"The fewer people around the better, I always say."

"And you're right. But I'll tell you what. We'll leave, and then you go find a pay phone and make the call, and when you find out something, you call the house and all you have to say is 'yes' or ' no.' You understand?"

"That would work nicely."

"And besides, if I stayed here, I'd eat all this pastry, it's very good, but it's not good for me, too much of it."

"I understand, Mr. S."

Gian-Carlo got up and walked to the door and pushed the curtain aside and looked for Pietro.

"He's not out there, Mr. S."

"He probably had to drive around the block," Mr. S. said. "He'll be there in a minute."

For the next three minutes, Gian-Carlo, at fifteen-second intervals, pushed the curtain aside and looked out to see if Pietro and the Lincoln had returned.

Finally he had.

"He's out there, Mr. S.," Gian-Carlo said.

Mr. Savarese stood up.

"Thank you for the pastry, even if it wasn't good for me," he said, and shook Ricco's hand.

Then he walked out of the restaurant and quickly across the sidewalk and got into the Lincoln. As soon as Gian-Carlo had got in beside him in the front seat, Pietro drove off.

"I'll tell you, Pietro, if anything, it smells worse than before."

"As soon as I get a chance, Mr. S., I'll take it to the garage and swap it."

"Why don't you do that?" Mr. S. replied.

"Anthony, something has come up," Mr. Ricco Baltazari, proprietor of Ristorante Alfredo, said to Mr. Anthony Clark (formerly Cagliari), resident manager of the Oaks and Pines Lodge, over the telephone. Mr. Clark was in his office overlooking the third tee of the Oaks and Pines Championship Golf Course. Mr. Baltazari was in a pay telephone booth in the lower lobby of the First Philadelphia Bank amp; Trust Building on South Broad Street.

"What's that?"

"The financial documents you're going to send me…"

"They're on their way, Ricco, relax. The van just left, not more than a couple minutes ago."

"That's not good enough. It'll take him for fucking ever to get to Philly."

"What do you want me to do, get in my car and bring them my fucking self?" Mr. Clark said, a slight tone of petulance creeping into his voice.

"It's not what I want, Anthony. It's what you know who, our mutual friend, wants," Mr. Baltazari said. "He wants those financial documents right fucking now."

There was a moment's silence.

"The only thing I could do, Ricco," Mr. Clark said, "is put somebody in my car and send him after the van, see if he could catch it, you understand?"

"Do it, Anthony. Our mutual friend is very anxious to get his hands on those financial documents just as soon as he can."

"If I had known he wanted those documents in a hurry, I would have brought them myself, you understand that?"

"If I had known he wanted them, I would have come up and got the fuckers myself," Mr. Baltazari replied. "I just left him. He said I should tell you he wants them, as a special favor, right now."

"I'll do what I can, Ricco. You want I should call our friend and tell him what I'm doing, in case my guy can't catch the van? Or will you do that?"

"He don't give a shit what you're doing. All he wants is the fucking markers. How you do that is your business."

"I tell my guy to take them right to our mutual friend?"

"You tell your guy to bring them to me, at the restaurant. When I got them, I'm to call our friend."

"Ricco, I would be very unhappy if I was to learn that you weren't telling me the whole truth about this."

"Anthony, get your guy on the way, for Christ's sake!"

"Yeah," Mr. Clark said, and hung up.

Mr. Clark took a pad of Oaks and Pines notepaper from his desk, and a pen from his desk set.

On one sheet of paper, he wrote, "Give Tommy the envelope I gave you, A.C." and on the other he wrote Ristorante Alfredo, Ricco Baltazari, and the address and telephone number.

Then Mr. Clark went down to the money room off the casino. There he found Mr. Thomas Dolbare sitting all alone on one of the stools in front of the money counting table, on which now sat a small stack of plastic bank envelopes. Mr. Dolbare, a very large and muscular twentyeight-year-old, was charged with the security of last night's take until the messenger arrived from Wilkes-Barre to take it for deposit into six different, innocently named bank accounts in Hazelton and Wilkes-Barre.

"Tommy," Mr. Clark said, "what I want you to do is take my car and chase down the van. He just left. He always goes down Route 611. Stop him, give him this, and he'll give you an envelope. You then take the envelope to Mr. Baltazari. I wrote down the address and phone number."

Mr. Clark gave Mr. Dolbare both notes.

"Right."

"As soon as you have it, go to a pay phone and call me. Or if you can't catch the van, call me and tell me that too."

"I'll catch it," Mr. Dolbare said confidently. He was pleased that he was being given greater responsibility than sitting around in a fucking windowless room watching money bags.

"Don't take a gun," Mr. Clark said. "You won't need it in Philadelphia."

"Right," Mr. Dolbare said, and took off his jacket and the.357 Magnum Colt Trooper in its shoulder holster, and then put his jacket back on.

"Don't drive like a fucking idiot and get arrested, or bang up my car," Mr. Clark said.

"Right," Mr. Dolbare said.

The van that Mr. Dolbare intercepted on Highway 611 between Delaware Water Gap and Mount Bethel was a year-old Ford, which had the Oaks and Pines Lodge logotype painted on both its doors and the sides. It made a daily, except Sunday, run to Philadelphia where it picked up seafood and beef and veal from M. Alcatore amp; Sons Quality Wholesale and Retail Meats in South Philadelphia.

M. Alcatore amp; Sons was a wholly owned subsidiary of Food Services, Inc., which was a wholly owned subsidiary of South Street Enterprises, Inc., in which, it was believed by various law enforcement agencies, Mr. Vincenzo Savarese held a substantial interest.

It was also believed by various law enforcement agencies that through some very creative accounting the interlocked corporations were both depriving the federal, state, and city governments of all sorts of taxes, and at the same time laundering through them profits from a rather long list of illegal enterprises.

So far, no law enforcement agency, city, state, or federal, had come up with anything any of the respective governmental attorneys believed would be worth taking to court.

Tommy Dolbare gave the van driver Mr. Clark's note, and the van driver gave him a sealed blank envelope.

Tommy got back in Mr. Clark's Cadillac Sedan de Ville, and continued down Highway 611 to Easton, where he had to take a piss, and stopped at a gas station. He decided, on his way back to the car, that Mr. Clark would probably like to hear that he had intercepted the van, so he went into a telephone booth and called Oaks and Pines Lodge.

Then he got back in the Sedan de Ville and continued down US Highway 611 toward Philadelphia. It is one of the oldest highways in the nation, and from Easton south for twenty miles or so parallels the Delaware Canal.

Shortly after Mr. Dolbare passed the turn off to Durham, a tiny village of historical significance because it was at Durham that Benjamin Franklin established the first stop of his new postal service, and from the canal at Durham that George Washington took the Durham Boats on which he floated across the Delaware to attack the British in Princeton, Mr. Dolbare took his eyes from the road a moment to locate the cigarette lighter.