“Guy on... uh... Forty-Seventh Street.”
“You should take it right back to him.”
“I will. Trade it for something else. I want you to have a ring from me. To wear when you’re here. So I’ll know you’re mine.”
“You know I’m yours, anyway. When I’m here. I shouldn’t have taken the ring home with me, that was too dangerous. But I wanted to keep looking at it. Because it was from you, and because seeing it on my hand, putting it on my finger whenever no one else was there, it reminded me of you. It’s so beautiful, Andrew, it was so thoughtful of you to...”
“I’ll get another one for you.”
“That can’t be traced this time,” Regan said.
“But only to wear here,” the woman said. “And nothing that expensive, please. I don’t want, you to spend that kind of...”
“I’ll buy you some earrings, too. To wear when you’re here.”
“And some nipple clamps,” Regan said.
Lowndes laughed. Regan laughed with him. They almost missed what she said next.
“... there in Florida?”
“Shhhh,” Regan warned.
“I had some business down there,” Faviola said.
“So you told me. But how’d it go?”
“Fine.”
“How was the weather?”
“Only so-so.”
“I wish I could’ve been there with you.”
“I didn’t have much time for anything but meetings,” he said. “Anyway, my uncle was with me.”
“Rudy Faviola,” Lowndes whispered.
Regan wondered why the jackass was whispering.
“Is he with the company, too?” she asked. “Your uncle?”
“Oh, boy is he,” Regan said.
“Yes, he is,” Faviola said.
“I thought... well, from what I understood, this wasn’t a family business.”
“It isn’t.”
“Like fun, it isn’t,” Regan said.
“You said the men who’d started it were semiretired...”
“That’s right.”
“... and that you ran things for them.”
“Well, I have help, you know. I mean, this isn’t a one-man operation.”
“I didn’t think it was. The conference room downstairs...”
“Uh-huh, for board meetings.”
“The company car...”
“Uh-huh.”
“Billy’s a wonderful driver, by the way.”
“Yeah, he’s a good man.”
“Are you planning to invest in Sarasota?”
“No, no. Well... uh... you remember my telling you we look for companies we can bring along till they become moneymakers?”
“Yes?”
“Well, this meeting was with a South American exporter who’s interested in doing business with a Chinese firm. We’re arranging a merger.”
“Chinese?”
“Yeah. We’re bringing them together so there can be an exchange of products.”
“What sort of products?”
“Rice and coffee.”
“Ask a stupid question,” she said.
“Rice and coffee, my ass,” Regan said.
“How does your company fit in?”
“Well, I told you. We arranged the merger...”
“So?”
“So there’s a fee for that. Naturally. Nobody does things for free, you know.”
“A flat fee?”
“Sometimes. It depends on the deal. Our fee on this one is a share of the profits.”
“You get a share of the profits just for bringing these two companies together?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. The principals, yes.”
“But a share of the profits?”
“It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“How big a share?”
Faviola laughed.
“A pretty big share,” he said.
“How big?”
He laughed again.
“Come on, tell me. How much?”
“How much what? How much do I love you?”
“That, too. But how much are you getting for a day’s work...”
“I love you more than...”
“... in Sara—”
“... life itself.”
There was a long silence.
At last, she said, “You don’t.”
“I do,” he said.
Another silence.
Then, from the woman, “Mmmmm, yes. God, yes.”
“Shit,” Regan said.
Andrew Faviola was telling Sal the Barber that he wanted to know where that fucking ring had come from. Regan and Lowndes were listening. Faviola had moved fast; this was Friday, only two days after they’d first heard about the ring being a stolen one.
“You give nice presents, Sal,” he was saying. “Next time tell me something’s hot, and I won’t...”
“Hey, Andrew, gimme a break, will ya?” Sal said. “I didn’t know the fuckin’ thing was hot.”
“Hot? The fuckin’ Boston Museum!”
“The ring came my way, how was I supposed to know somebody lifted it in a fuckin’ museum?”
“How’d it come your way, Sal?”
“How do things come a person’s way? I’ll tell you the truth, I thought I was doin’ you a favor, Andrew, givin’ you a beautiful ring like this one. You got to admit it’s an unusual ring, Andrew, ain’t it? I never seen a ring all black like this one, did you?”
“Where’d you get it, Sal?”
“There’s this shitty little crackhead named Richie Palermo used to do collections for me, this was maybe two, three years ago, before he got so hooked he don’t know his own fuckin’ name. I wouldn’t trust him to walk me across the street no more, but he gave me a fuckin’ sob story, so I lent him a grand, this was last month sometime. So naturally, the little fuck misses two payments, and when I find him he offers me the ring and a nine, I don’t know where he got them. I tell him don’t bother me with your fuckin’ problems, I’m not a fuckin’ fence. The nine...”
“Then you knew this was stolen goods, right?”
“No, no, did I say that? I was bargaining with him. Like makin’ him think I thought the shit was stolen. The nine was a good piece, but the ring looked rusty or something, you know what I mean, all black like that? What he owes me is still the grand, plus two weeks’ interest at fifty bucks a week compounded. In short, he owes me eleven hundred and two dollars and fifty fuckin’ cents, the shitheel, for which he’s offering me the ring and the Uzi in settlement of the whole thing. I tell him shove the ring up his ass, I’ll take the nine for the two weeks’ vig and he still owes me the grand. The ring looks like it came out of a Cracker Jack box, am I right? He tells me the ring is valuable, it’s some kind of fuckin’ Roman antique, second century, third century, just like I told you when I gave it to you. He said you could tell it was Roman because of the satyr and the bird on it, what the fuck do I know?”
“It’s Greek.”
“Greek, okay, whatever. I tell him okay, I’ll take the ring for the next week’s vig, but he still owes me the grand. Which is where we left it. In other words, I got the gun for a hundred and change, and the ring for fifty. But it’s a beautiful ring, Andrew, you got to admit that, once you get past it lookin’ rusty.”
“In other words, you gave me a ring this fuckin’ Richie Palermo crackhead stole someplace...”
“Andrew, I didn’t know it was stolen, I swear on my mother’s eyes!”
“... which my friend takes into a jewelry store to see which part of the Roman Empire it came from...”
“He said it was Roman, yeah.”
“... and it gets back to me that it’s a Greek ring stolen from the Boston Museum. This Jew who owns the shop tells her it’s a stolen ring, Sal. Which if the man wanted to cause trouble, he could’ve informed the police, Sal. The fuckin’ ring is on a list, Sal, capeesh? You almost brought the fuckin’ cops to my door with your fuckin’ rusty stolen ring!”