Meanwhile, here came the Honda, picking up speed as it slipped by the careening flatbed and getting back into its own lane barely in time to avoid the now stationary Daimler. It scooted by, gunning its engine, its rear end shimmying, and with maybe ten inches to spare. If they’d both been standing still, he could have reached out and grabbed the Honda’s driver by the neck, which he wouldn’t have minded doing.

“Crazy bastard!” Enrico shouted after him, applying the appropriate finger arrangement.

“Let’s not have any of that,” came the adenoidal injunction from the backseat.

Enrico muttered to himself. He still tried to think of Achille as a polite, quiet kid who respected his elders, but that had been years ago, when Enrico had first started work for the boy’s father, Vincenzo de Grazia, and it had been a misapprehension at the time. Since then, he’d come to know Achille only too well as the snotty, overbearing little turd he was. So much for what being born to a life of privilege could do for a kid.

“Sorry, sir,” Enrico said politely. “I couldn’t help myself.”

It had been a few months now since Achille had suggested that Enrico address him as “sir,” even in private, and it still rankled. Enrico was fifty-one years old, for Christ’s sake. What was Achille, sixteen? And age differences aside, Enrico didn’t take kindly to calling someone wearing a Hootie and the Blowfish T-shirt “sir.”

By now the boy had taken in the mess in front of them. “Oh, no, I don’t believe it. Can we squeeze around that?”

“Not a chance,” Enrico said. “Sir.”

“Well, what are you going to do? My French class starts in twenty minutes. My father will kill me if I miss another one. You better think of something, or you’re in big trouble, Enrico, I’m telling you.”

That was another thing that got to him-this empty, pointless, throwing around of his puny weight-but Enrico had lots of practice repressing the urge to give the kid a whack across the chops. “It won’t be a problem, sir. That lane on our right, that’s Via Principe Tomaso. We can-”