Now, Teresa was a no-nonsense mother of three teen sons with a thick Long Island accent. She was brass, opinionated, sarcastic, and not afraid to stand up to me. And when you were rich and influential enough, that was rare to come by. I liked having someone in my inner circle who could call me on my shit, tell me I was being a dick, or confirm that I was right when I got a weird vibe off a potential client or business partner.

I let out a snorting laugh at her as she pulled off her gray suit jacket and draped it around the back of her chair.

“So what do you know about her?”

“Well, contrary to your beliefs, I am not the FBI. I didn’t run a background check on her.”

“A name would be nice,” I said as she sat back down and pressed the butt of her pen on the desk, making it pop.

“Her name is Saff Amato.”

“Saff? That’s her full name?”

“It’s what was on the paperwork for the building. Shall I call her assistant back and ask for a copy of her driver’s license or birth certificate?” she teased in that deadpan voice I’d grown to appreciate over the years. “Knowing you like I do,” she said, tapping at her clacky keyboard with her acrylic nails that made the sound even clackier, “I did try to do a quick search of her online and on social media. I got nothing.”

“Nothing? Who, under the age of eighty, has no digital footprint?”

“You,” Teresa said, raising one of those dark, arched brows of hers.

“Fair enough.”

“And even if she is eighty, so what? Experience recommends a person. Look at my Marty.”

Marty, Teresa’s husband, was twelve years her senior. He’d been a rough-and-tough union ironworker at the time they’d met and for many years afterward. Until he had a hard fall that fucked up his back. After that, the two of them switched roles—with Marty at home with the kids and housework, and Teresa doing the corporate thing.

It was a flip that seemed to suit them best, with Teresa loving her job and Marty developing a strange obsession with how to load the dishwasher and what materials to put together in the washing machine.

“Me? I just shoved it all in,” she’d told me once, shrugging a shoulder. “Clean is clean. But I appreciate a man who knows how to wash the delicates, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, how’s that bird-watching camera you got him for your anniversary treating him?”