Chapter 2: The Man Who Buries Whole Crews

"I asked you a question," Bianca said.

"No, ma'am. Just the espresso."

I stepped back from the table. Eyes down. Small. Invisible.

Three years of practice.

Enzo Castellano didn't move out of the doorway, so I had to walk past close enough to smell gun oil and winter.

He didn't look at Bianca.

He looked at me.

"You read the file," he said.

Not a question.

"I set down a tray."

"For eleven seconds. Then you read the file."

Bianca laughed too loudly. "Enzo, she's the dish girl. She wouldn't understand a word of it. Half of them can't read the specials board."

Something moved behind his eyes. He walked into the room without answering her.

I made it to the dumbwaiter before my hands started shaking.

Gia found me in the basement at midnight with two cannoli and the face she makes when she has information.

Gia keeps the books. Gia is the only person here who likes me. Gia also knows one thing about me, and she has been sitting on it for eleven months like a woman holding a live grenade.

"So," she said. "Nico."

"So."

"Enzo raised him since he was seven. Parents got hit in a car outside Atlantic City. That kid is the only family he has." She bit a cannoli. "Four days. The brokers moved the number up twice. Bianca says pay. Enzo's about to say send in guns."

"That's sad."

"Anna." She stared at me. "Anna."

"Don't."

"Last year I watched you re-count a bag on the Rizzo delivery that would've started a war, and when I asked how you knew, you said, and I quote, 'I read a lot.'" She leaned in. "Dish girls do not read a lot. Dish girls do not correct the consigliere's deal memos in pencil and slide them back under the office door at two in the morning."

My stomach dropped. "You know about that?"

"Everyone upstairs knows about that. They call it the Kitchen Ghost." She shrugged. "They think it's some old retired wiseguy who wanders in. I have never once told them it's a thirty-year-old woman with a bad haircut."

"Gia."

"Whatever you're running from — fine. But that boy is sixteen."

I said nothing.

She sighed, stood, and dropped a sticky note on my station on her way out.

PRIVATE ROOM, 4PM TOMORROW. Bianca's walking the plan for Enzo and the Philly guy. Bring glasses.

At 3:52, Bianca appeared at the dumbwaiter.

"Russo. With me."

"I'm on until six."

"You're on wherever I say. Bring the tray, stand by the wall, refill water, and do not open your mouth." She fixed her lipstick without looking at me. "Enzo wants a witness who isn't made. God knows why. Just stand there and look clean."

I stood there and looked clean.

The room filled. Bianca. Sal Marchetti, underboss, fifty-eight, wedding ring, a laugh he only uses around her. Two captains. A lawyer.

And Enzo Castellano at the far end, not touching the water, not touching the folder, just watching everyone the way you watch a card table for cheating.

On speakerphone, from Philadelphia, an old fixer named Benny Aiello.

For twenty minutes it went fine.

Then Benny said something that made the room go quiet.

"Look, the shape of this isn't new. Two crews, one kid, brokers in front. There's exactly one person who ever brought somebody out of that alive. The Moretti girl. La Voce."

Enzo's head lifted. "Then get her."

"Can't. She's gone. Walked out three years ago after her old man. No number, no city, nothing." A pause. "That kind of talent doesn't disappear. It just... stopped."

My pitcher slipped a half inch in my hand.

Bianca smiled, easy and gorgeous. "With respect, I don't need a ghost. I've talked to these men six times. My plan is sound."

"You're certain," Enzo said.

"I'd stake my life on it."

I stood against the wall in a stained apron, holding a pitcher of water, and thought:

You're staking his brother's life on it. Not yours. His.

Enzo closed the folder.

"Fine," he said. "Full walk-through tomorrow, nine a.m. Everyone. On the record. If I'm not satisfied, we're done talking and I do this my way."

Sal went gray.

Bianca said, "You'll be satisfied."

Then Enzo stood, and as he passed my corner, he stopped.

Close enough that I saw the exhaustion under the ice.

"You're in the room tomorrow," he said quietly.

"Sir, I'm not—"