Bellagrand

“Okay. Labor is part of the operating budget.”

“But you already paid them a regular salary, yes? You paid them a fair wage for their labor?”

“How can it be a fair wage when Eddie’s uncle needed to be buried?”

Gina clamps her hands on her chest as if she is having a heart attack. “Because you have been overpaying the payroll, we don’t have enough to cover our mortgage. The note the bank holds against our restaurant is the one fixed capital expense we absolutely must pay.”

“Labor is the one fixed capital expense we must pay.”

“No, Harry. We can fire everyone and run the restaurant with just the family working for nothing, but if we don’t pay the mortgage, there will be no restaurant to run.”

“You’re placing people below institutions, Gia,” he says. “Always a mistake and unlike you. I thought you and I were sewn of the same cloth. The bank can wait for its money. The people can’t.”

“Harry, the bank has waited for its money. Over three months. Now we owe them not just next month’s payment, but the last quarter besides. And we need to pay it in the next twenty days.”

“So let’s pay it.”

“We don’t have it. Had you loaned our employees the money instead of simply giving it to them, the bank could see those loans as an asset, but as it stands …”

“We’ll have to get it.” Harry is unconcerned. “It’ll be fine. The bank will wait.”

“They won’t wait. They’ll take Salvo’s restaurant!”

“No, they won’t. That’s just to scare you. I know how this works. I’ll go talk to them. Just … let me finish my lunch and this one chapter.” He shows her the book he’s reading: Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities. “Look what he writes, it’s brilliant! ‘Politics is business. That’s what’s the matter with politics. That’s what’s the matter with everything—art, literature, religion, journalism, law, medicine—they’re all business. Make politics a sport, as they do in England, or a profession, as they do in Germany.’” Harry clucks in deep approval. “Isn’t he something?”

Gina has nothing to say.

“Just let me finish this chapter and then we’ll go.”

Harry goes to the bank. He goes with a barely contained Salvo and an overstrung Gina, who sits in the corner chair in Cassidy’s office and wants to break her fingers as she listens.

Ervin Cassidy is a kindly man, but a stern one. His placid, portly demeanor belies a steely interior. “Mr. Barrington,” he says, “we’ve been writing to you for three months, and you’ve been ignoring our letters and requests for payment. Our bylaws are our bylaws. Your loan is not coming from my pocket. This bank has investors it has to answer to. You have a collateralized note on which you cannot be more than ninety days in arrears. And you are currently at one hundred and seventeen. On top of that,” he calmly continues, “you have been constantly, and I mean nearly every single month since we began servicing your loan, late with your payments. In the last forty-one months you have not paid your mortgage on time once. Sometimes you’re eleven days late, sometimes forty-two, sometimes twenty-nine. But you’re always late.”

“We pay you eventually, don’t we,” Harry says sourly.

“Not for the last one hundred and seventeen days you haven’t,” Cassidy says. “A few months ago you asked me to extend you an overdraft, using the restaurant as collateral. This I did for you. That account is also thousands of dollars in arrears.”

“Perhaps you can increase the overdraft,” Harry says.

“Why would we do that?”

“So we can pay you back the money we owe you.”

The bank manager laughs softly, almost benignly, as if he is dealing with an irrational child. “You want us to increase your overdraft so you can pay us the money you owe us? You’re not even borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. You’re borrowing from Peter to pay Peter.”

“It’s just accounting,” Harry says. “Moving the debt from one place to another.”

“Yes,” Cassidy says. “But your debt has to be backed by the possibility of future earnings. The bank is not unreasonable, is it, to expect a small chance of being repaid?” Cassidy turns to Gina’s brother. “Salvatore, when you owned two restaurants, it was possible to increase revenue above the operating expense line. But as it stands right now, your one business will barely break even in the next three to five years. You have nothing extra to pay back the bank with.”

“We’ll increase sales,” says an unconcerned Harry.

“Mr. Barrington, let me explain to you how it works.”

“I know how it works.”

“The way it works,” Cassidy continues, as if he hasn’t been interrupted, “is first you increase sales and then you bring us your receipts and ask for a loan. Not vice versa. How would you increase your profits, may I ask? You’ve got two ovens and twenty tables. There is very little room for growth. You can increase your prices, but then you’ll have fewer customers. It’s a fine balance, running a business, which is why a high debt ratio breaks that balance, makes the whole equation untenable. I’m truly sorry.”

“Mr. Cassidy,” Harry says, “we don’t have the money right now. But the bank has plenty of money. It’s not as if you’re going to go broke, or lose your business if you wait a little longer.”

“That is where you’re quite wrong, Mr. Barrington. Quite mistaken. If we did what you’re proposing, we would indeed lose our business. And wait for what?”

Harry sighs, finally shaking his head in frustration. “Okay, fine. Go ahead and charge us a higher rate of interest on the overdraft.”

“We already are. And you can’t pay it. You know how I know? Because you haven’t paid it. And besides, charging you more to provide you with a service that you already can’t afford is doubly bad business. For you and for me. I’ve been doing this a long time, Mr. Barrington. Thirty-seven years. We are the First National Bank of Lawrence and we are very proud of our relationship with our customers, many of them immigrants, like your brother-in-law and your wife, who often fall on hard times. We help them as best we can—prudently. So that they don’t feel overwhelmed by debt and we still make money.”

“Making money is the important thing, it seems,” Harry says. “That’s first, isn’t it?’

Ervin Cassidy ices over after hearing Harry’s disrespectful tone. “Every single business in this town and in your father’s town and in every town in the United States is built with bank loans that are given to families such as your own,” he says, rising out of his chair. “We are the reason you have a restaurant in the first place. We are the reason your father has a thriving construction business, the reason there are roads and factories and carriages and horses. We are the reason the Panama Canal is being built. Where do you think this money comes from? The magic vault in the back? The bank has money because other people—not you, but other people—come to us and entrust it to us. They lend us their money for safekeeping, and then we turn around and lend their lifeblood to you so you can use their hard-earned savings to enrich your life. That’s how it works. Perhaps you should take an economics class, Mr. Barrington, to acquaint yourself with the rudiments of basic business practice. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Wagner is waiting outside my office. She has applied for a loan for a new ice cream stand.”

“What, we’re done here?” Salvo says, rising.

“Yes, Salvatore. I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid we are. If I don’t see four months of mortgage payments on my desk in ten days, we will commence recovery of your business property. I will hold off calling in the overdraft to give you more time to pay, if that helps any.”

The police have to be called to restrain Salvo in the public square on Essex Street. He attacks Harry, is arrested for assault and battery, and would be in jail, except Harry refuses to press charges. Salvo commands Harry to go to Herman Barrington and make it right. Harry says he will be damned before he ever shames himself again.

“You are damned and you have already shamed us—our entire family and my sister most of all for being the biggest fool in Lawrence.”

Salvo tells his mother that he cannot live another second under the same roof as the man who has single-handedly destroyed the business he came from Sicily to build. Either Harry leaves or Salvo will. But Harry can’t leave on his own. Gina has to go with him. So the choice is between Mimoo’s only daughter and her one remaining son. Caught in the Gordian crossfire, she refuses to make the devil’s choice. Salvo chooses for her. He packs his bags and leaves Lawrence for the North End.

That was 1908.

Antonio’s was auctioned at gavel to Ned Rector, who sold it piece by piece, making off with the pizza ovens, the tables, and the silverware and reopened six months later as Ned’s Mattresses and Beds, and six months after that as Ned’s Burgers.

Six

“SALVO HAS NOT FORGIVEN Harry?” Ben asked. “To this day?”

Gina shook her head. “Would you?”

“Why didn’t Salvo just partner with one of his friends in the North End?” Ben wanted to know. “It’s been a few years. Banks are more forgiving than your brother. They’d lend to him again, I’m sure.”

Gina shook her head. “It’s unending work, running a business,” she said. “Salvo learned it the hard way. To do it right, he has to do it himself. But he doesn’t want to. Which is one of the reasons he gave so much control to Harry, who unfortunately happened to be the wrong man for the job. Besides, Salvo found out things about himself, too, during the fiasco. He doesn’t like to be pinned down. He wants to be able to change jobs, like he changes women, and move on to the next flight of fancy. He continues to blame Harry, who certainly deserves a fair portion of the blame for what happened, but the truth is, Salvo himself is ill-suited to the daily grind of running a business. Or a marriage. He’s too much of a wanderer.”

“Oh, Gina.”

“I know. Listen.” She leaned closer. “Tell me, are they … his father and his sister … are they still upset with him over what happened? It’s been so many years.”

Ben also leaned forward, as if talking about difficult things required hushed voices. “All I know is that no one speaks of him. His name is never mentioned.”