Zero, What a God!

Chapter 7

"Look who wandered in. Did the guardhouse lose its guard?" Trent Holloway's voice rang across the marble floor of Prestige Motors.

Vittorio stopped just inside the glass doors. On the way from St. Anne's, he had gone home to Mercer Street long enough to trade the torn uniform for his cleanest shirt and the slacks he had bought for Teresa's funeral. His electric bike now stood chained to a lamppost on Harbor Avenue, and the valet had pinched the chain between two fingers and asked whether it would be staying long.

Inside, the air smelled of leather and expensive coffee. Under the white lights, twelve cars sat on raised platforms, and each one cost more than the whole building on Mercer Street.

Trent stood beside a cherry-red Porsche 911 with his right arm in a white sling. Vanessa hung on his good arm, and the new diamond flashed every time she touched the car. Two hours ago, she had stuffed the divorce papers into her bag. Now she was stroking the hood of the car she had talked about all year while Vittorio counted his pay at the kitchen table.

Vittorio looked past them for Robert Finch, the manager here. In Zero's early years, that careful man in a bow tie had kept his cars and accounts, and he had once spent an hour polishing a single fingerprint off a door handle.

Trent raised his good hand to the whole showroom. "Everyone, meet Vanessa's ex-husband, as of this morning! He guards the gate at Whitmore Heights, so if your car ever gets scratched in there, now you know who to blame. Take a good look, because you won't see a guard in here again."

A few customers turned. A woman by the Bentley display lowered her sunglasses, and two young salesmen by the coffee machine nudged each other. The ink on his signature had not been dry for two hours, and Trent was already selling tickets to the show.

With a grin, Trent jerked his chin toward a bucket and sponge by the service door. "So what's the plan, guard? Did you come to buy a car, or to wash one?"

Laughter rippled across the showroom. Vittorio kept his hands loose at his sides, though his ribs still burned where Trent's knee had landed last night.

Vanessa looked him up and down, slow and bored. "The cheapest car in here costs three hundred thousand dollars. He makes about forty thousand a year, babe, and that's with the night bonus. So he'd need over seven years without eating a single meal."

She had done the math without blinking. She had always counted his pay the night it came in, before he even took off his boots.

"Seven years? Babe, he can't even afford the air freshener," Trent said, and one of the salesmen snorted into his fist.

Vanessa leaned into Trent and laughed. "He used to hang a little pine tree on his bike so his uniform wouldn't smell like the laundromat. I'm not even joking."

The pine tree had been Teresa's idea. She had bought it at the gas station for ninety-nine cents and tied it to his handlebar herself on the day he got the guard job.

Zero had walked into rooms like this one to buy whole fleets, and managers had met him at the curb with umbrellas. One sentence from him would end this laughter. Vittorio held the sentence back, because Celine had sent him here and he wanted to see how high these two would climb before he let them fall.

He turned to the nearest salesman, a young man in a navy blazer with a gold name tag. "I'm here to see Robert Finch."

"Mr. Finch only meets VIP clients, sir. He handles the private accounts from the back office, and walk-ins stay on the sales floor," the salesman said, and his eyes dropped to the funeral crease still pressed into Vittorio's slacks.

Vittorio had ironed that crease the night before Teresa's burial, on a towel spread over the kitchen table. Nobody in this showroom could know what it cost him to wear these slacks again. Teresa would have pressed them better.

"VIP means people with money, guard," Trent said, dragging out every word.

Then Vanessa lifted her phone with a little squeal. "Oh my God, hold still. The girls need to see this."

CLICK!

The flash went off in his face. Vanessa turned the screen toward Trent, and the two of them laughed at the picture.

When the flash faded, Vittorio's eyes moved to the window on their own. A big man in a gray suit stood beside a car he was not looking at, with a camera held low against his hip. Out of old habit, Vittorio marked the man's shoes and the set of his shoulders.

Then Trent's voice dragged his attention back. "Still here? Call security, buddy, before he starts touching the cars!"

Vittorio walked past Trent without a glance. His work boots squeaked on the polished marble, and he stopped in front of the most expensive car in the room.

A black Rolls-Royce Ghost sat on a raised platform, with a silver line along its side. The price card stood on a chrome stand beside the front wheel. It showed more money than every pay packet Vittorio had ever earned put together.

"This one. I'll take it today."

The showroom went silent, and even the coffee machine stopped hissing.

Then Trent burst out laughing, so hard that his sling bounced against his chest. "Four hundred and ten thousand dollars! Can you even read the card, guard?"

"What are you paying with, Vittorio, the coins from the guard post or that envelope you keep for Teresa's headstone?" Vanessa covered her mouth, laughing behind her diamond.

The headstone envelope sat in his pocket right now. She had known about it for six months. In all that time, she had never once offered to add a dollar.

One salesman pretended to count coins into his palm. The other laughed until he had to lean on the Bentley.

Trent stepped closer and raised his good hand. "If you have even a hundred grand in your account, I'll crawl out of this showroom on my knees."