On the morning of the private investigator’s test, Vincent is awakened by the familiar smell of his mother’s breakfast. He eats with relish, brimming with confidence. He says goodbye to his mother, who kisses his cheek and pinches it. She looks deep into his eyes. The message is clear.
Angelo drives him downtown.
“You know that Alphonse is getting out next week, right?” asks Angelo.
Next to his mother and Paulie, there is no one in the world that Vincent trusts more than Alphonse Guidini. A few years older than Vincent, Alphonse looked after him when he was younger.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve missed him. I wrote him dozens of times and never got an answer, but that’s Alphonse for you. I told his mother and Ralphie that I would drive out to Statesville to pick him up. Ralphie understood.”
A prolific and highly regarded jewel thief, Alphonse was fucked over by one of the guys he did a robbery with. Alphonse was not actually caught in the act. Mario Collino, who had gotten picked up on another job, gave up the entire crew—Alphonse, as well as Jake Battaglia and Mark Gregorio—for a reduction in his sentence. Before that, the cops had no suspects.
In any event, Alphonse stood tall. He never cooperated with law enforcement, never gave up a single bit of information on Jake or Mark. When Jake heard that Alphonse got pinched, he skipped town, taking all the jewels with him. No one has heard from him since. The third guy, Mark Gregorio, never served time for the job either. He died in a freak car accident just a month before the trial started.
None of that mattered to Alphonse. To the cops, he didn’t even acknowledge that the others existed. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to five years. Alphonse did a little over two-and-a-half years of his sentence before he was paroled. He had never been convicted before, so it was an easy decision for the parole board.
But that left Mario Collino, the fucking sniveling rat, still in the wind. No one from the Neighborhood had heard from or about him in years. However, that changed just a few months ago. Vincent reached out to Mario’s friends and got the name of his girlfriend, and from there he found the rat living in Wisconsin under another name. The dumb shit was still using his own date of birth. Vincent keeps this information to himself but plans to give it to Alphonse at the appropriate time. For the rest of the drive downtown, Vincent thinks about Alphonse in silence.
Angelo drops Vincent off at the state office building, wishing him luck. At the doorway to the room where he’s about to take the test, Vincent is approached by one of his future competitors. Edward Braylord, owner of the largest investigative firm in Chicago, derisively looks at Vincent.
“I don’t know how you pulled this off, Scalise, but we will put you out of business before you even get a foot hold,” says Braylord, another ex-FBI agent with lots of corporate clients. “We’re looking into how you pulled this off and we will find out, I assure you.”
“And I assure you that you can go fuck yourself. We’ll see who ends up on top. Now get out of my fucking way.” Braylord can only glare at Vincent’s back as he enters the room. Vincent never glances back.
The test is scheduled to last an hour, but Vincent is finished in forty minutes, lingering longer to double check his answers. He walks out, pretty much happy with himself. He takes a bus back to the Neighborhood just for the hell of it. It will give him time to think as he watches the city go by.
Later that evening he calls Paulie, who is not home. Vincent leaves an insulting message on Paulie’s answering machine, then heads out to meet with the fellows at Ali Baba’s.