Chapter 5 : The Rounds
Marchetti Waste Management Yard, Jersey City Industrial District — January 14, 1999, 7:00 AM
The gate was chain-link topped with razor wire, and the man standing inside it looked like someone had carved him from the same concrete as the yard's retaining walls.
Sal Conte. Foreman. Bull neck, hands like catcher's mitts, a face that hadn't smiled since the Reagan administration. He wore a quilted work jacket over a flannel shirt, breath steaming in the January air, clipboard tucked under his arm with the territorial grip of a man who considered paperwork a weapon.
Vinnie stepped out of his father's Cadillac — found in the garage that morning, keys on a hook by the back door, engine turning over on the third try after sitting cold for two weeks. The driver's seat had been pushed back for Sal's longer legs. Vinnie had adjusted it forward, and even that small act had carried the weight of rewriting a dead man's preferences.
Conte watched him cross the gravel. The foreman's eyes tracked from shoes to face and made calculations that never reached his expression.
"Vincent."
"Sal."
A beat. Conte glanced at the clipboard as if it held instructions for this moment and found it unhelpful.
"Your father—"
"I know. Thank you."
Conte nodded. The brevity landed well — he was a man who measured respect in economy of words.
"Walk me through the operation," Vinnie said.
They moved through the yard. Six trucks in various states of readiness — two loaded, one being serviced, three waiting for drivers who'd arrive at seven-thirty. The maintenance bay smelled like diesel and hydraulic fluid. A dispatch office the size of a storage closet held a desk, a phone, and a laminated map of Hudson County with routes drawn in red marker.
Vinnie asked questions. Not the vague generalities of a boss performing oversight — specific questions. Which routes crossed each other? Where was fuel consumption highest? What was the per-truck revenue breakdown? Did the billing cycles align with collection schedules or lag behind?
Conte's wariness shifted by degrees. The foreman answered precisely, the way a professional responds to someone who speaks his language.
"Route four and route seven overlap on Kennedy Boulevard every Tuesday and Thursday," Conte said, tracing the map with a thick finger. "Your father knew. Said it wasn't worth the hassle to reroute."
"What would rerouting save?"
"Forty minutes a day. Two trucks. Call it..." Conte did mental math, lips moving. "Eight, nine grand a year in fuel and labor."
"Then reroute them."
Conte blinked. "Just like that?"
"Numbers don't lie, Sal. Nine grand is nine grand."
The foreman studied him for a three-count. Something recalibrated behind his eyes.
"Your old man knew trucks," Conte said. "You know numbers. Different, but not bad."
"First mark on the board."
[CREW LOYALTY UPDATE: SAL CONTE — 30 → 35. COMPETENCE DISPLAYED]
He left the waste yard at eight forty-five and drove to the second stop — a barbershop on Monticello Avenue, the kind with a spinning pole out front and a back room that the Health Department never inspected because the Health Department knew better.
The numbers operation ran out of the space above the shop — accessible through a narrow staircase behind the supply closet, the treads worn smooth by decades of men placing bets on everything from horse racing to which pigeon would leave a particular rooftop first. Three men worked the phones and the slips. Two of them stood when Vinnie walked in. The third stayed seated.
Paulie Bags. Real name Paolo Baglione. Late thirties, thick through the chest, dark eyes that radiated the specific hostility of a man who'd picked his side and resented anyone making him justify it. Gold chain visible through an open collar. Toothpick rolling between his teeth.
"The boss's kid." Paulie didn't stand. The toothpick migrated from the left corner of his mouth to the right. "Marco know you're here?"
The other two men went still. The phone rang. Nobody answered it.
Vinnie let the silence hold for four seconds. Long enough to be deliberate. Short enough to avoid looking like he was gathering courage.
"Marco answers to me. So do you. We clear on that?"
The words came out level. Quiet. The body wanted to tense up — adrenaline prickling at the base of his skull — but the financial analyst had spent ten years in conference rooms where showing fear meant losing the deal, and the principle transferred.
Paulie's jaw worked the toothpick. His eyes cut to the other two men and found no support there — they'd already stood up. He was the only one still seated, and the geometry of it was making a statement he didn't want to be making anymore.
"Yeah. We're clear."
He didn't mean it. The system confirmed what Vinnie already knew:
[PAULIE BAGLIONE — LOYALTY: 15. ALIGNED WITH MARCO FERRANTE]
But the words had been said in front of witnesses. In this world, public submission — even grudging — established precedent. Paulie had bent the knee with two soldiers watching. Reneging would cost him face.
Vinnie left without another word. The staircase creaked under his shoes. Outside, the January air bit at his face and he realized his hands were shaking. He shoved them in his coat pockets.
"Small victory. But victories accumulate. Compound interest — the most powerful force in any economy, legal or otherwise."
The corner deli on Bergen Avenue became an unplanned stop. His stomach had been growling since the waste yard and the body's hunger was becoming hard to ignore. He ordered a meatball sub at the counter — a place called Sal's, which was either a cosmic joke or just Jersey — and ate it standing by the window, watching foot traffic on the sidewalk.
The meatballs were transcendent. Pork and beef, fennel seed, marinara that had been simmering since before dawn. The bread was fresh, the cheese melted and pulling in strings. After days of hospital jello and frozen bread and bad coffee, this sandwich qualified as a spiritual event.
The woman behind the register — sixties, silver hair, apron dusted with flour — recognized the Marchetti name when he paid.
"Sal's boy? Your father came in every Friday. Prosciutto and mozzarella. I'm sorry about what happened, sweetheart."
She pushed his money back across the counter. Vinnie left a twenty under the napkin dispenser on his way out. Accepting free food from civilians felt wrong in a way he couldn't articulate. Paying for it felt worse — like rejecting a kindness. The twenty was a compromise.
Tommy Rizzo was waiting at the third stop — a storefront on Grand Street that served as the loan sharking operation's collection point. The sign above the door read ALLIED FINANCIAL SERVICES, which was either optimistic or satirical depending on your relationship with the business.
Tommy leaned against a maroon sedan, tracksuit straining across his shoulders, coffee in a paper cup that looked like a thimble in his hands.
"How'd it go?"
"Waste yard's solid. Numbers office needs watching." Vinnie didn't mention Paulie by name. Let Tommy fill the gap.
"Paulie Bags give you attitude?"
"Of course he knows."
"Nothing I couldn't handle."
Tommy's mouth twitched — the ghost of a grin, buried under professional restraint.
"Come on. I'll show you the collection book."
Inside, Allied Financial Services looked like an accountant's office designed by someone who'd never met an accountant. A desk, two filing cabinets, a phone, and a calendar on the wall still showing December. The collection book was a spiral notebook — names, amounts, due dates, interest calculations done in pencil so they could be adjusted.
Tommy walked him through it. Forty-seven active loans. Average principal: twelve hundred dollars. Average vig: two points per week. Default rate: eight percent, mostly construction workers and small business owners who'd missed a payment and needed another week.
"Your father never pressed too hard," Tommy said. "Guys who can't pay, you work with them. Guys who won't pay, that's different."
"How many won't pay right now?"
"Three." Tommy held up three thick fingers. "Benny Coletta owes six grand and he's ducking my calls. The other two are working it out."
"I'll handle Coletta."
Tommy's eyebrows climbed. "You sure?"
"I need people to know I'm not hiding behind a desk. You just told me I have about a week before Marco makes a real move. I need to show the crew I'm present."
Tommy set down his coffee. His expression shifted — something old surfaced beneath the affable exterior.
"Your father saved my life in '82. Bar fight that went sideways. Two guys with knives. Sal didn't think twice — just walked in and handled it. Broke his hand on one guy's face." Tommy flexed his own massive fist absently. "I don't forget that, Vinnie."
The familiar form — Vinnie, not Vincent — landed with weight.
"But you should know," Tommy continued, "Marco's been talking to three of our soldiers. Carmine Vitelli and the Russo brothers. He's telling them the family needs a steady hand. Experienced leadership."
"His hand."
"His hand. He's not wrong that the crew's worried. But he's selling a solution to a problem he's making worse by selling it."
"Three soldiers flipped or flipping. Plus Paulie Bags and Marco's core crew of twelve. That's sixteen men potentially against me. Fourteen with Tommy. And a handful of undecideds who'll follow whoever comes out of the sit-down looking stronger."
"The DiMeo tribute is due in three days," Tommy said, dropping his empty cup into a wastebasket. "Goes through Satriale's Pork Store. Tony Soprano handles it personally sometimes."
"Tony Soprano. The man my dead father's letter told me to stay close to. The man who, on a television screen in another lifetime, became the most powerful mob boss in New Jersey."
"Tomorrow morning. I'm paying three days early."
Tommy glanced sideways. A slow nod.
"Smart. Cuts the legs out from under Marco's pitch that we're unstable."
The sedan merged back into traffic. Jersey City's skyline — modest, industrial, unbothered by the gleaming towers that would colonize its waterfront in a decade — rose against a sky the color of old dishwater.
Vinnie counted tribute money in his head. Fifty thousand. Three days early. A message wrapped in green paper: the Marchetti family is solvent, functional, and led by someone who pays ahead of schedule.
[DAILY MISSION COMPLETE: VISITED 3 FAMILY OPERATIONS. +15 SP. TOTAL: 40 SP]
Marco's narrative — the weak kid, the hospital collapse, the family in freefall — was about to lose its best evidence.
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