Page 141 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
Nico pulls his phone and fires off a message to the numbers man.
He doesn’t tell me what he writes but I can see the rhythm of his fingers.
Short, incisive.
In twenty minutes, a battered envelope with a grocery list sticker on it appears on our table at the diner.
Inside is a ledger that looks like a grubby marriage—ink smudged, coffee rings, names that laugh at the idea of cleanliness.
It says what we need.
Marco’s codes moving cash to a shell company that pays out to men who have no coverage.
The ledger looks like something a careless man would make when he wants to forget to be honest.
It will sting in public.
Nico slides the ledger to me.
“You put it where?”
“Union box,” I say. “And a copy to the clerk. Make them have to look at their own paper.”
He smiles then, real and small.
“Good. Now we wait. And be boring.”
I hate waiting, but I like the way the day has bent with the force of our hands.
It's not a victory.
It's an interruption.
Visibility will do the rest.
Men who buy headlines make mistakes when they think they can read the room without wearing the room on their sleeves.
They don't like being wrong in public.
The ledger catches eyes like a mirror.
We walk home the long way and the city watches like a jury that has not yet been bribed.
Outside our door, Nico lets out a breath like a man who has put a match to a rope and is willing to see where it burns.
Inside, the apartment smells like coffee and paper and a scone gone soft.
We don't say much.
We put the evidence where it can't be lost and wait for the phone to ring.
It rings once.
A number I don't know.
He answers and listens.
His jaw works.
