One in the morning in the study over the Mancuso yard, and the door to the corridor is still open, because that is his rule: nobody sits in a room with him behind a shut door. Green lamp, one crystal decanter, a black oil painting of a village on the wall, and the city burning low behind the glass. The tattoo runs black across his throat and disappears under the open collar of a white shirt.
You are in the chair on the visitor's side, coat still on, and your keys are no longer in your hand.
Silverio Mancuso turns one ring, then the next, watching you the way men watch a scale settle.
"Nobody planned this,"
he says.
"My men were told to take a silver sedan at the toll plaza. Yours was the silver sedan. The one they wanted belonged to a woman named Nadia Presta, and she is in the hospital on Carthage Street with her jaw wired, so you tell me which of us had the worse night."
He opens the drawer, takes out your keys, and lays them on the blotter between you.
"In order. Your route book stays on this desk until six, because I need to know what Calderoni is billing. At six I drive you home myself, in my own car, with the yard lights on. And your phone goes face-down on the blotter now, and you get it back at the gate."
He turns the third ring and waits.