Tommy did not call.
The day after Vinnie had asked him for the lights, the day after that, the day after that — Tommy did not call. Tommy was at the office in the morning the way Tommy was at the office in the morning, drove Vinnie where Vinnie needed to go, drank his coffee at noon, smoked outside the building because Vinnie had asked him not to smoke inside. The Cadillac ran. The Star-Ledger was on the dash. Tommy did not bring up Saddle River. Vinnie did not ask him to.
On the second of July Vinnie went to Ortega's at six in the morning and hit the bag for an hour. Ortega watched the last ten minutes from the door of his office without saying anything. When Vinnie was wrapping his hands again to start a second round Ortega came across the gym and put his hand on the bag.
"Tomorrow."
"What."
"Come back tomorrow. Today you're done."
"I just got started."
"You started forty minutes ago. You stop now."
Ortega waited until Vinnie put the wraps away. Walked him to the door. Mañana, Vinnie. Pulled the door shut.
He drove to the office. Sat at the desk for two hours and did not pick up the phone. The lawyer called at ten. The hotel chain confirmed the contract was set to start July first, which was that morning. Beth Halloran had faxed a welcome packet. Conte came in to ask about a truck. Vinnie answered him without looking up.
At three in the afternoon Tommy stuck his head in the office.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You want me on tonight."
"On what."
"On — on whatever you been not asking me about."
"No."
"You sure."
"I'm sure."
"All right."
He pulled his head back. Closed the door.
Vinnie sat with his hand on the cap of the pen for ten minutes and did not write anything.
On the morning of the third Vinnie was at the gym at six. Ortega let him stay. He hit the bag for forty minutes.
On the morning of the fourth — the Fourth of July, which was a Tuesday this year — the gym was closed. Vinnie went to the lot in the morning instead. The framers were not there because the framers were Americans and were not framing on the Fourth of July. The foreman with the bad knee was there at the trailer doing paperwork by himself with the radio on a Springsteen station out of Asbury. Vinnie sat with the foreman for an hour and talked about lumber prices. The foreman did not ask what Vinnie was doing at the lot at eight AM on a national holiday. Vinnie did not ask the foreman what the foreman was doing at the trailer at eight AM on a national holiday. They drank black coffee out of the foreman's thermos. The radio played a Springsteen song Vinnie had not heard since 1985.
At noon Vinnie drove with Tommy back to the house. He sat in the backyard with a beer and watched two squirrels fight in the spruce for the better part of an hour. The squirrels were committed. They went up the spruce, down the spruce, across the fence, back up the spruce. When they were done the spruce dropped a small green cone on the patio. He picked the cone up. Set it on the picnic table. Went inside.
Elena called at four-thirty to tell him she was at her mother's in Belmar for the rest of the holiday week and that she had thought of him at the parade. He told her he had thought of her in the garden. She laughed. They said goodbye. He sat at the kitchen table with the phone in his hand for another minute after she had hung up.
At nine-thirty that night the phone in the study rang.
He picked it up at the desk.
"Marchetti."
"Vinnie."
Tommy. Not from a payphone this time. From the office, by the background — the wall clock at the office ticked at a slightly different rate than the wall clock in his study, and you could hear it.
"Yeah."
"It's done."
Vinnie sat down at the desk.
"When."
"Tonight. An hour ago. Maybe two."
"Where."
"On a boat."
"Who."
"T, Sil, Paulie."
He closed his eyes.
He opened them.
"How do you know."
"Conte's brother-in-law's neighbor works the marina at Long Branch. Saw the three of them come back in the Stugots at — call it eight-thirty, eight-forty. Three of them in. Not the four that went out. The boat was hosed down before it was tied off. The hose was the kind of hose a man uses when he's hosing down what he's hosing down."
"All right."
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"Conte's brother-in-law's neighbor doesn't know who the fourth man was. He thinks it was probably one of the older guys, that's what he said to Conte's brother-in-law on the phone."
"He thinks."
"He thinks."
"All right."
"Vinnie — "
"Tommy. Don't say it. Don't say his name on this phone. I don't want it on the phone."
"All right."
A pause.
"You want me to come over."
"No."
"You sure."
"I'm sure."
"All right, Vinnie."
He hung up.
He sat at the desk in the study with both hands flat on the wood the way he had sat at the desk in the study with both hands flat on the wood at the end of May. The lamp at the corner of the desk was on. The window faced the side yard. The side yard was dark. Somewhere two streets over a kid was setting off a firework that was not quite a firework but was loud enough that it counted, and another kid was answering with one of his own from the other direction, and the dogs in the neighborhood were doing the thing the dogs in the neighborhood did when the kids were setting them off.
The system warmed.
He let it.
[Threat resolved: Bonpensiero, S. Federal source eliminated. Marchetti exposure: zero. SP awarded: 60.]
He acknowledged it and let it close. He did not look at the number.
He stood up. Went into the kitchen. The kitchen was the room he went to when he had to put a thing somewhere and the desk was not the place to put it.
He pulled down the bottle from the cabinet over the refrigerator — the same twelve-year that had been there in February. He took a glass off the rack. He poured two fingers into the glass and set the glass on the kitchen table and sat down in front of the glass and looked at it.
He did not pick it up.
The amber color in the glass was the color of the kitchen counter the lamp at the desk was reflecting off the side of through the open doorway, and was also the color of the inside of his coat hanging on the chair, and was also the color, more or less, of the light from the streetlight outside the front of the house that came in over the top of the curtain. The whiskey did not move when he did not move. He did not move for several minutes.
He thought of a man at Satriale's at four in the afternoon two weeks ago, setting his hand on the back of a chair to say a thing to another man who was not at the chair.
He thought of a different man in a different season — a man whose books he had paid to have leaked and whose meeting he had not been near — who had also not come out of a room he had walked into.
He had been the engineer of one of those evenings.
He had not been the engineer of this one.
The math, by the count, said the same thing it had said the last time. A man had betrayed an organization. The organization had eliminated the man. Vinnie had not been in the room either time. Vinnie did not, by paper, exist anywhere near either event. The evidence trail was clean. The body would not be found.
The math, by the other count, said a different thing. Salvatore Bonpensiero had three kids and a wife and a mother who lived above a restaurant in West New York and a brother in Connecticut who had not spoken to him in eleven years and was now never going to. Salvatore Bonpensiero had given Vinnie a Christmas card with a handwritten note in it in December that had said Happy Holidays from the Bonpensieros, see you in the new year, S. and that Vinnie still had in a drawer in the kitchen because Vinnie was the kind of man, in this life, who saved Christmas cards from members of the family.
The first count was a number. The second count was a Christmas card.
He sat at the table with the whiskey in front of him.
After a while he stood up. Took the glass to the sink. Poured the whiskey down the drain. Ran the tap. Set the glass upside down on the drying rack.
He went into the kitchen drawer at the end of the counter and pulled out the December card from the back, behind the takeout menus and the receipts he had not filed. He read the handwritten note. He held the card for one minute. Then he put it back in the drawer, in the back, behind the takeout menus.
He turned off the kitchen light.
Went upstairs.
Did not sleep.
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