Page 63 of Dirty Pool

Maybe it was because Michel had grown up around the kind of wealth that was both stunning and surreal, but the sight of money never did very much for him. Not like some people who practically salivated at the sight of stacked bills on the table.

He’d once watched his grandfather buy his grandmother a thirty-carat gold chandelier the size of a small car to hang in her library just because he thought it would go with the theme. His mother bought herself a private jet for her fortieth birthday and didn’t even ask for the price tag before handing over a card to pay for it. The watch on his wrist, currently, cost an easy five grand and that was before the case he used to store it and keep it constantly spinning to maintain time.

Money wasn’t a new concept to Michel. There was nothing about it that he found particularly miraculous because he’d been desensitized to it. No doubt, that was his incredible privilege staring back at him—someone might find it disgusting that they assumed he didn’t truly appreciate the value of money, even if that wasn’t the case.

It simply didn’t make any difference to him when money was around. Which was a topic for another day, but he found it also did him a lot of good at times where money was on the table.

Everyone else in the room?

Watching that money.

Michel?

Unimpressed.

His father liked to say that nothing good came from men who were entranced by a small stack of bills. They couldn’t be trusted not to touch it. Seemed simple, right? Dante had a point, a good one.

Michel never had any desire to reach out and put his hands on something that didn’t belong to him just because it looked pretty and seemed foreign to him. Someone else, though? It became a constant urge they had to fight.

Nothing good in this business.

“Michel, you’re up next,” Sal said.

Tribute was another concept that wasn’t anything new to Michel. Growing up, he’d watched more than one tribute meeting from afar as his father sat at the head of a table, accepting his payments from every Capo in la famiglia. He’d also partook in the Cosa Nostra tradition more than once during his high school years when he was dealing drugs, and had to pay a portion of his earnings to one of his cousins making their way up in the ranks of the mafia.

Once a month, people gathered to meet whomever they owed their portion to, and handed it over. It wasn’t the actual tribute—that happened when the made man took his portion from the earnings he made through several venues, including people like Michel, to the man heading the family. The boss. Like Michel’s father.

He’d been lucky enough, or that’s what people would tell him, to be on both ends of the spectrum. The person on the front lines making money for the Capo, and the person in the room when that Capo brought his earnings into his boss to pay the tribute. He understood what happened now when he paid this money to the Capo, and he knew very well what would happen when Sal took his portion higher up, too.

Some details of tribute might vary between families. Things like how much of a percentage one might pay from their earnings, or how they might pay it to the boss be it through an envelope filled with cash, illegal transfers through offshore banks, or even safety deposit box pickups. Those were the minor details.

But the tradition itself?

Tribute?

Never changed.

One always had to pay the boss.

Michel stepped up to the table in the restaurant as the other man moved back, already done with his time there. The stack of bills on the table filled over half of it, though, all separated in different denominations. It was enough to make the man—a new bookie, Michel thought—glance back to look at the cash one more time.

In front of Sal sat a black notebook which he used to write down each person’s initials, and the money they brought in. It was how the man made sure no one was stiffing him when he could look back months for trends in payments, and more. There was always a bit of variance month to month, but nothing major. And if someone had constant variances that were concerning, then Sal had the proof staring back at him to deal with the issue.

Nobody wanted that.

To someone else, they might open that book and wouldn’t have a clue what they were looking at. Sal didn’t seem to have that problem at all because he knew exactly what he was doing to keep track of his money and people.

Sal was already scratching Michel’s initials down on the paper before he even spoke to him—M.M. “Put it in, and pay it down.”

Michel, unconcerned about the rest of the money on the table, and the other people in the room who were currently waiting their turn to pay or leave, pulled out a three-inch stack of bills that he’d made over the last month. Another month working for Sal as a dealer. Almost three altogether. A big part of him was ready to just focus on what he came to Detroit for.

Med school.

Before Sal could tell him to do it, Michel slipped half of the bills into the machine that would easily count the money, and spit it out on the other side. Once that half a stack had gone through, the machine beeped loudly, and a number came up on the screen in digital, red numerals. Sal nodded, and pointed his pen at the machine before plucking up the neat stack on the other side to begin separating it out by denomination.

And also, recount.

Because despite having the machine to do the counting for him, Sal was particular. Like all made men were. Every man Michel knew in this life liked to say the mafia was a nickel and dime business. Every single cent had to be counted, recounted, and possibly checked again.