Frankie stood on the shore of the St. Clair River, the bitter cold wind whipping up through her raven locks.  She watched the white/blue ice chunks slowly moving through the lights of the Blue Water Bridge that would soon connect the shore of Port Huron, Michigan USA to Point Edward Ontario Canada.  Their twinkling like stars high above the black depths gave an illusion of serenity, the way she herself had been these past ten days since the news of Tony's death had reached her.

Normally, she came to Michigan to stay in the Motor City, Detroit, for business... but Detroit was too hot.  The FBN knew to watch for her and her associates there and this job - it was far too risky of a venture to be seen meeting with Marie_Lucania face to face.  And so she'd sent the woman a note, hand delivered by a runner, for Marie to meet with her here in Port Huron at midnight on this date.  She couldn't be sure Marie would come... but she'd hoped that if the temptation of a big profit didn't make her come... that her curiosity would get the better of her.  After all, as a crew leader, why would she need to 'hire' another crew to do a job?  

Frankie walked back to her car and hopped up onto the hood.  Fishing into her purse she produce her silver cigarette case, a took out one slender stick of tobacco and placed it between her lips.  Shielding her matches from the wind she lit up and drew a long drag to calm her nerves.  This was the right thing to do... wasn't it?  This wasn't some sort of insanity brought on by the loss of Tony, was it?

Her eyes went back out to the river and the slow moving chunks of ice floating in the infinite darkness.  In silence, she listened to the distant sounds of the city that birthed the great Edison, and tried to banish insecurity from her mind.

Marie pulled her car up next to Frankie's, the woman looked thinner if that was even possible.  No doubt she had been to busy to eat lately.  That was the excuse she had told herself since Luca's passing.  When the news had reached her about Tony, she had been up to her eye balls in raw new recruits.  She had not been able to get away to travel down to Las Vegas.  Marie had regretted it.  Frankie had done more to help her after Luca died than anyone else.  

Opening the car door she hissed at the icy cold air.  She was a warm coast creature.  This weather was for the birds. 

She got out and pulled her coat tighter around her before she walked to greet her cousin -- cousins through marriage, but still family none the less.  "Frankie darling."  She kissed the woman on both cheeks as was the custom.  "Mi dispiace molto sentir parlare della scomparsa di Tony. Come te la cavi?"

“Like shit.”  She said in English.  The language was starting to become less and less odd to her ears and required her to think far less about the words she chose than when first got off the boat in New York City.  Truth was, in just a few years, she had no doubt she wouldn’t think about it at all.

“I don’t eat.  I don’t sleep.  I just work.”  She offered Marie a cigarette.  Marie held up a hand to refuse. 

“Got any Gin?”

Frankie scoffed, “I don’t go anywhere without it these days… use to hate the stuff, still doesn’t measure up to Sicilian wines… but it’ll get you where you’re going in a pinch.”  She let Marie take the flask.  “Be my guest.”

Marie took a drink and the two of them sat down on the hood of her car.  Frankie looked out at the river again and smiled as her cousin choked down the sweet liquor.  She accepted the flask back and took a drink.

“While I’m glad to see you… I gotta ask, what are we doing in this place freezing our collective asses off, Frankie?”

Frankie put the lid onto her flask.  “The FBN is watching me close right now.  I couldn’t come to LA and I couldn’t have you or any of your people come to Vegas and discuss business.  Hell, Detroit turned out to be too hot so that’s why we drove up here.”

She turned to look at Marie, “I need to hire some people for a job.  It’s got risk… but I can’t be tied to it in any way… so I can’t ask my people to handle it.  And while there’s some risk involved… I got five million reasons in this car RIGHT NOW for you to say yes.”  She smiles, “The question is, are you willing to take a risk of running afoul with the FBN?”

Marie's eyes widen.  Five million... that was a lot of greenbacks as the American would say.  "Every day I step out my door I am risk running afoul of them. "

She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them as she sat on the still-warm car hood.  "What do you need done.  My guys are still a bit green, but they are showing promise."

"I've requested and was granted a compassionate transfer of my father from a New York Prison to a prison in Las Vegas."  She measured Marie's reaction to the news her father was alive... most of her family believed he was dead, as her Grandfather had wanted it.  When a Don decides someone is dead, especially his only son, no one says otherwise.  

"Because I had to request the transfer I have to be in a very public place, far from anything that should go wrong on the long drive along route 66.  I've got people on the inside who tell me that they will have two men in the cab, two guards in the back with my father in shackles and chains - both legs and arms."

"It's possible you could hit them at some stop point but they'll be watching for that... probably better to bust him out on some rural place along the route.  I want my father's freedom... he can't go home to Sicily, and he can't come to me, but he's my father.  No matter how much I resent him for abandoning us.  I know Tony spared his life.  I feel like he hoped my father and I would eventually mend our relationship, and that's not going to happen if he's killed in prison by our enemies and ... well, it's only a matter of time."

"He'll need a car, new identity - papers... the works; so you'll want someone who can work up that sort of thing.  I can supply him with start up money, but you'll have to get him a gun.  And, of course I'd like you to deliver a message from me."  She took another hit of her cigarette.  "So... you think you're people would be up for something like that?"

Marie smiled.  This was the kind of job her crew would be perfect at pulling off.

"I think my crew would love to have this opportunity and I know the exact place to pull it off.  Luca and I traveled the Mother Road when we moved out to LA.  There are some great secluded spots along the way including and an area near the Missouri-Oklahoma state line.  Thick timber lining both sides of the road."  She nodded to herself as a plan begin to form in her head.  "Yeah we will take this deal.  Just get me the details of the transfer and we will make sure it is done." 

She smiled at Frankie.  She deserved to have this opportunity with her father.     

Frankie got into her purse and handed Marie a small folded up piece of paper containing the date and time they would be leaving New York.  "That will let you know when they are leaving.  From there, the speed at which they travel or where they stop I can't say."  

She sighs.  "Did you bury him?"  She says looking to Marie.  "Do you visit his grave?"  She looks back out to the water, maybe the question was more rhetorical really, she had so much on her mind, what comfort could she possibly be to Marie right now?  

"My grandfather, Don Enzo, sent a Priest to tell me that they'd buried Tony on the DiCaprio farm.  The old man has no idea how ironic it is that he sent this particular Priest, of all people, to tell me."  She shakes her head trying to dismiss the thought she felt ashamed for having - for so many reasons.

"Sullivan wanted me to go home, to say my goodbye.  Can you imagine?  Me, flying to New York, taking a steamer across the ocean for a month, just to talk to a bit of dirt?  All the while ... who takes care of my crew? My businesses?  My neighborhood?"  She looks down at the bright red cherry on the end of her cigarette slowly smoldering.  "Stupid.  So damn stupid.  There's nothing there - right?  Just dirt.  Tony's gone and I just need to accept that."

Marie took the paper and was opening to look at it when the question hit her right in the gut.  For a moment, a brief moment she had forgotten that Luca was gone.  She had been thinking how she could not wait to tell him about this opportunity. She blinked the tears back and swiped an arm across her eyes.

"Today will be the first time I have not gone to visit his grave since I buried him there.  I go everyday to tell him about my day.  Sometimes I yell at him for leaving me."  She shrugs her shoulders.  "I guess it helps.  Most of the time I just throw myself into my work to try and forget for a time."  The woman's voice wavered as she spoke, but never broke.

Frankie sighed again and took a long drag on her cigarette.  "I took his position away from him."  She says, not looking at Marie.  "He let some thing slip up during the war, things he shouldn't have... I wanted him to step aside, take some focus off work for a bit and put it on us... I wanted to tell him that I thought I was..."  She flicked the cigarette away.  "Pregnant."  She said with a finality.  

She shook her head, this time to forestall Marie's question.  "I'm not.  Either I was just under the weather and missing a cycle or... maybe I lost it in the stress of everything - I don't know, but he lost it.  Said he thought I was sending him away - kicking him out of the crew even though that was the last thing I was thinking of.  I mean, how could I do any of this without him?"

She shrugs.  "Didn't matter.  He was angry and I was angry and we both said things I hope we didn't mean and then, he was telling me he was leaving to go back to Sicily to help with Katy.  I called him a coward."  She said with shame in her voice.  "I told him to go... and he did and that was the last thing I ever said to him."

The wind howled across the rocky shoreline, the emptiness of the place echoed that hollow feeling that had been in her heart since that night.  "I thought ... he'd cool off and come home after a letter or two.  Tony never could stay mad at me... but, he's never coming back... so as mad as I am at him for leaving me, I can't yell.  I swore to myself I'd never yell at him again, so, I just keep sit here like I'm holding my damn breath.  Waiting to exhale - praying that somehow the impossible could be possible again just like it was in the war.  That maybe they're wrong and he's not dead... as stupid as that is to say."  

She slides off the hood.  "If I go to Italy and see his grave - I don't think I'll have that dream anymore; the one where he comes in the door unexpectedly carrying flowers and an apology & I get to tell him how sorry I am.  We make up, the way we always did and everything in the world is right again and I'm not alone."  She wraps her arms around herself, as if hugging herself.

"The money's in the trunk."  She walks around the back of the car and unlocks the trunk wiping a tear away before Marie can see.

Marie hadn't heard the particulars of how Tony died.  She had no idea that Tony had taken his own life.  She couldn't imagine what that was doing to Frankie -- the guilt, unanswered questions and the what ifs. Damn.  At least she knew that Luca had loved her that he had given his life so that she and the crew could live.  His death was a testament to his love for her.  

She slide down off the hood to follow her around to the trunk.  "It isn't stupid thinking he is not dead.  Your father is not dead.  You were told your whole life that he was and not you have found him here.  I can see why your mind would cling to the hope that the same thing might be true with Tony."

As Frankie unlocked the truck and they both lifted the heavy metal lid.  Frankie reached in and pulled the bag out of the trunk before handling it to Marie.  

"It's all there.  Counted it myself."  she said with a smile.  "Odd to be on this side of things."  She didn't remark on Marie's insight to why she dreamed of Tony being alive.

"Tell my father, when you get him back, that his partner is dead.  He should know not to go back to Sicily, but you might mention to him that's not safe... and he sure as hell shouldn't come to find me in Vegas or the FBN will be all over my operation; but this is a fresh start for him.  He gave me life and now I'm returning the favor.  We're square he and I.  I don't need anything else from him, just knowing he's okay is enough."

"Other than that... it's on you and your people."  She leans over and kisses Marie's cheeks.  "Thank you for this, I really appreciate it.  I... I just couldn't leave this undone."