Satriale's at nine on a Tuesday smelled like coffee and the salami slicer.
Vinnie pushed the door. The bell did the small flat sound it had done for thirty years. Two old guys at the front counter looked up — the one in the windbreaker who was there every morning, the one in the Carhartt coat whose name Vinnie didn't know — and looked back at their papers when they saw him. The kid behind the deli case nodded once. Vinnie nodded once back.
Tony was at the round table in the back with Silvio and an empty chair. He saw Vinnie come in. He didn't wave. He lifted his chin a quarter-inch and Silvio looked over the top of his glasses and Vinnie went to the counter and got a coffee and a sfogliatella he didn't really want and brought both to the back table.
"Vincent."
"Mr. Soprano. Sil."
"Sit down."
He sat. Silvio went back to reading the Star-Ledger business section with the slightly bored expression he wore when he was actually reading carefully. Tony was eating a bagel. The bagel had a quarter pound of cream cheese on it. Tony was a man who was either going to die of one of two things and the cream cheese was one of them.
"You're up early," Tony said.
"I had a thing in Newark. Thought I'd swing through."
"What kind of thing."
"Construction filing. Lawyer wanted to see me before nine."
"You're filing a construction company."
"Marchetti Construction Holdings. Newark."
Tony chewed. He looked at Vinnie while he chewed. Silvio's eyes did not lift from the paper but the corner of his mouth did the small Silvio twitch that meant I'm listening to this.
"That's the diversifying you were talking about."
"It is."
"What are you building."
"Nothing yet. The filing first. The contracts after. I got a foreman with a bad knee who's been hauling concrete for thirty years. He knows the unions in Essex County like he knows his own driveway. I'm going to put him in a hard hat and a clean office and let him bring me jobs."
Tony nodded slow. The nod was the Tony version of a thumbs-up. He set the bagel down on the wax paper.
"You're a different kind of guy, Vinnie. You know that."
"My father used to say it. He didn't mean it as a compliment."
"He was wrong."
Vinnie didn't answer. The compliment was the kind of compliment Tony gave that wasn't really a compliment, it was a positioning. Tony was telling him I notice the difference and I'm not punishing you for it. The not-punishing was the gift. Vinnie took the gift and put it where he kept gifts from Tony, which was a careful place.
He drank coffee. Bit the sfogliatella. The shell shattered down the front of his coat the way sfogliatella always shattered down the front of a coat, and Silvio finally lowered the paper to laugh, the dry once-through Silvio laugh that was about as much laughing as Silvio did.
"Look at him," Silvio said. "His mother dressed him."
"My mother is in Florida," Vinnie said.
"She'd be disgusted."
"She'd be disgusted."
Tony grinned. The grin was small. He had been waiting, the way Tony always waited, for the actual reason Vinnie had come.
Vinnie brushed the sfogliatella crumbs off his lap. Took another sip.
"Couple things." His voice was the same as it had been. He let it stay the same. "First — Richie's guys picked up the Market Street row last week. The four shops in Belleville my father had. I think you knew that already, but I wanted to mention it."
Tony's face did not change.
"Yeah," Tony said. "Yeah, he mentioned he was rebuilding his thing."
"That's what I figured."
"You got a problem with that?"
The question was not the question. The question was the test the question was wrapped around. Silvio's eyes had come up off the paper.
"No problem," Vinnie said. "Four shops in Belleville. Two grand a month. Worth less than the bad blood would cost. I'm not going to make a thing of it. I just figured you'd want to know it happened, in case anybody told you I made a thing of it later."
Tony watched him for a beat. Then he picked up the bagel again, took a bite, chewed slow.
"That's a good way to come at it."
"I appreciate that, Mr. Soprano."
"Tony."
"Tony."
A pause.
"Rich is gonna want more." Tony said it conversationally. Almost a small confession between friends. "He's a guy who, you know, ten years inside, he comes out, he's gotta prove a thing. He's gonna push. He's gonna push you, he's gonna push other people. Some of it I'll let him have. Some of it I won't."
"Understood."
"I appreciate you telling me. Not making a big thing." Tony's eyes were not warm. They were the eyes Tony had when he was using a man the way he wanted a man to be used. "Just — you see him push, you tell me. Like this morning. That's all I want. I don't need you to fight him. I got people for that."
"I will."
"Just keep me informed."
"I will."
Tony finished the bagel. He pushed the wax paper into a ball and dropped it on the table. He drank coffee.
"You ever watch the football game Sunday."
"I watched."
"That tackle."
"Yeah."
"One yard. The kid stretches out, the ball's like — " Tony made a horizontal motion with his hand. "He stretches and the other kid hits him from the side and the ball doesn't get to the goal line by — I don't know — six inches. Six inches. Whole season."
"It was a hell of a play."
"That's the Titans' year, by the way. They were not the better team."
"They were the better team for fifty-nine minutes."
"Fifty-nine minutes and fifty-four seconds."
"Sure."
"You like the Rams?"
"I like the Rams. I was rooting for the Titans."
"Why."
"Underdog."
"You always root for the underdog?"
"Mostly."
Tony grinned again. A second grin in one breakfast was rare. "That tracks."
Silvio folded the paper. Looked at Vinnie. "Marchetti. You done?"
"I'm done, Sil."
"Then beat it, you're cluttering my morning."
Vinnie smiled. Stood. Shook Tony's hand. Tony's grip was firmer than usual, which was Tony's way of putting a small underline under a small thing.
"Tuesdays are good for this," Tony said.
"Tuesdays are good."
"I'll see you next week, maybe."
"You'll see me next week."
He went out past the deli case, past the old guy in the Carhartt, past the bell. Silvio's eyes followed him to the door and Silvio gave him the smallest nod the human face could make, which was an entire conversation in nod form: good. clean. useful.
Outside, the morning was cold enough that his breath was a real cloud. Tommy was across the street, paper on the dash, engine running. Vinnie crossed the street and got in.
"How was it."
"It was fine."
"He listen."
"He listened."
Tommy nodded. Pulled out into the avenue.
"Where to."
"Newark." Vinnie buttoned his coat against the heater that hadn't kicked in yet. "I want to see the foreman."
"With the knee."
"With the knee."
The Cadillac rolled north on Kearny Avenue. Vinnie put his head against the seat back and closed his eyes for one long blink and opened them again, and there was a coffee stain on the lapel of his coat from the sfogliatella, small and irregular and shaped like New Jersey.
He left it there.
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