Chapter 14: Three Percent

"Say that again slower," I said.

Lexie didn't say it again.

She reached into the pile from the pickle jar and counted out a hundred one-dollar bills on the linoleum.

"This is every hundred dollars that goes through the count room," she said.

She split it into two piles, fifty and fifty.

"Half to the Vaccaros. Half to the Whalens. Thirty years, same deal."

Then she took a dollar and a half off the Vaccaro pile, and a dollar and a half off the Whalen pile.

She tore one bill clean in half to make it work.

She put all three dollars in the pocket of her robe and patted it.

"And that," she said, "goes to somebody else. Every hundred. Every night. For eleven years."

I stared at the two piles.

They still looked like fifty. You had to count them to see.

"How much?" I said.

She looked at the ceiling and moved her lips.

"About fourteen million dollars."

I sat down on the floor next to her.

"Who runs the count room, Lex?"

"You know who runs the count room."

"Say it anyway."

"Rino," she said. "But both families have people in there. And these sheets aren't signed."

She held one up to the window.

YEAR-END SUMMARY. A column of numbers. No initials anywhere.

"So it's not proof," I said.

"It's paper a cocktail waitress stole out of a shred cart in a pickle jar."

"When you say it like that."

"I say it like a jury will."

We looked at each other.

The last time I'd said Rino's name at a table, Ciro had picked his uncle.

I wasn't putting my hand on that stove twice.

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