The phone rang at two-fourteen in the morning two days later, and Vinnie answered before the second ring because he had been waiting for it.
"Vinnie."
"Tommy."
"One of Carlo's guys spotted him. Matt Bevilaqua. White motel on Route 21, the Sundowner. Blue car in the lot, not the brown Buick — switched cars somewhere. He went into room fourteen at one-forty. Carlo's guy is in his own car at the diner across the road."
"Tell Carlo's guy he doesn't get out of the car."
"Already did."
"Hang up. I'll call you back."
He hung up. Dialed Silvio's pager. Wrote on the same RFP page he'd written the Buick description on two days earlier, in the same corner, under the first line: Matt Bevilaqua. Sundowner Motel, Route 21. Room 14. Blue car in lot. ~1:40 AM.
The phone rang back in forty seconds.
"Marchetti."
"Matt Bevilaqua. The Sundowner on Route 21. Room fourteen. Blue car. He's been there since one-forty. My guy is across the road in the diner lot and he is not getting out of his car."
"Hold."
Then Silvio's voice, lower.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"T's going to call you in the morning."
"I'm here."
"Tell your guy to drive home now. Slow. Like a man going home from a bad shift."
"He's already going."
"Good."
A pause.
"Vincent."
"Yeah, Sil."
"Thank you."
He hung up.
He did not go back to bed. He sat at the kitchen table with the lamp on and a glass of water he didn't drink and listened to the heat kick on and off through the vents. Outside, the sky stayed the color it had been at one in the morning, and then it didn't, and the sky did the soft slow thing it did when it was about to start being a different color but hadn't committed yet.
At five-ten he made coffee.
He drank it standing at the counter. His hands were steady. He noticed that they were steady. The basement bag was still in the basement and the knuckles he had split on it in January were healed white and the man whose coffee his hands were holding was a man whose hands had been steady for a while now.
What he had done, by the count, was give two pieces of information to Silvio over two days. A Buick. A motel room number. He had not pulled a trigger. He had not driven the car. He had not been within ten miles of either event.
What he had done, by the other count, was tell a man with two trucks where the rabbit was sitting.
He drank the coffee. It tasted like coffee.
The system warmed behind his eyes. He let it.
[Achievement: Crisis Reliability. Political Capital +12. Loyalty Bank: Tony Soprano +8.]
He acknowledged it the way he would have acknowledged a calendar alert and let it close.
The phone rang at seven-forty.
"Marchetti."
"Vincent."
"Tony."
"You there last night."
"At my desk."
Tony's voice was the morning version of itself — slower than the afternoon, a smoker's first cigarette in it.
"You helped us find that piece of shit."
"He shot a friend. What else was I gonna do."
A beat.
"That's a good answer, Vinnie. That's a very good answer."
"Thank you, Tony."
"I'm not gonna talk on this phone. But you and me — we're gonna sit down soon. Not Tuesday. Sooner."
"Whenever you want."
"You got the foreman walking the lot today?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow afternoon I want to come by the lot. Just to see it."
That stopped Vinnie's breath for half a second, and the half-second was the kind that did not show on the face. Tony at the Newark lot was — Tony at the Newark lot was Tony validating the whole Construction Holdings move in public, in his own person, as a thing he wanted his name attached to.
"Three o'clock works."
"Three o'clock."
"I'll have the foreman there."
"Don't dress up. Wear something you can step in mud in."
"I will, Tony."
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You're solid, Marchetti. I won't forget this one."
He hung up.
Vinnie set the receiver in the cradle and stood at the counter and looked at the coffee maker.
The system warmed again, with more weight this time.
[Level Up: 7 → 8. Function unlocked: Loyalty Display Advisor (Basic). Cost: 25 SP per query. Limit: 3 queries per week. Note: ranks named contacts on loyalty trend.]
Eight, then.
He acknowledged it. Did not query. Did not pull a list. Let the new function sit in its drawer.
The kitchen smelled like coffee and the cold from the back door which did not quite seal. The clock above the stove ticked.
Outside, a sanitation truck went by — not Marchetti, the city's — and stopped at the corner. Two men got off the running boards in their fluorescent vests and emptied a row of cans and got back on and the truck rolled forward and the sound of it grew small.
He picked up the phone. Dialed Tommy.
"Tommy."
"Vinnie."
"Tony's coming to the lot at three tomorrow. Get the foreman there in clean boots and a shirt with a collar. Have him bring his plans on the actual paper, not the photocopy. And tell Carlo to put the new sign on the trailer this morning, even if the paint is wet."
"Done."
"And Tommy — somewhere between here and tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to go see Christopher at the hospital. Find out when's a good time. Through Carmela if you can. Through Adriana if you can't."
"I'll find out."
"And Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Yesterday — last week. The basement bag."
A pause.
"What about it."
"You saw."
"I saw."
"I just wanted you to know I saw that you saw."
A longer pause.
"All right, Vinnie."
He hung up.
He drank the rest of the coffee and went upstairs to shave.
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― DECREE ―
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