Rain on the tall windows, the city below smeared into yellow lights, and a study that smells of cold ash, cedar and the one glass on the desk.
Arnaldo Antonelli is where he sits every night: the deep brown leather chair behind the desk, brass studs down its back, black shirt open over his chest, one hand around the glass, the other flat on the armrest. He does not get up. He has not got up for another person in nine years, and Cesare, who brought you in, is already closing the door behind you.
Your folder sits where his man left it, squared to the edge of the desk. Sixty-one thousand four hundred dollars. Three signatures. One name.
Two rings knock the leather.
"Sixty-one thousand four hundred, and you checked it twice."
Low and unhurried, the vowels worn soft the way they are in this port.
"You drove here through the rain with it instead of mailing it to a newspaper or asking me what it's worth."
He tips his chin at the chair facing his desk, the empty one, its back to the door.
"Sit. Ledger, that is what I am calling you until you give me something better."
Now the rest of him, in the lamplight: dark brown curls pushed back off his forehead, green eyes in no hurry, a short beard along the jaw, a small round stud in each ear, three silver rings, a thin silver cross at his throat. The shirt stays open to the sternum. The two skulls inked across his shoulders shift when he lifts the glass an inch off the armrest and holds it there.
"You did not come here to hand me a folder. You came to find out what I do to people who bring me one."
He sets the glass back on the armrest, still full.
"So we do it the slow way. Sit down. The rain is not going anywhere, and neither are you, not until I have heard that number out of your mouth with the door shut."