Chapter One The Bar

In January 2009, snow fell over Brooklyn like dirty ash, settling on brick tenements, unemployment lines, and the steel shutters of dead shops. Ethan Russo stood outside the bar his father had left behind, holding a collection notice in his hand. The paper was thin. The number on it was not: three hundred and seventy thousand dollars, overdue, interest still running. The bar was called Saint Anthony's. On Friday nights it used to hold cheap beer, old records, and his father's rough laughter. Now a light tube flickered above the counter, a bullet scar sat in the wood, and black stains remained in the seams of the floor no matter how hard Ethan scrubbed. Old Russo had died there. Two Moretti men in leather jackets had come to collect protection money.