36

There is no scent of freshly baked bread in Little Italy, no Italians singing love songs or speaking boisterously while flapping their arms in the air. Still, enough charm remains to inspire a walk, if you’ve got the time. I did, so I told my driver to wait while I headed down Mott, and Mulberry, and Elizabeth and Baxter.

The area is gradually being swallowed up by Chinatown, and most of the people who can speak Italian have long since moved to the Bronx. But the streets are still lively and colorful, and the fire hydrants are painted green, white, and red, the colors of the Italian flag.

I didn’t find anything to buy, but I had a decent lunch and managed to clear my head after the meeting with Victor and Hugo. I didn’t think for one minute Victor and Hugo’s army of little people could take over the world, but I was gaining confidence that they could help me take down Joe DeMeo.

A couple hours after lunch, I found my driver and had him push his way through the traffic to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where I got a room at the Hotel Plaza Athenee. By five, room service had delivered an incredible Panini sandwich filled with fresh spinach, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. They also brought me a bottle of Maker’s and a heavy glass tumbler. I ate the sandwich and washed it down with three fingers of bourbon. By six, I’d had a hot shower and was freshly shaved and dressed. I watched the news on Fox for twenty minutes and still had more than enough time to walk the quarter mile east, to Third and Sixty-Sixth.

It was Tuesday, after all.

“For me?” she asked.

There was an empty chair waiting for her at the tiny table I’d staked out at Starbucks, and Kathleen had instantly spied the raspberry scone on the small square of wax paper across from me. To my utter surprise, she rewarded me with a radiant smile, removed her coat, and joined me at the table.

“Who’d a thought it?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“There’s a romantic component at work here,” she said, “one that might even rival your desire to separate me from my panties.”

“The mystery never ends,” I said.

“Do I want to know where you’ve been since Wednesday, what you’ve been up to?”

The angel on my shoulder urged me to tell Kathleen everything and let her run out of my life so she could find true happiness. Of course, the devil on my other shoulder said, “When in doubt, just smile and change the subject.”

“Can I get you a coffee?” I asked.

Kathleen frowned and shook her head. “That bad, eh?”

“I’ve had worse,” I said, and immediately realized I was telling the truth. I thought, What a rotten thing to have to admit, even to myself. I looked at Kathleen across the table. Her eyes were locked onto my mouth, as if she could read my thoughts by watching me speak the words. If that could possibly be true, I wanted to give her something better—a happier thought, one she might enjoy hearing. It would have to be something sincere.

Lucky for me, I had one. “I missed you,” I said. I’d wanted to say more about it, wanted to say it better, but at least I’d said it.

Her eyes remained fixed on my mouth while she processed the validity of my comment. Then she slowly twisted her lips into a smile, and I felt that thing I always felt in her presence.

Hope.

Maybe I still had it in me to be a better person than I’d been. Maybe I hadn’t yet descended so deeply into the pit that I couldn’t experience a woman’s love, capture her heart, have a decent life.

She took a bite of her scone and made a production of licking the sugar from her upper lip. She gave me a sly smile. “You really like me, don’t you!” she said.

I laughed. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Oh, I can get cocky,” she said. “Judging by the way your tongue is hanging out of your mouth, I can get cocky anytime I want!”

“That’s pretty big talk,” I said, letting my tongue hang out of my mouth.

“Pretty big what?” she said, laughing.

“Keep talking like that and you’re never going to get me in bed.”

“Oh, yes, I will!” she said.