said, giving a quick smile.
“Wyatt,” Nick said, clamping a hand on my shoulder, “this gentleman’s tab is comped. Have a bottle of ’97 Opus One sent over to table three and tell the chef to come out to see me.”
“Okay.” Wyatt headed for the kitchen.
I chucked a five onto the bar.
“Generous,” Nicky said.
“You can’t take it with you.”
“Wyatt’s a good boy. Come on.”
We sat at what I guessed was table three. I could see why the owner would want to sit here. It was the best vantage point in the place from which to watch the bar, the comings and goings from the kitchen, the waiter’s station, the hostess’ podium, and the rest of the dining room. What people don’t understand about owning a business is that when you’re there you can’t ever relax. There’s no such thing as being off duty when you’re in- house. The chef came out to us, introduced himself, shook our hands. Nicky spoke to him in Greek and the chef went away.
“I hope you don’t mind, but he does this thing with rib steak that I absolutely love. I ordered it for us. It’s not very Greek, but we don’t do strictly Greek here, anyways. That okay with you?”
“Fine. I hate that you’re going to waste a bottle of Opus One on me. I haven’t been feeling great lately and-”
“Don’t worry, Moe. It won’t go to waste. No one’s spilling the Opus One down the drain or watering the plants with it.”
Dinner, what I ate of it, was fantastic. We started out with a platter of dips and vegetable concoctions, only some of which I recognized, then salad, the marinated steak with lemon, garlic, and rosemary roasted potatoes, creamed spinach and feta tarts, and dessert of assorted pastries. I ate just enough of each to carry the wine. Nick was right about the wine, there would be no Opus One going to waste. I had way, way too much of it and by my third glass I didn’t really care about the physical price I was going to pay for indulging. The food aside, it was a lot of fun to tell the old stories about the Six-O. Enough time had passed for me to forgive and forget the betrayals so, at least for one night, I let myself feel about the guys the way I felt about them then. It was okay for me to laugh about what a ladies man Rico had been and to shake my head at what a practical joker Larry McDonald could be. I even laughed about the time Kenny Burton laid out a fireman during a pickup basketball game we played in Coney Island. Maybe it was the wine or maybe it was the dying that set me free of the baggage and the pain. Probably both.
When we weren’t talking old times, we talked about our families and business and where we’d come to in our lives. In a weak moment at the end of the meal and with my third glass of Grand Marnier in my hand, I told him the truth about why I’d come to the Gelato Grotto the other day. That I wasn’t working for the Tillman family at all, but that Alta Conseco was Carmella’s older sister and I felt obligated to look into things when she asked me to.
“I knew that story you told me at the Grotto was a crock a shit,” Nick said, but not angrily. “I figured you’d tell me. You always was big on the truth.”
I laughed. “Not as much as I used to be. Life has weaned me off it.”
He didn’t pursue it. “Look, I get why you told me what you did. You didn’t figure I would help otherwise. And I understand your helping out. You and Carmella was once family and her sister was her sister even if she did a terrible thing. You can’t abandon your family no matter what. That’s what a family does, it stands together when things get bad. Am I right?”
“Exactly. I couldn’t just say no to Carm.”
“But you should watch your back, Moe. Not everybody’s gonna be as understanding as me if they find out what you’re really up to. Defending those EMTs is kinda like defending Osama Bin Laden in this city, you know what I mean?”
“Thanks. I’m being careful.”
“So what you find out so far?”
I figured I owed it to him to tell him as much as I could. Here was a guy I hadn’t seen in fifteen years and the first thing I did was lie to his face. Plus, he’d been really cooperative based on that lie. He’d given me the surveillance video and sent me to Fuqua.
“So you think it’s somebody in the FDNY?” Nicky asked.
“I don’t know what to think, but it’s possible.”
“Okay, I’ll keep my eyes open. I hear things. People do a lotta loose talking in restaurants. You’d be surprised at the shit you hear when you’re not even trying.”
“Thanks, Nicky. I appreciate it. This was fun. Next time, dinner’s on me.”
We shook hands. “Let’s do it soon, Moe.”
“Soon. You have my word on that.”
Dinner with Nick would have to be soon, I thought, or it probably wouldn’t be at all.
SEVENTEEN
If I thought the cab ride with the windows rolled down was going to cut into the intensity of my alcohol buzz or take the edge off the searing pain in my gut, I was wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. The cabbie dropped me at the corner of Ashford Street and Atlantic Avenue. Carmella’s grandmother’s house was a few houses in off Atlantic. For many years, Carmella had lived in the upstairs apartment while her abuela lived on the first floor. She had willed the house to Carmella and I’d wrongly assumed that Carmella had sold the place after moving up to Toronto. When she’d sent me that packet of information, I’d been surprised to see she’d written down this address as where she was staying. I stood outside, looking up at the old place. Except for a coat of paint, the house hadn’t changed much in the last twenty years. This was where I kissed Carmella for the first time, a pretty chaste kiss even as first kisses go. And shortly after that, this house is where I learned of Carmella’s true identity.
I tasted the tears and felt the wetness on my cheeks before I fully realized I was crying. I didn’t make a habit of crying and I wasn’t usually a sad drunk, but nothing about my life was usual these days. I had a laundry list of things worth crying over, yet I knew these tears weren’t about Carmella. I may have had a pocketful of unresolved feelings for her. So what? She was here now, she’d be gone tomorrow. Maybe I’d be gone tomorrow. Who could say? These tears were for absent friends, for Wit and Mr. Roth and yes, even for Rico. When you reach a certain stage in life, you do a lot of wondering about the people who’ve passed in and out of it. Soon enough, I realized, I’d be someone’s absent friend. You add alcohol to thoughts like that and you get tears. Who, I wondered, would shed tears for me? It’s an unhealthy thing to think about, but nothing I’d done recently was very healthy. I walked up onto the porch and rang the upstairs bell.
Even through the front door I could hear the steps creaking under Carm’s feet. I remembered how those cranky old stairs complained the first time I walked them, as we both walked them, trying not to awaken her grandmother. We had stood in her little kitchen, talking quietly, drinking Coronas, flirting.
“I want you to like me,” she’d whispered.
As I recall, I said something like, “What do you think I’m doing here?”
“No,” she’d said, “I want you to like me, Moe, not just want me. I know how to make men want me. That’s something I could do even before I knew how.”
Then I’d leaned forward and put my lips very gently on hers. In a way, it was more a caress than a kiss, but it was still electric. She slid her lips off mine and nestled her body against me. She was the first “other woman” I’d kissed with intent and it was to be the full extent of my extramarital activity in the twenty years of marriage to Katy. Yet that kiss was nearly as exciting to me now as it had been then, almost as exciting as the first time I slept with Carmella after Katy and I split. I was thinking about that kiss when the door pulled back.
I felt weak because the figure standing in the little vestibule wasn’t Carmella at all. He was dressed in Shrek pajama bottoms and a Toronto Raptors T-shirt. His blue eyes were bleary from too many video games and not enough sleep. He had his mother’s skin tone and hair, but his face and blue eyes were his father’s: not my eyes, not my face, his real father’s-a hotshot lawyer named Dukelsky who’d had a short, torrid romance with Carm, but
