The blue sedan was on Garrison Avenue at twenty past eight on Wednesday morning.
Vinnie noticed it because he had been waking up early and going to the gym at six and had not been at the office before nine in nine working days, and a blue Ford that he had never seen on Garrison Avenue before, with two men in it and no engine running, on the same block as the entrance to the Marchetti yard at twenty past eight in the morning, was the kind of new fact a man tracked in his neighborhood whether or not he wanted to.
He told Tommy without turning his head.
"Blue sedan. Left side. Two guys. Don't slow down. Pull into the yard the way you pull into the yard."
Tommy did not slow down. The Cadillac took the curb cut into the yard. The blue sedan stayed where it was.
He went into the office. Sat at the desk. Did not look out the window. Got the lawyer on the phone at five of nine.
"Counselor."
"Vincent. You're up early."
"I want you out here today."
"At the yard?"
"At the yard. With a notebook. With three or four pieces of business I should have signed two weeks ago. With your assistant if you're bringing one. I'm meeting my lawyer in the open."
A pause.
"You got a tail."
"I have a thing on the street that I want a thing on the street to see me having a lawyer about."
"I'll be there at eleven."
"Bring lunch from somewhere. The place on Bloomfield."
"Done."
He hung up.
He sat at the desk for thirty seconds. Picked the phone up again. Dialed Tommy at the other side of the building.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Come up here."
Tommy came in. Closed the door behind him without being told to.
"Sit down."
Tommy sat.
"You saw the car."
"I saw the car."
"How long."
"Going on the third day I've seen the same one. Different drivers each day. Same car."
"You didn't tell me."
"I was watching it for a pattern before I told you. I had a pattern this morning. I was going to tell you at nine."
"All right."
He pulled the yellow pad off the desk corner. Wrote two columns. One column had the word PHONE. The other column had the word VOICE. He turned the pad around to face Tommy.
"From now until I say different — nothing on this phone, nothing on the office line, nothing on any car phone any of us uses, that we would not want a federal magistrate to read in a transcript. Not a code. Not a wink. Not a joke. Nothing. The hotel contract is the topic. The construction LLC is the topic. The waste routes are the topic. The price of cement is the topic. Anything else is I'll have to see you in person. That's the new rule. No exceptions."
"Got it."
"Voice column. In person. Sweep-checked locations only. The yard office is fine — Conte has the lawyer in here once a quarter to sweep it. The basement at home is fine. The pickup truck the lot foreman drives is fine. The Cadillac, we assume, is not fine, starting today. Any conversation in the Cadillac is garbage company conversation. You understand."
"I understand."
"Tell Conte. Tell Carlo. Tell DiNardo. Tell the new kid in the yard who I keep forgetting the name of."
"Mannarino."
"Tell Mannarino. Tell the foreman in Newark — for him, just say the FBI's looking at us now, behave the way you've always behaved. He behaves fine."
"Done."
He capped the pen. Slid the pad to the side.
"And Tommy — "
"Yeah."
"Pull out of every operation that is not above the line. I want every dollar that's still coming in to me to be a dollar that has a signature on a piece of paper with a state agency's letterhead on it. The auto body. The hotel. The waste haul. The Rossi structured payment is OK, it's documented. The Tony partnership distribution is OK because Sil routes it through legitimate vendor invoices. Everything else is dormant for at least sixty days. I don't care how much we lose."
Tommy thought about this for a second.
"That's about a quarter of our gross."
"It's about a quarter of our gross."
"Vinnie — that's — "
"It's the right number, Tommy. The hotel comes online this month. The hotel covers it. We're going to be flat by August. Maybe up by Christmas."
"All right."
"And one more."
"Yeah."
"From this point, you don't drive me anywhere I have not put on a calendar in advance. I want a date and a destination on a calendar that Conte's bookkeeper keeps in her drawer. If a federal agent shows up here in October and wants to know where Vincent Marchetti was on July twenty-third, Conte's bookkeeper can hand him a calendar that says East Ward lot, ten AM, with foreman; lawyer, twelve PM at deli; bank, two PM with Costanza. That's where I was. No back booths anywhere. No drop-ins anywhere. The calendar is the alibi."
"That's a lot of structure."
"That's the structure."
Tommy nodded.
"All right, Vinnie."
He stood. Hand on the doorknob.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You're not gonna be much fun for a while."
"I haven't been much fun for some time, Tommy."
"That's true."
He went out.
The lawyer came at five of eleven in his white Cadillac that was an older Cadillac than Vinnie's. He brought his assistant. He brought a banker's box of paper. He brought four pastrami sandwiches from the place on Bloomfield because Vinnie had said bring lunch and the lawyer had interpreted the instruction generously.
They sat in the office for ninety minutes with the door open and the blinds up. The lawyer walked Vinnie through three pieces of paper that needed signatures and one piece of paper that needed to be drawn up and one piece of paper that the lawyer wanted to see Vinnie's reaction to before he filed it. They drew on a yellow pad. The lawyer's assistant took notes the way the lawyer's assistant took notes. The pastrami sandwiches were good. Conte came in once to get a piece of paper signed. Carlo came in once to ask about a thing at the auto body that he could have asked Tommy about but for which he had chosen to ask Vinnie in front of the lawyer, which Vinnie noted with appreciation. The blue sedan, across Garrison Avenue, watched the open blinds and the lit windows and the white Cadillac in the yard for ninety minutes.
When the lawyer left at twenty past one Vinnie walked him to the white Cadillac himself, in the open, with paper in his hand and the assistant with the banker's box behind them. They shook hands at the driver's side door. The lawyer said Vincent, see you next Tuesday. The assistant got in the passenger seat with the box on her lap. The Cadillac pulled out of the yard onto Garrison.
The blue sedan did not pull out behind it.
Vinnie went back into the office.
At four-fifteen he went outside himself.
The blue sedan was still there. He had not seen it come back from any lunch break it had taken. The two men in it were a different two men than this morning, which made it four agents over three shifts so far, which meant a team of probably six on rotation, which meant the case had a number and a folder and a supervisor and probably an assistant U.S. attorney attached to it, which was the kind of thing a small Jersey City waste hauler did not by default warrant unless someone had recently put his name on a piece of paper somewhere upstream of him.
He thought about that for the length of the walk from the office door to the curb.
At the curb he stopped. Turned. Looked across Garrison Avenue at the blue sedan.
The two men in the blue sedan looked back at him for one second and then looked away in the way two federal agents looked away from a man who had just made them.
He raised his right hand to the brim of a hat he was not wearing. Touched the brim of the hat that was not there. Tipped it. Let his hand drop.
He turned and went back into the office.
The system warmed.
[Acknowledgment recorded. Behavior pattern: signaling presence. Recommendation: maintain. Subjects now aware they are observed observing.]
He acknowledged it and let it close.
He stayed at the office until seven-thirty. Conte went home at five. Carlo went home at five-thirty. The new kid in the yard whose name was Mannarino was the last one out of the yard at six-forty. Tommy at the door of the office.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You hungry."
"Pick something up."
"What."
"Whatever's open. I'm not particular."
Tommy went out. Came back at seven-fifteen with two cartons from the Chinese place on Tonnelle that did the brown rice the way the brown rice was supposed to be done. They ate at the desk with paper plates and plastic forks.
At seven-thirty Vinnie wiped his hands on a paper napkin and went over to the file cabinet and pulled out a folder. Brought it back to the desk. Slid it across to Tommy.
"What's this."
"Your salary going up ten percent retroactive to the first of June. Also a discretionary bonus the lawyer set up to be paid out as a one-time consulting fee from Marchetti Holdings in October. The consulting is for operations review. Which you've been doing for me without a contract for about a year. The amount on the line is what the lawyer told me a man with your skills who's been doing what you've been doing should have been making. I'll be honest with you — I should have done it in February. I'm doing it now because I want it on a piece of paper, in a place a federal magistrate could read it, that you are an employee of this company and not a soldier in another organization."
Tommy looked at the folder.
He opened it. Read the first page. The second page. The third page.
He closed the folder.
He looked at Vinnie.
"You don't have to do this for that reason."
"I'm doing it for that reason and also for the reason I should have done it in February."
"All right."
"Sign the bottom of page two. Conte's bookkeeper will file it tomorrow. The new tax withholding starts on the next paycheck."
Tommy signed. Took his copy. Folded it. Put it in the inside pocket of his coat. Stood up.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You done with me tonight?"
"I'm done with you tonight."
"You want me to drive you home."
"I'll drive myself."
"All right."
He went out. The yard gate closed behind him. The Cadillac that was a different Cadillac than Vinnie's — the older one Tommy drove himself, the one he had bought from his cousin in 1993 — started up. The yard light came on for the gate. The yard light went off.
Vinnie sat at the desk in the office with the lamp on and the blinds up.
Across Garrison Avenue the blue sedan was no longer the blue sedan. The blue sedan had been replaced at six o'clock by a tan minivan with one driver and an antenna on the roof that did not match the make of the minivan, which was a different way of saying the same thing.
He picked up the phone. Dialed Elena's office because he knew she was not at her office, because he wanted the message to be on her office machine in the morning where the only person who could hear it was her.
The machine picked up.
"Elena. It's me. I wanted to tell you — the hotel contract starts Monday. The first revenue is in by the fifteenth. I'm going to be at the office every day this month. The number's the same. I love you. Don't call back tonight."
He hung up.
He turned off the desk lamp. Stood in the dark for a second listening to the building.
Then he put on his coat and went out and locked the office and locked the yard gate behind him and got in his own Cadillac and drove home through the tan minivan's polite distance, the way a man drove home when he was being followed by a man whose job it was to follow him and both of them knew it.
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