Joe Verrazzano was sixty-eight years old and his hands were the size of a man's hands plus a quarter inch on each finger from forty years of carrying lumber, and he sat across the lawyer's conference room table from Vinnie on Wednesday morning the thirteenth of September with a manila envelope in front of him that he did not open while the lawyer talked.
The lawyer talked for forty-five minutes.
Joe Verrazzano did not say anything for forty of them. He listened. He looked at the table while he listened. He looked at the lawyer twice when the lawyer asked him a question, and answered the question with as few words as a man could answer a question of a lawyer with, and went back to looking at the table.
At the forty-fifth minute the lawyer set the pen down and said We're ready to sign, and Joe Verrazzano picked up the manila envelope and slid it across the table to Vinnie.
"That's the keys."
"All right."
"Three sets. One for the yard. One for the truck the foreman uses. One for the trailer office. The trailer office key works in the back door also, but you gotta jiggle it."
"All right."
"I wrote on the envelope which key is which."
"I see that."
"My son Joey — my son Joey was supposed to take this thing. He's not — he's a chiropractor in Pompano. He's got his own thing. I asked him. Three times I asked him. He doesn't want it."
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry. I'm telling you so you know who you bought it from."
"All right, Mr. Verrazzano."
"Joe."
"Joe."
The lawyer set the signature pages out. Joe signed first — his signature was a thing he had been doing the same way since 1957, an enormous looping J in front of a horizontal scribble. Vinnie signed second. Vinnie's signature was the host body's signature, which was a fair copy of Sal's. The lawyer's assistant notarized. The closing took six minutes once the talking was over.
Joe Verrazzano stood up. Shook the lawyer's hand. Shook Vinnie's hand. His grip was the grip of a man whose hands had built houses. He looked at Vinnie's face for an extra second.
"You're Sal's kid."
"I'm Sal's kid."
"He did a thing for me in '79. I never told him thank you the way I wanted to. I never told him."
"That's all right, Joe."
"He helped me out of a thing with a guy on the supply side. I asked him for a favor. He said Joe, don't ask me for the favor, just let me handle the thing, and he handled the thing, and the guy on the supply side and I have been good ever since. I should've sent him something. A bottle. An envelope. Something."
"He wouldn't have taken it."
"That's what I thought too. That's why I didn't send it. But I should've sent it. I'm telling you now so you know."
"I know, Joe."
Joe Verrazzano nodded once. Picked up his coat. Walked out of the conference room. Vinnie watched him go. The lawyer's assistant gathered the signed papers. The lawyer turned to Vinnie.
"You all right."
"I'm all right."
"He's a good guy."
"I know."
"You got a Catholic dad anywhere in this thing, that conversation is going on the to-do list for the next confession."
"Yeah."
The lawyer almost smiled. Almost.
"Welcome to the building business, Vincent."
The yard was on the east side of Verona, behind a chain-link fence that had been the same chain-link fence since 1972, with a single-wide trailer office and a small lot for trucks and a garage bay for the equipment. Three trucks. A small Bobcat. A trailer for the Bobcat. A storage container for tools. A coffee maker in the trailer office that had been there since before the trailer office had been a trailer office.
Tommy was at the wheel of the Cadillac. They pulled up at one of the afternoon.
The foreman — the man Joe had told Vinnie about, a foreman named Eddie Sciorra who had been Joe's foreman for nineteen years — was in the trailer office with two of the framers. He came out when the Cadillac parked at the gate. He was Vinnie's age, in jeans and a white T-shirt and a tool belt, with the kind of forearms a framer had who had been a framer for twenty years.
"Mr. Marchetti."
"Eddie."
"Joe called me at noon."
"How'd he sound."
"He sounded like Joe. A little tired."
"All right."
Eddie waited.
Vinnie looked at the yard. At the trucks. At the trailer. At the storage container. He had asked the lawyer to schedule this visit for one o'clock so that he would not be standing in this yard at eight in the morning with twelve men in a half circle around him on his first day. He had wanted to come at the lunch end of the day, when most of the crews were out on jobs, with just the office foreman and one or two guys around. He had not asked the lawyer to schedule it this way. The lawyer, who was a careful man, had scheduled it this way without being asked.
He turned to Eddie.
"You been here nineteen years."
"Nineteen and a half. I started '81."
"You know every man on this crew."
"I do."
"Anybody walking away on the new ownership."
"Two. The two I know about. One who's been waiting to retire and was holding out for Joe, he's gonna take the package and go. The other one's got a brother-in-law's company in Bayonne and he's been telling people he wanted to make the switch since June."
"That leaves ten."
"Ten."
"Eddie."
"Mr. Marchetti."
"Run it the way you been running it. I don't want anything different about this place at the end of October than what was the case at the end of August. I don't want different paint on the trucks. I don't want different signage on the trailer. I don't want different coffee in the trailer. The only difference between Joe's name on this place and my name on this place is the check goes in a different ledger at the end of the quarter, and the bookkeeping comes through my lawyer's office. That's the whole change. I'm not gonna come up here and tell you how to frame a house. I'm gonna come up here once a month, sit at the table with the foreman and the bookkeeper, ask three questions, and leave. If you have a problem, you call my lawyer. If you have a Joe problem — something a man brings to Joe in his back office because he wants Joe's eyes on it — you call me. That's the structure."
Eddie listened.
"All right."
"Anything you want to ask me."
"You gonna pay the men what Joe paid 'em."
"Plus three percent for the first six months. The lawyer's gonna take care of the announcements next week."
A beat.
Eddie's face did the thing a foreman's face did when he had been waiting forty-five seconds to find out what kind of buyer he was working for and had just found out the kind of buyer he was working for was the kind that didn't crush the wage at the closing.
"All right, Mr. Marchetti."
"Vinnie."
"Vinnie."
"You got a hard hat in that office."
"Why."
"I'd like to walk a job site with you this afternoon. The one in Cedar Grove, the kitchen on Pompton. Show me a frame I've never seen framed by my own men."
Eddie almost smiled. Almost.
"It's a half hour from here. I'll drive."
"All right."
Eddie went into the trailer. Came out with two white hard hats and put one on his own head and held the other out. Vinnie took it. Set it on his head. The hat had a small Verrazzano Builders sticker on the front that he was, by tonight, going to ask the lawyer to leave alone for at least another year.
In the Cadillac on the way home at five, Tommy asked the question Tommy had been holding all afternoon.
"How'd it feel."
"How'd what feel."
"The hat."
"It was an item of clothing, Tommy."
"That was not what I asked."
A beat.
"It felt fine."
"Just fine."
"I'm not gonna tell you it felt great, Tommy. I'm a guy who bought a small construction company, I'm not Bob Vila."
"You looked like Bob Vila."
"Don't be a wiseass."
"Eddie liked you."
"Eddie liked that he was keeping his job."
"That too."
Tommy turned the Cadillac onto the Garden State Parkway. The sun was coming through the driver's-side window the way the sun came through in late September, lower than it had been in August, the gold-orange that meant a Thursday in the city's last warm week before the school-year wind started showing up. Vinnie watched the road. The hard hat was on the seat beside him. He had not put it back in the trailer. He had put it on the passenger seat of the Cadillac at four-thirty and then driven home with it in the seat next to him, and Tommy had not said a word about it for the whole forty-minute ride.
On Saturday morning at eleven Vinnie was at Satriale's at the round table with a coffee when Tony came in.
Tony had Christopher with him. Both of them got coffee. Tony took the chair across from Vinnie. Christopher took the chair next to Tony.
"Marchetti."
"Tony. Chris."
"I hear you bought a construction company."
"Small one. Verrazzano in Verona."
"Joe Verrazzano."
"Joe Verrazzano."
"You're buying empires now, Marchetti."
"It's twelve guys, Tony."
"It's twelve guys this quarter."
"It's still twelve guys."
Tony nodded slowly. Drank coffee. Looked at Christopher. Christopher was looking at Vinnie like a man looking at a thing he was being expected to learn from. Tony looked back at Vinnie.
"You're doing it the right way. You hear me?"
"Yeah."
"Diversifying. Buying clean. Paying decent money. Not trying to — not trying to muscle your way into a sector you got no business being in. That's how it's supposed to work."
"Thank you, Tony."
"Christopher, you watching this."
"Yeah, T."
"This is the way you grow. You don't grow by taking. You grow by buying. A guy buys a thing, the thing makes him money, he buys another thing. Twenty years later he's the guy other guys come to. Twenty years from now Marchetti's gonna be the guy people in this room come to for a — for a thing. I'm telling you now, you remember I told you."
"I'll remember, T."
"Good."
He drank coffee.
"Marchetti."
"Yeah."
"Tell the lawyer I want to do a thing on the construction side. Through your construction company. Legitimate. A — a small thing. Not big. Through Sil, the way the waste partnership goes through Sil. I want to know whether your lawyer thinks it's the kind of thing that makes the company healthier or the kind that makes it sicker."
"I'll tell him."
"Don't promise me yes. Tell me what he says."
"All right."
Tony nodded. Pushed back from the table.
"Christopher, let's go."
"Yeah, T."
"Marchetti. Saturday next week, my house, two-thirty. Carmela wants you to bring that woman of yours."
Vinnie sat with that for a half second.
"I'll ask her, Tony."
"You ask her. You tell her — you tell her Carmela said she heard a thing about her that she wants to confirm with her own eyes."
"What thing."
"That's between Carmela and the woman of yours. Don't ask. You drive her, you eat the food, you sit on my deck for two hours, you go home. Two-thirty."
"All right."
Tony nodded once. Buttoned his coat. Christopher nodded at Vinnie on the way out. The bell did its sound.
Vinnie sat at the round table for one more minute.
Then he got up. Went to the front of the deli where Tommy was reading the Star-Ledger. Sat down across from him.
"Tommy."
"Yeah."
"Next Saturday two-thirty. Soprano house. Me and Elena."
Tommy lowered the paper.
"Carmela invited Elena."
"Tony said Carmela said."
"Vinnie. That's — that's a thing."
"It's a thing."
"Elena's gonna kill you."
"Or she's gonna come."
"You think she'll come."
"I'm gonna ask her tonight."
"From which payphone."
"Quick Chek on Tonnelle."
"All right."
Tommy raised the paper again. Lowered it once more.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"Eddie called me at the office this morning. Said he had a question about the trailer keys."
"Did you help him."
"I told him to call you."
"Good."
The paper went back up.
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