On the fifth morning of his imprisonment, something happened that was outside the drab routine: Pretty Boy came storming in, bellied up against him, and backhanded him hard across the cheek. Flesh tore inside his mouth as it was crushed against his teeth.
"Some fuckin' tip we get from you, crumb-fuck," said the thug on speed. "Fuckin' tip coulda fucked us all."
Gino didn't know what he was talking about. He stood there, one eye tearing, waiting for more information or more punishment.
Messina and Bo filed silently in. Bo took the lid off a container of coffee. Messina, wearing a dark gray coat over a dark gray turtleneck, moved slowly to the metal desk and leaned against the edge of it. He frowned, took a fleck of something off his tongue, then said to Gino, "The pencil. The guy that's writing for your father. D'you know he's working with the Feds?"
Gino's survival reflexes had come alive. He made a point of looking even more flabbergasted than in fact he was.
"We checked his office," Messina went on. "Know what we found? FBI business card. Agent Mark J. Sutton, of the so-called elite O.C. squad."
A gust rattled the warehouse, made it sing around its rivets. "I had no idea," Gino whined. "I swear on my mother."
Bo slurped coffee; his manic partner went to the Venetian blind and let his fingernails play its slats as if it were a xylophone. After a moment Messina said, "Gino, you've been causing us a lotta worry. First you worry us about that fuckin' union . Then you worry us about your old man's book. Now you worry us about the Feds. That's a lotta worry, Gino."
The prisoner signaled his remorse by putting on his most hangdog expression and staring at the floor. Messina wrapped the panels of his bulky coat more snugly around himself; worry made him cold.
"So you know what we're gonna do, Gino?" the doleful boss resumed.
Gino didn't know, but he had some ideas. The East River was maybe fifty yards from where he stood; this time of year it was cold enough to stop a person's heart well before he drowned. The captive swallowed, sucked his lower lip, and waited for sentence to be pronounced.
Messina hunched his shoulders and buried his thin chapped hands deeper in the pockets of his coat. He glanced morosely up from under his furrowed brow and said, "We're gonna let you go."
———
"Bert!" said Sal Giordano, sliding bulkily out of his booth at the pasticceria on Carmine Street. "Bert the Shirt! Good Christ Almighty!" The loyal Pugliese soldier, his eyes squeezed almost shut with grinning, lumbered around the table, grabbed the old man by the arms, and beamed at him as though he was a dear and long-lost uncle.
It was exactly the kind of exuberant and showy greeting that Bert had hoped to find on his journey north, but it came a day too late. The foreignness of the city, the archaicness of his being there, had already sunk too deeply into him. He felt self-conscious, felt like he was sleepwalking. He managed only a soft hello.
"What brings ya ta New Yawk?" Sal asked him.
By way of answer, Bert glanced quickly toward the empty place where Sal had been sitting.
The younger man gestured him into it and yelled for another espresso. Once they were seated, Bert leaned confidentially across the table and whispered, "I got a dog under my coat. OK I take him out heah?"
"Bert, hey, you're wit' me. Ya do whatever da fuck ya like."
The Shirt nodded, freed the chihuahua. The brittle animal blinked its milky eyes, then patrolled the upholstered bench, sniffed the unspeakable crumb-laden seam where the back joined the seat, and sneezed.
"Salud," Sal said. "So Bert, what's the story?"
"It's Gino."
Sal's wry face became a roadmap of disapproval. "He fuckin' up again? He makin' trouble for Joey?"
"Not for Joey dis time," said Bert. "For himself. He got himself in a bad beef wit' the Fabrettis. Don't ask me more."
The young soldier raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "OK," he said. "More I don't gotta know."
Bert lowered his voice another notch. "But there's somethin' I'm hopin' ya can do for me. I gotta go ta da top, gotta get wit' Messina. Can ya set dat up for me?"
Sal's head snapped back. At least that's what the tiny flinch seemed like to Bert. Bert was studying him hard now, doing what he used to do best, which was reading faces, figuring out what drove guys. Sal was good people, a guy who really wanted to help; at the same time, he didn't want to admit his limits or his fears. If you could get him right at the cusp of his bravado, just at the edge of how far he could go, he'd really push to save face and do you a solid.
While Bert was thinking this, a strange thing happened. His self-consciousness fell away. He forgot about the grippy tightness inside his ribs. He didn't feel young; it just stopped mattering that he was old. It stopped mattering that the world had changed. He was still himself, and if he took on an obligation to a friend, he would find a way to see it through. He reached up and toyed with the silver collar pin of his pale-blue monogrammed shirt.