Satriale's was quieter than it should have been.
Vinnie noticed it at the door before the bell finished its small flat sound. The two old guys at the front counter were there, but they weren't talking. The kid behind the deli case was doing something with the slicer he'd already done. Brian was not behind the counter at the espresso machine because Brian only worked Fridays. The man behind the counter was Sal — not Vinnie's father Sal, the other Sal, the one who'd been slicing capicola since 1969 and who normally had something to say about the Knicks the moment a familiar face came through the door.
Sal nodded. Didn't say anything about the Knicks.
The men in the room were in clusters. Two at the front table. Three at the side booth, including a soldier whose name Vinnie kept forgetting because he was always near the door and never at the table. The three were leaning in. One stopped leaning when Vinnie walked past. Picked up his coffee cup. Looked at the surface of the coffee.
Silvio was at the round table in the back.
He saw Vinnie come in. Lifted his chin a quarter inch — Tony's quarter inch, the one Silvio had picked up from working twenty-five years next to Tony and never adjusted. The chair across from him was empty. Vinnie went and got himself a coffee and a Coke for later and sat down.
Silvio's glasses were off.
"Marchetti."
"Sil."
"Sit close."
Vinnie scooted his chair in.
"I'll say it once," Silvio said, his voice at the level of two men reading the same newspaper. "Richie's been pushing. He sat down with Junior on Sunday at the house in Belleville. He sat down with Larry Boy on Monday. He sat down with two of Junior's old soldiers on Tuesday. He's not being subtle about it. T knows. Junior knows T knows. The whole family knows everybody knows."
"How bad."
"Bad enough that I'm telling you sitting here."
Vinnie drank coffee. Did not look around the room. Around the room was for after.
"Anything you want from me."
"I want you to keep doing what you're doing. T can't stop talking about your lot, by the way. He told three people last week. Vinnie's putting concrete in. He's at the age where a man wants to look at something that's getting built instead of something that's getting torn down."
"Concrete's down."
"I heard. The pictures Tommy took with the truck — Carmela's gonna want one for the wall."
"I'll get her one."
"Get her a copy. Get T one too."
The bell on the door did its small flat sound.
Vinnie did not turn around. He saw Silvio's eyes track to a point in the air over Vinnie's left shoulder, then watch the point move along the wall to the back, then to the back room. The bell did its sound again two minutes later, from a different person. Silvio's eyes tracked that one too.
"T's in back," Silvio said quietly. "Richie just came in."
"Should I — "
"Stay where you are. Drink your coffee. Look at the menu like you're a man considering a sandwich."
Vinnie picked up the cardboard menu propped against the napkin holder.
The back room of Satriale's had a door that didn't close all the way because the carpet had been laid a quarter-inch too thick in 1986 and nobody had ever planed the bottom. You could close it. You could not seal it. Anybody at Silvio's round table could hear most of what happened in the back room if they wanted to hear it, and could pretend not to hear it if they didn't.
For ninety seconds it was conversational. Two men's voices. Words you couldn't make out. The cadence of two grown men trying to talk like grown men.
Then it got louder.
A word here and a word there. Uncle. Cut. My share. Janice. Tony's voice, lower-pitched than Richie's and slower, doing the thing it did when Tony was running out of patience and trying to do paperwork on his patience to extend it. Richie's voice climbing — not yelling, the rich man's version of yelling, the I am explaining something to you that you should already know voice.
Then quiet.
Then Tony's voice once, the single word — no. Flat. The way a man says a word when he is finished saying it.
The door opened.
Tony came out first. His face was the kind of face that had been a face for thirty years and was now a face that meant I will not be having an additional thought about this in public. He walked through the front room past everyone and did not stop and did not nod and did not look at Silvio and did not look at Vinnie. The bell did its sound. The door closed behind him.
Richie came out twenty seconds later.
His face was a different face. Not the face Tony had. A red-around-the-eyes face. A jaw with something in it. He looked at the room — at the back, at the side booth, at the counter — and his eyes touched Vinnie at Silvio's table for exactly long enough that Vinnie knew they had touched him. Then they kept going. Then Richie went out. The bell did its sound again. The two old guys at the counter did not lift their heads at any point in any of this.
Silvio waited a full minute.
"All right."
"All right."
"You don't want to be in the middle of that."
"I'm not in the middle of that."
"You sure."
"Sil. He looked at me."
Silvio's mouth did the thing his mouth did when he was acknowledging a small fact he could not undo.
"He looks at everybody. He's deciding who's a chair and who's a table. Stay a chair."
"I will."
He pulled the roll of LifeSavers out of his coat pocket — the wintergreen kind, from the gas station on the way over — and pried one off the top with his thumb. Put it in his mouth. Offered the roll to Silvio. Silvio took one. They crunched in silence for thirty seconds.
"You been good to me, Marchetti."
"I haven't done anything, Sil."
"That's what being good means in our business."
Outside, Tommy was at the curb with the Cadillac running. Vinnie got in.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Talk to Carlo this afternoon. Anybody from Richie's people comes near any Marchetti operation — the yard, the lot, the auto body, anywhere — I want a phone call within the hour."
"Done."
"And tell Carlo not to alarm anybody. Just information flow."
"Done."
The Cadillac pulled away from Satriale's. Vinnie watched the door in the side mirror. The door did not open again.
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