Chapter 3 - The Broken Perimeter
By two in the afternoon, the diner was half-empty. The lunch rush had gone, leaving behind the smell of burnt onions and the specific, greasy dampness that came from the dishwasher near the back. Sal was behind the grill, scraping the flat top with a block of pumice stone, his white apron grey with charcoal.
I was wiping down the counter at station three when the bell over the door jingled.
It wasn't Dante. It wasn't the men from the cars.
It was a guy in a green canvas jacket with grease stains on the cuffs. He looked like he worked at one of the body shops down by Grand Avenue—the kind of place where the garage doors stayed down even in July. He had a newspaper rolled up under his arm and his hat pulled low over his forehead.
He sat at the end of the counter, right where the pie case blocked the view from the grill.
"Coffee," he said. His voice was thick, phlegmy.
"Black?" I asked.
"Yeah."
I poured the cup. When I set it down, he didn't reach for the handle. He kept his hands in his pockets. His eyes shifted from the window to me, his gaze staying on my nametag for a second too long.
"You're the girl from Clark Street," he said.
My fingers tightened around the handle of the coffee pot. "I work here, sir."
"I know where you work," he said. He didn't say it like a threat; he said it like a statement of fact, the way an insurance adjuster tells you the replacement value of a roof. "The old man has a lot of names. People are looking for him. People who have been looking for him since the summer."
"He's with his son," I said.
The guy let out a short, dry sound that might have been a laugh if his face had moved. "His son is busy. His son has a lot of things to look after. A lot of trucks that need to cross the state line without the state knowing. Sometimes things get dropped. Sometimes people find things they shouldn't."
He reached into his jacket, and for a second, my heart went up into my teeth. I thought about the coffee pot—the three quarts of boiling water inside it—and whether I could hit him before he cleared his pocket.
He didn't pull a gun. He pulled a small, silver lighter with a initials scratched into the casing: L.F.
"Give this to Dante," the guy said, setting it next to the coffee mug. "Tell him the Moretti boys found it in the ditch near the river. Tell him we know why the gate went dark."
He stood up, leaving a dollar bill on the counter, and walked out before the jingle of the bell had even died away.
I stood there for a minute, the coffee pot still in my hand, looking at the silver lighter. It was old, the chrome pitted by salt or time. L.F. Lucia Ferrante.
"Wren," Sal called from the grill. "Who was that?"
"Nobody," I said, my voice sounding small even to me. "Just a guy who didn't want his coffee."
I picked up the lighter. It was cold, colder than the room, as if it had been sitting in the mud for a long time. I slipped it into my apron pocket next to my pad and my loose change. The metal felt like a small, flat stone against my thigh.
Ten minutes later, the black Lincoln pulled up to the curb outside.
Dante didn't send Marco this time. He came in alone, his long coat open, his dark hair damp from the sleet that had started again around noon. He walked straight to the counter and sat down on the stool the guy in the green jacket had just left.
"You have something for me," Dante said.
"How do you know that?" I asked, looking down at his hands. They were clean, the nails trimmed short, no rings.
"Because the guy who left it works for a man who pays my cousin’s rent," Dante said. "And because my men followed him from the garage on Grand. Give it to me, Wren."
I reached into my pocket and set the silver lighter on the Formica.
Dante didn't pick it up immediately. He just looked at it. His face didn't change, but his eyes went very small, the pupils needle-points in the dark brown iris.
"He said they found it near the river," I said. "He said they know why the gate went dark."
Dante reached out, his long fingers closing over the silver casing. He didn't put it in his pocket; he just held it tight, his knuckles turning white under the skin.
"Get your coat," he said.
May you like
"My shift—"
"Your shift ended five minutes ago," he said, his voice dropping into that low, heavy register that made the diner feel very small and very cold. "Marco is outside with your roommate. Your apartment is empty. You’re coming back to the house."
