“Senior. The father.” He waves a hand. “Calm down. It’s a thing they do. Have done it for a hundred years. He’ll be fine.”
“They do this regularly?”
“Once a month. Last Friday of every month.” He glances at me. “You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Mm.”
Vincenzo kept compartments. He always had. There were rooms in his life he never opened to me even after twenty years. I knew not to ask about them. Most of the time, the system worked.
But Lorenzo was in this one. And I wasn’t.
What else do you know?
“I’m coming with you.”
He pauses with his hand on the driver’s door.
“You sure, boss? It’s just babysitting. Lot of standing around watching old men drink and lose money. I figured you’d want a shower and nine hours of sleep instead.”
“I’ll shower later.”
“Suit yourself.”
He shrugs and gets in.
I take the passenger seat, making sure to watch his hands on the wheel as he pulls out.
The ring. Heavy gold, signet, third finger of his right hand. The rumor, when I had bothered to listen for it, was that it came off his father’s body after the business with the family in Chicago. I never asked. It’s not the kind of thing you want to know in detail about the people you go to war with.
He pulls out of the garage fast.
He’s always driven this way. I made my peace with it years ago. He’s not driving any differently today.
A man with a guilty conscience drives carefully. A man worried about being watched drives the speed limit.
He’s doing neither.
That’s the problem with looking at someone you’ve known for five years through a new lens. The lens doesn’t show you anything new. It just shows you the same picture and waits for you to decide what you missed.
The casino is under a laundromat on the west side.
You go in through a supply closet behind the dryers. Down a narrow stair lit by a single bulb. Through a steel door with a panel beside it that takes a few knocks in a specific rhythm. Lorenzo does the rhythm without looking at the panel. He’s done it a thousand times.
The door opens.
The man behind it knows him.
“Castellano.”
“Tony! How’s the wife?”
“She left.”
“Then how’s whoever you’re paying to forget that?”
Tony laughs. Lorenzo laughs. The man behind the door registers me a second later than I’d expect.
