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night would never end.
    A shy, confirmed bachelor, he’d never been any good at picking up girls at bars or even asking for their phone numbers, so he was surprised and delighted when this beautiful young woman, twenty years his junior, asked for his. The courtship had been fast and furious. She was a delightful mix of sass, class, sex, and intelligence, and he was as befuddled as all their friends that she seemed so completely enamored with him. It took him months to work up the nerve to ask her to marry him and her a second to think about it before saying yes.
    Upon marrying, she immediately gave up her modeling career and started working on getting pregnant. Even then it took them a year, though not from a lack of trying. Finally, Vicente Paulito Carlotta Jr. was born, almost two years after their nuptials.
    Vince had never thought much about having kids. His own experiences as an orphan bouncing from one relative’s house to the next, none of whom wanted an extra mouth to feed, had not been happy ones. He’d gone along with getting Antonia pregnant because that was what she wanted. And yet, once Vincent was born he learned a whole new kind of love.
    “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you by looking like a slob in public,” Vince now replied to his wife.
    Antonia laughed and walked over to stand in front of him. She reached up to straighten his tie. “Little chance of that, my Prince Charming who all the women want,” she said lightly but then frowned. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
    Vince reached up and took her hands in his. “I wish I didn’t have to either,” he said. “But it’s important. Charlie called and said he wants to bury the hatchet. . . .”
    “He wants to bury it in your back,” she retorted.
    “Probably, but I still need to hear what he wants to say,” Vince said. “He knows he’s going to lose if the Labor Department looksat the election results. He might be trying to save face, and maybe prison time, by offering to step down from the presidency.”
    “I think he would rather die than lose to you,” Antonia said. “I don’t trust him; he has cuore nero. ”
    “A black heart,” Vince translated. “I think you’re giving him too much credit; I don’t think he has a heart. But he does have an ego, and if he thinks he’s going to lose, he’ll want to work out some sort of deal. He’s really not the confident guy he likes to project; he gets by on a lot of bravado.”
    “But why meet at Marlon’s? And why at night?”
    Vince shrugged. “Charlie’s still one of those old-school guys who likes to work things out over beer and cigars.” He let go of her hands, leaned down, and kissed her. “Don’t worry, my love,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen. Marlon’s will have a crowd. Randy will be there and he’s nobody anybody wants to fu—sorry, to mess with. Besides, Vitteli’s too smart to throw his life away over who gets to be union president.”
    Antonia stuck out her lower lip. “I still don’t like it. Joey Barros scares me.”
    “Joey’s bark is worse than his bite, and that dog doesn’t even bark unless his master tells him to,” Vince replied. “I expect Charlie will have him muzzled.”
    Vince walked over to his big wooden desk. As he picked up his car keys and wallet, he noticed a pad of yellow sticky notes next to the telephone. FPB 8196. He thought for a moment, pulled the top sheet from the pad, and put it in his wallet.
    “What’s that?” his wife asked.
    “Nothing,” Vince replied as he slipped the wallet into his coat pocket.
    “Don’t tell me ‘nothing’ when I see you thinking about something,” she replied.
    “It’s the license plate number of those jokers who came to the door the other night,” he said.
    “Did they ever come to the union office to sign up?”
    Vince shook his head. “No. At least not that I know of; but they could have tried to get on down at the docks and I just haven’t seen the paperwork