Chapter 3 - The Cold Math of Respect
By four o’clock in the afternoon, the diner had been cleared.
The shades were drawn down over the front windows, casting the dining room in a muted, sepia twilight. The yellow crime-scene tape that the city police might have used was absent; no police officer had been called, and none would come. The 72nd Precinct understood that Castellano’s handled its own maintenance.
In the back office, beneath a framed photograph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers and a bronze crucifix, Vincent sat behind a desk made of solid mahogany.
Opposite him sat Arthur Lawson.
Arthur was fifty-five, wearing an expensive camel-hair coat that he had not bothered to remove, though beads of sweat were running down his temples into his trimmed grey beard. His hands were clasped between his knees, trembling with an intensity he could not conceal.
“He is twenty-two, Vincent,” Arthur said, his voice cracked with pleading. “He’s a boy. He runs with those idiots from the athletic club. He drinks too much rye.”
“He is a man grown,” Vincent answered. He had an espresso cup before him, the steam rising in a thin, fragrant ribbon. “A boy plays stickball in the street. A man understands that when he enters another man’s house, he honors the bread.”
“I’ll pay for everything,” Arthur blurted out. “Ten thousand. Twenty. Whatever the girl wants. I’ll send her to Florida for a month. I’ll buy her a car.”
Vincent set his cup down with a sharp *clink*.
“You think her dignity has a price tag from your ledger, Arthur?”
Arthur flinched. “No. That’s not what I meant. I only mean—I want to make it right.”
“You cannot make it right,” Vincent said. “You can only survive the mistake.”
Vincent leaned back in his leather chair, folding his hands across his stomach. The afternoon light filtering through the high barred window threw the contours of his face into deep relief, making him look less like a restaurateur and more like an inquisitor from an older, darker century.
“Your son struck a woman under my protection,” Vincent stated. “He laughed while she bled on the floor. If I let him walk back onto Fifth Avenue without a mark, every punk between here and Bay Ridge will think my roof is porous. They will think Vincent Castellano has grown soft because his joints ache when it rains.”
“Vincent, please. His mother—”
“His mother should have taught him that a woman’s face is sacred,” Vincent snapped, the iron returning to his voice. “Listen to me carefully, Arthur. Derek will sign over the title of his car to this diner. You will write a check for fifty thousand dollars to the Sisters of Mercy hospital fund in Amelia’s name. And then your son will leave New York.”
Arthur blinked, dazed. “Leave?”
“He has an uncle in Chicago who packs hides. Derek will work for him. If I see his face south of the Harlem River before five years have passed, I will not call you to this office. I will simply send two boys with a shovel to your summer house in Jersey.”
Arthur stared at the desk. The silence stretched until the grandfather clock in the corner chimed the half-hour.
“Does he keep his teeth?” Arthur asked quietly, defeat settling into his shoulders like wet cement.
May you like
“Most of them,” Vincent replied. “Now get out of my office. Dr. Rossi is finishing with the girl, and I do not want her smelling your panic when she walks through the hall.”
***
