The wine bottle was already open when Vinnie sat down. Elena had been ten minutes early.
The place was a four-table Italian on a side street off Washington in Hoboken — Maria's, hand-painted sign, a kitchen the size of a closet, the owner's nephew running the front and pretending he hadn't recognized either of them. Elena had picked it. She picked all of them. ADA neutral grounds, off the maps of the people on either side of their lives. The owner's nephew had a hairline scar that ran across his eyebrow and he didn't make eye contact when he poured the second glass.
"You're early," Vinnie said.
"I'm always early."
"Earlier than usual."
"A little earlier." Elena pulled the cloth napkin into her lap. The briefcase she carried everywhere was set against the wall behind her chair, the strap looped twice around the leg, which was a thing she did when she was settling in for a long sit. "I wanted to think."
"About?"
"You'll find out."
He let it go. They ordered. Elena ordered the swordfish because she always ordered the swordfish at Italian places that did fish, and Vinnie ordered the osso buco because it had been good the one time they'd been there before and there was no point pretending he hadn't memorized the menu. The bread was a day old. He took a piece anyway and tore it in half. Elena watched him do it.
"Long week?" he asked.
"Long month."
"The Tortorello thing."
She made a small sound that wasn't a laugh. "I can't talk about the Tortorello thing."
"I know. I was being polite."
"I appreciate that, Vincent."
The full name. The first one of the night. The night was going to be that kind of night, then.
They got through the first course. Caesar for her, no anchovies; minestrone for him, too salty. They talked about the heat and her sister's wedding plans in Connecticut and his mother's hip and they did the thing they did, where the conversation moved around the thing that mattered, and the thing that mattered sat at the table between them like a fourth chair nobody had pulled out.
When the swordfish came she set her fork down before she'd touched it.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"I've been thinking about us." She wasn't looking at the food. She was looking at him. "About what we're doing."
He set his own fork down. The osso buco steamed.
"Okay."
"I need you to tell me — honestly — what you see in five years. Not what you want. Not what sounds good. What you actually see."
He could have done the deflection. Let me think about it. That's a big question for a Tuesday. He didn't. He'd been waiting for this question for two months and he'd written the answer in his head a hundred times.
"Five years," he said. "Maybe a little more."
"Okay."
"Waste management contracts — I'm pursuing the government side now. Municipal, then county. Tony's piece of that opens doors I couldn't open before. By two thousand and one I want a construction company operating out of Newark. By two thousand and three I want it on commercial buildings. The auto body shops, the legitimate side of those, generates enough now to look like real income. By two thousand and four the legitimate revenue is the majority. By two thousand and five I'm running a company that does waste management and construction and the rest of it is the insurance policy, not the business."
Elena listened. She didn't interrupt. Her hand stayed on the stem of her wine glass.
"What about the men?"
"The men stay."
"You can't get rid of them."
"I can't get rid of them and I won't try. They earn through legitimate sources. They eat from legitimate sources. Some of them stop earning the other way. Some of them keep going on a small scale, off the books, and I look the other way as long as they're not stupid. The structure stays. The economics change."
"And the tribute."
"The tribute keeps going. To Tony. Same number. Different source. It looks the same on his end."
"He's going to notice."
"He's going to notice and not care. As long as the number is right and I keep showing up. Tony's not a sentimental man about how. He's sentimental about how much."
Elena finally picked up her fork. Cut into the swordfish. The flesh flaked apart along the grain. She didn't eat right away.
"Five years."
"Five years."
"That's a long time."
"It's a long time."
She put the fork down again. She slid the briefcase strap a half-inch with the back of her shoe — recalibrating. He saw her do it and pretended not to.
"Look." She used the word the way she always used it, the word that meant she was about to stop being a prosecutor and start being a person. "I'm not stupid, Vincent. I know what you do. I know what you are. I read the wires. I read what the Bureau sends over. I have read your name on three separate intelligence summaries. Not as a target. As a peripheral. And it's been more than a year and I know that the longer this goes the more dangerous it is for me and the more dangerous it is for you."
"I know."
"I don't want to keep being careful forever. I don't want to keep choosing restaurants by which staff won't recognize me. I don't want to keep telling my mother I'm seeing a man I can't bring home."
"I know."
"I want you to know that I believe you."
He went very still.
"I don't know if it's smart," she said. "I'm an officer of the court and I'm sitting across from a man who runs a crew, and you're telling me you have a five-year plan to be a different man, and I believe you. So I want you to know that. Because I think it matters that you know it."
She reached across the table. Her hand on his. Her thumb on the knuckle of his ring finger, light pressure. He had the foolish, financial-analyst thought that she had picked that finger on purpose. Maybe she had.
"I'll wait," she said. "But not forever. Show me progress. Real progress."
"I will."
"Real."
"I will, Elena."
She took her hand back. Picked the fork up. Started eating. Her eyes were on her plate and she was breathing in the controlled way that meant she didn't want to be doing this in public and was doing it anyway.
He ate. He didn't taste the osso buco. He thought about the construction company, and the next municipal RFP cycle, and a small box he had not bought because buying it would have been arrogant. He thought about how she'd touched the ring finger and not the others.
They finished the meal. They talked about nothing important. They argued cheerfully about whether the cannoli would be any good, and he was right that it would and she was right that the shell would be soft, and they split it and ate both halves and the nephew brought a second coffee neither of them had asked for and didn't charge them for it.
Outside, on Washington, the sidewalk was wet from a hose somebody had used to clean a stoop and the air smelled like soap and the river. Her car was around the corner on Hudson. He walked her to it. She didn't take his arm — they didn't do that in public, ever — but they walked in step.
He thought about the box. He thought about the kind he'd buy. Not big. Not flashy. Something old, something with a thin band. He'd seen one once in an estate window in a place his mother used to drag him to when he was eight, in another life, in a city she'd never know about. The thought sat in his chest and didn't move.
Not now.
Too soon.
Too dangerous.
But someday — if both of them survived the years he'd just promised her.
At the car she stopped and turned and looked at him in the way she did when she was about to do something that broke her own rules. He stepped in. Her hand on the side of his neck. The kiss was longer than the one in the parking lot last time. She broke it first.
"I'm trusting you," she said. The words came out small. "Don't make me regret it."
"I won't."
She got in the car. She didn't look at him through the window. She started the engine, checked the mirror twice — she always checked twice — and pulled out into the lane. The taillights got smaller on Hudson and then they turned and they were gone.
He stood on the curb for a long moment.
[+50 SP — Trust established.]
He acknowledged it. Slid his hands into his pockets. Walked back toward where Tommy had parked the car two blocks over. The wet sidewalk was drying in patches and his shoes made no sound at all.
Trust was the most dangerous thing she could give him. He wouldn't waste it. He was going to build it into a wall around her, a thing she could stand inside of and not feel the wind. He'd start tomorrow. He'd start with the municipal contract on the Newark waste corridor and he'd send Tommy a note to push the construction filing forward by ninety days, and he was going to mean every word he had said to her in the four-table restaurant on Washington Street, because she had reached across the table and put her thumb on his ring finger and not let go.
He got to Tommy's car. Got in. Tommy looked at him.
"Home?"
"Home."
Tommy pulled out. Vinnie watched the lights of Hoboken slide past, and somewhere up Hudson, her taillights were a half-mile ahead of his, and she was going to be home before he was, and he was going to think about the box in the estate window for a long time before he slept.
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