Chapter 12 · Dinner Numbers

"Read it," Sal said, and dropped the folder right on top of my risotto. Sauce splashed my wrist. "Since you're the one who wants a chair at this table."

Twelve people at that table. Luca at the head, me on his right where he'd put me an hour ago, in front of every capo who still thought I was a leash he kept on a pretty girl. Sal Bonetti had been waiting all night to make me prove I wasn't.

I wiped the sauce off with my napkin and flipped the folder open anyway.

"Careful," Luca said, low, not looking at me. "He's fishing."

"Let him fish."

The page was a shipping manifest dressed up as a produce invoice — three trucks, Elmwood distribution, numbers that looked clean if you didn't know what clean looked like. I did. I'd built the real version of this exact route two weeks ago.

"This is wrong," I said.

Sal smiled around his wine glass. "Enlighten us, bookkeeper."

"Truck two's weight doesn't match its fuel log. You're running four hundred pounds heavier than what you're declaring, and the delivery window's forty minutes short for that mileage.