AF: I have a few more things to take care of here at the club, then I’ll be coming home.
TF: Be careful, the weekend traffic.
AF: Yeah, don’t worry.
TF: What time do you think you’ll be?
AF: Six, six thirty. For supper, anyway.
Supper. A holdover from the Brooklyn days, when the evening meal at Stella Faviola’s table was always called “supper” and never “dinner.”
AF: Is Lino still coming up?
TF: He’s already here.
AF: Oh? Good. Tell him I’ll see him later, okay?
TF: Drive careful.
Lino again. An apparent guest in Faviola’s impregnable Connecticut fortress. Lino. Short for Mick-a-lino? Or had this been Michelino on the tapes? The diminutive of Michele? Transmogrified by a tone-deaf WASP typist to some sort of bastardized English? Michele. Pronounced “Mee-kiy-lay” in Italian. Michael knew because “Michael” just happened to be his name, and that’s what he’d been called the one and only time he’d been, to Italy, Michele, with a hard ch as opposed to the soft one in the French “Michel.”
Michele.
Michael.
Michelino.
Little Michael.
Anthony Faviola had no children or grandchildren named Michael. Nor had the name figured prominently in any of the trial material, any of the volumes of transcripts the U.S. Attorney’s office had studied and restudied in its successful bid to put Faviola away forever. If anyone had noticed mention of a Michael or a Little Michael, no significance had been given to the names. Until now.
Now a Queens waiter who owed money to a Manhattan loan shark had agreed to courier some dope and had walked into a sting set up by Narcotics. And during a conversation between a pair of capos trying to save his ass, a Faviola lieutenant had said he’d talk it over with Lena — or so they’d thought. But Lena had become Leno, and from there it was a hop, skip, and jump to Mick-a-lino to Michelino to Little Michael.
He checked the tapes.
The name had, in fact, been pronounced in the Italian way, Michelino, and transcribed by the typist in phonetic English. Which meant that Lino didn’t rhyme with wino, it rhymed with dean-o.
Michelino.
Little Michael.
Once more unto the breach, Michael thought, and plunged into the transcript yet another time.
Alonso Moreno was known in some circles as La Culebra, which meant the Snake. Andrew guessed this had more to do with his business practices than with his looks. He was, in fact, quite a handsome man.
Sitting on the foredeck of a forty-eight-foot Grand Banks — not particularly known for speed, but no one was trying to outrace anyone today — Moreno offered Andrew a cigarette, shrugged when he declined it, and then lighted his own and turned politely away to exhale a stream of smoke. Turning back to Andrew, his dark glasses reflecting bright morning sunlight, he said, “I already told your people no,” and then snapped his fingers at a man wearing knee-length white cotton shorts and a white cotton sweater, and pointed immediately to the pitcher of lemonade sitting on a low table fastened to the deck with cleats. The man in white poured their glasses full again. The cigarette in one hand, the glass of lemonade in the other, Moreno alternately sipped and puffed.
“So why are you here?” he asked.
Andrew figured Moreno had a good ten years on him, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, in there. Rudolph Valentino looks, black hair slicked back from a pronounced widow’s peak, aquiline nose a trifle too long for his face, androgynous Mick Jagger lips, puffing and sipping, calmly waiting for a reply. Too polite to say you’re wasting my fucking time here. But wise enough to realize Andrew had come all the way from New York and was not to be summarily dismissed.
“I’m here because I don’t think this was explained properly to you.”
“It was explained,” Moreno said, and suddenly took off the sunglasses.
Eyes so brown they looked black.
Maybe that’s where he’d got the Snake nickname.
Black eyes reflecting sunlight.
Out on the water, a speedboat towing a skier behind it appeared suddenly on the horizon.
“Mr. Isetti explained it to me fully.”
Slight Spanish accent. Andrew had heard someplace that Moreno was college-educated, had been studying to be a doctor, in fact. He imagined Moreno with a scalpel in his hand. The thought was frightening.
“The business aspects,” Andrew said.
“Every aspect,” Moreno said. “We’re not interested.”
“We consider this a very rich deal.”
“We’re rich enough,” Moreno said, and smiled.
“We’re not,” Andrew said, and returned the smile.
“Que pena,” Moreno said.
“We figure a person can always get richer than he is.”
Moreno said nothing. Bored, he puffed on his cigarette and sipped at his lemonade. Out on the water, the speedboat cut a wider arc. The skier behind it let out an exuberant yell.
“We figure that a person who doesn’t want to get richer runs the risk of getting poorer,” Andrew said.
“I don’t see that risk.”
“Do you know how Columbus happened to discover America?”
“What?” Moreno said.
“I said, ‘Do you...?’”
“I heard you. What does it mean?”
“He was looking for China.”
“So?”
“We’re bringing China right to your doorstep. You don’t have to go looking for it.”
“I’m not looking for it. You’re the one who’s looking for it.”
“No, we’re looking for an expanded market that’ll...”
“Good, you go look for it. We’re happy with America.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me,” Andrew said.
“I’m hearing you fine, thank you very much,” Moreno said. “That’s just a child out there, you know? The skier.”
Andrew glanced briefly over the water and then turned his attention back to Moreno.
“You supply your product,” he said, “the Chinese supply theirs. Our European associates turn it over, and we distribute all over America and Europe.”
“We already distribute in America and Europe,” Moreno said.
“Not the new product.”
“We don’t need any new products.”
“We think you do.”
“Hey, really, who the fuck cares what you think?” Moreno said.
“Mr. Moreno, I think you’d better...”
“No, don’t ‘Mr. Moreno’ me, and don’t tell me what I better do, I do what I want to do, never mind what I better do. I told Isetti we’re not interested, he says I think you owe us the courtesy of hearing what Andrew has to say, he came all the way down here from New York. Okay, I just listened to what Andrew has to say, and we’re still not interested. I don’t know who sent you...”
“Nobody sent me, Mr. Moreno.”
“But whoever it was...”
“I came on my own.”
“Fine. Go back on your own. Tell whoever sent you...”
“This is the last time I’ll explain it,” Andrew said, and sighed wearily, as if trying to instruct a particularly recalcitrant child. “We’re working out a three-way deal with the Chinese. If you’d like to join us, you’re more than welcome. That’s why I’m here. But if you refuse to see the merits, we’ll have to go ahead without you. I think you can understand how difficult we can make things...”
“Listen, get off my boat, okay?” Moreno said, and then, in Spanish, to the man in the white cotton shorts and sweater, “Llevarlo de vuelta a la costa, no hay nada más que discutir aquí.” He extended his hand to Andrew, said, “Our business is finished, Alberico will take you...” and then stopped in midsentence and got to his feet and pointed out over the water, and said, “That child’s in trouble.”