bad, but a shark is."

"Depends on how you look at it. A shark sees what there is for the taking and takes it. Sharks are smart." Gaetano pointed at the doors we passed. "That watchmaker, he's a banker on the side. He takes in Italians' money and saves it for them until they've got enough to send for relatives back home. Or, for the really stupid ones, until they think they've made their fortune and decide to go back to Italy. But in the meantime, he gives them nothing-not a cent- and he has their money to use however he wants. He can spend it to start a business of his own. Or he can lend it to immigrants who want to start businesses. None of the real banks will lend them money. But a shark will. He does nothing-he just sits there and makes money off the hard work of the people he lends to. And he makes money off the savings of other people, see? That's a smart shark." He pointed. "That wine store, it's the Banca Italiana. It has no license, nothing. The owner did nothing but say he was running a bank, and people gave him their money. That's what I'm going to do when I get it all together. I'll open a bank."

"And who's going to trust you with their money?" I said.

"You. And mooks like you."

"I'm not a mook."

"Oh, right, you're a king, the way you gave Tin PanAlley the rest of your ice cream. Listen, mook. Half-wits like you can't protect yourselves. It's either give me your money or get robbed on the street." Gaetano tilted his head at me. "You keep surprising me, Dom. You know less than the Baxter monkeys."

"I saw a monkey today," I said.

"You like monkeys? That figures. Come on." Gaetano swaggered up the street like a big man-a shark-and I followed like a mook. He stopped midblock. "Here it is. The most famous monkey-training school in the city. A smart monkey goes for thirty dollars." He grinned at me. "You'd go for maybe twenty."

There were curtains over the windows, so I couldn't see inside, thankfully. But I could hear monkey chatter from within. And I heard something else, too. Snaps. A whip?

It was right then that my stomach cramped. I doubled over.

Gaetano laughed. "The price of ice cream," he said. "The Genovesi are pigs. They use dirty ingredients and dirty mixing bowls and they make dirty ice cream. But it tastes the best. If you stick around long enough, your guts'll get used to it."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.