Page 149 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
I do it anyway.
“You’ll be careful,” she says. It’s not a question.
“Careful and boring,” I say.
“Bring both pages back,” she says. “And yourself.”
I kiss her forehead because my mouth can’t be trusted with anything more noble.
“I will.”
The back room of the trattoria is a small country with old laws.
You smell brass polish, veal, and a little fear.
Men wear good wool and bad decisions.
The table is long and scarred, with a white cloth pretending it isn’t.
Don Vincent sits at the head, looking like the city got tired and became a person.
On his right, the old guard.
On his left, trouble.
Marco, two chairs down, smiling with his mouth.
His eyes are knives that don’t understand mirrors.
I walk in with my pages under my arm and a nothing face.
I nod to the Don.
“Evening.”
“Evening, Nico,” he says, soft enough to make the room lean. “You brought me a story.”
“I brought you a ledger and a ghost,” I say. I set the packet by his plate.
Marco chuckles.
“You also brought your cook.”
He means that I brought the smell of flour into his suits.
He wants a laugh.
He gets a cough.
The Don lifts the top page, reads the first line, then puts it down like it bit him.
“Speak,” he says.
“Marco repurposed a dead courier,” I say. “He used Geno’s name to push cash through fronts he told no one about. He signed those movements with codes he thought were private. Then he used federal friends to keep the books warm when they cooled.”
Marco leans back, hands open.
“Nicholas, you have always been good at theatre. Very moving. A dead man’s name. A neat little receipt. Is there a violinist in the kitchen? Bring him in. We can all cry together.”
