“Of course it isn’t.”
“Well, Moreno knows that, you think he’s a fuckin’ dope? He’s figurin’ I throw my fuckin’ coke in the pot, I may get a third of nothing in return. Which, in a way, he’s right.”
“He’s got to be convinced otherwise, Uncle Rudy. This isn’t pie in the sky here, this is a cartel taking shape. In time, his third’ll be worth millions more than what he’s putting up.”
“Sure, in time,” Rudy said. “Tell that to a fuckin’ spic with his dick in his hand.”
“Well, as I see it, he’s got no choice.”
“Let me put Petey Bardo on this,” Rudy said, “get him to work up some figures. In the long run, it might be worth giving this jih-drool a little more on his end, keep him aboard. There’s no deal at all without his coke, you know.”
“I know. But there’s no deal without the Chinese, either, and they’re beginning to get itchy. I can’t wait forever for Moreno to see the light.”
“Let me see what Petey thinks we can afford, okay?”
“What if Moreno turns it down?”
“Then we got to think of some other way to convince him, huh?”
“Mm,” Andrew, said.
The men were silent for a moment.
Andrew looked at his watch.
“You expecting somebody?” Rudy asked.
“One o’clock,” Andrew said, nodding.
“Just a few more things I have to tell you.”
“No hurry, I can make a call.”
“The word’s out all over that nothing’s changed. Your father’s partners are your partners, capeesh? Same deals everywhere. Just in case somebody got it in his head, Hey, I’m on my own now Faviola’s in the slammer. Wrong. One or two guys we still have to talk to, make sure they understand completely, but otherwise I don’t see any trouble.”
“Okay.”
“One last thing. Some stupid fuck gambler in Queens stiffed Sal the Barber for fifteen grand plus the vig. Then he had the fuckin’ nerve to steal another five grand of cash he got for deliverin’ some coke for Frankie Palumbo. Frankie had a sitdown with Jimmy Angels, you know him?”
“No.”
“Angelli, Jimmy Angelli, he owns a shitty restaurant in Forest Hills, he’s a capo in the Colotti family. Anyway, his cousin’s involved with this fuckin’ thief, and now Angelli’s askin’ yet another favor.”
“What was the first favor?”
“Lettin’ that asshole deliver the coke, for which he paid back Frankie by stealing five grand from him.”
“Tell Frankie to take care of him,” Andrew said. “So it won’t happen again.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing,” Rudy said, “I’ll leave you to your pleasure.”
He rose, embraced his nephew, kissed him on both cheeks, said, “Ciao, Lino,” and left the apartment through the door that led to the tailor shop downstairs.
The girl rang the doorbell on the Mott Street side of the building. The gold lettering on the black mailbox read “Carter-Goldsmith Investments.” She wondered who Carter-Goldsmith was. He hadn’t told her he was in the investment business. A voice came over the speaker set into the doorjamb.
“Who is it, please?”
His voice. Andrew’s.
“Me,” she said. “Oona.”
“Come on up, Oona,” he said.
A buzzer sounded. She turned the knob, opened the door, closed it again behind her. The buzzer kept sounding as she climbed the stairs, stopped when she was about midway up. The staircase was paneled with wood on either side. There was a lovely wood-paneled door at the top of the stairs. A small bell button in a brass circle was set in the doorjamb. She pressed the button. The door opened at once.
“Hi,” she said.
“You made it,” he said:
“I told you I would.”
“Come in,” he said.
Her name was Oona Halligan, she was an Irish girl from Brooklyn, he’d met her at a disco joint last night. Red hair and green eyes, Irish as they come, he loved fucking Irish girls.
She’d explained to him that she had a lot of time on her hands just now because she was looking for a new job while collecting unemployment. Her boss had fired her because she’d wanted to do a certain thing her way instead of his way, which she’d told him was a stupid way to do it. She guessed that wasn’t a particularly clever move, huh? Telling her boss that his way was the dumb way, but live and learn. Anyway, she had a lot of time on her hands just now.
This was while they were sitting on a black leather banquette with music blaring from ten thousand speakers that had to be worth ten million dollars, Andrew with his hand on her knee, Oona with her short red skirt riding clear north to Canada. He’d casually mentioned that if she had so much time on her hands why didn’t she stop by his apartment tomorrow afternoon sometime, say around one o’clock, they could listen to some music and he’d brew her some tea.
The tea always got them.
Made him sound like an English gentleman.
I just might, she’d said, arching an eyebrow. If I’m in the neighborhood.
You don’t have to decide now, he’d said. I won’t make any other plans, I’ll be there all afternoon, I’ll look for you around one.
Where is your apartment? she’d asked.
Actually, at the start of any relationship, he preferred matinees.
Most girls didn’t like to pop into bed with you on the first date. You asked them to stop by the next day, that automatically made it a second date, and it made it daytime in the bargain, which sounded very safe, especially if you were offering tea. Besides, if you did get a girl to go home with you at three, four o’clock in the morning, she’d almost certainly be there when you woke up not knowing who she was or how she’d got there. Afternoons, you played some soft music, you offered tea or hot chocolate or even booze if that’s what the lady preferred, everything slow and easy, and then you took her upstairs later, fucked her brains out with the drapes drawn and daylight peeking around them. If the afternoon turned out to be a bummer, you cut her loose before dinner. If it went well, you asked her if she’d like to go out for something to eat, there were great Italian and Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood, and then you took her back here later, knowing her already, knowing that if she did spend the night it’d be a pleasurable experience and you wouldn’t hate yourself when you woke up alongside a beast the next morning.
Irish girls turned him on.
He thought of an Irish girl as a religious little darling who’d suck your cock and then run to a priest in the morning to confess her sins and say penance at the altar. He particularly liked Irish redheads. A real Irish redhead could drive a person crazy, that wild carrot-colored hair on her head and between her legs. Loved to part that flaming thatch below, spread those innocent pink Irish-girl lips, lick her into an Irish frenzy that would later cost her a hundred Hail Marys and a thousand Our Fathers, not to mention a dozen or more Acts of Contrition. He hated the Catholic religion but he loved fucking religious Irish-Catholic girls.
He wondered all at once if Sarah Welles was Irish.
Secretly, she was happy this hadn’t turned out to be another “family” weekend.
Today was Martin Luther King Day, the eighteenth of January, a school holiday in New York, which meant that Sarah and Mollie automatically had the day off. But the DA’s Office was closed today, too, and it looked as if this might turn into another long weekend like those the family had shared over Christmas and New Year’s. Sarah felt strongly that King should have his own holiday — but not in January. By the time the third Monday in January came around each year, she’d had enough holiday to last a lifetime.