The system warmed at the breakfast table on the third of June.
Vinnie had been reading the Star-Ledger business section and eating toast with the kind of half-attention a man gave the Star-Ledger business section when he was waiting for his coffee to be the right temperature. The warmth came across the space behind his eyes the way the warmth had come before a hundred times, except this time it had come without him asking. He set the paper down.
[Unprompted Alert. Subject: Bonpensiero, S. Compromise vector approaching critical threshold. Estimated revelation event: 25 to 45 days. Recommendation: continue zero direct contact. Distance protocols active.]
He acknowledged it.
It closed.
He drank the coffee. Picked up the paper again. Finished the toast. Put the dishes in the sink. Got in the Cadillac with Tommy at the wheel.
That was a Tuesday.
The days that followed were the kind of days that, looked at one by one, were not anything to look at. The new territory came online without incident. Marchetti trucks now ran a route on Friday mornings down Belleville Avenue that they had not run since January, and the four shopkeepers at the four storefronts had Vinnie's people back with envelopes that did not have to be redirected. The auto-glass row across the avenue paid up Tuesday like clockwork. Vinnie did not go to either himself. Tommy and Conte handled it. Carlo at the auto body had two new contracts off the salvage operation Tony had handed to a different Carlo, and money was moving in a way that pleased the lawyer and worried Conte, who worried about everything that pleased the lawyer.
The hotel contract paperwork came back from Beth Halloran's procurement desk on the seventh of June with a single notarized signature page that needed Vinnie's countersignature. He took it to the notary at the bank Mike Costanza managed and Mike walked it across the floor himself.
He had Tuesday coffee at Satriale's twice — the eighth and the fifteenth. Tony was there the first Tuesday. Tony was not there the second.
He saw Pussy twice in that ten days. The first time was at the back of the Bing on the Wednesday afternoon — Vinnie had stopped at the Bing only to drop a check off for Silvio for a cleaning bill, and Pussy was at the bar with Christopher and a man with a cellophone bag. Vinnie nodded at Pussy from across the room. Pussy lifted a finger. Vinnie did not come closer. He gave Silvio the check, said nothing memorable, left within four minutes.
The second time was at Satriale's on the fifteenth, four o'clock in the afternoon — and that was a thing for a different occasion.
In between he saw Pussy at distance, twice, in cars going in different directions on Route 21.
Marchetti operations had no business going through Pussy's hands. Vinnie had personally confirmed this through Tommy, through Conte, through Carlo. Pussy's name was not on a piece of paper any Marchetti driver carried. The Bayonne pickup that had been a recurring joint on a calendar had been quietly handed off to one of Silvio's other guys when Vinnie's foreman in Newark had developed a conflict that prevented Marchetti participation. Silvio had not asked why. Silvio had set up a different driver. Silvio had not used the word why with Vinnie about a thing in his life for about six weeks now.
On the eighth Tommy noticed.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You got something against Big Pussy."
They were at the yard. Vinnie was signing forms.
"Just being careful."
"Careful how."
"Pussy's got the IRS up his ass on the auto upholstery thing. I read it in the paper. I don't want any of our paper on the same desk as any of his paper for a while."
"That was last year, Vinnie. The IRS thing."
"That was last year. The IRS waits a year and they come back."
"Hmm."
"Hmm what."
"Nothing. Just — for a guy who reads the paper, you read the paper a lot."
"I do."
Tommy did not press it. He shrugged once. He went back to whatever he had been doing before he had wandered into the office. Vinnie signed the form he had been signing. He noted that Tommy had noted.
On the ninth he started going to a gym.
It was a small place on McCarter Highway, on the second floor over a hardware store, run by a Cuban man named Ortega who had been a contender at flyweight in 1971 and had spent the twenty-nine years since training men who did not have to weigh in. Ortega did not ask Vinnie's last name. He took the seventy-five dollars for the month and pointed at a hook on the wall where a man was supposed to hang a coat.
Vinnie went on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at six in the morning, before the day's calls started. He wrapped his hands. He put the wraps on the way Ortega had shown him after he had watched Vinnie put them on the wrong way for ninety seconds the first morning. He hit the bag for forty minutes. He showered in the cold-water shower at the back of the gym because the hot water shower was broken in the way it had been broken in 1996 and was going to keep being broken for several more years.
The bag did not split his knuckles. Ortega's wraps and Ortega's bag did not require that of a man. He hit it and hit it and hit it and the work was the kind of work a body did when a body had been waiting to do it for a year. He left the gym every morning thirty minutes lighter than he had walked in.
On the second Wednesday a man at the gym — a heavyset Sicilian with a fighter's nose who Vinnie was pretty sure was somebody's nephew somewhere — looked at Vinnie's combinations on the bag and said, Hey kid, your left's lazy. Vinnie thanked him. Adjusted his left.
He did not bring the gym home.
On the fourteenth Tommy called him at the office at two in the afternoon.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"Conte's brother-in-law called. Tony's sick."
"Sick how."
"Bad clams from somewhere. He's been on his couch since Sunday night. Carmela's got him on the Pedialyte. He's been having — Conte's brother-in-law's wife heard Carmela on the phone with her sister — he's been having these fever dreams. Talking to himself. Sitting up at three in the morning. Crazy stuff."
"How crazy."
"Carmela's word was frightful. She used the word frightful. Conte's brother-in-law's wife had to look it up."
"All right."
"Sil's calling the table for tomorrow afternoon at Satriale's. Four o'clock. Without Tony."
"I'll be there."
"You sure."
"I'll be there."
He hung up.
He sat at his desk for half a minute.
Then he picked up the phone again.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"When I'm there tomorrow at four — I want you in the front of the deli with the paper. I want eyes on who comes in. Pussy in particular. I want to know — if Pussy comes in — how he comes in. Whether he looks like a man who's been expecting the table or a man who's surprised by it. The exact second he learns Tony's not there. I want you watching for it."
A pause.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"Why."
"Tommy. I'm going to tell you one thing and then I'm going to not tell you the next thing. The one thing I'm going to tell you is — I think Pussy's about to have a very bad month. I don't know exactly when. I don't know exactly how. I want eyes on him while he has it. The next thing I'm not going to tell you is how I know, and I'm asking you not to ask."
A longer pause.
"All right, Vinnie."
"Thank you."
"Eyes on Pussy."
"Eyes on Pussy."
He hung up.
He went to the gym at five. He hit the bag for ninety minutes. Ortega watched him the last fifteen and said nothing.
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