'Twenty pounds.'
'Hey! Congratulations! And your heart thanks you, too. Hard to lose weight, isn't it? Don't tell me, I know. Fucking calories stick right on there. Micks like you, they hang over the front of your belt. Dagos like me, you discover one day you're ripping out the seat of your pants every time you bend over to tie your shoes.'
'It actually wasn't hard at all.'
'Well, you come on in to the Brothers, William. I'm gonna fix you my own special. Chicken Neapolitan. It'll put all that weight back on in one meal.'
'I might just take you up on that,' Billy said, smiling a little. He could see himself in the mirror on his study wall, and there seemed to be too many teeth in his smile. Too many teeth, too close to the front of his mouth. He stopped smiling.
'Yeah, well, I really mean it. I miss you. It's been too long. And life's short, paisan. I mean, life is short, am I right?'
'Yeah, I guess it is.'
Ginelli's voice dropped a notch. 'I heard you had some trouble out there in Connecticut,' he said. He made Connecticut sound as if it was someplace in Greenland, Billy thought. 'I was sorry to hear it.'
'How did you hear that?' Billy said, frankly startled. There had been a squib about the accident in the Fairview Reporter -decorous, no names mentioned - and that was all. Nothing in the New York papers.
'I keep my ear to the ground,' Ginelli replied. Because keeping your ear to the ground is really what it's all about, Billy thought, and shivered.
'I have some problems with that,' Billy said now, picking his words carefully. 'They are of an ... extralegal nature. The woman -you know about the woman?'
'Yeah. I heard she was a Gyp.'
'A Gypsy, yes. She had a husband. He has ... made some trouble for me.'
'What's his name?'
'Lemke, I believe. I'm going to try to handle this myself, but I wondered ... if I can't . . .'
'Sure, sure, sure. You give me a call. Maybe I can do something, maybe I can't. Maybe I'll decide I don't want to. I mean, friends are always friends and business is always business, do you know what I mean?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Sometimes friends and business mix, but sometimes they don't, am I right?'
'Yes.'
'Is this guy trying to hit on you?'
Billy hesitated. 'I'd just as soon not say too much right now, Richard. It's pretty peculiar. But, yeah, he's hitting on me. He's hitting on me pretty hard.'
'Well, shit, William, we ought to talk now!'
The concern in Ginelli's voice was clear and immediate. Billy felt tears prick warmly at his eyelids and pushed the heel of his hand roughly up one cheek.
'I appreciate that - I really do. But I want to try to handle it myself, first. I'm not even entirely sure what I'd want you to do.'
'If you want to call, William, I'm around. Okay?'
'Okay. And thanks.' He hesitated. 'Tell me something, Richard - are you superstitious?'
'Me? You ask an old wop like me if I'm superstitious? Growing up in a family where my mother and grandmother and all my aunts went around hail-Marying and praying to every saint you ever heard of and another bunch you didn't ever hear of and covering up the mirrors when someone died and poking the sign of the evil eye at crows and black cats that crossed their path? Me? You ask me a question like that?'
'Yeah,' Billy said, smiling a little in spite of himself. 'I ask you a question like that.'
Richard Ginelli's voice came back, flat, hard, and totally devoid of humor. 'I believe in only two things, William. Guns and money, that's what I believe in. And you can quote me. Superstitious? Not me, paisan. You are thinking of some other dago.'
'That's good,' Billy said, and his own smile widened. It was the first real smile to sit on his face in almost a month, and it felt good - it felt damned good.
That evening, just after Heidi had come in, Penschley called.
'Your Gypsies have led us a merry chase,' he said. 'You've piled up damn near ten thousand dollars in charges already, Bill. Time to drop it?'
'Tell me what you've got first,' Billy said. His hands were sweating.
Penschley began to speak in his dry elder-statesman voice.