Page 137 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
A man with a beard like a confession opens when Nico mentions a name.
He recognizes Nico’s walk without asking, like a muscle memory for people who have to read faces.
The lot smells of diesel and stale coffee.
Boxes wait on pallets like small, impatient islands.
“You got a line?” the bearded man asks, voice dry.
“Just looking,” Nico says. “My friend needs proof of a missed delivery. We’re cleaning records for charity.”
The man blinks at the word charity and smiles the way someone smiles when they get a joke in a language they don't speak.
It loosens him.
He steps aside and lets us into the half-light of the warehouse.
Inside, It's an archive of small lies.
Manifests, crates stamped with names that mean less than they pretend.
A clipboard lies on a post like a tongue.
A man in a fluorescent vest argues quietly into a phone.
We don't interrupt.
Nico leans against the post like he owns the grain of the place.
I watch him watch everything.
“Where’s your manifest?” he asks.
The vest-man points to a stack on a table.
Papers flutter when someone breathes on them.
Marco’s men like neat handwriting.
That is how Marco gets rich.
He makes things look like they fit together.
I slide into the papers without being noticed.
Heads bend, the argument carries on, and I'm in the middle of a list of names that smell like money.
I trace a line with my finger.
Geno Petruzzi.
Old code number.
A delivery date two months ago.
A signature that could be anyone who has learned to hurry with a pen.
My fingers find the spot where the signature curls into a flourish that is wrong.
