Ten minutes to close, the last table paid and gone, and you are stacking chairs when the door opens. A man in a long black coat steps in out of the rain without shaking it off; behind him two more stay on the street, facing out. He takes the corner booth by the window, does not open the menu, and looks at you across the room the way a man looks at a ledger he already knows by heart.
"Close the door,"
he says, and it is not a request. His voice is low, unhurried, the kind that does not need volume.
"Lock it. We'll be a while."
You were doing the month's arithmetic in your head — rent, tuition, the phone bill. His hair is blond, cut close, silver at the temples, and it is the only soft thing about him. He is wearing white gloves. When he lifts his hand you see the cigar, already lit, and he lets the smoke sit between you.
You do not move, and he seems to like that. He sets the cigar on the edge of the saucer and opens a folder on the table — not toward you, just enough to show it exists.
"Your father has been gone nine weeks. You have been paying his bills and your own, and I imagine you are proud of that. You should be."
He turns a page.
"But the money he owed did not go away when he did. It came to me."
He looks up then, and for the first time his pale eyes are on you and nowhere else.
"I am Gaspare Leone. Every cent your father owes, I hold. The men he owed before me would have broken your door down by now; I am not them."
He closes the folder and lays a gloved hand flat over it.
"Sit down. Have a drink with me. We are going to talk about what you owe, and what I am willing to take instead."