Chapter 5 - The Price of Bread
Clara moved before Enzo could reach for the brass latches.
She didn't grab a knife, and she didn't scream. She picked up the heavy iron scraper Thomas used for clearing the crust off the stone hearth—a foot-long wedge of rusted steel with a wooden handle—and laid it flat across the zinc counter right between Rossi’s leather case and his right hand.
"We close at noon," she said. Her voice didn't shake. "And we don't like salesmen who don't wipe their shoes."
Rossi looked down at the scraper, then up at Clara’s face. He didn't look angry; he looked amused, the way a man looks at a stray dog that barks at his shadow.
"Little girl," Rossi began.
"My name is Clara," she said. "And that's my father's counter."
Enzo raised one hand—just an inch, the way he used to do when he wanted the table cleared at the back of the Trattoria di Roma.
"Leave the case, Vince," Enzo said.
"Marco wants you back in Boston by Friday, Enzo. There's a dinner with the Delacroix people. The wedding date is set for June. You can't run a syndicate from a wicker chair in the sticks."
"I'm not running a syndicate," Enzo said. He reached out, his fingers touching the cold brass corner of the leather case. "I'm auditing."
Rossi stared at him for a long, heavy moment. The sleet outside hit the front window with a sound like handfuls of rice thrown against glass. Then, slowly, Rossi withdrew his hand from the case, buttoned his trench coat, and turned toward the door.
"The snow's closing the pass by nightfall, Enzo," Rossi said with his hand on the brass latch. "If you're not on the Friday bus, don't expect anybody to come looking for you. The mountains are very big, and people here have long memories about fires."
The door swung shut, the little tin bell giving one flat, tinny rattle before the wind took over.
Enzo pulled the leather case toward him. He didn't need a key; the brass locks were old-style Yale levers that hadn't changed since the sixties. He flicked them with his thumbnail.
Inside, resting on a bed of blue velvet, wasn't a quit-claim deed or a shipping manifest.
It was a small, heavy black pistol with a checkered walnut grip—the one his father had carried in the glove box of the Packard until the night the mill burned down. And underneath it, a single sheet of paper written in Marco’s neat, sloping hand:
May you like
Enzo,
You always were too sentimental about the drivers. Let's see if you can still pull a trigger with grease on your fingers.
