behind him because something on the computer screen had his complete attention. Just about the time I opened my mouth to say something, he slammed his fist down on the keyboard, sending keys flying off in all directions.
“What did that computer ever do to you?”
“Oh, Moe, Jesus! You startled me,” Nick said, trying to compose himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. This,” he said, tossing the ruined keyboard in the trash,” is just about business. My suppliers are making me crazy. You own a business. You know how it is.”
Yes and no. I knew what it was like to have suppliers give me a hard time, but it never got me mad enough to take it out on the hardware. Then again, I’d never invested enough of myself in the wine business to lose it like that. I never cared about it like my brother Aaron cared about it, the way Nick cared about his restaurants.
“What, are the suppliers shorting you on your orders? Not giving you full value on your credits?” I asked.
“That should be the worst of it. Forget it. C’mon, the guy I want you to meet is-”
“Nicky, pick up line two,” a disembodied voice filled the room. “It’s your brother, Gus. He says it’s important.”
A angry look washed across Nick’s face, not dissimilar to the one he had after making short work of his keyboard. “Fuck!” He picked up the phone. “What?” He listened, his face hardening. Then he barked something out in Greek-a curse, no doubt. You don’t have to understand a language to understand its swear words. A long stream of Greek followed and it wasn’t love poetry either. Nick smacked his palm down on the corner of the desk. He listened for a couple of seconds and screamed into the phone before slamming it back into its cradle. I may not have been a keyboard smasher, but I certainly understood arguments between brothers.
“Not having a good night, huh?”
Nick was distracted. “What?”
“Having a bad night?”
“Yeah, let’s get outta here before the roof collapses. The guy I want you to talk to is waiting for us at a restaurant in Bay Ridge. C’mon out the back way. I’ll drive.”
We stepped through the near empty kitchen, out the rear door of the pizzeria, down the loading dock steps, and onto West 10th Street.
“My car’s over here.” He pressed a button on his key and the taillights on a gray BMW 525 winked at us.
“Nice ride,” I said, sliding into the front passenger seat.
“Gotta have some perks for all this fuckin’ aggravation, no?”
“You’ll get no argument from me, Nick.”
When Nick turned right onto 86th Street, neither he nor I had much of a stomach to look as we passed by the Grotto.
…
An old school Italian restaurant, D’Alto’s was an endangered species. Smelling of backyard red wine, garlic bread, Parmigiano cheese, and oregano, dimly lit with Chianti bottle candlestick holders covered in generations of melted wax, full of tables dressed in red and white checkered linens, the place reminded me very much of Cara Mia and a hundred other red sauce restaurants that had vanished from the Brooklyn landscape over the last decade. These kinds of places weren’t hip, weren’t Food Channel enough. Nothing that came out of the kitchen required a degree from the Culinary Institute of America. But I loved places like D’Alto’s because it smelled and tasted like my childhood, like eggplant and veal smothered in red sauce and covered in mozzarella cheese, like Brooklyn was supposed to taste.
An old man approached us with menus.
“We’re with him,” Nick said, pointing at a man seated at a table in the darkest corner of the restaurant. “Bring us three glasses of red to start, okay?”
The old man nodded yes. In a place like D’Alto’s, the wine list was very short: red or white. Period. Sometimes, it wasn’t even that extensive. Mostly, it was just red and then it was homemade either in someone’s basement or backyard. You drank it from water glasses and if it wasn’t fit to drink straight, you squeezed in some lemon and threw in a couple of ice cubes to cut it.
When we got to the dark table, the lone figure fairly popped up out of his seat. Except for some acne scars, he was a good-looking guy, maybe six-three, two hundred and sixty pounds, early thirties, with a huge upper body, a real prison build. Lots of empty time to fill up with push-ups and pull-ups and free weights. He had a head of neatly kept black hair, dark brown eyes, and a strong chin. He had a confused nose that couldn’t decide which way to go, but it added a nice bit of character to him.
“Joey Fortuna, this is Moe Prager, the guy I want you to talk to,” Nick said. “Moe, Joey Fortuna.”
We shook hands. Fortuna’s handshake and prison tats on his arms reinforced my guess about his workout routine.
“Joey here was once a firefighter, one of New York’s Bravest,” Nick continued.
“No wine for me,” Fortuna said, waving his glass away when the old man delivered the red wine and a basket of crusty bread. “Just some sparkling water and lime.”
I snickered. Nicky did too and told the old man to leave the third glass on the table, that he’d drink it.
“What’s so funny?” Joey wanted to know.
“Should you tell him, Moe, or should I?”
“Be my guest, Nicky.”
“Kid, in a place like D’Alto’s, you’re gonna get tap water with lemon. These old Guineas don’t know from sparkling water.”
The kid tried to laugh with us, but it sounded hollow. He was on edge. Whether that was because he didn’t like getting ragged on or because of what he’d been brought here to talk about, I couldn’t say. What was obvious was that he wasn’t having himself a grand old time.
Nick and I sampled the red wine. Definitely homemade, but not bad, no ice or lemon required. I put down my glass.
“You said Joey was a firefighter or didn’t I hear that right?” I asked.
“No, Moe, that’s right. Past tense,” Nick said.
Joey spoke up, “I got caught-”
“-selling steroids, right?” I finished his sentence.
“Fuck, man, how’d’ya know?”
“Acne scars, prison build, tats. You still juicing?”
“No way,” he lied. “I swore that shit off. I’m on parole. If they ever heard I was-”
“Calm down, kid. Calm down,” Nick said, patting Joey’s huge shoulder. “No one here’s interested in that kind of thing. No one wants anybody to get jammed up. Just tell Moe what you told me.”
The kid opened his mouth just as the old man came back to take our order. Nick did the honors.
“Cold antipasto plate, eggplant parm, veal parm, a big dish of ziti with red sauce. And him,” he said, pointing at Joey, “he’ll have two grilled chicken breasts with a salad. Oil and vinegar on the side. That okay with you, kid?”
“Lean protein and leafy greens. Just what I was gonna order.”
The old man shook his head in silent disgust. Grilled! No breading! No red sauce! Sacrilege! He was still shaking his head as he walked away.
“Okay, kid, tell the man,” Nick cued Fortuna. “Tell Moe what you’ve been doin’ to make ends meet.”
Fortuna bowed his head and muttered, “Collections.” Then louder, “I been doing collections.”
“Not traditional collections, I take it. You’ve been working for someone who puts money on the street,” I said.
“That’s right. I sorta convince guys that are slow payers to speed up their delivery, if you know what I mean.”
Nick spoke for both of us. “Yeah, kid, we know. We were cops once.”
“Who you muscling for, Joey?” I asked.
The kid went green and Nick came to his rescue.
