The host woman pretended not to know him.
She did it well, the way a professional did anything well — eyes that took in his coat and his face for the practical second of recognition then went back to the music stand as if she had never had a customer who looked like Vinnie Marchetti before. She showed him to the booth in the back corner with the upholstery that had been wrong since 1973. He sat. She poured a glass of water that she had not been asked for. She walked away.
He set the wrapped paper packet from the bakery in Bloomfield on the table in front of the other plate.
It was warm through the paper. Tommy had picked it up forty minutes ago and the bakery had wrapped it in three sheets and a paper bag and the bag was still soft around the edges. The bread inside the bag was a round loaf with the dark crust and the small hard letters stamped on top — the pane di altamura his foreman in Newark had told him was made on Saturday mornings only and not all of those, by the older Pugliese man at the back oven, who would not sell more than two an hour to any single buyer.
Vinnie had asked Tommy three times if he was sure about the bakery. Tommy had said three times he was sure.
The bell on the door did its small sound.
Elena.
She had her hair down for the first time in a while. The coat was the long charcoal one. She saw him at the booth and she did the small thing she did with her mouth where she was deciding whether to be tired or to be glad and landed on glad. The host woman walked her over without ceremony.
"Vincent."
"Hi."
She slid in. Set her briefcase under the booth. Looked at the wrapped paper packet on her plate.
"What is this."
"It's a loaf of bread."
"It's a loaf of bread on my plate."
"From the place on Bloomfield. The one your grandmother used to talk about — the Altamura. The one you said at Maria's last summer you hadn't found in three years."
She did not move for a second.
Then she pulled the paper apart slowly. The smell rose. The crust was still warm. She tore off a thumb-sized piece. Ate it standing up — sitting up. She made a sound that was not a word. Her eyes closed for one beat.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"You — you cannot ambush me with my grandmother's bread the minute I sit down."
"I had to do it before the wine. The wine would have made the bread less."
"You're an asshole."
"Yes."
She tore off another piece. Pushed the loaf across to him. He took a piece too. They ate bread for half a minute. The host woman, in her small genius, brought the wine over without being asked and walked away without speaking.
Elena took a sip of the wine. Set it down.
"I have to tell you something."
"Go."
"It's expanded."
"The case."
"The case. The cases. It started Bergen, and then the bookmaking thread led into a thing in Passaic, and the Passaic thing turned out to be sharing personnel with a thing in Hudson, and now the thing in Hudson is — it's not Marchetti, Vincent. I want to say that first. Your name has not crossed my desk. Your operations have not crossed my desk."
"Okay."
"But the people in the Hudson thing — some of them — are people who do business with people who do business with people who pay tribute the same place you do."
He set the bread down on the plate. Held the wine glass by the stem.
"How many degrees."
"Two."
"That's not very many."
"That's what I'm telling you."
A waiter came over. Elena ordered without looking at the menu. He ordered the same thing. The waiter went away.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"My boss came in on Monday and put me on the joint task force four months early. I told you six months. It's three weeks."
He did not move his face. He turned the wine glass a quarter inch on the table. The wine in it tilted to the new vertical and tilted back.
"Three weeks."
"Maybe two. They want to brief me on the active investigations on the fifteenth. Once I'm briefed I'm in. Once I'm in I have a fiduciary responsibility to disclose conflicts. If the case I'm reading on the fifteenth has the word Marchetti or the word DiMeo on the same page as your name — I have to recuse off it. Which means somebody has to be told why."
"Which means it goes in a file."
"Which means it goes in a file."
He watched her. She watched him.
"Elena."
"Yeah."
"How would you like me to handle it."
"That's not your question to answer."
"Then how would you like to handle it."
She put the bread piece down on her plate. Put her hands flat on the table on either side of the plate.
"I have thought about this for forty-eight hours, Vincent. And the answer that I keep landing on is — I want you to be more invisible than careful. I want you to be a man who, when the federal agent at the next desk over to me says the name Marchetti came up at a meeting today, the federal agent at the next desk over to me has to look it up because nobody at her shop has heard it. I don't want you protected by careful. I want you protected by boring."
"Boring."
"Boring."
"That's a hard ask."
"I know it's a hard ask."
"I'm working on it."
"I know you're working on it. I'm asking you to work harder."
"I am."
She picked up the wine. Drank a quarter of it. Put it down.
"The bank thing — the line of credit you told me about on the phone — that's good. The hotel bid is good. The frame on the office wall is good. Keep doing those things. Boring is the construction company that you can show me a flowchart of. Boring is not the back booth at the Bing on a Friday night."
He had not told her about the back booth at the Bing on the Friday night.
She watched him take that in.
"It's a small profession, Vincent. People talk to me. People who don't know I know you talk to me about people they don't know I know."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Then I won't be at the back booth at the Bing on Friday nights."
"Thank you."
"Are you going to tell me anything else that I have to not do."
She considered.
"Stop tipping bartenders in hundreds. You think it's invisible. It is the opposite of invisible. The bartender remembers a hundred. The bartender writes a hundred down on a piece of paper at the end of his shift."
"Understood."
"And — Vincent."
"Yeah."
"When you bring me a loaf of my grandmother's bread, you make my job — what you're asking me to do — you make it harder. So thank you. And also — don't do it again until this is over."
"Okay."
They ate the rest of dinner without talking about it.
When the host woman came over for dessert orders Elena shook her head and Vinnie shook his head and the host woman did not ask twice. The check came folded. Vinnie paid in twenties from his wallet and an additional small bill for the host woman that was not a hundred.
Outside on Garden Street the air was the cold-edge kind that came off the river in late April. They walked toward the waterfront because their cars were in opposite directions and because neither of them wanted to be at a curb yet.
The path along the water was empty. Manhattan across the river was the kind of thing that did not change at night except for the lights on the buildings telling you which floors were still working. They walked. He held her gloved hand. The glove was leather and a little too small at the knuckle and she had been complaining about the gloves since November and had not replaced them.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"Don't make me explain you."
He stopped walking. She stopped because his hand stopped.
"What do you mean."
"Don't make me have to sit in front of a man in a brown suit at the end of a year of this and explain why I didn't recuse off a case I should have recused off because I didn't think the words on the page were about my Vincent. Don't make me explain you."
"I won't."
"Don't say I won't. Make it so I don't have to."
"Make me look easy."
"Make yourself look easy. Then I don't have to look at anybody."
He nodded.
He kissed her there on Frank Sinatra Drive with the river behind them and a single jogger somewhere behind her doing his last quarter mile in the dark. The kiss was not the first one and it was not the second and it was the kind of kiss that two people who had been doing this for a while gave each other when neither of them had to ask.
She walked him back to his car. Tommy was at the wheel with the Star-Ledger on the dash. She squeezed his hand. Walked away toward her own car four blocks south.
He got in. Closed the door.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"From this point forward — anywhere I go that is on a piece of paper somewhere — restaurants, my office, the lot, the home address. Anywhere that isn't on a piece of paper — none of it. No more back booths anywhere we don't have to be. No more drop-ins anywhere. The Tuesday Satriale's stays. Everything else changes."
"Done."
"And Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Find me a smaller florist."
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