Why Is the Money Warm?

Saturday, 7:05 AM. The Quadrilatero.

Massimo Grandi was sharpening a knife when they came in, and he did not stop.

“Leo,” he said. “Marco. Come in. Mind the shutter, it’s only half up. Mind your heads. Mind the ham.”

Leo minded the ham. It hung from the ceiling beside forty other hams, and each one was worth more than his car. The shop smelled of salt and pepper and cold stone. On the counter lay a whole mortadella as big as a child.

Marco did not mind the ham. He walked into it, apologised to it, and straightened his jacket. The jacket was polyester, the colour of mustard, and he had bought it because a man in a film had worn one like it. The man in the film had not been sweating at seven in the morning.

“Sit, sit.” Massimo pointed with the knife at two stools. “Have you eaten?”

“We’re fine,” said Leo.

“You’re thin. Both of you. It worries me.” Massimo put down the knife and cut four slices of mortadella by hand, each one so thin that Leo could see the counter through it. He laid them on paper and pushed them across. “Eat.”

They ate. It was the best thing Leo had eaten in a month. That was the problem with Massimo.

“So,” said Massimo. “Eleven thousand four hundred.”

“About that,” said Marco.

“Not about. Exactly.” Massimo took out a small notebook and a pencil. He did not open the notebook. He did not need to. “The Norway business. The artisan mortadella for the Norwegians. You remember.”

“The Norwegians were not ready,” said Marco.

“The Norwegians were ready. The mortadella was not mortadella. It was a sausage from a supermarket with a new label, and my name on the letter, because Leo signed for it.” Massimo looked at Leo, kindly. “You signed for it, Leo.”

“I know,” said Leo.

“I’m not angry.”

“I know.”

“I am never angry. Anger is bad for the blood.” Massimo tapped the notebook on the counter, once. “Midnight.”

“Tonight?” said Marco.

“Tonight. Eleven thousand four hundred, in my hand, by midnight. Or I will be disappointed.” He picked up the knife again and turned it in the light. “And when I am disappointed, I make sausages. I don’t want to. Sausages take all day. The casings, the grinding, the tying. It’s a great deal of work for everybody.”

Nobody said anything. The knife went on the stone. Shff. Shff.

“And today of all days,” said Massimo, “I have no time for disappointment. My goddaughter is married this afternoon.”

Marco put down his mortadella.

“Giulia,” said Massimo. “I held her at the font. She screamed the whole time, a wonderful girl. Today she marries a very nice young man from Naples. Very polite. Never eats my mortadella.” He smiled at the knife. “I’ve noticed. I notice everything. The reception is at the Hotel Bella Vista. Four hundred tortellini. I made the filling myself.”

“The Bella Vista,” said Marco. His voice came out high. He brought it down. “Lovely hotel.”

“Terrible hotel. Beautiful chandelier.” Massimo came around the counter and lifted the shutter for them with one hand. “Midnight, gentlemen. Go with God. Mind the ham.”

Outside, the Quadrilatero was waking up. Men in white aprons were hosing the stones. A woman was building a pyramid of peaches.

Marco walked fast, with his hands in his pockets, until they were around the corner. Then he stopped under a portico and leaned on a pillar and breathed like a man who has climbed a tower.

“The Bella Vista,” said Leo.

“I know.”

“Our wedding is his wedding.”

“I know, Leo.”

“He is the godfather.”

“He is a godfather. There’s a difference. It’s a baptism. It’s a religious title. It is not the other thing.” Marco wiped his face with a handkerchief that matched nothing. “In fact, it’s better.”

“How is it better?”

“Think. What do we want?”

“Eleven thousand four hundred.”

“And where is it?” Marco lowered his voice. “Carla Rossi, the old woman with the purple hair, she was at the bakery on Thursday telling the whole line. The family gave envelopes at the rehearsal dinner last night. The early ones. The aunts, the uncles. More than sixty envelopes, Leo. She said sixty. In a box. In the hotel office, for safekeeping, until the wedding.”

“So we steal the envelopes.”

“We borrow the envelopes. And who gave the biggest envelope at the dinner, do you think? Who is the godfather?”

Leo thought about it.

“So we pay him,” Leo said, “with his own money.”

“It’s circular.” Marco’s eyes had gone bright. “It’s perfect. The money leaves him and returns to him. Nothing is lost. It is a closed system of meaning. Eco would weep.”

“Eco is dead.”

“Then he would weep more.”

Leo looked at the pillar. Someone had written on it, long ago, in marker: Everything is connected. Under that, in different marker: No it isn’t.

What Leo wanted was not complicated. His aunt had a ground floor on Via Piella that had been empty for six years. It had a wide door and a concrete floor. It would make a good bicycle repair shop. He would fix chains and true wheels and never again sign a letter about Norway. That was all. That was the whole plan.

“Fine,” said Leo.

At 7:40, the Hotel Bella Vista was a kitchen fire without the fire.

The power was back. The breakfast room was full of people in half their wedding clothes, shouting at each other in a friendly way about coffee. Nobody looked at two men in the lobby, because everybody in the lobby was looking for someone else.

Behind the front desk, a young man in a hotel jacket was asleep with his head on a large green book.

Marco went behind the desk like he worked there. Leo followed like he didn’t. The door to the back office was open.

Inside were umbrellas, a child’s shoe, and two boxes.

The first box was on the desk. It was white and wrapped in silk, with a ribbon, and a slot in the top, and silver letters that said GIULIA & MATTEO.

The second box was on the shelf, under a white tablecloth. It was round and tall. A paper tag hung from it.

Marco read the tag in a whisper. “Rossi. Wedding gift.”

“There’s a question mark,” Leo whispered.

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“The silk box is too obvious. Anyone would take the silk box. It’s a decoy, Leo. For fools.” Marco lifted a corner of the tablecloth, looked, and dropped it again quickly, as if he had seen something private. “The real money is always under the tablecloth. The question mark is the tell.”

“The silk box has a slot for envelopes.”

“So would a decoy.”

Leo opened his mouth. Marco had already picked up the round thing, tablecloth and all. He staggered.

“Heavy,” Marco whispered, delighted. “Sixty envelopes. Leo. They put in coins.”

They went out the back way, down a narrow staircase that smelled of wine and floor soap. Halfway down, a young man came up toward them.

He was wearing a hotel dressing gown and one sock. He held a notebook under his arm and a paper napkin in both hands, and he was reading the napkin with great concentration, moving his lips. He did not look at them. They did not look at him. He went past them, down the other stairs, the ones that went to the cellar, and they heard a key turn in a lock.

Nobody said anything. In a wedding hotel, everybody belongs.

The Fiat belonged to Marco’s cousin, who did not know. It started on the third try. Marco drove. Leo sat in the passenger seat with the round thing on his knees, still under the tablecloth, and watched the porticoes go by, arch after arch after arch.

Marco was humming. It was the theme from The Godfather.

Under it, Leo could hear something else. It was lower than Marco. It was coming through the tablecloth, into his knees, into his hands.

He put his palm flat on the top of the box.

It was warm. Not warm like a thing left in the sun. Warm like a thing that was awake.

“Marco,” said Leo.

“Mm.”

“Why is the money warm?”