She remembered Jack Tocco, the don, coming in Club Leo one time with his entourage, and the whole place stopped, people looked like they were frozen, the men, her father included, paying homage to the man, the boss of all bosses.
She said, "Joey, what the hell do you do? You connected?"
He said, "To what?"
"The Mob?"
He never answered the question. They were on his boat called Wet Dream, that's how imaginative he was, looking out at the lake, a couple miles offshore, Canada somewhere in the distance, sun setting, red highlights on the horizon, Sharon thinking she'd gotten herself in too deep and shouldn't see him any more. He got up and went below and she was trying to think of what to say to him.
He came back on deck with a bottle of champagne and two flutes three-quarters filled and handed one to her.
She said, "What's the occasion?"
Joey said, "I've been thinking about this for a while. I hope you have, too."
He put the bottle in a cooler that was on deck. He got down on one knee and looked up at her.
"Will you marry me?"
He clinked her glass and took a sip. She did, too.
"Be careful," he said. "There's something in there."
Sharon saw it at the bottom of the flute, floating just above the stem. She knew what it was.
"It's our anniversary," Joey said. "Five weeks from the day we met."
Joey was a party boy. This was the last thing she would've expected. She said, "I've got to tell you I'm a little surprised. I thought you were seeing other girls, too."
"Not since I met you, babe. When I saw you I got hit by a tornado, a fucking hurricane."
She didn't know what else to do so she drank the champagne and felt the ring tickle her mouth, bobbing in the bubbles. When her champagne was gone, she turned the glass upside down and caught it, a diamond ring, a big one.
He said, "Put it on."
And she did, the biggest engagement ring she'd ever seen.
"Three fucking carats," he said.
He was grinning, holding his champagne glass by the stem. "Had it made special. What do you think?"
Chapter Four
McCabe waited at the bus stop on Via Trionfale with a heavyset gray-haired woman wearing a black dress. She was holding hands with a young girl in a school uniform who looked nine or ten. The woman wore dark translucent stockings and he could see the hair on her legs matted against the fabric.
Two tradesmen in blue coveralls were smoking, a slight breeze blowing it toward the woman. She glanced at the men, fanning her face. They dropped their cigarettes on the sidewalk and stepped on them as the bus pulled up. The doors opened and people got off and McCabe and the others got on.
The bus was packed, siesta over, people going back into the city to work. McCabe stood leaning against the rear window, looking down the aisle, the air thick with the smell of body odor. At times it was so heavy he had to breathe through his mouth.
He watched traffic approach, looking out the rear window, helmeted riders on Vespas and Lambrettas coming up close to the bus then gunning their motorbikes, hearing the throaty whine of their engines at high rpms as they whipped by. The bus drove down Via Cola di Rienzo, over the river and through the giant arches of Flaminia and stopped in Piazza del Popolo. McCabe got off and walked across the square to Rosati.
He sat at a sidewalk table, sipping a Moretti in a stemmed glass, taking in the scene, studying the obelisk that was brought to Rome by Augustus after the conquest of Egypt, appreciating the simplicity of it. Beyond the obelisk was the Porta del Popolo, a giant arch carved out of the Aurelian Wall, the original perimeter of the city.
He watched pigeons land in the piazza in front of the churches, strutting and bowing on their little red feet, blue- gray feathers flecked with red. He once saw a show on pigeons on the Nature Channel and remembered some amazing pigeon facts: they could fly fifty miles an hour and they came in seven different colors and when they had sex, the female bent down and the male climbed on top, flapping his wings for balance, saying "Coo roo-croo coo."
At a table to his right, a balding old dude in a suit was having a conversation with a young girl who looked like a model, a bottle of wine in an ice bucket next to the table. Rosati was known as the place wealthy Italian men brought their mistresses during the week, and their wives on weekends. He watched two stylish girls, early twenties, get out of a taxi and move past him on their way into the cafe. He turned and checked them out and they turned back and smiled, and sat a few tables behind him. He was thinking about buying them a drink when he saw a girl coming across the square.
Fixed his attention on her moving toward him from Canova. And although cars and motorbikes zipped around, all he saw was the girl coming toward him like a scene in a movie. The girl wearing sunglasses and tight black capris and a white tee-shirt, hair combed back, tied in a ponytail. She reminded him of Manuela Arcuri, Manuela with streaked hair. McCabe held on her, gaze locked on her as she came closer, maybe fifty yards from where he sat at a front table.
He saw a motorcycle appear, entering the square from Via del Babuino conscious of the throaty brat-brat of its exhaust, muffler going bad. It made a ninety-degree turn, coming fast behind the girl, two riders on it. She heard it too, and switched her bag from her left shoulder to her right, the motorcycle coming up behind her now, going right, surprising her, the passenger on the back grabbing the bag, yanking it off her shoulder, the girl trying to hang onto it, and then letting go.
McCabe got up and moved between two BMWs parked in front of the cafe, and went into the square as the motorcycle approached. It was heading for Via di Ripetta. He stepped in front of it, and as the bike tried to swerve around him, he reached out and grabbed the passenger's arm and pulled him off the back and took him down on the cobblestone surface. The guy was trying to get up, but McCabe was bigger and stronger, knees on his chest, holding him down, a skinny teenager with a big nose, wearing a striped soccer jersey, looking up at him, stunned and afraid.
McCabe pulled the girl's purse out of his hand and now the girl ran up and started kicking him in the ribs, swearing in Italian. McCabe got off him and watched her. The kid tried to cover up and then scrambled to his feet, running, the girl going after him, letting him go. She yelled something in Italian, but the kid didn't look back.
McCabe handed her the purse, a black shoulder bag that said Prada Milano, silver metal in a black triangle on the side. She stared at him, studying him.
"What you did was very courageous. How can I repay you?"
McCabe could think of a few ways. He said, "Have a drink with me." She was better-looking up close, about his age, early twenties.
She said, "Only if you let me buy one for you."
Her English was perfect and she spoke with a sexy Roman accent.
"I've got a table," he said.
"Not here," she said. "I know a better place. Do you mind?"
Did he mind? He couldn't believe his luck. He stepped over and put a five-euro note on the table and the people sitting there applauded him. He moved back to the girl, surprised by the reaction.
She said, "See, you are a hero."
They walked across Piazza del Popolo and down Via del Babuino toward the Spanish Steps, passing storefronts: Gente, Bonora, Feltrinelli and Carlucci.
She said, "What do you do when you are not pulling thieves off the back of a motorcycle?"
"Have drinks with good-looking girls," McCabe said, walking past St Attanasio, a small church tucked in among the designer shops, an odd contrast he thought. "I'm a student, and the only reason I saw the motorcycle was because I was watching you."