“You know where I’m staying,” Heather said, and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. “If you want to talk, call me.”
“Okay, honey. Be careful.”
“Wish me luck,” Heather said, and gently touched Sarah’s face, and slung the carry-on over her shoulder, and went swiftly toward the security gate.
Sarah watched as she put her bag onto the moving belt and then stepped through the detector frame. She remembered suddenly a playhouse she and her sister had built of branches and twigs when they were respectively eight and six years old.
“It has no door, Sarah,” Heather had complained.
Her sister stepped through the doorless frame now, moving toward her bag on the other end of the belt, slinging the bag again, and then stepping out briskly into her future.
Sarah watched her until she was out of sight down the long corridor.
A river ran through the property upon which Anthony Faviola had built his sprawling Connecticut estate. There were trout in the river, but Tessie Faviola would not allow anyone to fish for them. That was because she personally fed the fish every day, and she felt it would be unfair to first throw bread in the water for them and then bait a hook and take advantage of their tameness. Tessie also felt it was unfair that her birthday always followed so closely after Mother’s Day. It meant that unless they were reminded, some people might forget a gift on one or the other of the two reasons to celebrate her existence. Petey Bardo’s personal opinion, Tessie was a tyrant. All fuckin’ mothers were tyrants, you wanted to know, his own included.
It was still chilly on this third Sunday in May, so Petey was wearing a brown woolen sweater over his brown swimming trunks. Bobby Triani, sitting beside him on the dock, dangling his feet in the very cold water, was wearing a snug blue swimsuit and a white mesh shirt, his muscles bulging. Bobby was smoking. Petey had quit smoking three years ago, when he’d suffered a mild heart attack. He still believed the reason he’d been passed over for underboss was the fuckin’ heart attack. Rudy drops dead of a heart attack, they’re gonna fill his shoes with somebody else has heart trouble? No way. Instead, they gave it to Bobby here, who didn’t know his ass from his elbow about the business, except where it came to stolen property.
Petey found it difficult to be near people who smoked, but he said nothing about it now because there were more important things to discuss with the fuckin’ underboss. The women were all up at the house, cooking, running after the kids. Andrew was up there, too, bullshitting more with his cousin than with his own two sisters, as usual. Ike and Mike, they look alike. Petey sat shivering in bathing trunks and a woolen sweater, and thinking the only good thing about a fuckin’ brook, you knew it wasn’t bugged.
“I think it’s dangerous the way Andrew’s treating this so lightly, “he said. “It’s one thing he found the bugs and yanked them out. It’s another how it could’ve happened.”
Bobby nodded.
“I don’t mean any disrespect to him...”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bobby said, and waved this aside with the hand holding the cigarette.
“But I really think we should find out who these broads are he’s boffin. What I’m worried about,” he said, glancing at the fish darting below, “is that they got in there once, they can get in again. We got heavy stuff comin’ down the pike very soon, Bobby. Even if we change where we meet, if one of Andrew’s girls is workin’ for them, those cocksuckers’ll follow us wherever we go.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said.
“They got somebody in there boffin’ Andrew, they can put bugs in wherever we go, hear everything we’re saying.”
“They ain’t allowed to do that, are they?” Bobby asked.
“Do what?”
“Let a cop sleep with somebody? I’ll bet there’s a rule about that. About an undercover sleepin’ with somebody. It’s the same as a vice cop takes off his clothes in front of a hooker, the bust goes out the window.”
“Who says it has to be a cop?”
“I thought you said an undercover.”
“No, I said whoever he’s boffin’. It could be somebody they flipped,” Petey said. “A hooker, a junkie, somebody they got the whole nine yards on, she’ll go down on the Pope, they ask her to.”
“Yeah, that’s possible.”
“She’s in there workin’ for them, they’ll be under our skin forever,” Petey said.
“You know,” Bobby said, “I told him we should ask around...”
“I know you did.”
“Find out what’s what.”
“I know.”
“He said forget it, he’d do his own askin’.”
“I know.”
“He’s the fuckin’ boss,” Bobby said, and shrugged.
The men sat in silence on the riverbank. Trout splashed in the water. From far above them, the children’s voices came rolling down the sloping lawn. Petey dipped one foot in the water. It was freezing cold. This wasn’t even the end of May; summer was a long way off.
“The other hand,” he said, “sometimes you gotta do things are for the boss’s own good.”
The garage where Billy Lametta kept the company car was on Delancey Street, over near the East River. Bobby found him there the very next day, in his shirtsleeves, the sleeves rolled up, polishing the Lincoln, a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he worked. Bobby admired people who still had the courage to smoke.
“Hey, Billy,” he said, lighting up a cigarette himself. “How’s it goin’?”
“Okay, Mr. Triani,” Billy said. “How was your weekend?”
“Very nice,” Bobby said. “We went to the country.”
“Great day for the country.”
“Beautiful,” Bobby said.
“So what brings you down here?”
“Few things I wanted to talk to you about,” Bobby said.
The polishing cloth hesitated for just an instant. Billy was wondering what he’d done wrong to rate a visit from the underboss.
“Always glad to see you,” he said, and resumed running the cloth over the shiny black metal of the Lincoln. But he had begun sweating.
“First,” Bobby said, “I know this ain’t Christmas, but you been doin’ a good job, and there’s nothin’ wrong with a little bonus in May, is there?”
He reached into his jacket pocket and took from it a fat roll of bills fastened with a rubber band. The outside bill was a C-note. Billy could see that at once.
“Gee, hey, that’s nice of you, Mr. Triani,” he said, “but Mr. Faviola takes good care of me, you don’t have to worry.”
“Get yourself a new suit, whatever,” Bobby said, and nudged him with the roll of bills.
“No, really, I wouldn’t want Mr. Faviola to think...”
“I’ll tell him about it, don’t worry. Here,” he said. “Take it. It’s two thousand bucks.”
Billy’s eyes widened.
“Take it,” Bobby said.
Billy hesitated.
“Go on, take it,” Bobby said, and tucked it into Billy’s shirt pocket.
“Well... thanks, Mr. Triani, I appreciate it.”
“Hey,” Bobby said, and grinned expansively.
Billy was wondering what he wanted from him. He kept polishing the car. The garage was a place where a lot of so-called black cars were kept. These were either Caddies or Lincoln Continentals like the one Billy was polishing, but they were mostly owned by limo companies instead of privately. The difference between the black cars and the stretch limos was that the limos cost thirty-five an hour to hire whereas the smaller cars cost only twenty-eight. Billy was salaried, more or less; he received a legitimate check from Carter-Goldsmith Investments every two weeks. In addition, Faviola slipped him a coupla hundred bucks whenever the mood struck him. Triani had just stuffed a month’s salary into his shirt pocket.