The yellow pad was on the kitchen table and the tea on the counter was cold and the Sharpie he was using was bleeding through the page because his last pen had run out three days ago and he had not been to a stationery store since then and the Sharpie had been on the counter from when Tommy had used it to label a box of files. He had drawn a line down the center of the page. Left side: what he knew. Right side: what he could do.
Left side, in Sharpie:
Tracee Vargas. Twenty. Two-year-old son named Antonio, lives with her mother in Belleville. Works the Bing four nights a week, days at a salon on West Side Avenue called Marie's. Owes Ralph Cifaretto money — about six thousand. Has been with Ralph six weeks. Wants out of the Bing, no realistic exit. Pregnant — does not know yet, will be told by an OB at Saint Joseph's the third week of March. By the second week of May, Ralph will hit her in a parking lot behind a back-bar in Lodi until she dies of a head injury. He will use a metal railing.
He had written the last sentence and then crossed it out with one stroke. Not because the sentence was wrong. Because he did not want the sentence on the page in a house where his fiancée had been three nights ago.
He turned the page.
He wrote the sentence again. Smaller. On the right side of the new page. The right side was for things that could be done about it.
Right side:
1. Warn her directly. Will not believe me. Will tell Ralph. Ralph kills her sooner.
2. Kill Ralph first. Out of the question. Requires Commission approval Tony will not seek for a capo he just elevated. Also a line I have not crossed and will not cross unless the math is unrecognizable.
3. Get her out. Make her want to leave. Job, money, distance. Routed through a network that does not trace to me.
He underlined three.
Three was the only one. He had known it was the only one when he had sat down two hours ago. He had needed to write the other two down to be sure.
He put the cap on the Sharpie. Set it on the pad. Got up. Walked to the sink. Poured the cold tea down it. Filled the kettle. Set it on the stove. Came back.
The salon name was Marie's because Eddie Sciorra's wife Anna had a sister who did hair at a place in Bayonne and the place in Bayonne was owned by a woman whose cousin owned Marie's. Anna had asked her sister, casually, three weeks ago, whether anyone in the network knew a stylist named Tracee who worked nights at a club. The sister had asked her cousin. The cousin had called back: yes, Tracee Vargas, days at Marie's, twenty, kid, has had a hard year, the manager Marie likes her. The cousin had said why are you asking and the sister had said a friend has a friend in Tampa with a salon opening, looking for somebody. The cousin had said I'll mention it. That was the whole intelligence operation. Eight phone calls across three counties over fifteen days. Vinnie was on no leg of it. His name was not in it. Eddie was not in it. Eddie's wife had asked her sister a question.
The kettle whistled.
He took it off. Poured. Took the cup back to the table. Sat.
He wrote at the bottom of the page.
Tampa. Real job — find one. Real apartment — find one. Cash up front to cover six months. Channel: Anna's sister's cousin to Marie. Marie tells Tracee a friend in Tampa needs a chair and a body to fill it. Cash arrives via the cousin's salon's bookkeeping as a relocation bonus. No name attached. No questions answered if she asks who. The frame: a long-shot opportunity that came up because somebody knew somebody. People say yes to those.
Below that:
Cash needed: six thousand to clear Ralph (anonymous envelope to Bing manager — not to her). Six thousand for first three months Tampa. Five hundred for a one-way bus. Twelve five total. Out of the personal cash. Not through the books.
Below that:
Risk: Ralph notices she's gone. He looks for her. He doesn't find her. He looks for the person who got her gone. He doesn't find that person either, because Anna's sister's cousin doesn't know anybody named Marchetti and Marie thinks she got the call from her cousin on a friend-of-a-friend basis and Anna doesn't know Tampa is real. The frame holds because everybody in the frame is telling the truth about the part of it they're in.
He stopped.
He did the small breath that came out as half a laugh because he had just designed an operation that satisfied his own paranoia. The financial-analyst part of him had run the chain twice and the mob-boss part of him had run it once. The chain held.
He picked the Sharpie back up.
Wrote, on the bottom of the page:
Send the cash Wednesday. Buy the bus ticket through Anna's sister Friday. Call Marie's at six on Tuesday — but the woman who answered today won't be there at six. Call Marie's at three on Wednesday instead.
He capped the Sharpie.
He sat back.
The phone rang on the wall.
He let it ring twice. The way Elena had asked him to. On the third ring she would hang up and call back. The first ring-twice-and-hang-up was the I'm fine, I'm thinking about you signal that had become a thing between them since the engagement. The second call was the actual call.
It rang twice. Stopped.
It rang again. He picked up.
"Vincent."
"Elena."
"Late."
"Yes."
"You at the kitchen table?"
"At the kitchen table."
"Pad out."
"Pad out."
"I'm going to ask you something and you're going to answer with a yes or a no or you're going to tell me you can't say."
"Okay."
"Is the thing you're working on this week the kind of thing where, if it goes wrong, somebody dies?"
A beat.
"No. If it goes wrong, somebody who would have died a different way dies that way instead of being somewhere else. If it goes right, somebody who would have died doesn't."
A longer beat.
"Vincent."
"Elena."
"That's a yes on saving somebody."
"That's a yes on trying."
"Who."
"I can't say."
"All right."
"Elena."
"Mm."
"Twelve five out of the personal cash. There won't be a trace of it. It doesn't put us anywhere."
"I'm not asking about the money. I'm telling you about the money. The number you just said — keep it in the personal cash, not the LOC. Don't draw on the line. The line is for legitimate working capital."
"Okay."
"Vincent."
"Yes."
"You're doing a thing my father would have done."
"Your father was a postman, Elena."
"My father was a postman who, in 1974, in a snowstorm, walked an old woman who was disoriented two miles home because he saw her shoes were the wrong shoes. He didn't know her. He missed three deliveries on his route to do it. He got written up by his supervisor for it. He framed the write-up. I have it. It's in my mother's closet."
"All right, Elena."
"I'm just saying."
"I hear you."
"Sleep, Vincent."
"You sleep."
"I will. I have a thing at eight tomorrow."
"Sleep."
"Vincent. The diamond is on the counter at my apartment. I take it off when I shower. I want you to know that. So if you call here and you hear water in the background, the ring is on the counter, alone, watching me. Get used to that."
"I'm getting used to that."
"Good night."
"Good night."
He hung up.
He stood at the window over the sink for two minutes. The kitchen was dark behind him. The window faced the back garden. The garden in February was dirt and three sticks where the tomato plants had been in August. Sal had planted the strip in '79 and Vinnie had cleared it last fall and would plant it again in May.
He touched the Saint Michael medal under his shirt.
He did not pray. He had not prayed in his other life since he was eleven. He had not prayed in this life ever.
He spoke quietly to the window.
"Sal."
The garden did not answer.
"You wanted out. Enzo told me. Eleven months. You were eleven months from out when the man across the river got you first. So you know — you know the math of trying to do a thing before the clock runs. You'd say it was crazy. To put twelve and a half thousand into a girl in Belleville I never met. Twelve and a half is six months of tribute. But you'd also say — you'd also say, Sal, that twelve and a half is the cost of a thing that would otherwise live in my head for the rest of the years Elena and I get to have. And you'd say that's the kind of thing a man buys when he can buy it."
He did not wait for an answer. There was no answer to wait for.
He turned around. Went back to the table.
Picked the Sharpie back up.
Wrote one more line under everything.
Wednesday. Cash. Anna's sister.
Capped the pen.
Turned out the kitchen light.
Walked up the stairs.
The diamond was on a counter in an apartment in Newark and the woman who owned it was probably in bed by now and the bus to Tampa left from Port Authority at six forty-two on Friday mornings and Vinnie would not be on that bus, would not see her face, would not know whether she said yes until Marie's called Anna's sister's cousin and the cousin called the sister and the sister called Anna and Anna told Eddie and Eddie, casually, on a Friday afternoon at the Verrazzano yard a week from tomorrow, would say to Vinnie:
Vinnie. Anna told me to tell you Tampa worked out.
Or:
Vinnie. Anna told me to tell you Tampa didn't.
He set the alarm for five-thirty.
He turned off the bedside light.
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