“You don’t decide what’s important. I decide what’s important. Your job is to tell me everything, you understand?” The comic-opera Italian had dropped out of his voice, a bad sign. She didn’t dare look at him, and was happy to catch sight of their waiter approaching with a round tray.

“You’re right, of course,” she said. “Minestrone, right? My favorite. Really.”

The waiter delivered a steaming bowl. She fished her spoon around in it and pretended to be fascinated by what she discovered; it smelled like old dish-water, and the pieces of vegetables looked wasted and transparent. She looked over at the limp disheartened Caesar salad and kept stirring the minestrone.

Sol spooned his soup with slurping relish. One good thing about his mulberry sharkskin suit, it wouldn’t show any stains. The shirt was about a half-shade off, the tie scrawny and black. The jacket was big enough to hide a gun; she figured him for a flash piece, something silver and mother-of-pearl, tucked in a custom shoulder holster. All the fucking wiseguys in this town, and she had to get one who thought he was an extra in The Godfather. He was stupid, he was cheesy, he was good for a laugh at a slow party.

And every once in a while—like now—he scared the living shit out of her.

She hated, hated being alone with him.

“Eat,” he urged her, caught for a second in the no-man’s-land between his Jewish upbringing and his Sicilian pretensions. “Eat, baby, it’s good for you.”

She dutifully swallowed a mouthful of dishwater, felt something lumpy on her tongue that might have been potato or well-cooked cockroach, reached for her wine, and took a hasty gulp.

The acidic bite reminded her of lemons and cold sores.

“So tell me about this woman, this whore,” Sol said. He broke a piece of garlic bread from the loaf and set it afloat in his minestrone.

“Deadhead. A sponge. Honest, she couldn’t remember her own name, much less where she was.” Exaggeration, but not by much. By the time Robby had poured Velvet into the taxi, there had been little left in the way of functioning brain cells. Robby had not taken the hooker’s remaining cash. It had probably been a mistake.

“I hope you’re right,” Sol said. He gave it just the right inflection—worried, threatening, doubting. All with a smile. Jesus. In spite of her better judgement, Robby took another sip of wine that blasted through her sinuses like a nose full of pepper. She sneezed into her napkin, two or three times, while he looked on indulgently.