Artie Bucco was sweating through his collar by the time Vinnie got to the door of Nuovo Vesuvio.
The smell of fresh paint was still in the place. They'd put it up in November on the bones of what had burned, and the wood at the host station had that bright color new oak gets before it darkens, and the brass was so brass it looked almost orange under the lamps. Artie had been open six weeks. He looked tired the way men look tired when they're trying not to look tired.
"Mr. Marchetti."
"Artie." Vinnie shook his hand. The hand was wet. "Smells good."
"Veal. The veal tonight is — please, come in."
"You all right?"
Artie looked at him. The look was a quick assessment of who was asking and why. He decided the question was a real one. "Forty-seven people," he said, quiet. "Open bar. They've been here since five." It was a quarter past six.
"You got enough help?"
"I got my cousin and my wife and a kid from the neighborhood who didn't show up till twenty after."
"Tip the kid double anyway. He'll come back."
Artie blinked. Nodded. Filed it like the small kindness it was. "Bar's that way. Mr. Soprano is at the back table. Mr. Aprile is — Mr. Aprile is at the back table too." He swallowed. "I'm seating you with Mr. Dante's group."
"Thank you, Artie."
The dining room was loud. Forty-seven people meant forty-seven coats on hangers and the smell of forty-seven different colognes layered over the garlic. The band — a three-piece doing standards from the booth in the corner — was playing Volare the way every Italian-American restaurant in New Jersey played Volare. Tony was at the back, in the middle banquette, holding court the way he held court — one arm along the top of the seat, jacket open, glass of red in his free hand. Silvio was two seats down, glasses on. Paulie Walnuts was at the end of the bench in a sport coat the color of dark salmon, laughing at something with his mouth open and his eyes not laughing.
And Richie Aprile was on Tony's left.
Vinnie clocked him while he crossed the room. Short — five-six, maybe — and built compact, the way a welterweight is compact, no fat anywhere on him. Hair receded. Skin like a man who'd just spent ten years not getting much sun and was making up for it under restaurant light. The suit was new but not expensive. He sat with his back to the wall and one hand on the table flat in a way that some men sit and most men don't.
The eyes were the part the show had got right.
Vinnie had seen these eyes on screen in a different life. He'd thought of them as actor's eyes — the kind a good character actor builds. Up close they weren't actor's eyes. They were what David Proval had built them out of. They were the originals. They smiled while the rest of the face smiled and they did not warm up.
He sat down at Silvio's table. Silvio gave him a small nod and went back to a story about a guy who used to own a horse. Vinnie ordered a Macallan from a passing kid, neat. Took two sips. Watched.
Tony was being pleasant.
Tony was being the kind of pleasant a man is who is doing math under the pleasantness. He was laughing at something Richie said. The laugh was the right size. Richie was laughing back. The laugh was the same size. The way Richie's hand sat on the table — flat, fingers slightly spread — was a way of sitting that said I am at the table on which I am sitting because I belong here, not because you let me. Tony's eyes registered the hand. Tony's face did not.
Silvio's foot, under the table, tapped twice against the leg of Vinnie's chair. Then twice again. The signal didn't mean anything specific. It meant I see what you see.
Vinnie did not turn his head.
The Macallan arrived. He drank it slow.
Around six-forty-five Christopher came in from the side door wearing a suit that fit him and a shirt that didn't. He scanned the room, found Tony, found Richie, and went to Richie first. Embraced him. Held the embrace one beat longer than was respectful and one beat shorter than would have insulted Tony. Vinnie watched Silvio register that calibration. Christopher had grown a small new political muscle while Vinnie wasn't looking, and the muscle was misaligned.
Then Christopher saw Vinnie. Crossed.
"Vinnie. You see who's home?"
"I see."
"Come on, come say hi. He's asking who's who."
That was the moment. Vinnie stood, smoothed the front of his jacket, and went with Christopher to the back banquette.
Tony noticed him coming first. The half-smile happened. "Marchetti. Sit down for a minute. Richie, this is the guy I told you about. Vinnie Marchetti — Sal's kid, runs the garbage out of Jersey City."
"Sal's kid." Richie's voice was lighter than the face it came out of. He didn't stand. He extended a hand across the table and Vinnie shook it. The grip was hard for half a second and then it relaxed, the way some men shake hands.
"Mr. Aprile. Welcome home."
"Your old man and me went back."
"He spoke of you, Mr. Aprile."
He hadn't. Sal had spoken of Richie exactly once, in 1989, and what he'd said was the Aprile kid is going to die in prison or in the street, one of the two. The host body remembered it; Vinnie used it now without flinching.
Richie's eyes did the thing eyes do when a man enjoys hearing himself spoken of. He nodded. The nod was small. "Sit down a minute, Sal's kid. Have a drink with me."
Tony's eyes flicked once. The flick was for Vinnie.
"Thank you, Mr. Aprile. I've got Silvio's table and a glass already poured. But I appreciate it. Maybe later in the night."
The flick had been a small good answer. Vinnie did not look at it twice.
"Suit yourself." Richie shrugged. The shrug was already moving on. "You holding the garbage business now? Sal's old routes?"
"My father's routes, yes. We've added some."
"How much you kicking up?"
The room was loud. The question was casual. The question was not casual.
"Whatever Mr. Soprano asks for, Mr. Aprile."
"That's a good answer." The eyes did smile, then, in their cold way. "Tony, you got him trained."
"He came trained, Rich."
"Well." Richie picked up his glass. "Welcome to it, Sal's kid. Sit down, Tony."
Vinnie was already moving away. Tony's hand briefly touched his elbow as he passed — the smallest pressure, good — and then Tony was back in the banquette and Vinnie was halfway back to Silvio's table and his pulse was a beat faster than he wanted it to be. He sat. Silvio's foot tapped his chair leg once. Vinnie picked up the Macallan. Held it. Drank.
The rest of the dinner did what these dinners do. The band did That's Amore. Paulie told a long story about a man and a goat that wasn't funny but everyone laughed because Paulie was telling it. The veal was excellent. Vinnie ate it slowly. He kept a count, in the back of his head, of the times Richie's hand left the table and the times it came back, and the count was useful information whose only use was that one day it might be useful.
Around nine, Artie passed the table with a tray and Vinnie touched his sleeve.
"Artie."
"Mr. Marchetti."
"You did good tonight."
Artie's face did the small grateful thing it did when somebody noticed. Vinnie slid two folded hundreds into Artie's apron pocket the way a man tips a man who isn't supposed to be tipped, and Artie nodded and moved on without breaking stride.
Silvio's foot tapped once more.
At nine-thirty Vinnie made his exit. Crossed to the back, gave Tony the small handshake from a half-step back, gave Richie a polite nod from too far away to require another handshake. Richie's eyes followed him to the door. Vinnie pretended he didn't see it.
The cold outside was a relief. Tommy was at the curb in the Cadillac, engine running, breath fogging in the open window. Vinnie got in.
"How was it?"
"Crowded."
Tommy pulled away. The lights of Bloomfield Avenue slid past, and Vinnie put his head back against the seat for a moment and let himself breathe.
[Threat assessment: Richie Aprile. Volatility — extreme. Earning — medium. Probability of major incident within twelve months — 91 percent. Recommended posture: minimum engagement, flexible positioning.]
He acknowledged it.
He thought about Enzo, that morning a few days ago. Give him a small piece. Something you can lose. He had a piece now in mind — a vending account in West Caldwell that had been Sal's and that Vinnie didn't care about and that sat just inside the territory Richie was going to ask after. If Richie asked, Vinnie would give it. He'd give it cleanly, with a smile, on a Friday, with no negotiation. The piece would cost him eight hundred a month and would buy him a month of distance and a month of distance was a month of building.
Tommy turned onto the Parkway south.
"He shake your hand?"
"He shook it."
"How was the hand."
"It was a hand."
Tommy nodded. He understood the answer.
A patch of black ice took the back wheels for a quarter-second on the curve at exit 145 and the Cadillac shimmied and Tommy's hands moved on the wheel and the car straightened and Tommy swore quietly under his breath and Vinnie's stomach unknotted by the smallest degree.
"Take Bloomfield home," Vinnie said. "I want to go past the auto body."
"At ten o'clock at night."
"I want to go past the auto body."
Tommy didn't ask why. He turned at the next exit. Vinnie watched the lit signs of the strip malls go by — Dunkin' Donuts, a Friendly's, a Sleepy's — and somewhere up Bloomfield Avenue the small piece of nothing he was going to hand to Richie Aprile sat in a vending machine in a laundromat, and somewhere four miles past it the new construction filing was sitting on a desk waiting for a signature he'd be giving on Monday, and somewhere in his chest was the small bright unfamiliar thing that he had learned, very recently, to recognize as a kind of grim, working hope.
He had a year. He had less than a year before Christopher caught a bullet outside a Verizon and Pussy went on the boat and Richie ended in a ditch with two from his own fiancée. He couldn't stop any of it. He didn't try.
What he could do was build.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Monday morning, first thing — call the foreman in Newark. The one with the bad knee. Tell him I want to walk the lot at nine."
"Nine Monday."
"Nine Monday."
The Cadillac rolled past the auto body. The lights were off. Carlo had closed up at eight, the way he always did. The new sign was up — Rossi Auto Body. Est. 1984. — and the paint was good and the parking lot was clean, and Vinnie watched it pass and let himself feel, for the second time in six months, the small impossible thing of a man who had planted something and watched it grow.
Then he turned his face toward home.
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.
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰