“Mr. D’Amico.”
“Tony.”
We go in.
The room is wood-paneled and old. Someone has put work into making it look like the 1920s. Smoke hangs at chest height. A small jazz combo plays in the corner without anyone listening to them. Maybe twenty players, mostly men of a certain age.
The center table is the one I’m here for.
Vincenzo is at it. Whiskey in one hand, cards in the other, slouched. Across from him: Victor Moreno Sr.
Vincenzo’s laughing.
Victor Sr. is laughing back.
Outside of two state funerals, I’ve never seen them at the same table before.
They look like brothers now.
Lorenzo guides me to a spot along the far wall. Decent sightlines. Two exits within reach. He gestures for a drink, and one of the women working the floor brings him whiskey without asking.
He hands the glass to me.
“You look like you need it more than I do.”
I take it. I don’t drink.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Boss. I’ve been telling you about this for years.”
“No, you haven’t.”
He squints at me. “Eh. Maybe I haven’t. It’s the kind of thing you don’t bring up because everybody’s supposed to know. The two of them were drinking together when my father was a kid. They came up together. Then the eighties happened, you know the eighties, and they became enemies on paper. But this they kept.” He gestures at the table. “Neutral ground. No business. Cards and shit-talk. Once a month, like the moon.”
“And you’ve always known?”
“Everybody knows.”
“I didn’t.”
He looks at me.“Yeah. Okay. That is interesting.”
He says it without performance. Without smirk. He’s noticed, the same way I have, that there’s a hole in my information where there shouldn’t be one.
I drink, after all.
The whiskey’s cheap. The room is wrong. The two old men at the center table are laughing about a hand Vincenzo just lost, and Victor Sr. is leaning forward to refill Vincenzo’s glass himself, and Lorenzo is at my elbow watching me watch them.
I run the question back through my head one more time.
Lorenzo has been with me for five years. He’s done every job I’ve ever asked of him without complaint.
He also knew where she lived.
He’s also the most comfortable person in this room full of Morenos.
He’s also, I’m realizing, one of the only people in this city who could move between the two old men at that table without raising an eyebrow on either side.
