“A large meat lover’s,” Nat said at the counter as he sent me to commandeer a booth. The restaurant smelled deliciously of basil and tomato sauce and fresh baked bread. It was a busy place, with people picking up pizzas to go and cheerful groups taking up the tables and booths.
While I waited in my booth, and wondered with foreboding if a meat lover’s was as bad as it sounded, a waitress took an order for a pitcher of beer.
Nat joined me. “Did you get beer?”
“Should be here in a minute. What’s a meat lover’s?”
“Cheese pizza with about four pounds of ground beef, salami, pepperoni, ham, chicken, and bacon.”
“Mmmm.”
He smiled at me. God, he was gorgeous. “C’mon, English; they have pizzas where you come from.”
“With ham and sweet corn or artichoke and fresh tomato, not what sounds like half an abattoir.”
“Next you’ll be tellin’ me McDonald’s sells veggie burgers over there.”
“Well—”
He shook his head. “No. Just, no. Besides, it’s protein and I’m damn near hollow.” He settled his Louis Vuitton messenger bag on the bench next to him and tugged at one shoulder of his lavender cashmere pullover because, apparently, it was microns out of true. I knew better than to interrupt. He finished rearranging himself and looked up. “What did you think of ol’ Zane?”
“Seemed helpful. Nice enough fellow—guy. Weird name.”
“Pretty common in Texas. Not short for anything; it’s just Zane. I kinda liked him.”
I rolled my eyes. “I gathered. A bit old for you.”
“Maybe. Could be he’s a daddy. Am I up for being ordered around and wearing a collar?” He seemed to consider it for a few seconds and then he grinned. “Nah, prob’ly not.”
“He’s pretty, though.”
“Hmmm.”
I hesitated. “Did that description Vanessa gave us sound familiar at all?”
“What, the guy? Not so’s I noticed. D’you think I’d make a good Zane? I could have a professional name at The Coffee, like the waitress and the dancer.”
“It would have to have the same initial, like Nicky or Noel. He was kind of bossy, now I think about it.”
“Maybe in a good way,” Nat said, with a campy little flutter of his eyelashes.
“Don’t daddies want twinks? You’re not a twink.”
“Well, thanks for that,” he said, and then scowled. “Twinks don’t have to be blonde.”
“Oh, please. Too tall. Why are we even talking about this? Nathaniel is a good name. And Nat is good—short and easy to remember. Come to think of it—your name is Nathaniel.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“So why are you Nat and not Nate or Nathan?”
He shrugged, looking uncomfortable.
“Nat?”
“I was small and hyperactive as a kid,” he said reluctantly. “Apparently, I was a real pest.”
“Um, okay, but—small and hyper—” I stopped and my eyes flew open wide. “Oh my God! Your name is Gnat? Like a mosquito?” He grimaced and then nodded. “But that’s a much better name for the coffee shop,” I said gleefully. “Gnat’s Coffee.”
He looked around quickly and hissed, “Don’t you tell another livin’ soul, Theo.”
Our order arrived just then, and as we each helped ourselves to a heaping pile of meat masquerading as a pizza, I decided to be merciful. I could always pick up the name thing another time. Often.
“Speaking of names, did you notice we didn’t get a name?” I swallowed hurriedly, inhaled, and waved my hand around in front of my face in the universal sign for o-my-god-that-cheese-just-scorched-everything-it-touched.
“I did notice, yeah. Think they don’t know it?”
I shrugged. “Could be.”
He looked thoughtful. “I’m sorta surprised we got as far as we did. I mean, how come they talked to us at all?”
Our waitress seemed happy enough to pause by our table for a chat; the rush seemed to be settling down, and Nat had folded a twenty-dollar bill under the cheese shaker.
“We get priests pretty often because we’re so close to Peter and Paul,” she said. “Sometimes they don’t wear their collars; I think they’re embarrassed because of all the, you know, scandals, but we can tell they’re priests. We know our regulars, anyway. They’re good guys.”
“This one came in Wednesday night a week ago. He was wearing a suit,” I went on, “all in black with his collar.”
She pursed her lips.
“And he had a gold tooth at the front and a very strong accent,” I said.
“Yeah, okay, him. He ordered a soda and sat at that table by the window, nursing it for, like, two hours watching the street.”
“He was alone? Did he talk to anyone?”
She thought for a minute and eyed the twenty-dollar bill. “Just after he came in, a guy sat down at the table with him. They talked for a couple of minutes.”
“Was the second guy older, wearing a sports coat, with gray hair?”
“No, nothing like that. He was younger, in jeans and a hoodie. A guy I think, could’ve been a girl, hard to say; I had a full section and I was busy.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing much. The young guy left; the priest stayed here and nursed his soda for about another hour, then he suddenly got up and left. Didn’t leave a tip, and that’s one of my best tables. I like to seat big parties there so people passing by can see what they’re eating; it’s good advertising, right?” She wrinkled her nose. “A priest by himself drinking a soda wasn’t doing us any favors.”
“Did you notice which way he went when he left?”
“Yeah, ’cause I was sort of pissed. Though I guess priests don’t have much money. So I watched him and saw him cross the road.”
“Toward the Venus?”
“Yeah, pretty funny, right, like one of those jokes, so I kept watching in case he went in, but he didn’t. He picked up a guy who was leaving.”
“What did the guy look like?”
“I couldn’t really tell; I mean, it was across the street and all, and kind of dark.”
“Did they argue?”
“No—just the opposite. They talked for a minute, then went off together. Then I stopped watching because I had a customer.”
So Sergei had met with two men on the night he was killed. And I had no idea who they were.
The meat lover’s was about as bad as I’d feared, but I was starved, so I finished my slice anyway.