She wondered how she’d been described.
She did not ask him.
He dropped her off some fifteen feet from the blue door on Mott Street. Around the corner, Detectives Regan and Lowndes were watching the tailor shop. They did not see Sarah as she entered the building.
She went into Andrew’s arms at once.
Somehow this did not surprise her.
The touch of his hands was familiar. His hands cupping her face, his hands moving to her breasts, his hands sliding up under her sweater to unclasp her bra. She knew his lips far too well already, his lips on her face, on her mouth, on her nipples. He slid his hands under her skirt, bunched the skirt above her hips, his hands on her buttocks now, clasping her to him. She wished she’d worn sexier panties, but she hadn’t expected the car, hadn’t expected to see him ever again — or had she? He was on his knees now, his hands exploring the leg holes of the panties, she did not want him tearing them open again, she started to say, “Please don’t ruin...” but he was moving the nylon aside, exposing her blond pubic patch, parting her lips with his fingers and searching with his tongue until her sudden gasp told him he’d found her. Her back arched, her eyes closed, her hands clutching the bunched skirt above her hips, she stood before him helplessly trembling as he brought her to orgasm. In a near swoon she allowed him to carry her to the bed. He took off only her panties, sliding them down over her hips and her waist and the long length of her legs, and her ankles, and spread her to him still wearing her pumps and her skirt bunched above her waist, and her sweater raised to expose her breasts. She opened her legs wide to him, raised her hips, and guided him into her.
He moved against her slowly at first, sliding the full length of him deep inside her, and then withdrawing until her lips enfolded only the head of his cock, clinging there precariously for the tick of a second, and then thrusting deep into her again. She did not know how long he kept her on the edge of screaming aloud, the deep penetration, the slow withdrawal, the fear that she would lose him entirely, but still enclosed, still there, still captured, and then the sudden lunge again, the swift hard rush deep inside her, the near orgasm each time his downward stroke battered her clitoris. And then he began moving against her with a steadier rhythm, and she joined the rhythm and urged it to a faster pace, her legs around him, her ankles locked behind his back. She found herself urging him with words as well, Yes, give it to me, her skirt high on her waist, feeling vulnerable and exposed because she was still dressed and he was fucking her in spite of it, Yes, fuck me, she said, his mouth on her nipples, his hands fiercely clutching her ass, never in her life had she, fuck me, never with Michael, never with the boy at Duke, give it to me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.
At a little before five, she called Michael at his office and was told by his secretary that he was down the hall with the chief. Grateful that she could lie to Phyllis rather than to Michael personally, she asked her to tell him that another teachers’ meeting had been called and since she wouldn’t be home until later this evening, could he please take Mollie to the Italian restaurant on Third for dinner?
“And tell him I love him,” she said.
Which she supposed she still meant.
Down the hall, Michael was reporting to Charles Scanlon, the Organized Crime Unit chief, on the progress being made on the Andrew Faviola surveillance. Scanlon, as usual, was puffing on a pipe and looking meditative. Michael was of the secret opinion that Scanlon felt he was a reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Why else the incessantly fired pipe and the sweater with all the burn holes in it? If he didn’t work for the District Attorney’s office, Scanlon probably would have been shooting cocaine in emulation of his literary idol. Charlie, as he insisted all of his people call him, thought he had a deductive mind. Michael wasn’t so sure about that. But he admired his immediate superior for his tenacity, his willingness to go head-to-head with the DA for any one of his people, and his true determination to rid this city of organized criminal activity. His obsession was similar in many respects to Georgie Giardino’s, except that it was not ethnically motivated. He had asked Georgie to attend the late afternoon meeting because his knowledge of the Faviola family was impressive. Both men listened now as Michael told them what he thought was happening.
“I think the house in Great Neck is where he sleeps and that’s all. None of the detectives tailing him reports anyone going in or out of that house but Andrew himself. The tailor shop is another matter.”
“It’s where again?”
Scanlon. Puffing on his pipe. Sitting behind his desk in room 671, behind the secured doors that sealed off all the unit’s offices. A diminutive man with beetling black brows and a hooked nose. The nose could have been Basil Rathbone’s when he was playing the master sleuth, but nothing else about him was even remotely Sherlockian. Michael himself had always felt the Holmes novels were badly written and not what he would call compelling in any way. Sue him.
“Broome Street,” he said.
“Broome Street,” Scanlon said, and nodded.
“Fifth Precinct,” Georgie said.
He had come back from his trip to Vail and had listened all amazed while Michael reported his belief that the playboy son of Anthony Faviola was now running the show. He listened now in further amazement as Michael told them that Andrew Faviola was running things from a shitty little tailor shop on Broome Street.
“There’s no question in my mind,” Michael said. “He’s using the back of the tailor shop as a business office. We’ve had detectives go in there at all hours of the day to take in dry cleaning or to have alterations made, and none of them have ever seen him in the front of the shop. From what we can gather, there’s a pressing machine in the back, you can catch a glimpse of it when Faviola or any of the others go back there. There’s sort of a curtain on a rod that divides the front from the back. Vaccaro — that’s the tailor’s name, Louis Vaccaro — works at a sewing machine up front. Usually there are some cronies who drop in to smoke their stogies and shoot the breeze with him while he works. But they’re neighborhood people, and we haven’t identified any of them as wiseguys. They’re just passing the time with their old goombah Louis. Who we don’t think is mob-related, either.”
“Who is?” Scanlon asked. “That you’ve seen going in there?”
“So far, we’ve been able to identify Rudy Faviola...”
“Anthony’s brother,” Georgie supplied.
“Used to be underboss,” Scanlon said, and nodded. His pipe had gone out. It would probably go out a dozen times during the meeting. The ashtray on his desk was brimming with burnt wooden matches. Looking like Vesuvius on a bad day, Scanlon filled the office with a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke, puffing violently, intent on the flame of the match and the bowl of the pipe.
“Who else?” he asked.
“Petey Bardo.”
“Consigliere,” Scanlon said.
“Favors brown suits,” Georgie said.
“Used to be consigliere, anyway,” Scanlon said, “when Anthony was still boss.”
“My guess is the hierarchy is still the same,” Michael said, “except that Andrew’s taken over for his father.”
“Who else have you seen?”
“Capos from all over the city. We’ve been able to identify Gerry Lacizzare, Felix Danielli...”
“Heavy wood,” Scanlon said.
“It gets heavier. Bobby Triani...”
“Rudy’s son-in-law.”
“Sal the Barber Bonifacio...”
“Guy who started it all,” Georgie said.
“No, the guy who started it all is dead,” Michael said.
“Dominus vobiscum,” Georgie said in mock piety, and made the sign of the cross.