Mafia Chic (6 page)

T
he next night, courtesy of the two hundred dollars my grandfather Marcello had miraculously “pulled” from my ears through his sleight of hand, I told Di I was going to treat her to a night out at a little French bistro on the Upper East Side. I opened Teddi’s, cooked for the lunch crowd, and then handed off the kitchen to Leon. Quinn was, of course, with those Irish-Italian movie star looks of his, greeting each table and doing his usual superb job of making everyone who entered Teddi’s feel like a big shot. After the lunch crowd slowed to a trickle, he and I sat at the bar for our good-luck sambucas. Restaurateurs—at least Italian ones—are a superstitious breed.

Quinn grinned at me, his blue eyes absolutely dancing—doing a damn
macarena
—as he handed me my drink. Quinn is my first cousin on my father’s side of the family so we have the same last name. He has long black lashes, that by all rights—if there’s any justice in the universe—should
have been mine. But no. I have to apply five coats of L’Oréal’s Voluminous in jet black just so you can see mine, and Quinn gets to bat his impossibly full lashes at every woman who walks through the door. His mother is Irish, Aunt Colleen, and she says a novena for our restaurant every day, praying that we somehow, miraculously, in New York City, where restaurants fail each day, make it.

“What are you twinkling about?”

He leaned on the bar, his smile infectious. “I met a girl.”

“God, Quinn…you have more sex in a week than I have had in my lifetime, I think. I don’t understand it. I do and I don’t. I mean, yes, you’re beautiful.”

With that, Quinn turned around and surveyed himself in the mirror behind the rows of liquor bottles. “I have to agree with you, Ted.”

I grabbed a cocktail straw and threw it at him. “Arrogant and beautiful.” I waved my hands (Italians speak with their hands). If I had to sit on mine, I’d be rendered mute. “And you have the whole bad-boy thing going.”

“And last night, I was a very, very bad boy.”

“Please, spare me the gory details.”

“I’m a gentleman. I don’t kiss and tell—except to my best friend, cousin and business partner all rolled into one, Teddi Gallo. We should have been born brother and sister.”

I rolled my eyes but smiled despite myself. It was true. Of all my relatives, except maybe Tony, I loved Quinn best. And though I was very fond of Tony, especially when he came over to make pastry or to hang out and watch TV with Di and me, sharing pizza and wine, it was Quinn who was my friend, my true friend. I told him nearly as much as I told Di. My brother, Michael, and I could barely stand in the same room without it leading to an argument. I’m sure that
pained my parents, but Michael had left Brooklyn and never looked back. Sometimes I envied his L.A. life so far away from the family, and other times I thought he did it out of some sense of shame, that my father with his pompadour and my uncle Vito in his “guinea Ts” and hairy back weren’t good enough for Michael. None of us were. I had wished Quinn was my brother for as long as I could remember.

“How about you, Teddi? You’re gorgeous. And you never date.” Quinn wagged his finger at me.

“I’m married to this restaurant. I’m either waking before dawn to open, pulling a double shift or closing. How you can close this place six nights a week and then go out and party…and
then
go and get laid, I have no idea.”

“I’m young. And so are you. Sometimes you just have to burn the candle at both ends.”

“I did have a date the other night. Went well.”

“Oh?” He arched an eyebrow.

“But I’ll leave it at that. Don’t want to jinx it…. And shouldn’t you be prepping for the dinner shift?”

“Not without my sambuca, cuz.” He lifted his snifter, and we clinked our glasses.

Quinn had gone to the Culinary Institute of America, and I truly admired how he could walk into the restaurant and instantly spot if a single fork was out of place. He was able to do it all and in any condition—hungover, on no sleep, freshly rolled out of a woman’s bed. He had the energy of ten people.

After Quinn and I finished our good-luck sambucas, I went home, dumped my chef’s coat in my laundry basket—my coat, embroidered in red script with “Teddi’s” on the left breast, was caked in red sauce—then showered and waited for Di to get ready. As usual, I told her we were supposed
to leave a full hour before we actually were. I had tried, over the years, to analyze just what it was that made Di so late. I honed in on the fact that she changed a minimum of six times before any outing—even something as simple as going to the corner deli for a bagel.

The bistro I picked was intimate, and the chef clearly knew his sauces. I was having a hard time choosing an entrée.

“See that fellow over there?” Di asked me as she sipped a Campari and soda.

“The drop-dead gorgeous one?”

“That very one. I think he’s stalking us.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well…this morning, when I went to get my usual bagel—and tell me, why can’t you get a good bagel in London? What is it about New York that positively
breeds
good bagels?”

“They claim it’s the water.”

“The water? What kind of rubbish is that?”

“I’m serious. When bagel makers go to other parts of the country…same recipe. Same flour. Same ovens. Different water. The bagels aren’t as good.”

“Fascinating. Well, I ordered a salt bagel. I know I shouldn’t have extra salt—bloating. You know…PMS. But—”

“Lady Di…can you focus? Why do you think he’s stalking us?” I looked over the man in question. I took him for about six feet tall. Very well built and muscular, but not too much so. In fact, everything, from his haircut to his shoes, was screaming
“ordinary.”
The kind of ordinary that would make him hard to pick out in a lineup. He was very handsome, with chiseled features, but I could tell he was trying to blend in.

“Well…I ordered my usual,” she continued. “Well, not my usual-usual, which is a plain bagel, fat-free cream cheese, black coffee. I splurged for the salt bagel. And he was there.”

“Where?”

“In Charlie’s Deli.”

“So?”

“And then, because I’d noticed him, I thought back to another day when I was at the grocery store, and I swear I saw him there. It jogged my memory. And now he’s here.”

“I think I know what’s going on.”

“What?”

“Well, there’s one way to find out whether he’s simply from the neighborhood and coincidentally showing up at all our favorite haunts or if there’s something more sinister afoot.”

“Sinister? So you
do
think he’s stalking us.”

“How do you feel about getting our food to go?”

“But we just got here.”

“Do you want to know who he is or not?”

“Not that badly.”

“All right, then, I have a different plan.”

We ordered, and when our food came, I told the waiter that we had tickets to a cabaret show and would have to leave at precisely nine-thirty. I discreetly handed him the cash, prepaying for our bill.

Diana and I ate. The waiter brought over the bottle of white wine we ordered. The more French wine Diana drank, the giddier she got over Tony. I thought about Robert Wharton. He didn’t make me feel giddy. No one did, actually. Not that I could remember. Maybe that was what attracted me to cooking. It let me pour all my emotions into the pot and the saucepan. From the time I was a little girl,
I swore to myself that when I got older, I would never sleep with one eye open, looking over to wonder whether my husband came home safe and sound. I would never marry a mobster. I would never marry a cop. Two sides of the same coin. I would never be giddy. Giddy was just another form of the thunderbolt.

When we finished our dinners, the waiter brought back my change, along with two mints. I looked at Di over the flickering candlelight. “Here’s the plan. We bolt.”

“Bolt?” Her eyes were glazed slightly from the wine, and she suddenly started laughing loudly. “What are you talking about, Teddi?”

“A hunch. Now, listen…when I count to three, we leave this restaurant like we suddenly realized the kitchen was on fire. And we see what Mr. Tall, Dark and Suspicious over there does. If he suddenly gets his check and makes a run for things, then we know he’s following us. And if he and his table mate—” I referred to the man whose back was to us, also with an amazingly perfect haircut “—don’t flinch, then it’s all a little serendipity. You got that?”

“Got it. I love all this intrigue. I’m channeling my inner Pussy again.”

“Don’t say that too loudly.”

“All right…Octopussy.”

“Okay, Bond girl, one…two…you have your purse and shawl ready?”

“Ready.”

I gently lifted my purse into my lap from the floor. “One…two…three!”

We suddenly leapt from our chairs and hurriedly made our way to the door. No, we weren’t subtle, but we
were
out to the sidewalk in fifteen seconds.

“Come on.” I grabbed Di’s arm and made a beeline for an ice cream shop three doors down and half pushed her inside. Peering out the glass at the street, I saw the two men from the bistro suddenly make their way out the door of the restaurant. They stood on the corner, looking first left then right. Next they made their way to an unmarked van and went around the back of it.

Di gasped. “They
were
stalking us. Not just one, either. Two rotten little Peeping Toms. Maybe they’ve been spying on us through our bedroom windows.” Di shuddered. “It gives me the creeps. They’re pervs.”

“You’re half-right, Di. It’s a ‘they’s talking us all right. But they’re not working alone.”

“Not alone? I have the screaming abdabs!”

“The what?”

“I’m terrified! What is going on?”

“They were feds.”

“Feds? What the hell are feds? You know, I realize we both supposedly speak English, but I swear to heaven I don’t understand you half the time. More than half the time.”

“Feds. FBI. They have been tailing my family since…well, since long before I was born. And that haircut and those shoes…the one was a dead ringer for a fed. The van clinched it.”

“But you don’t have anything to do with the family business. You paid back your grandfather every red cent he lent you to start Teddi’s. You and Quinn. That anal-retentive little tight-butt of an accountant you use made sure of it. So why would these fed-people stalk you?”

“I believe the FBI would call it surveillance, not stalking. And I don’t know why me. Not yet at least. But it pisses me off.”

“Oh, God, no. You with a temper tantrum is truly frightening.”

“Come on.” I grabbed her arm. We braved out into the nippy fall air. I started walking right for the dark blue van.

“What are you going to do, Teddi?”

“You’ll see.”

When we arrived at the van, I went around back to the double doors at the rear. I started banging on them with all my might. “We saw you, you bastards! Open up!”

There was no noise, no movement, no nothing from the van.

“Maybe we’ve made a mistake,” Di offered. “Maybe they cut behind the van and then across the street. It is dark out.”

“There was no mistake. The only thing missing from this guy was a bulletproof vest. And he probably had one on under his shirt.”

“We know you’re in there!” I screamed, and pounded on the van again. Luckily, we were in the Big Apple, where it takes a lot more than this to attract attention.

“We’re not leaving!” I screamed again. Turning to Di, I said, “Listen, we’re going to make it so they have to come out. You go to the front of the van and sit on the hood. Just climb right up on the bumper and sprawl back on the hood and front windshield. They’ll come out eventually because they can’t leave otherwise. And trust me, FBI agents drink a lot of fucking coffee. Mother Nature and sheer tiredness will work for us. They have no idea how stubborn the Marcellos can be when we’re fucked with, and let’s not forget the fact that I’m fifty percent Gallo. Besides, Tony is bound to come here soon, too. He and Uncle Lou know we went to that restaurant. They’ll find us, and they won’t be happy.”

“See…your family does have all the fun. Now I’m fighting the fed-people.”

“Feds. Just feds, Di.”

“Feds, then. Is this an appropriate outfit for this sort of thing?” She looked down at her Jimmy Choo shoes and mini-dress. She wore a heavy velvet wrap around her shoulders.

“Well…it’s not quite Pussy Galore, if that’s what you’re asking, but my God, if Tony sees you in that, watch out.”

“Smashing!” She beamed. “All right, then, I’m off to the front of the van.”

I leaned back against the rear doors of the van, making a mental note of the license plate to give to my cousin Tony.

“Damn!” Di shouted from the front of the van.

“What?” I shouted back.

“These feds of yours now owe me a four-hundred-dollar pair of shoes, Teddi! I broke my heel climbing up on the bumper. I could scream blue murder!”

And maybe it was the wine, but as I walked around the front of the van, I noticed that Lady Di was not sprawled
back
against the windshield, but had plastered herself, face front, to the windshield so that her breasts were smashed flat against the glass, creating a
lot
of cleavage. Those G-men were surely happy fellows.

I walked back to my post and leaned against the doors. “We have all night, assholes!” I shouted.

Finally, minutes later, my teeth chattering from the night wind, I heard the sound of the van doors being unlocked. I stepped back and out emerged the very handsome agent we’d seen at dinner. I found myself suddenly unable to think of anything to say, but luckily for me, he stuck out his hand and smiled.

“You got us.”

I stared at his hand, certain I should refuse to shake it on principle, but next thing I knew, my palm was pressed against his palm.

“Mark Petrocelli.”

“Teddi Gallo. But you already know that.”

“Look…” He grinned with a crooked smile. “I think we all got off on the wrong foot here.”

“You’re tailing me. There is no right foot. What you’re doing is just as wrong as whatever it is you think my family has done.”