Page 16 of Slow Burn

“You don’t decide what’s important. I decide what’s important. Your job is to tell me everything, you understand?” The comic-opera Italian had dropped out of his voice, a bad sign. She didn’t dare look at him, and was happy to catch sight of their waiter approaching with a round tray.

“You’re right, of course,” she said. “Minestrone, right? My favorite. Really.”

The waiter delivered a steaming bowl. She fished her spoon around in it and pretended to be fascinated by what she discovered; it smelled like old dish-water, and the pieces of vegetables looked wasted and transparent. She looked over at the limp disheartened Caesar salad and kept stirring the minestrone.

Sol spooned his soup with slurping relish. One good thing about his mulberry sharkskin suit, it wouldn’t show any stains. The shirt was about a half-shade off, the tie scrawny and black. The jacket was big enough to hide a gun; she figured him for a flash piece, something silver and mother-of-pearl, tucked in a custom shoulder holster. All the fucking wiseguys in this town, and she had to get one who thought he was an extra inThe Godfather.He was stupid, he was cheesy, he was good for a laugh at a slow party.

And every once in a while—like now—he scared the living shit out of her.

She hated,hatedbeing alone with him.

“Eat,” he urged her, caught for a second in the no-man’s-land between his Jewish upbringing and his Sicilian pretensions. “Eat, baby, it’s good for you.”

She dutifully swallowed a mouthful of dishwater, felt something lumpy on her tongue that might have been potato or well-cooked cockroach, reached for her wine, and took a hasty gulp.

The acidic bite reminded her of lemons and cold sores.

“So tell me about this woman, this whore,” Sol said. He broke a piece of garlic bread from the loaf and set it afloat in his minestrone.

“Deadhead. A sponge. Honest, she couldn’t remember her own name, much less where she was.” Exaggeration, but not by much. By the time Robby had poured Velvet into the taxi, there had been little left in the way of functioning brain cells. Robby had not taken the hooker’s remaining cash. It had probably been a mistake.

“I hope you’re right,” Sol said. He gave it just the right inflection—worried, threatening, doubting. All with a smile. Jesus. In spite of her better judgement, Robby took another sip of wine that blasted through her sinuses like a nose full of pepper. She sneezed into her napkin, two or three times, while he looked on indulgently.

She was still wiping her nose when the waiter returned, bearing a new basket of wine and an aria he said was fromTosca.She listened with her chin resting on her fist, shooting glances at Sol. He looked enthralled, but his eyes were cool. Not a music fan, though he had to pretend to be, to fit in with his fantasy.

She had once allowed a friend to convince her to lay out three hundred dollars for a leather miniskirt and halter top. She kept it hanging in the far corner of her closet, price tags still attached, and took it out about twice a year to hold it up against her body and pose for the mirror. For those few guilty moments, she was somebody else. Somebody dangerous.

She wasn’t absolutely sure how much of Sol’s playacting was fantasy, and that scared her.

When the waiter stopped singing, she passed him a dollar. Before she could order, Sol spread his hand palm-out to stop her.

“Linguini for myself and the lady. And get rid of the minestrone, it’s cold, what’s the matter with you? Eh?”

The waiter stalked away in search of a more cultured audience. She bit off a desire to tell anybody who might listen that she hated linguini.

“I like you, Robby,” Sol said. “You’re an artist. You know how rare that is, your kind of game? Kids today, they gank old ladies for a couple dollars and change. No finesse, not like you. You and me, we’re old country.”

She doubted it.Shewas old country, born in County Meath; he was far too nostalgic to have ever been outside the States.

“So I worry when I see you acting crazy, baby.” He leaned over and laid his pinkie-ringed hand over hers. Up close, the ring looked chunky and uncomfortable, the diamond almost feverish in the middle of all that gold. “It isn’t good for business.”

“I’m okay,” she said. She slowly pulled her hand away. His smile faded.

“You better be. I gotta tell you, I got people to answer to. Your little operation down there, it’s nice, it’s profitable. Very low profile. We like that.”

We.She wondered what his bosses would think about the plural.

She thought she’d stepped down hard on her temper, but a little of it got control of her mouth and said, “So glad we’re making you happy, Sol.” The sarcasm was a little too obvious even for Sol.

While the storm built up in his dead-gray eyes, she looked away at a cheap concrete cherub in the corner. It looked dirty, too many pats from grease-smeared fingers, and the expression on its rough face looked more like indigestion than happiness.

“Attitude, Robby? Now you’re giving me attitude?” Sol leaned back against his red leatherette seat and studied her; she felt the pressure of it like hands. “Hey, I don’t want trouble. You remember what happened to Annie.”

She didn’t let him see her flinch, but the knife went deep on that one, right to her heart. She clenched her fingers in her napkin hard enough to hurt, but that was better than letting him see her shake. She didn’t dare let him know he scared her. God only knew what he’d be like then.

“You and Jim and Mark and Kelly, you’re my high-priced talent,” Sol’s voice continued smoothly. She moved her stare back to the concrete cherub; it was slightly cross-eyed, missing a thumb. The amputation looked fresh and jagged. “I can’t let anything fool around with that. So maybe this woman isn’t a problem, maybe that’s so, but I got to worry, Robby, that’s what you pay me for. I’m yourfriend.So if she comes back again, you let me know. I’ll take care of it. Eh? That’s what you pay me for.”

The waiter was bearing down on them with two steaming platefuls of linguini. The noodles looked like spilled guts, the sauce gore. She felt her throat clench up in protest.

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