C4 The Handshake

Two bridges separate the Financial District from Santa Maria.

On one side, glass and steel. On the other, trees. Crossing into Santa Maria the streetlamps dropped lower, and the plane trees lined up along the curb, chopping the light into segments. The houses sat back behind the trees, invisible except for iron gates and driveways. No corner stores in this district. After nine at night, not even the dogs barked.

The Moretti house stood at the far end of the street.

Leo watched him in the rearview as the car turned up the drive.

"About the lawyer. Yesterday," he said. "She didn't take it."

Dante said nothing. He watched the window.

"The envelope went back across the table. No photographs. No second question." Leo said. "And nobody from her side has touched the federal people today. If you want to leave another one—"

"Pull it."

Leo looked at him in the mirror.

"Pull it?"

"That document had no business being on any table, and you know it better than I do," Dante said. "Starting tomorrow, stop testing her."

The car stopped at the door. He got out and did up his jacket.

"And if your father asks—"

"He's asking about the case," Dante said. "Not about her."

---

Eight places at the long table. Six filled.

His father sat at the head.

Salvatore Moretti had been home three weeks without seeing a single outsider. He walked the garden for twenty minutes every afternoon, ate dinner slowly, and spoke less and less. But every time he opened his mouth, every fork at the table stopped.

"The Sorbo matter," he said.

The uncle at the far end set down his glass. "Freeze order's vacated. Remanded to the government, three weeks to file. If they can't, it dies."

"And after it dies?"

"The accounts on that shipment have to be walked again. The docks are unsettled too. People are starting to ask whether we're changing who handles the handoff." The uncle glanced at Dante. "On Friday, maybe we don't raise it at that dinner."

"Friday is Friday," Salvatore said.

Dante cut his food into even pieces.

"Who handled it?" Salvatore asked.

"Outside counsel. A woman named Vance."

Salvatore raised his eyes to the far end of the table.

"You used an outsider on a family matter."

Dante set his glass down.

"I used someone who can win."

"Win." Salvatore turned the word over, flat. "You win prettily, you lose prettily. She gets her name back. You lose our accounts."

"The accounts can be walked again."

"Accounts can," Salvatore said. "People can't."

Nobody at the table moved a fork.

"Should we change who closes this out?" the uncle said. "Put one of our own on it."

Dante looked up.

"No."

"Reason."

"She won."

"Winning once means nothing."

"Then wait for her to win twice," Dante said.

He looked down at his plate. The meat had gone cold. He hadn't touched it.

"On Friday, old Ricci will raise the two shipping lines north of the harbor," the uncle said.

"Let him raise them."

"What he wants is those two berths on the north side."

"Give him one."

"One may not be enough."

"It's enough." Salvatore said. "Any more, and he'll start thinking they're his."

"Dad—"

It was Marco.

He sat at Dante's left, his top collar button open, his glass already half gone.

"I know something about that shipment. I'm the one who talked to the dock side. If you let me—"

"Eat," Salvatore said.

"I'm just saying, that shipment shouldn't have—"

"I said eat."

Marco's mouth stayed open.

He held the sentence in his mouth for two seconds, then bent to his plate. The knife scraped the porcelain and made a thin, sharp sound.

The second time he tried, it was when the uncle mentioned the government.

"There's someone on the government side we—"

"Marco."

Salvatore didn't look at him.

Half a minute later the old man spoke again. "Marco. Last month, on the docks. How many strangers did you see?"

Marco's knife stopped.

He looked up, and something came on in his face—the expression of a man who has been asked something.

"Three," he said. "Two were shipping agents, and one—"

"Wednesday, three o'clock. Have them come to the office," Salvatore said to the uncle.

"Yes."

The old man laid his fork down and leaned back.

Marco's sentence was still in the air. Nobody picked it up. He kept his mouth open for two seconds, then closed it.

The third time, he said nothing at all. He set his knife and fork down side by side, picked up his glass, and finished the wine.

Not one person at the table had looked at him all evening.

Dante looked at him. He looked for a while, then moved his eyes away.

---

Dinner ended at nine thirty.

Dante rose, said he had a call to make, and started up the side stairs.

On the landing, someone called after him.

"Dante."

Marco stood at the bottom of the stairs with one hand on the rail. He'd been drinking, but he wasn't drunk—his eyes were clear, only his shoulders sagged a little when he talked.

"That shipment. I really do know something."

Dante stopped on the landing.

"I know."

"Then why won't you use me."

The stairwell was dark. One sconce burned on the corridor above.

Dante stood there looking down at him. It occurred to him that he couldn't remember the last time he and his brother had spoken alone.

"Another day," he said.

Marco smiled. The smile stopped at the corner of his mouth.

"Sure," he said. "Another day."

He turned and went down. His steps were loud, and got louder.

Dante stood there and listened to them carry all the way to the ground floor, and then stop.

He had meant to call him back.

He didn't.

---

At the end of the second-floor corridor was a room with the door closed. No name on the door, and the handle was brighter than any other handle in the house—because someone polished it every day.

His mother's study.

He went in, turned on the light, and lowered the needle onto the record.

The record was old. The needle landed with a wash of static before the piano came in. He set the volume to the lowest point where he could still hear it.

He took the pocket watch out of his jacket, held it in his palm, and wiped the case with his cuff. The case was already clean, clean even inside the scratches. Then he set it back on the desk.

There was a shallow ring on the desktop, paler than the wood around it, pressed there over many years. He put the watch in the exact center of that ring.

Only then did he get to work.

The drawer held a stack of papers—this week's records, to be disposed of. He didn't read them; he took them out and set them aside. He made one call and said one sentence: "Hold the dock accounts for three days."

The person on the other end asked something.

"Don't ask why," he said. "Three days."

He hung up and sat back with both hands on the armrests.

The record moved into its second part. The piano stopped, and a slow clarinet came in. He had heard this record too many times not to know where the scratch was—four bars into the clarinet, the record gave a small, soft click.

Click.

He closed his eyes and let it pass.

In this room, he was twelve years old.

He went to the window and pulled the curtain open an inch.

Down in the yard, Marco stood under the mercury lamp, lighting a cigarette. It took him two tries—the wind came off the cypresses. Once it was lit he didn't leave. He stood there, smoking it down, drag by drag.

The lamp threw his shadow long, all the way to the driveway.

He finished the cigarette, crushed it under his shoe, stood a while longer, and went inside.

He used the kitchen door. The door the household staff used.

Dante closed the curtain.

---

Going down, he found Salvatore on the terrace.

The old man sat in a wicker chair. On the low table in front of him was a birdcage. Inside it, a canary—yellow, short-tailed—had its head tucked into its wing.

Dante paused at the doorway, then went out anyway.

"The case she won," Salvatore said. "Did you know she'd win it?"

"I knew she'd attack the procedure."

"You went to see her."

"I did."

Salvatore lifted his glass—wine—and drank.

The terrace light was off. Only what spilled from the house touched the cage.

"Stop looking into your mother's business."

The bird stirred, pulled its beak free of its wing, and called twice. The sound was thin and carried further than it should have.

Salvatore pinched a little seed from a dish on the table and held it through the bars. The bird hopped over and pecked at his fingertip.

"I haven't been looking," Dante said.

"I know you haven't," the old man said. "You've just been collecting. One thing at a time."

Dante didn't answer.

Salvatore finally raised his head and looked at him for a long time.

There was no anger in it. That was what made the back of Dante's neck cold.

"You're more and more like your mother," Salvatore said.

---

At 10:40 Dante came out by the garage.

The garage stood apart from the house at the end of a private drive lined with tall cypresses. At this hour the mercury lamp over the garage door was the only light left on the property.

Under the lamp he saw two figures in the distance.

One was Marco.

The other stood beside a car with its engine running, in a long coat. Headlights off, only the engine turning over, the exhaust breathing white in the cold.

The two men shook hands.

The handshake lasted a beat too long.

The man in the coat said something, and Marco nodded twice. Then he smiled—not a business smile. A loose one. The smile of a man who has finally been listened to.

Dante stood in the shadow and didn't move.

He watched them finish, let go, say goodbye. The man got into the car, backed out, swept the front yard with his headlights, turned, and drove off.

Marco stayed where he was, watching the car go. He stood there a long time, his shoulders loose.

Dante stepped back into the shadow, took out his phone, and sent Leo two words.

"Check him."

He looked up.

The light in the second-floor study was still on—he had forgotten to kill it on his way down.

He went up and turned it off. The record was still spinning, the needle riding the empty run-out groove, hissing around and around. He lifted the arm, set it back on its rest, and closed the lid.

*He wanted to be used. I said another day.*

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Leo had sent back a plate number and, after it, three words.

**Federal plate series.**

He didn't go back to the city that night. He slept in the room on the third floor that was always kept for him, where the smell was old wood and camphor.

It was the smell the house had when his mother was alive.