He was bigger than Christopher remembered.
The prison weight was still on him, thick neck, broad shoulders, the kind of build that came from years of lifting in a yard where being weak was a liability.
Tony Blundetto sat across from him at the coffee shop and his hands wrapped around the cup like it was something he was used to holding on to.
The knuckles were scarred.
The forearms were dense.
The eyes had the particular flatness of a man who had spent fifteen years not showing what he was thinking.
The coffee shop was a place Christopher had chosen for its neutrality, no Soprano associates, no familiar faces, just a counter and some booths and enough quiet to pass for privacy in a public space.
The coffee was mediocre.
The air smelled of burnt beans and steamed milk.
A radio played soft rock from a speaker in the corner.
A few customers sat at the counter, their conversations low, their attention on their own lives.
Before the meeting, Christopher had stopped at Satriale’s.
Paulie had been holding forth about a dream he had — something about a talking fish and a message from his mother — and Christopher had let him talk, nodding in the right places, his mind already on the conversation ahead.
“You look distracted,” Paulie had said.
“You got something on your mind?”
“Just the cousin.
Gotta figure out how to make the pitch.”
Paulie had laughed.
“Pitch.
Listen to you.
You’re like a goddamn salesman now.”
Tony had been at the back table, reading the newspaper.
He had looked up when Christopher walked in, and their eyes had met across the room.
Tony had nodded: a small gesture, but Christopher had felt the weight of it.
Tony was watching how he handled the cousin situation.
The test had already begun.
“So you’re my handler,” Tony B.
said.
“I’m your cousin.”
“Same thing, these days.” Tony B.
smiled, but there was no humor in it.
“Tony put you on me?”
“Tony asked me to help you find your feet.”
“Help me find my feet.” Tony B.
turned the phrase over like he was testing it for weight.
“You talk like him now.”
Christopher let the comment land.
The body remembered this dynamic: the older cousin, the one who had been the wild one before the stretch, the one whose respect Christopher had once needed but no longer craved.
The power in the table was different now.
Tony B.
did not know that yet.
The Gauge was already running, reading the micro-adjustments in Tony B.’s posture, the slight forward lean that meant interest fighting with pride.
“Here’s what I’m thinking.” Christopher leaned forward.
“There’s a storefront in Elizabeth.
Massage parlor, nothing fancy, but the location is good — foot traffic from the bus depot, a residential neighborhood a block over.
We stand it up as a legit operation.
Real customers, real revenue, real books.”
“A massage parlor.”
“A front that earns.
You run it.
You get the salary, the legitimacy, the thing that keeps you busy.”
Tony B.
stared at him.
The flatness in his eyes flickered, not anger, but something closer to wounded pride.
“I did fifteen years.
You think I want to spend my first year out rubbing old men’s shoulders?”
“I think you want to spend it not going back.”
The words landed.
Christopher watched them hit: the flicker in Tony B.’s eyes, the slight tightening of the jaw.
The Gauge was still warm, and he could read the shape of the reaction: pride, wounded, looking for an exit.
Tony B.
had spent fifteen years dreaming about what he would do when he got out, and none of those dreams involved massage tables and scented candles.
“You don’t know what fifteen years is like.”
“You’re right.
I don’t.” Christopher kept his voice even, his hands still on the table.
“But I know what happens when a guy gets out and doesn’t have anything to do.
He finds something.
And the something he finds usually gets him killed or sent back.”
“I ain’t gonna get sent back.”
“Not if you’re busy.
Not if you’re earning.
Not if you’ve got something that’s yours.”
Tony B.
went quiet.
He looked at his coffee, then the window, then back at Christopher.
The calculation was visible: the weighing of pride against survival, the old reflexes against the new reality.
He took a long drink of his coffee, set the cup down, and wrapped his hands around it again.
“A massage parlor.”
“A real business.
Real books.
Real customers.
You run it, you own it, you make money.
And when Tony asks what you’re doing, you tell him you’re earning.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
Christopher met his eyes.
“I get a cousin who’s alive.”
The words were true.
He hadn’t planned them, hadn’t calculated their effect, but they were true, and Tony B.
heard the truth in them.
The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction.
The flatness in his eyes softened, just enough to let the light through.
“Let me think about it.”
“Think fast.
The lease is going to someone else if we don’t take it.” Christopher stood and dropped a bill on the table.
“I’ll send you the address.
Walk the space before you decide.
It’s better than it sounds.”
He walked out without looking back.
The seed was planted.
The canon trajectory.
Joey Peeps, the hit, the escape, the murder, had just had its fuel reduced.
Tony B.
was not hunting yet.
He was curious.
The curiosity would buy time.
Outside, the June sun was high and the street was busy.
Christopher lit a cigarette he had no intention of finishing and stood on the sidewalk a beat, letting the noise of the city wash over him.
The craving hummed in the background, a steady bass note under the day’s work.
One clean week.
Two.
The count kept climbing, and the wanting kept humming, and the clock kept ticking toward a future that was already different from the one he had been given.
His phone buzzed.
A text from Paulie: How’d it go with the jailbird?
He typed back: He’s thinking about it.
Paulie’s response came a moment later: Thinking’s dangerous.
Christopher smiled and put the phone away.
Paulie was not wrong.
He drove home through streets he was still learning to recognize, the map of this new life slowly filling in.
But the shape was emerging.
The cousin was engaged.
The wire was being managed.
The count kept climbing.
The next morning he met Paulie at Satriale’s for coffee.
“So?
He bite?” Paulie asked.
“He’s in.”
Paulie raised an eyebrow.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Paulie shook his head.
“You got a gift, kid.
I don’t know what it is, but you got it.”
Christopher drank his coffee and said nothing.