After a while the little dog took a deep breath and sighed and sat at Roland’s feet. He broke wind loudly. Everyone in the restaurant must have heard, but no one looked. Showing polite, I guess. Paying respect, I guess.

When the calamari came, it was excellent.

Chapter Sixteen

Sixteen

The Figaro Social Club was on Mott Street, squeezed between a shoe repair shop and a place that sold fresh ground coffee, looking sharp with one of those padded doors upholstered in red naugahyde. The naugahyde was cracked and had maybe been wiped down in 1962 but not since, and the doorstep and the gutter were littered and oily and wet. A small CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC sign was hanging on the door. I thought it all looked sort of crummy, but maybe I was just suffering from West Coast Bias. On the West Coast, big-time mobsters spent a lot of money and lived in palaces and acted like they were related to the Doheny family. Maybe on the East Coast such behavior was considered gauche. On the East Coast, the well-established mobster probably went in for the rat-hole look.

I pushed through the red door and stood in the entry for a moment, letting my eyes adjust. Charlie DeLuca and a couple of guys built like bread trucks were sitting at a bare wooden table, shoveling in pasta with some sort of red sauce. Behind them, Joey Putata and a short, muscular guy were wrestling a full beer keg onto the bar. An old guy in a white barman’s bib yelled at them to go easy with the goddamned thing. In the back of the place a tall bony man with a long face and a hatchet nose was shooting pool by himself. His shoulders were unnaturally wide, as if he should have been twins but wasn’t, and he was X-ray thin, with pale skin pulled tight and lean over all the bones. His hair was black and shaggy and stuck out in spikes on top, and he wore black Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and black roach-killer boots with little silver tips and tight black pants and a black silk shirt buttoned at the neck. All the black made the pale skin look as white as milk.

The bartender saw me first and flagged his hand. “Hey, can’t you read? We’re closed to the public.”

“I know. I’m here because I want to see Mr. DeLuca.” You give them the mister when you’re hoping for cooperation.

DeLuca and the two guys at his table looked over, and so did Joey Putata. When Joey Putata saw me, he stopped wrestling with the beer keg and said, “Oh, shit.” He hadn’t said anything about the clam bar.

“My name is Elvis Cole, Mr. DeLuca. I want to talk with you about Karen Lloyd.” I was laying it on thick with the mister.