Chapter 5 - The Shadow at the Door
The rain was coming down in sheets now, rattling against the high leaded-glass fanlight above the front door.
Paulie checked the brass peephole, his jaw set.
"Who is it?" Vincent asked, standing two paces back in the shadows of the foyer.
"It’s Julian Dawson," Paulie said, his voice flat. "The ex-husband."
Vincent’s eyebrows did not move. "Alone?"
"Two guys in an Oldsmobile across the street. Brooklyn plates. Marco’s boys."
A cold, thin smile touched Vincent’s lips. It was a terrible thing to see—a smile that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with the geometry of a slaughterhouse.
"Open the door, Paulie."
"Boss, he’s got a look about him. Drunk, or hopped up on something."
"Open the door."
Paulie turned the heavy brass deadbolt.
The door swung inward, admitting a blast of wet November wind and Julian Dawson.
Julian was thirty, but he looked forty-five. His hair was plastered to his forehead by the rain, his cheap corduroy coat sodden and stained at the cuffs. His eyes were wide, wet, and twitching with the chemical energy of a man who owed money to people who broke fingers for sport.
"Rachel!" Julian shouted, his voice bouncing off the black marble floor. "Rachel, get your ass out here! I know you’re in here, you bitch!"
He took two stumbling steps into the foyer before his eyes adjusted to the dim light and found Vincent Caruso.
Julian stopped.
The bravado ran out of him like grease down a warm plate. He knew the face. Every punk who ran numbers or picked pockets between the Battery and the Bronx knew that face.
"Mr... Mr. Caruso," Julian stammered, his hand twitching at his side. "I didn't—they said she was just cleaning here. They said—"
"Who said?" Vincent asked.
His voice was almost musical. He took one step forward, stepping out of the shadows. He looked immaculate, even in his cardigan.
"Marco," Julian blurted, terror tearing the secret from his mouth before he could think to barter with it. "Marco Moretti. He told me Rachel was here. He said she was shacking up with some old greaseball and using my kid as a shield. He said if I came and caused a scene, took the kid back, he’d square my tab at the club in Bay Ridge."
Paulie closed the front door behind Julian with a soft, final *thud*.
"Your tab," Vincent said.
"Three grand," Julian whimpered, his teeth starting to chatter from the cold and the realization of what he had stepped into. "Just three grand, Mr. Caruso. I got rights. Emma’s my blood. You can't keep a man from his blood."
A small sound came from the archway leading to the kitchen.
Rachel stood there. She had her arm hooked around Emma, holding the girl behind her hip, but Emma was peeking out, her eyes wide as she took in the sodden, trembling wreck that was her father.
"Julian," Rachel whispered, her voice sick with memory.
"Rachel!" Julian lunged forward two inches before Paulie’s heavy hand landed on his collarbone, pinning him to the spot like an insect under a pin. "Tell him! Tell him I'm her father! You think you can live in a palace with a gangster while I'm sleeping in my car?"
Emma spoke.
"He smells like bad beer," she said.
Her voice was not angry. It was just tired. The weary observation of a child who had seen the same show too many times in too many cheap apartments.
Julian looked at her, his face twisting into something ugly. "You little ingrate—"
Vincent moved.
It was not the movement of a sixty-year-old man. It was the strike of a whip.
His left hand seized Julian by the throat, driving him backward against the oak paneling of the vestibule with a force that knocked the wind out of the younger man’s lungs in a wet *whoosh*. The wood groaned under the impact.
Vincent’s face was two inches from Julian’s.
"Listen to me, little boy," Vincent whispered.
Julian clawed at Vincent’s fingers, but the Don’s hand was made of pig iron. His feet dangled an inch above the marble.
"You gave her life," Vincent said, "which makes your failure all the more disgusting. You traded her safety for three thousand dollars of bad debt to a nephew who doesn't have the brains to keep his own nose clean."
"Please," Julian croaked, his eyes bulging.
"If you ever speak to her again," Vincent continued, his voice dropping into a register that vibrated through the floorboards, "if you ever walk on the same side of the street where she buys her bread, I will not kill you."
He tightened his grip until Julian’s face turned the color of an eggplant.
"I will buy the building you sleep in," Vincent whispered. "I will buy the bar you drink in. I will make sure that every time you close your eyes, you hear my shoes on the stairs. And when you are eighty years old and dying in some charity ward with no teeth and no friends, you will still be afraid of the dark because you will think Vincent Caruso is standing by the bed."
He dropped him.
Julian hit the marble in a wet heap, gasping, coughing, clutching his bruised throat.
Vincent looked at Paulie.
"Put him in the car across the street," Vincent said. "Tell Marco’s boys that if they want to deliver messages, they should come through the front door themselves. And give Julian fifty dollars."
Paulie paused. "Fifty, Boss?"
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"He needs to take the train to New Jersey," Vincent said, wiping his fingers with a clean handkerchief from his pocket. "He isn't coming back."
***
