“I’m sorry you had to see him this way,” Vincent said.
“I’m still glad I came. Because I found out something today.”
“About the team, you mean?”
I said, “About how your family is more loyal to me than my own.”
I was walking to my rental car when he called out to me.
“One more thing,” he said.
I turned.
“Those things the owners discovered about the commissioner and Mr. Barr? The things that gavethemleverage over him?”
“What about them?”
“You’re welcome.”
I told him that by tomorrow morning I’d be back behind my desk, that it was never too soon to start getting ready for next season.
“Time for me to get back to my team.”
Vincent Amato smiled.
“You mean our team.”
“Actually,” I said, “I don’t.”
I moved closer to him, away from the car, so I didn’t have to shout.
“Your father let my father run the team. Now you’re going to do the same with me.”
“And why would I do something like that?”
“Ask your father,” I said. “He just told me something upstairsmyfather told me my whole life.”
“And what was that?”
I quickly covered the distance between us, seemed to surprise him by hugging him goodbye, then whispered to him what his father had said to me upstairs in a voice so weak I almost couldn’t hear him.
“Kill or be killed,” I said to Vincent Amato.