I Hid Vito's Ledger Now Chicago Wants Me novel · Chapter 2 of 3

Chapter 2: The Coat

A black car stops outside. Matteo Santangelo walks in, takes the coat off the rack and tells the men it belongs to him. They leave. He tells Lucia he has owned her father's debt for two years.

The first one is still standing in my doorway when the black car pulls up.

It stops at the curb with its engine running.

Nobody gets out for a long moment.

Then the back door opens.

The man who steps out is tall and doesn't hurry.

Black shirt open at the collar. Black jacket. No umbrella, and it's starting to rain.

He walks past the car and up onto the sidewalk like the whole street belongs to him, which, from what I understand, it does.

The first one turns to look at him.

His face does something I have never seen a man like that do.

It goes careful.

"Mr. Santangelo."

"Move."

The first one moves.

Matteo Santangelo steps into my shop and stops just past the threshold.

He looks at the pile of coats on the floor.

He looks at the open register.

He looks at me.

Six years, and his face hasn't changed except around the eyes.

"Which one is the coat," he says.

The first one points at the floor.

"The one with the torn lining."

Matteo crouches and picks it up.

He holds it the way the other man did, by the collar, and lets the split hem hang.

Then he stands and folds it over his arm.

"This is mine," he says.

The first one blinks.

"Vito wants it."

"Vito can want it from Rush Street."

"It came off that rack."

"It came off the rack in my house six years ago." Matteo's voice doesn't move. "I paid for the wool. I paid for the buttons. Joe Morelli cut it and I never picked it up."

Nobody says anything.

The rain has gotten louder against the window.

The young one is looking at the floor now.

The big one is looking at Matteo's hands.

"Tell Vito it's not in this shop anymore," Matteo says. "Tell him I took it home."

The first one doesn't like it, and he knows it doesn't matter.

He walks to the door.

"Vito won't like this."

"Vito hasn't liked anything since September."

They go out.

The car waits until they're down the block before it pulls away from the curb.

I am still standing behind the cutting table with my hand in my pocket.

Matteo turns around and looks at me properly for the first time.

"You're bleeding," he says.

I look down.

There's a line of red across the side of my left hand, from the scissors, thin and shallow.

"Rack caught me."

"Rack didn't catch you. You were cutting something."

I don't answer.

He hangs the coat on the end of the rack and smooths the collar with two fingers.

Then he walks the shop once, the way the first one did, but slower.

He stops at the register.

He opens it and looks inside.

"Forty-one dollars."

"They took it."

He takes a wallet out of his jacket and puts two hundred on the counter.

"Don't," I say.

"It's not a gift."

"Then what is it."

"Rent."

I look at the money and don't touch it.

"Who are you," I say, "to be paying my rent."

"You know who I am."

"I knew a boy at a party six years ago. That's all I know."

He picks up one of the coats off the floor and hangs it back on the bar.

He does the next one too.

"That's not true," he says.

"Which part."

"The part where that's all you know."

He hangs up the bridal jacket last, careful with the shoulders.

Then he turns and looks at me, and there is nothing soft in his face at all.

"I own your father's debt," he says.

The shop is very quiet.

"Two hundred forty thousand dollars," he says. "It was a delivery route he took out money to run. It went under. The Santangelo family held the paper for eleven years."

I knew there was a debt.

I didn't know whose name was on it.

"Two years ago I bought it," he says.

"Why."

"Because I wanted to know where you were, and this was the only address that ever came back."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer I have."

My father's chair scrapes upstairs again.

We both look up at the ceiling.

"He's awake," I say. "He'll come down."

"Let him."

"No." I come around the table. "You're not standing in my shop at nine at night telling me you own my dad."

"I'm not telling him anything."

"You just told me."

"I told you because you were about to be told by three men in a car." He picks up his wallet. "Better me."

I stand there with my hand bleeding and my heart going too fast.

"You can't just buy a person," I say.

"No. You can only buy the paper."

"That's the same thing."

"It's not." He walks to the door and puts his hand on it. "The paper says your father owes me money. It does not say you do."

He opens the door.

The rain has turned to something heavier.

"I'll have the coat cleaned and sent back," he says.

"Don't."

"It's mine."

"It's a torn coat in a rack in my shop."

"It's the coat you cut open tonight." He looks at me. "Next time, don't do it with the lights on."

I don't say anything.

He steps out into the rain.

Then he stops.

He stands there with the door half open and the water coming down off the awning behind him.

"I have to tell you something," he says.

"Tell me tomorrow."

"No. Tonight."

He comes back in and shuts the door.

He doesn't come any closer than the first tile inside the mat.

"Six years ago," he says, "my grandfather had a heart attack in Palermo and they flew him here for surgery."

I know this part.

I was there for this part.

"Somebody paid the hospital," he says. "Sixty thousand dollars, the whole thing, on the day of the operation. The desk wouldn't tell me who. It took me four months to get a name out of them."

I don't look away from him.

I could look away. I've done it before.

"Lucia Morelli," he says.

The rain is running down the glass behind him.

"I looked for you at the university. You were gone. Your family was gone. The house in Elmhurst was empty."

"Everyone was gone," I say.

"I know."

"So what do you want."

He stands there in his wet jacket with his hands at his sides.

"You paid for my grandfather's surgery," he says. "I have been looking for you for six years."

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