The bell on the front door of Satriale's did its sound and a voice came in behind the bell that was forty percent louder than the room and the room adjusted to the voice in the half-second after the bell.
Vinnie did not look up.
Tony was at the round table. Silvio at his right. Paulie in the chair on the wall side. Christopher across from Silvio. Vinnie in the fifth chair, between Christopher and the wall photographs. A pot of coffee in the middle. Sugar packets. A plate of biscotti that nobody had touched.
The voice came across the deli.
"Look at this. Look at this. The whole table. Marchetti's here. Marchetti, you got fat. T, you been letting him eat?"
The man behind the voice was tall, thick at the middle, balding at the front with a half-circle of dark hair around the back, in a leather jacket that was nicer than the room. Fifty-something. The eyes were bright. The smile was wide and showed all the teeth.
Christopher said Ralphie. Paulie did the hey ho sound. Silvio took his glasses off and set them on the table glass-down. Tony did not stand up. Tony did the small lift with two fingers off the cup that was his greeting to a capo he had recently elevated and did not yet entirely trust.
Ralph Cifaretto came to the round table.
He did not pull up a chair. He stood at the end of the table with his hands on the back of the empty chair that nobody had set out for him. He told a story. The story was about a guy in Linden who had tried to cheat Ralph at gin rummy. The punchline was a thing Ralph had said to the guy that did not, in any version of the world Vinnie had lived in, qualify as a punchline. Christopher laughed in the second after Ralph laughed. Paulie did the staccato laugh. Tony did the laugh that was a half-exhale that did not commit. Silvio did not laugh at all.
Vinnie smiled at the third sentence. Did the small half-laugh at the punchline because the half-laugh was what the room expected of a younger guy who was not at his own table.
Ralph's eyes came around to Vinnie.
"This the kid."
"Marchetti," Tony said.
"Marchetti. Marchetti. Sal's kid."
"Yeah."
"You got the garbage trucks."
"I got the garbage trucks."
"And the Newark thing. The municipal."
"I got the Newark thing."
"And the construction. Verrazzano. I know Joe Verrazzano. I knew Joe Verrazzano since I was a kid. Joe Verrazzano put my uncle through his apprenticeship in '67."
"He's a good man."
"He's retired."
"He's in Boca."
"Boca." Ralph laughed. "Everybody's in Boca."
He came around the table. He put his hand out. Vinnie stood up. Took the hand.
The grip was the grip Vinnie had been told about by his ten-thousand-Sunday-night memory of a man Vinnie had watched on television in a different life: the grip that did not stop at hard, the grip that went one full second past the moment the other man wanted his hand back, the grip that ended with the other man's bones reminded of themselves. Ralph's eyes were six inches above Vinnie's. The wide smile did not move.
"Pleasure, kid."
"Mr. Cifaretto."
"Ralph."
"Ralph."
"We should do business, you and me. A guy with garbage trucks and a guy with — well. I got ideas."
Vinnie did the smile that was the second of his two smiles, the one for being polite to a man whose hand he wanted back.
"Maybe. Let me know."
"Maybe."
"Let me know."
Ralph held the smile for a half-second longer than the smile was earning. Then released the hand. Patted Vinnie's shoulder twice with his free hand. The pats were not gentle.
Tony, from his chair, said Ralphie. Sit. Coffee.
Ralph turned to Tony. The voice changed. The energy reset.
"T. I came to tell you about a thing. Garrison Avenue. The thing with — "
Ralph took the chair next to Paulie. Started in on a story.
Silvio's hand found Vinnie's wrist under the table for a half-second. The hand pressed once. The hand left. The hand was the hand of the consigliere telling the younger partner stay another fifteen minutes. Then leave. Don't make a thing of leaving.
Vinnie poured himself fresh coffee.
System, quietly, on the inside:
[Threat Assessment: Cifaretto, Ralph. Volatility — extreme. Major incident probability within eight months: 92%. Recommended posture: maximum distance.]
He closed the system the way he closed his eyes for half a second when his lower back stiffened. He drank the coffee. He did not look at Ralph.
He stayed sixteen minutes.
The biscotti went untouched the whole time he was at the table. At the seventeenth minute he pushed his coffee back with the saucer and stood up.
"T. Sil. I gotta — Verrazzano's at the lot at three-fifteen."
"On a Saturday?"
"Estimating a kitchen for a guy in Caldwell tomorrow. Wants me there."
"Marchetti the contractor," Tony said, and he did the half-smile.
"Marchetti the contractor."
"Beat it. Go contract."
"Tony. Sil. Paulie. Christopher."
He did not say Ralph. He nodded at Ralph. Ralph did the smile that did not move.
He walked out through the deli and across the gravel out front and got into the Cadillac on the driver's side this time because Tommy had taken the morning off. He sat at the wheel for a minute before starting the engine. He looked at the back of his right hand on the wheel. The hand looked like the hand of a man who had shaken another man's hand. The hand felt like the hand of a man who had shaken the hand of a man who would, in a parking lot behind a club Vinnie knew the name of, in approximately ninety days from now, beat a twenty-year-old girl to death with a metal railing.
He started the engine.
He did not drive to the lot.
He drove to a phone on the avenue.
He fed it the quarters. He dialed a number he had written on the inside of the matchbook in his coat pocket two days before.
A woman answered.
"Marie's."
"Hi, ma'am. I'm trying to reach a friend of my cousin's. Tina. Tina with the long hair."
"Tina's not in till four."
"Could you — could you tell her her cousin Vincent stopped by. About the salon position in Tampa we talked about. Tell her I have a contact who needs an answer this week. I'll call back Tuesday at six."
"Tampa."
"Tampa."
"Honey, who's Vincent?"
"She'll know. Or she won't. Either way."
"All right, baby. I'll tell her."
He hung up.
He stood at the phone for a moment longer. He did not put another quarter in.
The Cadillac was at the curb. Through the windshield he could see the deli at the far corner where the bell would do its sound again whenever Ralph Cifaretto finished his coffee and his story and left.
He did not drive in that direction.
He drove the other way.
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