Chapter 7 - The Meeting on Twenty-Sixth
The twenty-four men sitting on the vinyl stools did not look at their plates.
Nobody reached for their coffee. Nobody wiped their mouths.
Tom, the Santa Fe switchman, slowly lowered his fork onto his paper napkin, his thick shoulders squaring beneath his denim jacket, his eyes tracking the two men standing behind Salvatore Moretti’s shoulders.
Every working man on Twenty-Sixth Street knew Joey Campagna. They knew the red Buick he parked outside the union hall on election mornings; they knew the two boys from the freight docks who had been pulled out of the slip in nineteen-eighty-one with their hands wired behind their backs.
"Get out," Tom muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, looking straight ahead at the stainless-steel backsplash.
Salvatore Moretti did not turn his head. He tapped the silver eagle head of his cane against the green-and-cream floor tile with a sharp, rhythmic CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
"Excuse me, working man?" Salvatore murmured, his mouth twitching in that grotesque, rhythmic tic.
"I said get out," Tom repeated, turning on his stool to face the old mobster, his six-foot-two frame towering over the three men in cashmere coats. "This is Callahan's. We don't want your people in here while we’re eating our breakfast."
Joey "The Horse" took half a step forward, his gloved right hand slipping beneath the lapel of his overcoat toward his shoulder rig.
SHUCK-CLICK.
From the corner by the coat rack, Otis Kowalski took one long stride forward, the blackened steel barrel of the twelve-gauge Remington leveling straight at the bridge of Joey Campagna’s nose from five feet away.
"Take your hand off the leather, Joey," Otis rumbled, his voice like gravel sliding down a chute. "Or they’ll be scraping your brains off these pie cases until Tuesday."
Joey froze. His hand remained hooked inside his coat, his dark eyes widening in sudden, terrifying recognition as he looked into Otis’s scarred Polish face.
"Otis..." Joey breathed, the color draining from his sallow cheeks. "You're... you were supposed to be in Miami."
"I don't like the beach, Joey," Otis said. "The sand gets in my boots."
Raphael Santoro stepped out from behind the prep window.
He didn't take off his white apron. He walked with unhurried, measured strides around the end of the counter, stopped three paces from Salvatore Moretti, and looked down at the old Don.
"You brought three coats to my counter, Salvatore," Raphael said, his voice quiet, conversational, and completely devoid of heat. "That's fifteen hundred dollars in dry cleaning if somebody drops a cup of coffee. Why don't you sit down in booth four before your legs give out?"
Salvatore stared at Raphael.
For forty years, Salvatore Moretti had commanded thirty crews between the river and the Indiana state line. He had seen young men rise with guns in their hands, shout about respect, and end up in the lime pits behind the scrap yards within six months.
He had never seen a man take two bullets in the gut, buy a forty-meter diner at a tax auction for fifty dollars, and stand behind a griddle with an apron on his waist while twenty rail workers watched him fry eggs.
"Your father was a baker in Palermo, Raphael," Salvatore whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of ancient rage and cold, calculating bewilderment. "He died with flour on his hands and eighty dollars in his pocket. Is that what you want? You want to die behind an iron stove on Twenty-Sixth Street while the five families take your docks?"
"My father died an honest man, Salvatore," Raphael answered, stepping to booth four and pulling out the laminate table with one hand. "Which is something nobody will ever say about you when they carry your casket out of St. Anthony's."
He gestured to the vinyl seat.
"Sit down, old man. We have forty minutes before the bank opens on LaSalle Street."
Salvatore hesitated for two seconds. He looked at Otis’s shotgun; he looked at the twenty-four silent, hard-eyed rail workers who were watching him with open, murderous contempt; then he slowly lowered his frail frame onto the cracked red vinyl of the booth.
Joey Campagna and Carmine Vento remained standing by the coat rack, their backs pressed against the glass, Otis’s shotgun pinned squarely between them.
Maeve Callahan walked over to the booth.
She did not carry a weapon. She carried two thick white ceramic mugs of black coffee and a small plate containing two hot, buttered biscuits from the back oven.
She set one mug in front of Raphael, set the second mug in front of Salvatore Moretti, and placed the biscuits directly in the center of the table.
Salvatore looked down at the mug. He didn't touch it.
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"I don't drink coffee from a Callahan, girl," the old man hissed.
"You'll drink it today, Salvatore," Raphael said softly, picking up his own mug and taking a slow, appreciative sip of the dark chicory roast. "Because it's the last cup of coffee you’re going to have in this city as a free man."
