“LAW AND ORDER, VIN,” Teddy Marino was saying. “We gotta have it. Gotta have it.”

“I absolutely agree,” said Vincent Russo.

“It’s like taking care of a car or your body. Once you let one thing go, the whole package is in trouble. You got problems with your ignition, eventually it’s going to get in your engine. Something goes wrong with your stomach, it’ll end up in your heart. Right? This is how things break down.”

“Of course,” said Vin. “A hundred percent.”

“Here,” said Teddy. “Take part of this thing. I don’t wanna eat it all myself. I’m turning into a fat pig.”

He handed Vin half his twelve-inch-long salami and Swiss sub sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers.

They were sitting in a booth at the White House sub shop on the corner of Arctic and Mississippi Avenues. The tourists at the next table all wore Baltimore Orioles baseball caps. Celebrities like Jerry Lewis and Susan Sarandon smiled down from photos on the walls. The line of people waiting for sandwiches went out the front door. Others sat hunched over their food at the counter, like auto workers on an assembly line.

“Where are we going?” said Teddy, taking a bite out of the half sandwich he’d kept. “By my count we got problems at three of the unions now.”

He ticked them off with his fingers. “We got that punk from New York trying to horn in on Ralph Sasso and the hotel workers. Number two, I got Paulie Raymond not returning my calls at the construction union. I told you, you can never trust a cop no matter how much jewelry he wears. And number three, I hear from the roofers’ that your boy still hasn’t come by to pick up the envelope.”

“He hasn’t?” Vin put down his half of the sandwich.

“This is how we break down.” Teddy reached across and took the sandwich back. “We let things get out of control. That’s why we have to bring back law and order. Just the other night, we had a card game robbed at the Ocean Club. Would that have happened last year?”

Vin stared at him vacantly.

“I don’t know either,” Teddy said. “But if I find out that fucking kid Nicky had anything to do with it, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands. I tell you, Vin, we should’ve whacked that kid and his father at the same time.”

Vin stared down at his empty plate a moment and scratched at his wild tangle of gray hair.

“Jeez, Ted,” he said, tearing paper from the edge of the plate and putting it in his mouth. “I didn’t know that about Anthony not picking up the envelope. I’m gonna have to have a talk with the kid about it.”

“Never mind,” said Ted, finishing the first half of his sandwich. “I gave the job to Richie. He’s gonna handle it from now on. Your boy doesn’t want it, he don’t have to have it.”

Vin tried to hide his disappointment as he tore another strip off his plate and began chewing it.

“None of these new kids we have is any good,” said Teddy. “They’re all junkies and bums. They don’t understand this thing of ours. We’ve gotta install discipline in our soldiers again. Especially with this indictment coming up, we don’t want anybody else turning rat on us. This is gonna be a Cosa Nostra ’til the day I die. Be it an hour from now or a hundred years from now. We’re gonna have unity and harmony even if it kills us.”

But Vin wasn’t listening. He was staring at the back of someone’s head over by the cash register, some twenty feet away. The head was covered with thick black hair. A small gold earring winked from one earlobe. But without even seeing the face, Vin knew it was someone familiar. The feeling burned across the room, like someone had lit a fuse on the floor. Then the head turned and Vin saw Larry DiGregorio’s chinless face. He felt his head get light as his heart went still. Larry, back from the dead. It took a moment to register that it was actually his son Nicky. They were identical, except Nicky had long dark hair flowing over his collar and more natural color in his face.

He rose off the stool and walked right over to the booth where Vin and Teddy were sitting.

“Happy Father’s Day, you fat piece of shit.” He slid into the booth and faced Teddy.

Teddy’s face got tight and shiny. “Is it, is it, ah, Father’s Day?”

Nicky gave Jerry Lewis’s picture a surly look. “No, asshole, that was two weeks ago, but that ain’t the point. Every Father’s Day, Larry took me here for a sub. It was our tradition with each other. This is the first year I wasn’t with him.”

“Hey, Nicky, we’re all sorry about what happened.” Vin, who was sitting beside him, put a furry hand over the sapphire ring on Nicky’s left pinky.

“Yeah,” said Teddy, putting down his sandwich slowly. “Larry was a good man. You get the flowers I sent over for the funeral?”

Nicky stared across the table at him. “I know you did it, Ted.”

“Did what?”

“I know you had Larry killed.”

Both Vin and Teddy reached for napkins out of the steel dispenser at the same time.

“Oh now Nick, you don’t have call to go around saying things like that,” said Vin, wiping his mouth. “Larry was a friend of ours. We wouldn’t let nothing happen to him.”

“Oh yeah?” Nick’s head slowly rotated to the side, like a department store security camera picking up a shoplifter. “Maybe you were the one that did it, Vin. It’s your style, ain’t it. Putting an ice pick in him, like an animal.”

Vin took his eyes away, as though the conversation no longer interested him. “You don’t have any evidence to say that, Nick. You oughta watch it. You could get sued by somebody.”

“That right? I don’t have any evidence?” Nicky leaned over and put his broad face down by Vin’s. Even sitting down, he towered over the older man. “Then how come when I went by the union the other day, they told me it was your son Anthony who was going to pick up the envelope from now on?”

“Hey, I don’t have to take this.” Teddy started to rise.

“Just hold the fuck on.” Nicky leaned back and dropped his hands under the table. “Right now I’m holding a Glock machine pistol on both of you. So which one of you bastards wants to get his balls blown off first?”

All the blood drained from Teddy’s face. Vin went on chewing his plate.

“Whooa, Nicky.” Teddy’s features began to smear. “We don’t know anything about this. If you got a problem with Anthony, why don’t you take it up with him?”

Vin squinted over at him for clarification. “We’re not saying Anthony had anything to do with what happened to your father,” he said quickly, pulling on his fingers.

“Well, that’s not for us to say, Vin,” Teddy interrupted. “If it’s a problem between the young kids, it’s not for us to settle it.”

Nick DiGregorio hit the table with his free hand and the napkin dispenser rattled.

“I don’t care who, what, or where,” he said. “But someone’s gonna fuckin’ pay.”

Hey, come on, don’t be like that,” said Vin, urging Teddy with his eyes to help him calm the young man. “We’re all friends here, Nick.”

“Fuck friends.”

Nick DiGregorio grabbed the cup of soda out of Teddy’s hand and poured it out on his lap. Then he stood up