Carlo had walked into the back room at the auto body on a Tuesday morning in the middle of January and said Tommy. Something. And he had said it with the side of his mouth and the way he held the clipboard the way a man holds a thing he wants the other man to look at the way he wants him to look at it. Tommy looked. The numbers were three Buick LeSabres in three weeks and none of them on the intake sheet. Tommy did the math on the side of the clipboard with Carlo's pencil. Two thousand a month, give or take. Going on since about September.
Tommy brought it to Vinnie that night at the kitchen table.
They didn't go in for ten more days. Vinnie wanted the lawyer to print the partnership agreement out fresh, the page-one paragraph circled in red where it said all revenue, all sources, full disclosure quarterly. He wanted to walk into the room with paper and not with knuckles.
He had Tommy call Rossi on Saturday. Sunday afternoon at four, Vinnie's gonna stop by. Be at the shop. That was all. Tommy did not say be alone. The instruction was in the silence.
Tommy parked the Cadillac across Bergen Street and pulled the Star-Ledger up to his chest.
"Twenty minutes."
"Twenty if it goes right. Forty if it goes wrong."
"What do I do at forty."
"Nothing."
"Vinnie."
"At forty, Tommy. Nothing."
He got out. Crossed the street. Hands in the coat pockets. The coat was a fall coat, not a January coat, and the wind that came up the avenue from the river found his neck and reminded him of it. He had three things in the coat: the lawyer's folder, his keys, and a roll of LifeSavers from the Quick Chek.
The bay doors of the shop were down. The side door was locked. He knocked twice.
Footsteps. Bolt drawn.
Gennaro Rossi opened the door. He was in his sixties, shaped like a man who had lived on coffee and pasta since 1973, and his hair was wet because he had washed it before coming down to the shop because he was the kind of man who washed his hair before a meeting he was afraid of.
"Vincent."
"Gennaro."
"Come in. Come in. Out of the wind."
The office was at the back of the shop, past two lifts and a workbench that had a small radio playing a Jets postgame at low volume. There was a calendar on the wall with a saint on it and a girl in a bathing suit on it depending which page you turned to. Rossi led him through. Closed the office door behind them.
Vinnie sat across from the desk without being invited.
Rossi sat in his own chair. His hands were on the desk. They were not steady.
"Coffee?"
"No."
"Water?"
"No."
"All right."
Vinnie set the folder on the desk. Pushed it across. Did not open it.
"I want you to open that, Gennaro."
"All right, Vincent."
Rossi opened it. The top page was the partnership agreement, page one, the paragraph in red. The second page was Carlo's intake sheet for September through January. The third was Carlo's parallel observation log. The fourth was the lawyer's calculation: ten thousand, eight hundred, give or take five hundred, in revenue not booked. Annualized at the current rate, twenty-five thousand a year.
Rossi looked at page two. At page three. At page four.
His hands came off the desk into his lap.
"Vincent."
"You been stealing from me, Gennaro. From our partnership. Since September."
"Vincent — "
"I'm not — I'm not gonna let you tell me a story about it. I been over the numbers with my lawyer and with Carlo. Carlo's papers are clean. Yours are not. There's no version of the next ninety seconds where you tell me a thing I haven't already looked at. I'm gonna save us both some time and I'm gonna tell you the question."
Rossi's mouth opened.
Rossi's mouth closed.
"The question," Vinnie said, "is what happens now. There's two answers to the question. I want you to listen to both before you say a word."
A beat.
"All right."
"Answer one. You give me a check on Tuesday for the ten thousand, eight hundred. Plus two thousand interest because you held my money for five months. Total: twelve eight. The check clears, you and I continue. Your monthly nut to me goes up six hundred for the next twelve months because I'm not interested in being stolen from twice. Carlo stays in his job and reports to my lawyer once a month instead of once a quarter. You and I don't have this conversation again. Ever. If we have this conversation again, the second conversation is not this conversation."
"Vincent — "
"Answer two. You don't give me a check. I take the shop. The whole shop. Today. We walk out into the bay and I tell Carlo to call my locksmith and you go home and you tell your wife that she can't go to Boca in March because her husband is unemployed. That's the second answer. There's no third answer. I'm not — I'm not going to put my hands on you, Gennaro. I'm not going to send anyone to put his hands on you. I'm just going to take a thing and you're going to lose a thing. That's how this works on the part of my side of the business that I run."
Rossi's eyes were wet.
The wet was not the wet of fear. It was the wet of a man who had been caught and who had spent a Saturday alone at this desk practicing a story and had just been told the story would not be heard.
"Twelve eight."
"Twelve eight, Gennaro."
"By Tuesday."
"By Tuesday at four PM. Carlo brings me the check. You don't have to be there. Probably better if you're not there."
"Plus six hundred a month for a year."
"Plus six hundred a month for a year."
"Vincent — I wasn't — there were doctor bills with Stella's mother, I had — "
"Don't."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't say that either."
Vinnie stood up.
Rossi stayed in his chair.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"I won't forget this."
Vinnie looked at him across the desk.
"Neither will I."
He left the folder on the desk. The folder was for Rossi to look at after Vinnie left, to look at again, to look at every quarter for the next year when the check went out. He had brought a second copy in the Cadillac for himself.
He walked out through the bay. Past the lifts. Side door. Bolt back. Out.
The wind on Bergen Street.
He did not go to the Cadillac.
He walked.
He went up Bergen to the corner. Around the block. Past a hardware store closed on Sunday. Past a Polish bakery closed on Sunday. Past a barber shop with a dim light on inside and a man in his eighties sweeping with the door locked. Past the auto body again on the back side, the chain-link, the dumpster. Around the second corner. Down the next block.
He had wanted to hit Rossi. Not in a rage. In the cold way. Across the desk. One time, with the back of his hand, on the cheekbone, with the Omega watch making it count. He had wanted Rossi to know what the second answer felt like before being given the first.
He had not done it.
The not-doing was a small thing.
The not-doing also took two laps around the block.
By the second lap his hands were warmer in the coat pockets. By the second corner of the second lap he had stopped thinking about Rossi's cheekbone and had started thinking about the next year's quarterly numbers under the new structure. By the time he was back at the Cadillac across the street he had decided on the second of two phone calls he would make in the morning. The first one was to the lawyer. The second was to Eddie Sciorra.
Tommy lowered the Star-Ledger when the door opened.
"Twenty-eight minutes."
"It went right."
"Yeah?"
"He's gonna pay."
"Hands."
"On the wheel. We're not gonna do hands. He's gonna pay."
Tommy did the half-smile.
"You walked the block."
"I walked the block twice."
"It's January, Vinnie. Your coat is for October."
"It is."
"I'm just observing."
"Drive."
The Cadillac pulled away from the curb.
Through the windshield as Tommy turned onto the avenue, the sun was already setting at four-fifty in the afternoon, the way it set in January in Newark, and the avenue was wet from the rain that had finished while Vinnie was inside, and the streetlights were just coming on one block at a time from the river inland.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Tomorrow morning, eight, the lawyer. Then ten, I want Eddie at the office."
"What's at the office at ten?"
"A small thing he doesn't know he's doing yet."
"All right, Vinnie."
He watched the streetlights come on.
Reading more than one of my novels? Good news — one Patreon, all of them.
patreon.com/TheFinex5
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰
― DECREE ―
More chapters reign FREE upon unwrittenrealm.com.
The throne acknowledges.
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰