Chapter 13 : The Wake
Pagano Funeral Home, Newark — February 14, 1999, 2:00 PM
The line stretched through both rooms and into the hallway, past arrangements of white lilies and carnations that filled the air with a sweetness thick enough to taste. A hundred men and women in black, queued in the particular geometry of grief that organized crime had perfected over generations — mourners in front, politicians in the middle, predators at the back.
Vinnie stood between a man he didn't recognize and a woman clutching a rosary whose beads clacked with the rhythm of her prayers. He'd arrived forty minutes ago. The line had moved seventeen feet.
Enzo waited in the car. Tommy stood outside the building's side entrance, smoking, trading nods with other soldiers who recognized the uniform of their profession — dark suit, dark tie, hands that didn't know what to do with themselves when they weren't working.
The February tribute had gone to Silvio three days ago — fifty thousand, hand-delivered, no discussion. The first tribute paid under the new regime, if you could call the interregnum between Jackie's death and Junior's coronation a regime. Silvio had accepted the envelope with the same practiced neutrality he'd shown in January at Satriale's. Business continued. The machinery didn't pause for funerals.
The line moved. Vinnie shuffled forward with it, past a framed photograph of Jackie Aprile Sr. in his prime — thick-shouldered, dark-eyed, the kind of face that had owned rooms for three decades before the cancer began its audit. The photograph showed a man who'd never imagined dying in a hospital bed while his subordinates lined up outside his door, calculating.
The receiving room was smaller than Vinnie expected. Open casket at the far end — Jackie in a dark suit, hands folded, face arranged by the mortician's art into an expression of peace that the man had almost certainly never worn in life. Rosalie Aprile stood beside the casket with her children, accepting condolences with the mechanical grace of a woman who'd been shaking hands for six hours.
Junior Soprano occupied a position three feet to the right of the family — close enough to signal authority, far enough to maintain the fiction of deference. He wore a black suit that fit like it had been commissioned for this exact occasion, which it probably had. His expression balanced solemnity and satisfaction with the precision of a man who'd been rehearsing for this role his entire adult life.
"He thinks he won. Standing there like the heir apparent at the reading of the will, already counting rooms in the palace. He doesn't know he's the decoy. He doesn't know Tony put him there to draw fire."
Tony Soprano stood apart. Not far — six feet, maybe eight — but the distance was architectural. He occupied the space between the family and the crowd with the contained stillness of a man who'd decided to hold his position and let others come to him. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved through the room the way searchlights moved through fog — steady, methodical, missing nothing.
The line delivered Vinnie to Rosalie first.
"Mrs. Aprile. I'm Vincent Marchetti. I'm sorry for your loss."
She took his hand. Her grip was warm, practiced, empty — the handshake of a woman who'd performed this ritual two hundred times today and would perform it two hundred more.
"Thank you. Jackie spoke well of your father."
"She's on autopilot. Can't blame her. The husband's in the box and the vultures are already circling the leftovers."
He moved to Junior.
"Don Soprano." The title — deliberate, public, carrying the weight of recognition. "My condolences to the family."
Junior's hand closed around Vinnie's with a grip that managed to be simultaneously limp and proprietary. The satisfied smile arrived on schedule — a quarter-inch widening of the mouth that said you remembered.
"Vincent. Good of you to come. Your family has always shown respect."
"Always."
Junior leaned closer. His breath smelled of breath mints and ambition.
"We should talk soon. There are... opportunities. For reliable friends."
"I'd welcome that, Don Soprano."
"And there it is. The second approach, right here at the casket. The man hasn't been boss for a week and he's already recruiting. Building his court one handshake at a time, turning a funeral into a job fair."
He moved on. Tony was next — or rather, Tony was adjacent, positioned in a way that didn't require the line to pass through him but allowed those who chose to stop.
Vinnie stopped.
"Mr. Soprano. I'm sorry for the family's loss."
Tony's eyes locked onto his. Up close, the man was larger than the party at the Aprile house had suggested — not just physically, though he was that, but in the particular way that certain people occupy space. Tony Soprano didn't stand in a room. He filled it.
"Marchetti." A beat. "You paid your tribute early again."
"First of the month. Same as always."
"Your father was the same way. Never late, never short. Reliable."
"That word again. Reliable. The family motto, apparently. Carved on the Marchetti crest next to a picture of a garbage truck and a calculator."
"I appreciate that, Mr. Soprano."
Tony studied him. The look lasted five seconds — a long time when it came from a man who could order your death between bites of gabagool. Then something shifted, not warmth exactly, but a degree of assessment that upgraded from filing cabinet to possibly useful.
"Come by Satriale's sometime. Have a sandwich."
"I will."
He moved through the rest of the room. Shook hands with faces he recognized from the birthday party — Paulie Walnuts, who clapped his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise he'd feel tomorrow. Silvio, whose nod carried the efficient warmth of a man who appreciated that some things didn't require words. Christopher Moltisanti, who shook his hand with the distracted intensity of a man already thinking about the next thing.
And then — at the back of the room, near the door to the second parlor — a man Vinnie recognized from a different kind of memory.
Tall. Lean. Silver hair combed back. A face that belonged on a currency note — distinguished, symmetrical, projecting the particular authority that came from representing the most powerful crime family in New York City.
Johnny Sack. John Sacramoni. Underboss of the Lupertazzi family.
He stood with two associates — New York muscle, unmistakable in their suits that were a shade too well-tailored for Newark — surveying the room with the calm attention of an investor evaluating a portfolio.
His eyes found Vinnie's. The moment lasted half a second. Johnny Sack raised one eyebrow — who are you? — and Vinnie responded with a nod that said nobody important, just paying respects. Johnny's attention moved on.
[POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: NEW YORK PRESENCE CONFIRMED. LUPERTAZZI FAMILY MONITORING DiMEO SUCCESSION]
"New York is watching. Which means the transition isn't just local politics — it's interstate commerce. The Lupertazzis want to know who's running things, whether the tribute arrangements change, whether there's an opening to exploit."
Outside, the February air hit Vinnie's face and he loosened his tie with a gratitude that was almost physical. The funeral home's interior had been warm, close, saturated with the competing frequencies of cologne, flowers, and the particular chemical sweetness that morticians used to make death smell like a department store.
His stomach growled. He'd skipped lunch — the morning had been consumed by logistics, the drive from Jersey City, finding parking in a neighborhood where every curb was occupied by black cars and the men who drove them.
Near the side entrance, a kid was crying. Seventeen, maybe eighteen — dark hair, acne scars, wearing a suit that didn't fit because suits that fit required money that grief didn't provide. He leaned against a Lincoln Town Car with his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with the particular violence of a young man who'd been told his entire life that men don't cry and was losing the argument.
Vinnie pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket — white cotton, ironed, the kind Enzo had insisted he carry because "a man without a handkerchief is a man unprepared for life's indignities." He held it out.
The kid looked up. Red eyes, wet face, the naked devastation of someone who'd lost a person they'd counted as permanent.
"Thanks." The kid took it. Pressed it to his face.
Vinnie walked away. Some grief was private. The best thing you could do with another man's pain was acknowledge it existed and then give it room.
Tommy was waiting at the sedan. He'd finished his cigarette and started another — the second pack visible in his jacket pocket, the habit's infrastructure on display.
"Junior looks happy." Tommy's assessment carried the flatness of a man stating the obvious. "Happy. Tony looks like he's chewing glass."
"Junior's going to be boss."
"Officially."
"That's the only kind that matters to Junior."
Tommy exhaled smoke. "And to us?"
Vinnie opened the passenger door. Paused. The saint's medal in his pocket pressed against his thigh — Carmine Teresi's gift, the old soldier's benediction. Saint Michael, patron of men who made war for a living.
"To us, it means we pay tribute to Junior and keep our mouths shut about who's really running things. Same strategy. Nothing changes."
"Nothing changes." Tommy dropped the cigarette and ground it under his heel. "Everything changes."
He started the car. They pulled out of the parking lot and merged into traffic, leaving behind the funeral home and its hundred black suits and its open casket and the kid with the borrowed handkerchief who was still crying against a car that wasn't his.
[+15 SP — POLITICAL EVENT: DiMEO FAMILY FUNERAL ATTENDANCE]
"Three weeks since the hospital. Jackie's dead. Junior's boss. Tony's watching everyone. Johnny Sack's watching Tony. And I'm a small-time family from Jersey City trying to grow a business and solve a murder while the biggest mob family in New Jersey reshuffles its entire power structure."
"No pressure."
The Cadillac found the Turnpike. Vinnie stared out the window at the industrial corridor that separated Newark from everywhere else — refineries, container terminals, the particular architecture of American commerce that existed to be efficient rather than beautiful.
His phone sat in his lap. He should call Enzo, debrief the political landscape. Should review the notes he'd made about who was positioned where, who talked to whom, whose handshake was warm and whose was calculated.
Instead, he picked up the phone and dialed.
"Tommy. The sandwich invitation from Tony."
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to Satriale's this week. Alone."
Tommy's eyes found him in the rearview mirror. The question was visible, but he didn't voice it. Tommy Rizzo knew when a decision was a decision and when it was a discussion.
"I'll drop you off."
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