ERICA
Chapter playlist:
Sloppy Soup Samba — Daniel Pemberton
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked — Cage The Elephant
The bell above the door does its little ding as I walk in, and Donna’s pen is already moving. The little notepad appears from her apron pocket before I've cleared the entrance mat. She writes without looking up, tears the top sheet, and clips it to the order wheel.
“Blueberry stack, extra butter, strawberry shake. Extra whipped cream.”
Donna is basically a permanent feature of the place like the specials board that still lists pie for two-fifty.
She loves me.
She really does.
“Thank you, Donna.”
She gives me the look that means I know, honey, and then she’s gone.
I head straight to the back.
Vin’s Diner exists in a pocket of Bay Ridge that won’t let go of the 1970s.
The booths are cracked red vinyl, and the menus are covered in plastic and a sticky residue that will never come off.
The light comes through the front windows at an angle that makes everything look slightly golden, even on gray mornings.
It smells like maple syrup and burnt coffee and fry oil that probably needs to be changed more often.
Every time I walk in here it brings me back to my childhood, as unconventional as my childhood was.
Uncle Sal is keeping office hours as usual.
Nine o’clock, corner booth, every morning, as reliable as the sun coming up.
Anyone who’s anyone in this city knows Sal’s standing reservation at Vin’s Diner.
I’m fairly certain the city of New York would relocate the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge before asking Sal Delray to move tables.
Technically, he’s not my uncle. But he was a father figure to my father, and in our world, that’s practically blood.
It’s complicated.
He’s reading his newspaper when I walk over. Old school. He doesn’t look up.
I kiss his cheek before sliding in across from him.
“Hey Uncle Sal.”
“Hey Kid.”
He’s in the cream blazer today. I have spent twenty years wondering whether it’s one blazer or twelve identical blazers.
He looks exactly the same as always. Thick black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.
The bolo tie with the turquoise stone he claims came off a senator (though which senator depends on the decade and his mood), and the enormous gold pinky ring.
He folds the newspaper, looks at me over the rim of his glasses.
“So,” he says.
That is his invitation for anyone to get to the point. One of the things I love about Sal.
“I need to put together a crew,” I say.
He lifts his coffee cup. Considers it. Sets it back down. The western omelette is half-finished. White toast beside it, one piece gone. He’s been here a while. He is always here a while.
“What kind of crew?”
“Small. Six, maybe seven.” I fold my hands on the table. “I think I can get most of my usual girls. I just need two more.”
“Such as?”
“A smithy. Old school.”
He nods once.
“And… someone with DC connections.” I keep my voice easy. “A face.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then he makes a low sound in the back of his throat, and says, “DC.”
The word sits between us like he placed it there on purpose and is waiting to see what I do with it.
He already knows.
Of course he already knows. Sal Delray has spent sixty years knowing exactly who’s in every room worth being in, and he knows precisely what’s in Washington, DC.
The lines around his eyes don’t move. Takes a deliberate sip of his coffee.
It’s probably getting cold by now, but Sal never makes a fuss over such things.
The man’s built a lot of wealth over the years, but he doesn’t let it show.
He’s not flashy, drives an old Buick, and never wastes food.
Even if it means drinking cold coffee over getting a fresh cup.
At length he says, “The museum. People will be watching.” He turns his cup a quarter-turn on the saucer. “The question is what they’re watching for.”
There it is. The thing he’s not saying, taking up room between us.
I let that sit for one breath.
“The job isn’t at the museum,” I say.
He goes still. The small cup-turnings, the resting fingers, all of it stops at once. He looks at me.
“The piece is being moved,” I say. “One night only. First time in decades it’s leaving the premises, and it won’t leave again for a long time after.”
“Your father…”
“I know. This is different. I won’t make the same mistakes he did.”
“People have long memories,” he says. “There will be friction.”
“I know that, too. I saw Hobbs when I was in DC.”
Sal narrows his eyes.
“He didn’t see me, don’t worry. He was mid-conversation on the front steps of the museum. I was half a block away before I placed the face.” I keep my voice even. “I turned the corner before I was made.”
A beat.
“I’m almost certain he didn’t see me.”
Donna materializes. Blueberry pancakes, extra butter already working its way across the top of the stack in little golden rivers.
Strawberry shake with the whipped cream a full inch over the rim of the glass, because Donna has strong convictions about whipped cream and I have never once disagreed with her.
She sets everything down without ceremony, and refills Sal’s cup before he can reach for it.
She’s been doing that my whole life. On her way past, Donna’s hand lands on my shoulder for exactly one second. She doesn’t look at me. I don’t say anything. We’ve been doing that my whole life too.
I take a sip of the shake. Cold and sweet and strawberry, exactly the same as it has been since I was five years old.
“How long have you been planning this?” Sal says.
“A while.”
“How long is a while?”
I put the glass down, thinking about the day I first heard about that sports gala. That’s my opening. “Long enough to know it’s possible.”
He looks at me steadily.
“The letters,” he says. Slow. Precise. The way he says everything. “That’s what this is really about. If you were just after the piece, you’d have run the job already. You want the letters.”
The proof. The papers that say what actually happened.
“And you know where they are.”
I shrug. “I know where they should be.”
“That’s not the same thing, kid.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s not. But Zoe can hack into the original donation records. They should have been logged with all the accompanying documentation.”
He considers this. “Should have.”
“Should be,” I confirm.
He makes that sound again, low and noncommittal, and goes back to his coffee. It is not a reassuring sound. It is the sound of a man who has seen a great many should bes fail to become are. But he doesn’t tell me I’m wrong.
I’ve been living inside should be my whole life. The necklace should be ours. The letters should be on record. The name should mean something other than what it means now. Everything I’ve spent the last three years building is just the argument I’m having with that phrase.
“I don’t need a bankroll,” I say, before he can offer. “I know you’re going to offer, so I’m saying it first. I’ve been setting money aside for years. Every job, every cut, it’s gone into a fund. I’m ready.”
Something moves in his face. The softest possible version of softening, the kind you’d miss entirely if you hadn’t been watching Sal Delray since you were small. He was going to offer. It is completely written all over him. But he lets me have it.
“I wasn’t going to offer,” he says.
He absolutely was.
“It’s going to work,” I tell him. And I mean it. “This is the one. The window is there, the crew is right, the plan is solid. After this, I’m done. One last job, and then I figure out what I’m supposed to be when I’m not chasing after my family’s legacy.”
Sal looks at me for a long moment. He’s the closest thing to an uncle I have, which is both deeply comforting and slightly alarming. But there it is.
When he finally speaks, it’s slow and deliberate, each word set down like he’s placing cards on a table.
“The mark is never the safe,” he says. “The mark is always the story they already believe about themselves.”
I nod. I know this one.
Except I think about Georgetown. I think about standing three feet from a man in a polo shirt at the waterfront and reading him in approximately four seconds: tourist, distracted, decent watch, easy lift.
I’d misread the mark. Which is, in Sal’s language, the only real mistake.
I push the thought away. It’s been three days, and I genuinely cannot explain why a stranger I’ll never see again keeps showing up in the middle of completely unrelated situations.
“It always is,” I agree, and take a long pull of my strawberry shake.
Sal reaches for the little packet of orange marmalade and fights with the corner of the foil with shaky fingers.
“Here, let me.” I take it from him before he can protest and peel the foil back. He only grunts and proceeds to spread the marmalade over his toast.
“You been up to see your old man?”
I take a very large bite of pancake.
“How’s the block association?” I say, around it. “Any news on 86th?”
He looks at me for exactly one second. Then, as he always does when I redirect on this subject, he lets it go without ceremony. He sets down his butter knife.
“Frank DiPietro sold his boat,” he says.
“Frank DiPietro has a boat?”
“Had a boat. In his garage. Fifteen years.” He takes a bite of toast. “He saw something on television about the Jersey Shore and got ideas. He has never been on the water. He’s afraid of the water.”
“Then why did he buy a boat?”
“Kid.” He wipes his marmalade fingers on a napkin. “Why does anyone do anything?”
I lean forward. I cannot help it.
“He listed the boat on Saturday. Sunday morning, his brother-in-law Terrence sees the listing. Terrence has never been on a boat. Terrence does not know what a boat does. Terrence has no conceivable use for a boat. But Terrence sees Frank’s asking price and something happens to him.”
“What kind of something?”
“A competitive something. Terrence made an offer out of spite. Frank countered. Terrence went three hundred over asking. Frank went four hundred.”
“That’s the whole story?”
“Their mother calls from Boca because word reached her somehow.
Neither of them can explain the boat to her.
Neither of them can explain the boat to themselves.
“ He pauses to drink. He does this without hurrying, in the manner of a man who knows he has the room and is not going to waste it.
“Terrence wins. The boat is in Terrence’s garage now.
It has not moved. Neither of them has been to the water. They are not currently speaking.“
I’m already losing it.
“Frank’s wife sent Terrence’s wife a baked ziti last Tuesday. As a gesture.”
“And?”
“Terrence’s wife has not returned the dish.”
It comes out of me completely. A real laugh, right there in Vin’s Diner on a Friday morning in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I haven’t laughed in longer than I’d like to admit. Undignified and full, blueberry pancake fork halfway to my mouth, my free hand coming up like that’s going to help anything.
Three days ago I’d come close when that stranger with absolutely no situational awareness about the gravity of his own humor had said “crime doesn’t pay” to a pickpocket like it was a public service announcement.
Something in me had wanted to laugh out loud at that.
But I didn’t let it out. You don’t let your guard down when you’re working.
I have no idea why he keeps doing that. Walking through my head uninvited.
Sal watches me with a very small smile.
I love him.
I love him so much it is almost a problem.
“The dish,” I say, when I can say anything.
“The dish,” he confirms, and finishes his toast.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. Take a breath. The laugh settles into something warmer and sits there in my chest alongside everything else.
He lets me have the laugh.
“The DiPietros each believed they were winning something,” he says. “Neither of them could have told you what.”
Okay. He’s not just telling me about Frank DiPietro.
“The story Frank needed to believe,” Sal continues, “was that he had something Terrence didn’t.
Terrence needed to believe the same thing about Frank.
” He straightens the edge of his napkin on the table.
One small, deliberate motion. “The boat was irrelevant from the beginning.” He picks up his coffee cup. “It always is.”
Sal signals for the check with one small raise of two fingers. “Monday,” he says. “I’ll have names.”
“Thank you, Uncle Sal.”
Outside, Bay Ridge carries on. A delivery truck honks twice. Guys are yelling back and forth at something insignificant, probably.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, waving his pinky ring. “But do me a favor, kid.”
I reach for my pancakes and cut into the stack and its blueberry goodness. “Anything for you, Sal.”
“Go up to Otisville. Pay a visit to your father.”
I’m not ready for that. Not until I can deliver the proof to him.