The Verrazzano yard on the second Friday in March had two trucks out on jobs and one in the bay with a transmission problem and a half-foot of dirty snow at the back of the lot that nobody had been able to do anything about because the salt truck the city sent had skipped them in February. Vinnie was at the trailer office at three-twenty with the second-quarter ledger open on Eddie's metal desk and a paper cup of coffee Eddie's wife had sent over with him in the morning.
Eddie came in.
He had his coat off and his coat back on in the same minute because the trailer office's heater had been working on Tuesday and had not been working on Friday and was making the sound a heater made between those two states without committing to either.
"Vinnie."
"Eddie."
"You finished with March yet?"
"Almost."
"You want a refill on the coffee."
"I'm okay."
Eddie sat down across the desk. Did the small thing he did with his shoulders when he was about to say a thing he had been holding for an afternoon.
"I got a thing from Anna."
"Yeah?"
"She wanted me to tell you Tampa worked out."
Vinnie did not look up from the ledger column he was on.
He finished the column. Wrote the subtotal at the bottom. Capped the pen.
"Tampa worked out."
"That's the message."
"All right."
"And one more thing. Anna's sister told her — Marie called Anna's sister this morning. She said three words came back to her from Tampa. She wrote them on a napkin. Anna said you'd want them. Thank you, T. That's the napkin. Anna threw it out after she told me. She said it wasn't a thing to keep around the house."
A beat.
"Eddie."
"Yeah."
"Thank Anna for me."
"I'll thank her."
"And thank her sister."
"I'll thank her sister."
"Don't thank Marie. Marie doesn't know there's anyone to thank."
"All right, Vinnie."
He looked up. Eddie was looking at him steadily. Eddie was the kind of foreman who had heard a number of things in nineteen years of being a foreman that he had agreed at the time of hearing them never to repeat. He was treating this like one of those things, with the same level of attention.
"Eddie."
"Yeah."
"You and Anna and Anna's sister and her cousin — none of you ever did anything."
"We didn't do anything."
"Tampa worked out for a girl I don't know."
"For a girl you don't know."
"Good."
Eddie nodded once. Got up. Went back to the bay to look at the transmission with the truck that had it.
Vinnie sat at the desk.
He did not move for two minutes.
Then he closed the ledger. Capped the pen. Put the pen in the cup with the other pens. Stood up. Put his coat on. Took the empty coffee cup with him because he had a thing about leaving paper cups on other men's desks. Walked out of the trailer office and across the gravel to the Cadillac that Tommy had parked at the gate at three with the engine off.
He got in the back.
Tommy lowered the Star-Ledger.
"Home."
"Yeah?"
"Home."
Tommy started the engine.
The Cadillac pulled out onto the avenue. He did not look at the bay where Eddie was crouched at the back of a truck. He did not look at the gate as it closed behind them. He looked at the road.
System came up on its own about half a mile in.
[Standing Trend Analysis: Cifaretto (R.) ↔ Vargas (T.). Connection severed.] [Direct violence probability, Cifaretto → Vargas: 0%.] [Ripple containment: monitoring. Cifaretto baseline volatility unchanged. Will seek alternative outlet.] [Achievement: Saved a Life by Indirection. +60 SP.] [Level 9 → 10. Cost: 150 SP. Function unlocked: Standing Trend Analysis (Basic).] [SP balance: 270.]
He read it once on the inside of his eyes the way a man reads a watch.
He closed it.
Tommy at the wheel.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You hungry?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure, Tommy."
"You don't have to be sure. There's a place on Tonnelle."
"Tommy. I'm sure."
A beat.
"All right, Vinnie."
The Cadillac took the avenue south.
He thought, on the inside, briefly:
A twenty-year-old girl was on a bus or off a bus or in a bedroom in a town in Florida he had never been to, with a salon job at a place a woman named Marie had told her about, with three months of rent paid by a hairdresser's cousin's friend's network, with a six-thousand-dollar envelope to the Bing manager that had erased a debt to a man whose hands she would never see again. She had a two-year-old son named Antonio. She would have a daughter or a son in August. She would not be in a parking lot in Lodi on the second Tuesday of May with a metal railing on the ground three feet from her and Ralph Cifaretto standing over her with his face on him.
She would not.
She would.
She would.
The Cadillac took the bridge.
He sat with his hands flat on his thighs and watched the river and did the thing he had not done since Marco Ferrante had taken the deal in February of 1999, which was the small physical thing that was almost a smile and was not a smile and was the body recognizing a kind of victory the face had not been given permission for.
He let the body have it for half a mile.
Then he set it down.
At the house he went in the side door. Coat on the hook. Sneakers off. Walked through to the kitchen. Took down the yellow pad from the kitchen counter. Sat at the table.
Wrote one line at the top of a new page.
Tampa worked out.
Looked at it.
Tore the page off the pad. Tore the page into four pieces. Then eight. Then sixteen. Put the sixteen pieces in the kitchen trash under the coffee grounds from this morning and the Star-Ledger he had not had time to read.
Stood up.
He had a phone call at five-fifteen to Tony at Tony's office about the construction-side thing the lawyer had finally restructured to fit inside Verrazzano's payroll line clean. He had a phone call at six to Elena at her apartment because she had said call me at six on Fridays, Vincent, that's when I'm home, I want to know you're home too.
It was four-fifty.
He went into the study. Sat at the desk. Pulled the Verrazzano Q2 projections out of the bottom drawer. Picked up the new pen Tommy had bought him at the stationery store on Bloomfield because Vinnie had run out of pens twice in February and Tommy had decided to be the kind of underboss who fixed that.
Uncapped the pen.
Started working.
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