Digging in my dresser, I grab my melatonin and take a couple and then I close my eyes against the feeling of dread building in the pit of my stomach.
Chapter Three: Carmelo
Thebodyshopison a side street off Passyunk, wedged between a check-cashing place and a laundromat that hasn't been open in God knows how long. The roll-up door is halfway down, there's a Cadillac on the lift, a Honda on blocks and the smell of motor oil and cigarettes coming through the gap. I duck under the door and the two men inside look up at the same time.
The one under the Cadillac is holding a wrench. Mid-forties, thick forearms, grease to his elbows. Not the one I'm here for.
The one sitting on the tool chest with a sandwich in his hand is.
Tommy Delvecchio. Fifty-one. Runs a book out of this shop and two others in South Philly and owes the Bonaccorso family sixty-two thousand dollars for product that was fronted to him nine months ago and has been ducking Leone's calls since January. Leone mentioned it the day I left for Philadelphia. "Since you're there."
Delvecchio sees me and the sandwich stops halfway to his mouth. He doesn't know my name. He knows what I look like because men in his position make it their business to know what every enforcer on the eastern seaboard looks like, and I'm not a difficult man to remember.
"I called Leo," he says. "Last week. I told him I needed more time."
"You did not."
"I called the number."
"You called the number and hung up before anyone answered. Three times." I know this because I’m the one he hung up on.
Delvecchio puts the sandwich down. The man under the Cadillac is watching us. He's still holding the wrench. I look at him and he puts the wrench on the floor and slides out from under the car and walks to the back of the shop, through a door and closes it behind him.
Smart.
"I have forty," Delvecchio says.
"You have sixty-two."
"I don't have sixty-two. I have forty. I can get the rest but I need until the end of the month."
I pull the knife from my belt. Not fast. There's no reason to be fast. Delvecchio isn't going to run because there's nowhere to run to, and he isn't going to fight because he's fifty-one years old and sitting on a tool chest eating a ham sandwich. I'm six-four and holding a blade and that is simple enough that even a man who can't pay his debts can do the math.
I walk to him. He doesn't move. I take his left hand, and I put it flat on the tool chest. I put the tip of the knife against the webbing between his index and middle finger and I press until the skin dimples and a bead of blood comes up around the point.
"The end of the month," I say.
"Yes."
"Forty now. Twenty-two by the thirtieth."
"Yes. Yeah. By the thirtieth."
"If it's the first and I haven't heard from Leone that the balance is clear, I'm going to come back here, and this conversation is going to be different."
"I understand."
I hold the blade there for another three seconds because the three seconds matter more than anything I've said. Words are a negotiation. Silence with a knife in your skin is a fact. Then I pullthe blade back and wipe the point on his shirt and fold it and put it back on my belt.
"The forty," I say.
He gets off the tool chest and goes to the back office and comes out with a bag. I don't bother to count it because if it's short I'll know and he knows I'll know and the knife just told him what happens next. I take the bag and walk out.
The sunlight on Passyunk is too bright after the shop. I squint and turn east and walk twelve blocks to the apartment, and the bag goes under the bed. I'll deal with it later. I wash my hands in the bathroom sink. Delvecchio's blood circles the drain, thin and pink, and then it's gone. I dry my hands and grab my knife and go to the window.
Grace is working the lunch shift. I can see her through the restaurant's front window, moving between tables, plates on her arm.
I've mapped her world. All of it. It took a day and a half because there isn't much to see. The restaurant, open six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday. Her apartment, third floor, two windows facing the street, one facing the alley. The bodega on the corner where she stops almost every morning—the woman behind the counter talks to her and Grace listens and smiles and pays too much for her coffee on purpose. The laundromat four doors down from the bodega where she does her clothes on Monday, her day off, at nine in the morning. She carries the bagon her left shoulder, and her right hand is free and the tapping happens against her thigh while she walks.
