The hotel chain's procurement officer was a forty-three-year-old woman in a navy pantsuit named Beth Halloran, and she had a binder.
The binder had tabs.
Vinnie sat across from her in a conference room at the Sheraton in Edison at nine-fifteen on Wednesday morning with the Marchetti Environmental Services bid in a folder of his own and the foreman's union-cleared subcontractor letter and the certificate of insurance and three years of audited financials that the lawyer had pulled together over a weekend. Tommy was in the lobby. Conte was at the yard handling a small truck issue. Vinnie was alone in the room. He was wearing the gray suit and the blue tie that Elena had told him on a different night was the better of his two ties.
Beth Halloran turned to the tab in her binder labeled Pricing.
"Walk me through line item seven."
"That's the holiday surcharge. We waive it. Most carriers don't. Your housekeeping shifts run on Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day. So do ours. We don't think you should pay extra for being in business when we're in business."
"That's an eight-percent margin for you on a calendar year."
"It is."
"And you're still bidding under Waste Management Inc."
"I am."
"How."
"Smaller fleet, lower overhead, owner runs the books personally."
"You're the owner."
"I'm the owner."
"You're young."
"I am."
She wrote something in the margin of the binder.
"And the construction property — the one on Wilson Avenue in Newark — is yours also."
"Marchetti Construction Holdings. Same parent."
"Same parent that doesn't exist on paper yet."
"That's right."
"That's a thing you should fix."
"I'm fixing it. The lawyer says June."
"Fix it by June."
"I will."
She wrote something else.
"I'm going to recommend you to the committee. You'll hear by the end of next week. The contract is twelve months with a six-month renewal option. Twelve thousand a month net to you across the eight properties. Service starts July first."
"Thank you."
"You can stop holding your shoulders like that, Mr. Marchetti. The hard part was the bid."
He let his shoulders down.
She closed the binder.
The bank was three blocks away.
Lincoln Savings, on Route One, in a brick building that had been a bank since 1948 and looked it. The line officer was Mike Costanza — no relation to anyone Vinnie cared to identify, a small-business banker in his mid-fifties who had grown up in Belleville and remembered Sal Marchetti from when Sal had a route on Bloomfield Avenue.
Mike took Vinnie back to his office.
Mike looked at the financials.
Mike looked at the construction LLC filings.
Mike looked at the hotel contract that Vinnie did not yet officially have but had been told he would have by next Friday.
Mike said, "I'm prepared to approve a working-capital line of two-fifty."
"Thank you."
"The terms are prime plus three, secured against the construction holdings receivables and the waste contracts. I have to do the personal guarantee piece too — you know that."
"I know that."
"It's not that we don't trust you, Vinnie. It's that I have to defend it to my regional VP."
"I understand, Mike."
"How's your mother?"
"She's in Florida."
"Tell her Mike Costanza says hello."
"She won't remember you. She's eighty-one and she has the start of the thing."
"Tell her anyway. She'll like that somebody from home remembered."
"I will."
They shook hands. Mike walked Vinnie to the front of the bank. The teller at the second window nodded at Vinnie. The teller did not know Vinnie. The teller nodded because Mike had walked him out and Mike was the assistant manager.
Outside on the sidewalk Vinnie stopped at the Cadillac.
Tommy was at the wheel. Tommy had been driving for Vinnie for fifteen months. Tommy did not need to ask how it had gone because Vinnie's shoulders were where they had been an hour before the meeting started.
"Approved."
"Two-fifty."
"Two-fifty."
A beat.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"For a guy who hasn't had a real day off in six weeks you look like a man who just took one."
"It's a real day, Tommy."
He got in.
Back at the office the lawyer's letter on the LLC reorganization was on the desk when Vinnie sat down. The hotel contract memo from Beth Halloran's secretary had already been faxed over — Sal Conte had handed it to Vinnie at the door without a word. Conte's face was the face Conte put on when he wanted Vinnie to know that he had noticed a thing and was choosing not to comment on it. Conte left.
Tommy came in. Sat on the chair across the desk. Lit a cigarette without asking.
"The guys are asking me."
"What."
"Why all the straight-business stuff. Carlo asked. Conte asked. DiNardo asked. The new kid in the yard asked DiNardo. Word gets around."
"What'd you tell them."
"I told them you'd tell me when you were ready to tell me. They said that wasn't an answer. I said it was the answer."
"That's a good answer, Tommy."
"It's not gonna hold them all summer."
"I know."
Vinnie set the lawyer's letter aside.
"When the feds look at us — and they're going to, Tommy, the only question is when — I want them to see a waste hauling company. With a construction subsidiary. With a hotel contract. With a bank line of credit at a regional bank. With a foreman in Newark who's got a bad knee and an honest face."
"And what're we actually doing while they're looking."
"The same thing we were doing. But less of it. And in places that aren't where the company is."
Tommy chewed on that. Smoked.
"It's not exciting work."
"It's not supposed to be exciting work."
"The guys want exciting."
"Then they should find a different family."
A pause.
Tommy laughed once. A short laugh. He took a drag and let it out toward the ceiling.
"All right."
"All right."
"You want me to set up a meeting for the inner circle. Conte, Carlo, the new kid in the yard, two of the senior drivers. I'll explain it. They'll grumble. They'll do it."
"Set it up. Next Tuesday."
"Done."
Tommy stood. Went to the door. Paused with his hand on it.
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"That frame in the box behind the filing cabinet."
"Yeah."
"You want me to put it up before I go."
The frame was in a box behind the filing cabinet. The lawyer had had a copy of the State of New Jersey LLC registration certificate made and matted in a black wood frame as a small congratulations gesture and the frame had been sitting in the box for a month because Vinnie had not gotten around to deciding where on the wall it went.
"I'll put it up."
"You sure."
"I'll put it up."
"All right."
Tommy went out. Closed the door behind him.
Vinnie sat at the desk for a minute and looked at the wall above the filing cabinet. There was a slightly darker rectangle there from where the old calendar Sal had hung in 1981 had been until last fall when Vinnie had taken it down for paneling.
He pulled the box from behind the filing cabinet. Took the frame out. Held it up at the wall. Set it on the floor while he found a nail in the drawer of the desk and a small hammer that had been in the drawer since Sal's era. He tapped the nail in. Two strikes — the second one bent the nail slightly. He worked it the rest of the way with the side of the hammer and then he hung the frame on it. The frame sat a quarter inch crooked. He nudged it. Stepped back.
It said: State of New Jersey. Certificate of Formation. Marchetti Environmental Services LLC. Dated 4 November 1996. Active.
The lawyer had also matted, in the bottom right corner under the certificate, a small business card.
Vincent S. Marchetti. President.
He looked at it for a long second.
Then he went home, ate two slices of the bread that was left in wax paper on the counter, drank a glass of water at the sink, and went into the kitchen where the yellow legal pad lived. He pulled it off the counter. Flipped past the line he had written in August (Newark RFP / Construction filing — accelerate) and the two lines he had written in March (Tony's people only. Nothing through Richie. / Build faster than him.) and found the next empty page.
He wrote:
The frame goes up. The bank says yes. The hotel says yes. Hold the line through May. Survive Richie.
He capped the pen.
Picked up the phone.
Dialed Elena.
The line rang twice.
"Elena Moretti."
"It's me."
"Hi."
"Friday. Lunch. Your office building. The deli across the street. Twelve-thirty. I want to show you something."
"What."
"A piece of paper."
A pause.
"All right."
"Bring an appetite."
He hung up.
The kitchen clock above the stove ticked once.
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