Mafia Chic (16 page)

“Sure. I’ve got a meeting with a potential source on Friday. But I will also touch base with you before Sunday to
make sure I have all my rules straight regarding any and every eventuality that could occur while taking a limo full of your relatives to a Giants game.”

I walked him to the door and hugged him. His arms wrapped around me perfectly and my breasts pressed against his chest. We kissed good-night. After he left, I locked and bolted the door.

I turned to look at all the dishes. I had slept so heavily on the couch. But I was in no mood to start cleaning up. They could wait until morning. I walked back to my bedroom, slipped out of my clothes and into my bed. Exhaustion had finally caught up with me. I slept soundly until the morning.

Office Memorandum: United States Government

TO: David Cameron

FROM: Mark Petrocelli, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation

SUBJECT: Wiretap report, Anthony (Tony) Mancetti’s apartment (Grandson of Angelo Marcello)

11:45 p.m.

Diana Kent: Tony?

Tony Mancetti: What, baby?

Diana Kent: Two questions.

Tony Mancetti: Shoot.

Diana Kent: Shoot what?

Tony Mancetti: I mean go. Ask me.

Diana Kent: What did you think of Robert?

Tony Mancetti: He was okay. Not the kind of guy I pictured Teddi with. All right…I don’t like him. And neither does Poppy.

Diana Kent: Yes. But would you expect her to marry someone connected?

Tony Mancetti: (Laughing)

Diana Kent: What’s so terribly funny?

Tony Mancetti: When you try to talk family shorthand. That’s what’s so funny. And no. I’d break her legs if she ended up with some soldier. She’s too smart. Way too smart. But I also didn’t picture a stuffed shirt, either.

Diana Kent: If I tell you something, will you promise not to break anyone’s legs?

Tony Mancetti: Tell me.

Diana Kent: Promise me first.

Tony Mancetti: Can’t promise if you don’t tell me.

Diana Kent: Promise me.

Tony Mancetti: I can’t resist you when you pout like that. God, don’t tell anyone I am absolutely fuckin’ whipped, Diana. All right…I promise.

Diana Kent: All right, then. Tonight, when I was alone with Robert in the living room, Teddi was cooking…. Well…I think Robert Wharton was coming on to me.

Tony Mancetti: That motherfucker—

Diana Kent: Now, don’t be difficult. You promised, after all. But I really think he was making a play. Anyway, he is giving me
the creeps, and I don’t think he’s good for Teddi. At all.

Tony Mancetti: I’ll fuckin’ kill him, Diana. Coming on to my girlfriend
and
fuckin’ pulling this bullshit on Teddi.

Diana Kent: Don’t be so cross. I’m a big girl, and I have handled lots of pompous asses before. And maybe I was mistaken, but I don’t think so.

Tony Mancetti: You gonna tell her? ’Cause that motherfucker hurts her, I’ll kill him.

Diana Kent: Well, that brings me to question number two.

Tony Mancetti: What question?

Diana Kent: Remember? I asked you if I could bring up two questions. So I asked you about Robert, and now I have to ask you something else.

Tony Mancetti: Shoot.

Diana Kent: I got it this time. Means “go.” What do you think your family would say if Teddi ended up with…let’s just say someone from law enforcement?

Tony Mancetti: A cop? Jeez. She seein’ a cop, too?

Diana Kent: Not exactly. But what if I told you that a PR agent spends her time with people, people, people. Putting parties together, putting people together, hooking up this magazine writer with that singer. Making connections. And I have gotten so good at it that…well, let’s just say that I have
an uncanny ability to spot when two people are made for each other.

Tony Mancetti: And you’re saying my cousin Teddi should be with a cop?

Diana Kent: Sort of.

Tony Mancetti: Like a fix-up? You know this cop?

Diana Kent: In a manner of speaking, yes. We discussed Jimmy Choo shoes. But that’s neither here nor there. When the two of them are near each other, you can just see the sparks. So my question is, what would your family say?

Tony Mancetti: I guess it would depend. I mean, I’ve got two second cousins in the NYPD. One of my father’s cousins is a fireman. I would say that it would depend on the cop. I mean, if he freaked out over us betting on football and you know…things like the truckload of shoes we got, then I don’t know. But if he was really the one for Teddi, and he wasn’t a fuckin’ asshole, then I guess it might be all right. Anything would be better than this Robert jerk. Would help if the cop was Italian, ya know?

Diana Kent: How positively excellent.

Tony Mancetti: Come here. Take down your hair.

Diana Kent: Mmm.

Tony Mancetti: I don’t want to turn out the light. I want to see you.

Diana Kent: I want to see you, too.

Tony Mancetti: You know you’re my girl, right?

Diana Kent: Yes. And you’re my guy.

Tony Mancetti: You won’t go back to England, will you?

Diana Kent: Ever?

Tony Mancetti: Not like that…it’s just—

Diana Kent: Shh. We’ll figure it all out. Now, let me see you…

Tony Mancetti: God, you’re fuckin’ perfect. My thunderbolt.

I
slept eight hours or more after my date with Robert, plus couch time. But when I didn’t wake up rested, I decided it was time to go see my horse.

Poppy Marcello has always had many interests and many hobbies. He likes Cuban cigars, and he follows boxing. He enjoys playing bocce ball on sawdust in the back of his restaurant. He likes to sit around with his family every Sunday and eat until no one can move. He relaxes in his wood shop and his garden. And he likes horses. Racehorses.

Teddi Bear’s Folly was a beautiful, sleek, black Thoroughbred. Poppy bought her six years ago. Poppy’s trainer, Arturo “Doc” Decicco trained Teddi Bear’s Folly along with a dozen other horses at a farm in the Catskills. Some of the horses did well. A couple were trotters—raced with the carts. The farm never lost money, but then again, it didn’t make money. Because the horses were a passion, that was just fine. The best of Poppy’s horses, Valentine Vegas All-the-
Way, was set out to stud and that brought in fees. And so, the farm was a beautiful place that did okay for the family, and when my cousins and I were younger, we would go there in the summers for a vacation, swim in the pond, fish and enjoy the fresh air that we lacked in Brooklyn and Queens.

Teddi Bear’s Folly, though, was a money loser. In fact, she had never run a race. Not ever. Actually, she had
started
many a race, but she never finished. She would start out at the gate okay, but inevitably, on the last lap, she would stumble, or suddenly lose her stride. Doc thought perhaps she’d do better in shorter races. But that didn’t work, either. So, instead, Teddi Bear’s Folly was put out to pasture and became little more than an overgrown pet.

I begged Uncle Lou to let me borrow his Lincoln Town Car. Living in Manhattan, I didn’t need a car of my own. Uncle Lou agreed, so he and Tony did their rounds of the pizza ventures in Tony’s sports car and dropped off the Lincoln to me around 11:00 a.m. Driving a Town Car is kind of like driving a Sherman tank. The trunk was big enough to store several bodies in—a fact not lost on me. I always wondered what would happen if someone applied luminol to the trunk. But then, as I often did, I pushed the idea from my mind.

The car, a long black monstrosity, was housed in a parking garage. She was polished to a sheen, and though I rarely drove her, she was a smooth ride. I had learned to drive on my mother’s maroon Cadillac. My father let me use his Town Car once I got my license. In short, I wasn’t a woman who drove a compact car. I drove big cars—and loved them. And every once in a while, I liked to take a drive up the New York Thruway to the farm to visit my Folly.

The day was beyond brisk and had moved into frigid. I dressed for the weather, feeling like the Pillsbury Dough-boy in my parka and hat. I looked like a beefy guy. I had on blue jeans and my black riding boots. I had felt tense on the streets of Manhattan, but once I got into the mountains, I felt like I was in heaven. I rolled down the windows and blasted the heat, feeling the sting on my cheeks and gulping in the fresh air. Then I decided enough with the cold and rolled the windows back up and just enjoyed the scenery. Eventually, I arrived at the farm. Doc came out to welcome me in the gravel driveway.

“Teddi? Is that you? I barely recognize you in that big coat. You should have phoned. I would have set up the guest bedroom for you and had Frannie make you some lunch.” He kissed each of my cheeks, pink from the cold, his handlebar mustache tickling me.

“No fuss. Not staying overnight. I just felt like taking Folly out.”

“I’ll saddle her up.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

He went off to the barn and I walked slowly behind him, feeling myself relax. When I got to the corral, the horses’ mouths and nostrils were half-hidden by their breath, curling into fog in front of their heads. The grass beneath them was dusted with snow, and the horses gathered together for warmth, hanging around the bale of hay they were nibbling.

Doc brought Folly out. I pulled an apple from my coat pocket and offered it to her. She came and nuzzled me. I slipped my foot into the stirrups and waved to Doc.

“Be careful, Teddi. She bucks and you fall on the frozen ground and you’ll break something for sure.”

“I’ll be careful. She’s not skittish.”

Skittish? Teddi’s Folly was a step up from glue. Forget digging your heels in, or even a crop to get her to move. She
walked
everywhere, which was fine by me. As we walked out into the woods, I began to tell Folly my troubles. I imagined that she understood in some wise, equine way.

Did I really care about Robert, or was it that he was so different from my family that attracted me? And what was it about Agent Petrocelli that I found so damn appealing? I imagined Folly telling me it was his biceps. “No,” I said. “It’s more than that.” He had perfected the smirk. But he also had this incredible way of seeing into me. Who could explain chemistry? And it was chemistry I feared from when I was a little girl.

And what was I to do with Quinn? With the cookbook? It didn’t matter once I was on Folly’s back. I rode and just let my troubles fade away. As I breathed out, the air turned to clouds of vapor, and I imagined it taking my confusion with it. Not that it helped me make up my mind about anything.

I stayed at the farm for supper and drove back to the city very late. I called Uncle Lou from my cell phone and told him I would put the car in my building’s garage and he could get it the next day. Back in the city, I decided to drive by the restaurant to see if I could catch Quinn and have our sambuca together. We needed all the luck we could get. I also was praying Tatiana hadn’t quit. She was our longest front-of-house employee, and she stayed for Quinn. Once the two of them actually got together, I assumed it would end in disaster like every other woman.

I pulled up to the curb. The lights were out, but very often Quinn would go into the small office to count the re
ceipts. I took out my keys and got ready to open the door and deactivate the alarm.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, tires squealed on the quiet street and a black sedan pulled opposite the restaurant, its passenger-side window down and a gun firing out of it. I literally saw the car in a blur, and at the same time, it was truly as if my life flashed before my eyes, my whole world going by in slow motion. I saw my mother and father in my mind, my first pony ride, sitting with my grandmother and the photo of Mariella, my grandmother’s funeral, my high school crush, meeting Diana, picking out the linen for Teddi’s with Quinn, the first dollar Quinn and I ever made, framed on the wall of Teddi’s behind the bar—and the first time I laid eyes on Mark Petrocelli. All this, I swear, in the time it took me to blink my eyes.

A bullet shattered the front window of Teddi’s, and a spray of bullets hit the windshield of Uncle Lou’s car. No one was on the street, and for the life of me, I don’t know why, but I froze. I didn’t duck, I didn’t fall to the sidewalk. My breath left me, and I couldn’t even muster up a scream. This wasn’t happening, I told myself. This wasn’t happening.

From the opposite direction, a blue van sped and blocked the remaining path of the gunshots. I saw Mark Petrocelli and another agent fly out the back doors, and Mark reached me and pulled me to the ground so fast and hard a pain shot through my shoulder as we hit the sidewalk, his biceps curling around my head to protect me.

Within minutes, cop cars surrounded the black sedan, whose tires the FBI had shot. The car was driven by none other than Crazy Chris Corelli, I could see, though Mark and I were still lying on the sidewalk. I don’t know who was
breathing harder—him or me. My teeth chattered from shock more than cold, and I finally looked up at him.

“That transfer to white-collar crime can’t come fast enough,” he whispered, his face pale.

“Amen,” I whispered, and buried my head into his chest. “Is Quinn okay?”

“He went home a half hour ago. We saw Corelli and decided to stay.”

Slowly, hearing cops’ voices all around and shouting on the street, we stood. My hands shook as I opened Teddi’s, desperately wanting a drink. Mark and his partner came in. I paged Quinn, who soon arrived and took me into his arms, kissing the top of my head and then pulling back every few seconds or so to make sure I was “really in one piece.” I was still wearing my stupid bulky ski jacket, and I let Quinn take it off of me.

“You swear you’re not hurt?” he said.

I nodded. “Just my shoulder, from where I landed on the sidewalk.”

Quinn leaned in very close to me and whispered in my ear so quiet, no one else could hear. “Corelli is a dead man.”

Quinn called my father, Uncle Lou and Tony, and they came, along with my Poppy, who, from his wild hair and striped pajama top with dress trousers, was obviously roused from bed.

Mark said to them, “The car, the bulky jacket. They thought she was Lou. Had to be. Even Corelli looked unnerved he almost killed her.”

“Teddi Bear.” Poppy held me to him, tears streaming down his face. My father had four double Scotches in rapid succession, and Uncle Lou and Tony were answering questions from the police.

Within twenty minutes, the family attorney, George Griselli, arrived and called this “random street violence.” He had an in at one of the newspapers. He’d try to influence how it played out, I knew.

Mark looked helplessly at me. In a room full of people, he had to act as if he didn’t know me as more than his assignment. And I knew I had never so desperately wanted to be held by a man in my life.

Within three hours, we had locked up again, called Quinn’s cousin Andrew, who owned a glass company, and swept the sidewalk of glass. I had waved solemnly at Mark, whom my father must have shaken hands with forty times to thank him for saving my life, and was ushered home by my dad and Uncle Lou, while Tony took Poppy back to his house. In my apartment, my father called my mother and told her everything was going to be okay.

Diana came stumbling out of her bedroom in a green silk bathrobe.

“What’s going on?”

“Teddi was almost shot at the restaurant,” Uncle Lou said.

“What?” Diana was to me in two seconds flat, sitting next to me on the couch and stroking my hair. I wanted to cry, but I was too numb.

I nodded. “I had borrowed Uncle Lou’s car. They thought I was him.”

“Oh, good Lord, that’s insane. He has a bald spot.”

Uncle Lou patted the back of his head.

“I was wearing a hat, Di. They couldn’t tell. A hat and a big ski jacket. I did kind of look like a guy.”

“Well, what happened? Did they get this guy?”

My father, whose face was still pale, his pompadour flat and pieces of hair askew and falling on his forehead, said,
“An FBI agent saved her, of all fuckin’ things. This family owes that man a debt of gratitude. An Italian, no less. We’ll send him a case of wine. Something. If anything had happened to her…” His voice trailed off and he walked away and into the kitchen.

I looked at my watch. It was near dawn. “Guys…I’m about to keel over. Why don’t you go home? I want to go to bed.”

“Of course,” Uncle Lou said. “But I’ll be right out on the sidewalk in front of this apartment building. You girls are safe.”

They left after kissing me, and Di started to cry.

“Di…I’m okay.”

“This is the scariest thing that’s ever happened. What if you had been shot? It was James Bond who saved you, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Oh, Teddi, doesn’t that show you something?”

“It shows me he’s still staking out my restaurant.”

“You can’t mean that.”

I shook my head. “I know. I don’t.”

“What’s going to happen to the men who tried to shoot you?”

“It’s a rival family. There’ll be a sit-down with the head of that family…after the guy finishes his prison sentence. They caught him red-handed so there’ll be some kind of retribution.”

“He deserves it, the bastard. Our Teddi. Our dear, darling Teddi. Do you want me to make you some breakfast?”

I stared at her. “Di, you don’t even do toast right.”

“How about a spot of tea and then off to bed?”

“Just bed will be fine.”

She tried to help me up from the couch.

“Di—” I held up my hands. “I can still walk like a normal person.”

“Right-o. It’s just so scary.”

I hugged her. “I’m okay.”

“And Tony? Where’s he in all this?”

“He drove my grandfather home. He’ll be here stalking us more than ever, I’m sure.”

We got to my bedroom and I hugged her again, then I went in, shut the door, stripped down to my underwear and went to sleep.

When I woke up, it was one o’clock in the afternoon, and I almost felt as if I had dreamt the entire thing, right down to that “life flashing in front of my eyes” thing. It was as if it had never happened.

But of course, it had.

Later that night, I showed up at work, much to the astonishment of Quinn.

“You were practically assassinated and you’re at work?”

“Assassinated?” I hissed at him. “I’m not one of the Kennedys, Quinn.”

“Call it what you want. I’m freaked out. And so is the family—both sides. Take a look in the dining room.”

I spun my head around and was instantly filled with love—and laughter. Every table was full—of family. They’d taken over the place, including my Poppy.

“Hello, everyone,” I said as I stepped into the main room.

Everyone gave a little wave. My mother stood up and came over and hugged me to her. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.”

“Ma…”

“I know. I’m just terrified.”

I brushed a tear away and said to my family, “I better get back in the kitchen.”

There, in the kitchen, Ju-Ju-B and Leon were arguing over the radio station.

“Hey, boss lady,” Leon said. “We didn’t expect you.”

I shrugged. “Get shot at, go to work, it’s all in a day.”

Ju-Ju-B came over to me with a meat cleaver. “Anyone touches a hair on your head, Teddi and—” He pretended to draw the cleaver across his throat.

“Meat cleaver vs. Uzi. Fair fight.” I grinned at him. “Now, back to work. We got a packed house.”

“What’s this ‘head’ your family is all requesting?” Leon looked at the ticket in front of him.