Chapter 6: The Table

Mickey read it four times.

Then he held it out to Vin without a word.

Vin read it once and went still all over.

"What clock," he said.

Mickey looked up at the ceiling.

Through the floor, faint, he could hear it ticking.

The old brass clock over the bar.

His dad had it apart on his bench six years ago, the same month he finished this vault.

Mickey remembered the brass gears laid out on a towel, and his dad telling him not to breathe on them.

"That clock," he said.

He was up the fourteen stairs before Vin could stop him.

He pushed through the steel door, through the dark kitchen, into the dining room.

The lights over the bar were on.

Pietro was sitting on a stool under the clock, alone, with an espresso and a newspaper.

At one in the morning.

He'd been waiting.

"Mickey," he said warmly. "You keep late hours for a man in your condition."

Mickey put his hand in his pocket over the folded paper.

He didn't look up at the clock.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever not done.

Vin came through the kitchen door behind him.

"Uncle."

"Vincenzo. Good. I wanted to tell you in person." Pietro folded his newspaper.

"I've called the Families. They'll sit tonight at nine, in the back room."

"The Table sits on the full moon."

"The acting head can call it any night there's a question for it." Pietro smiled at Mickey.

"And there's a question. Bring the omega. Everyone wants to meet him."

He finished his espresso and walked out the front door into Taylor Street.

The bell over it didn't even ring.

"He knows," Mickey said.

"He knows you were downstairs. He can't know about the paper." Vin's voice was low.

"We don't touch that clock with his men drinking under it every hour the place is open."

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