I needed to get through the green gate before whoever held Paolo decided that a familiar yard was too easy to find. Neri caught my sleeve when I started across the street. 'You don't know whose trouble you're entering.' I pulled free without answering. He did not follow me. That seemed like permission for three foolish steps. Then I understood it meant only that he preferred to remain outside. I reached the wicket beside the gate and pushed it with my shoulder.
The yard smelled of wet rope, coal smoke, and old cabbage. Two trucks stood beneath a wooden loading roof. Neither showed me anything I could identify as Paolo's. A man in a leather apron stepped between me and the loading platform. Another came out of an office carrying a mug. I recognized him from deliveries to clubs that used Vito Lanza's men for floor labor. He recognized me too. His mug stopped halfway to his mouth. 'Wrong entrance, Verri.'
I told him I had come for a banquet worker taken from the hall. He asked whether I meant a man who had failed to pay a debt. I had heard enough slippery questions in cloakrooms to leave that one unanswered. Instead, I walked toward the platform. The man in the apron planted a broad hand against my chest. My bruised shin trembled under me. I could not have pushed past him without falling, so I turned toward a shuttered storeroom as if I had intended to go there.
Paolo's coat lay beside its threshold. I knew the brown repair on the cuff because I had teased him about the cloth not matching. He had replied that a waiter carried plates, not fashion. Now one sleeve rested in gray water draining from the roof. I bent and lifted it. The apron man seized the collar at the same moment. For a second we held it between us like two servants disagreeing over laundry. 'Leave that,' he said. I wound the wet sleeve around my wrist.
He pulled hard enough to bring me against the platform. My hip struck the boards. I kept hold, less from courage than because surrendering the coat would make everything I had said at the hall sound hollow. The office door opened again. Vito Lanza came out buttoning a cardigan under his jacket. I had carried messages to him before, always about wages or arrival times. He stopped several feet away. 'Let him stand,' he told the man. Then, to me: 'What are you trying to buy?'
'Nothing. I want Paolo.' Lanza looked at the coat and then at my scraped hands. 'You brought somebody through the wrong door today.' I could not tell whether he knew about Bruno or merely meant me. I said Paolo had daughters waiting. His face did not change. 'Then you should have watched him.' Behind the shutter something scraped across the floor. I struck the wood with my open palm. 'Paolo!' The apron man caught my shoulder, but an answer came through: 'Matteo. Don't leave me here.'
Hearing him made me reckless. I pulled toward the door and received a short blow below the ribs that folded me against the coat. Lanza stepped close enough that I could smell peppermint on his breath. 'You heard him alive. Take that much away.' I wanted to demand a reason, a promise, a time. None of those would open the door. I straightened slowly and kept my voice level. 'I'll come back with his own stewards.' Lanza looked toward the gate. 'Not through my yard.'
The apron man marched me out with one fist beneath my arm. On the pavement he shoved me hard enough to make me stumble into a parked cart. The coat stayed with me. I carried it to a luncheonette and asked to use the telephone. My first call reached an empty club office. On the second, a steward said he would not enter another crew's premises on my account. I told him Paolo had answered me. He said hearing a man was not the same as having authority to collect him.
I returned before the lamps came on, choosing the public alley behind the loading roof because the wicket was now bolted. The storeroom shutter stood raised. A laborer swept straw from an empty floor while another rolled a handcart toward the street. Paolo's voice had vanished with everything else. I called his name once. The laborer kept sweeping. I had made Lanza show me Paolo was alive, and in doing so had warned him exactly where I would look. The storeroom was empty before I could return with anyone.