The Misfortune Cookie

“No, no, take your time,” said Tommy Two Toes. “No rush.”

“Shut up, Tommy,” said Napoli.

“What are they doing?” Stella shrieked as cops started coming down the steps from her office with boxes full of her business files. “That’s my stuff! Put that back!”

The policewoman said, “It’s all covered by the search warrant you tried to eat a few minutes ago, Miss Butera.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

“Why won’t you sleep with me again?” Lopez asked, looking bewildered. “What happened?”

“What happened?” I repeated. “Why?”

“Oh, this is almost worth getting arrested for,” said Ronnie.

“Lopez,” said Napoli, “we actually are in the middle of a big bust, so—”

“Yeah, why?” he said to me.

“Because you slept with me and then didn’t call!” I raged.

“Whoa! Really?” said Jimmy.

“The bum!” said Stella.

Ronnie burst out laughing.

Napoli looked at Lopez. “Is that true?”

“It’s been a week!” I added.

“Yikes,” said the redheaded cop.

Tommy added, “What a jerk!”

“A week?” said Napoli.

“Yes!” I said.

“No, of course it hasn’t been a week,” Lopez said dismissively.

“Christmas Eve!” I shrieked, enraged beyond all measure. “We had sex on Christmas Eve! Twice!”

“Stamina,” Tommy said judiciously.

“Young guys,” Freddie said with envy.

“Oh, that explains why you were late for work Christmas morning,” said Napoli.

“And I haven’t heard from you since then!” I shouted. “A week!”

“What a mook,” Freddie said in disgust.

Lopez shook his head. “No, Esther, it was only . . . only . . .” He paused. “Oh.”

“The penny drops,” said Ronnie.

Lopez squinted at me. “It’s been a week?”

“Yes.”

“Christmas Eve . . . New Year’s Eve . . .” We all waited in taut silence while he thought it over. “You’re right. I guess it’s been a week.”

“You guess?” A moment ago, I hadn’t thought it was possible to get any angrier. Now I realized how wrong I’d been.

“God, even for a cop, this is pathetic,” said Ronnie.

“Put a sock in it, Ronnie,” said Napoli.

“That ain’t no way to treat a lady,” said Jimmy Legs, shaking his head as the redheaded cop handcuffed him.

Apparently thinking he had a good argument at hand, Lopez said to me, “You could have called me if you wanted to talk t—”

“I did call you! I left you a message!”

“Oh . . .” He looked dazed. “That’s right. I forgot . . .”

“You didn’t call her back?” blurted the policewoman who was cuffing Stella. She met my eyes. “Men.”

“Hey, we ain’t all like that,” protested Freddie—who was here tonight with his mistress while Mrs. Freddie was probably at home alone.

“Men,” I repeated.

“Jesus, Lopez,” Napoli said in exasperation. “After Chubby Charlie got whacked, why did I have to go around and around and around with you about this woman, if you were just going to wind up dumping her? You could’ve saved me a lot of antacids if you’d just—”

“Don’t you have a big bust to supervise?” Lopez said to him.

“You’re the one who insisted on doing this tonight,” Napoli shot back. “I wanted to wait a couple of days, when we’d have more staff available for this and it would be easier to find a sober judge. But noooo, you pushed and pushed until—”

“Fine, this is all my fault,” Lopez snapped. “Everything is my fault. Okay?”

“Well, there’s something we can agree on,” I said.

“But as long as we’re here now,” Lopez prodded Napoli, “maybe you’d like to go arrest someone.” He nodded toward the wiseguys who were lined up next to Stella.

“No, that’s all right, we can wait,” said Tommy. “Don’t put yourself out.”

“Shut up,” Lopez and Napoli said in unison.

Then Napoli glared at Lopez, gave a disgusted shake of his head, and turned to the arresting officers, whom he urged to stop gaping at us and get this bust back on track. He crossed the floor and started assisting them.

Lopez looked around uncomfortably at the crowd for whom we had been providing a free floor show. “Look, can we talk about this later?” he said to me.

“No, there’s nothing left to talk about!” Immediately contradicting myself, I said, “How could you do that? What kind of a person are you?”

“He’s a loser, that’s what kind!” said Freddie as he was being escorted out of the restaurant by two cops, his hands cuffed behind his back.

Napoli told Freddie to mind his own business.

“What were you thinking?” I raged at Lopez, getting it all off my chest now. “You insensitive, self-centered, callous—”

“I was busy!”

I was so furious I could barely speak, but I forced the words out. “You were . . . busy? ”

Lopez lost the last shreds of self-control. “Yes, goddamn it!”

So did I. “BUSY?”

“Lame,” said Jimmy.

“Priceless.” Ronnie was laughing again.

“And so were you, it turns out,” Lopez shouted.

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

“It means I got here, at the end of a week made in hell—”

“Oh, now you remember it’s been a week!”

“—to find you dancing on tabletops! Having the time of your life— and giving a bunch of wiseguys a good long look under your skirt!” He was beside himself now. “So don’t pretend you’ve been sitting around waiting for me to call!”

Since that was exactly what I had been doing, this was too much. Just too much. Before I knew it, my hand was whipping across his cheek in a loud, stinging slap. Lopez fell back a step, startled. So did I. I’d hit him so hard my hand burned, and a white palm print stood out sharply against his dark skin for a moment.

Stella and the Gambello crew were cheering.

“Way to go, Esther!”

“Good for you!”

“That’ll teach the bum!”

Lopez and I stared at each other, both caught off guard by what I’d just done. I heard harsh, rasping