Chapter 12 - The Card on the Desk
The linoleum of the hospital lobby was slick from a recent mop-down, smelling faintly of pine disinfectant and wet wool as the midnight rain continued to lash against the reinforced glass doors. I stood by the reception desk, turning the heavy cream card over between my thumb and forefinger. The paper was expensive—heavy cotton bond, the kind lawyers or high-stakes gamblers used when they wanted you to know they didn't care about the price of stationery.
"Did he say anything else?" I asked the night-shift security guard, a heavy-set guy with a security badge pinned crookedly to a cheap navy blazer.
"Only that you’d know where to find him," the guard muttered, not looking up from his crossword puzzle. "He walked out toward the parking garage just as the two federal agents went down to grab coffee. Looked like a guy who didn't want his picture taken by the traffic cams."
I didn't wait for the elevator. I took the concrete stairwell two flights down, my hand resting naturally against the Sig Sauer I’d tucked back into my waistband after Vance’s team cleared out. The parking garage was an echoing concrete tomb of gray pillars, fluorescent tubes humming with a high-pitched electronic whine, and pools of black oil leaking from old sedans.
My black Lincoln Town Car sat in slot 42, right beneath a sputtering overhead light.
And leaning against the driver’s side door was a man in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit that looked like it had cost more than my first restaurant. He was smoking a thin, unfiltered cigarette, the red tip glowing like a hot coal in the dim gloom.
"You're late, Nate," the man said.
His voice didn't rattle off the concrete; it was low, smooth, and carried a faint, rhythmic cadence that tickled some dormant part of my memory—a sound I hadn't heard since I was ten years old sitting on the back steps of our house on 18th Street.
I stopped ten feet away, my hand dropping off the grip of my gun. I didn't pull the piece, but I didn't relax my shoulders either.
"Vincent?" I said, the name feeling foreign and heavy in my mouth, like a stone I hadn't lifted in thirty years.
The man turned his head. The cigarette smoke curled up past his cheek, catching the yellow glare of the fluorescent tube. He had the same jawline Sarah had described, the same dark, hooded eyes our father had carried to his grave, but there was a thin white scar running from the corner of his left eyebrow down to his jawline—the souvenir of a poker game gone wrong in Cicero back when the century was still young.
"They told me you were running restaurants downtown, Nate," Vincent said, tossing the cigarette stub onto the concrete and grinding it out with the toe of an oxblood Italian leather shoe. "I didn't believe 'em. Thought you’d either be six feet deep in a marsh or doing twenty-to-life in Marion like the rest of the old crew."
May you like
"People change their names, Vinny," I said, stepping closer, my boots echoing off the concrete floor. "Some people even change their graves. Everyone in the city thought you died in that warehouse fire back in ninety-six."
"A fire is a very convenient way to retire from the board," Vincent smiled, though there was no humor in his eyes—just the dead, calculating stare of a man who had spent three decades watching the world from behind a one-way mirror. "Especially when the federal government and the Outfit are both trying to collect on a debt that was never yours to pay."
