Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (24 page)

“This is crazy, don’t go with him. Tell him to give you what he has and then fuck off. He’ll go off with his rodent tail between his legs.” I was beginning to work myself up into an Italian frenzy, but Sally stopped me.

“Casey, if I’m not stewing over this, you shouldn’t be. I told you. It will be over soon.”

Soon was just too far away.

I
MET
S
ONYA IN
the lobby just before nine and told her about Sally.

“Well, at least we don’t have to spend the next hour or so in a closed car with him. I would have killed him for sure.”

“Not if I got to him first.” We climbed into the Mercedes and Giuseppe told us that we would now sadly be leaving the region of Emilia-Romagna and going south. I guess anything south of where you live in Italy is considered the land of the
banditi
.
Since Mrs. Alfano’s Italian roots were more southern than mine, I could understand the reasoning. Sonya told Giuseppe that we wanted to speak only Italian on the way down. Mine was getting better every day and Sonya was learning a lot of single words, but I think she said that so I’d have to do most of the talking and she could put her head back and contemplate murder options.

When we arrived in Florence, Giuseppe gave us a brief tour around the city before delivering us to the hotel. He explained that although it was no Parma, Firenze was an incredible city. He was right; it was an incredibly beautiful city.

I checked into the hotel and then followed the bellman to my room. My parents had sent me off with birthday money for the trip, and I planned to buy something special with it. Once in the room, the bellman systematically showed me how everything worked.

“This is for the heat and the cool,” he said with his hand on the thermostat. “And to open the curtains, you push and pull the stick.
Spinga, tira. Spinga, tira
.” He had hold of a plastic bar attached to the curtain rod and he was repeatedly pushing the curtains back and forth. I expected that next he would show me how to turn on and off the lights and the shower and then how to pick up and put down the phone. I took some euros out of my purse and handed them to him. End of lessons. He told me to enjoy my stay and left.

I quickly slipped on a comfortable pair of clogs and headed out into the city to try to shop my way to a happy birthday. The expensive shops along Via Tornabuoni were tempting, but unless the sales that Signors and Signoras Gucci, Armani, Versace, Prada, and Escada were proclaiming in their windows were ninety percent off, they were out of my range. I walked down a cobblestoned street that ran off Tournabuoni and
found tiny shops that sold great items made by Signor Nobody and were affordable by Signorina Costello. Three hours later, I clogged back to the hotel laden down with gifts for myself, as well as some for my family. George was slithering out the hotel door just as I approached it, and I stopped him on the sidewalk. He was wearing what looked like new shoes and had somehow succeeded in finding the only ugly pair in Florence. A long scarf with black fringe and an exposed Ferragamo label was wrapped around his neck. I was having trouble shaking my image of tightening it.

“Hello, George. Is Sally back?” I asked.

He sneered at me, and I wondered which package held the Swiss Army knife I’d bought for my father. “For the moment,” he said.

I gritted my teeth and met his snide stare with my own. “And just which moment would that be?”

“The last moments you’ll be working with her,” he said, smirking, and then scurried away, rodentlike.

“
Vaffanculo!”
I called after him, but he was too far away to hear me. Unfortunately, the woman coming out of the hotel with her little girl was not. She covered the child’s ears and gave me a piercing look.

My mother would crucify me if she were here. “
Mi dispiace,”
I apologized, but she ignored me.

I asked for my room key at the front desk, and the clerk said, “Ah, yes, Signorina Costello. There is a message for you.” He handed me a hotel envelope, and I recognized Sally’s writing. The note said that she was back and for me to call. I spent several minutes calming my anger from my encounter with George, then went to her room instead of calling.

“Door’s open. Come in.” She was sitting up in bed reading.
It looked as though she had dozed off and was just waking up. She patted the bed, inviting me to sit.

I sat at the foot of the bed. “I got your note.”

“Yes. I just wanted you to know that I was back.” She looked at the packages I had set down on the floor. “You’ve been shopping. What did you get?”

“Everything I could afford.” I opened the bags and unwrapped several layers of tissue paper to show her my haul. She wanted me to try on the sweater I’d bought, and she inspected the inside of a small leather purse I’d chosen for my mother. As I was rewrapping everything, I told her that I’d run into George outside. “He said you were only back for a moment. Does that mean you didn’t get what you wanted?”

“No, it was a wasted trip.” There was an edge to her voice, but she still sounded as though she could be discussing something as inane as the items in my shopping bags, although it was costing her a hell of a lot more than my birthday check.

“When
do
you get it?”

“I’m going with him on Saturday. When the shoot is over.”

A picture of George sneering at me outside popped into my head. It made my blood boil to think of Sally going anywhere with him. This has gone too far, I thought. I can’t sit by quietly while she throws away a life’s work on a scumbag like George Davis. I wasn’t positive about the connection, but it was a safe bet.

“Sally,” I said, moving forward on the bed so I was close enough to put my hand on hers. “I have to tell you something. It’s not easy, but well, I know about Peter.” I said it very gently, but her eyes shot open and she took a quick, deep breath anyway. I went on: “I accidentally watched the CD when we were in Bologna—the night the hotel left your carry-on in my
room. I was looking for something to read and I thought it was a cooking tape.”

Her eyes teared up, and I felt like scum. “Upsetting, isn’t it? How could I live with someone all those years and not see him for the traitor he was?”

I just didn’t know how to respond to that. I handed her a box of tissues and said, “The CD is what George had that you wanted.”

“Yes.”

“But now you have it. Why is he still around?”

“There are more. George said that man Boris had all their meetings on tape and he was willing to sell them to me for a lot of money. We were supposed to meet him today, but he failed to show up, so we’re going to see him on Saturday.”

“Where?”

“Yugoslavia.”

“
Yugoslavia?
Why Yugoslavia?”

“I don’t know. That’s where he is.”

“Jesus, Sally. How did this all start in the first place?”

“Out of the blue. George approached me about a year ago and said he had something I might want. At first he told me a lot of details about the times Peter was in Russia. You know, he went there often as part of the Russian-American science team. I was surprised that George knew so much about him, but I didn’t take it as proof that Peter was doing anything like what he claimed. Then he showed me that CD. The one you saw. It was clear that Peter was negotiating to sell some formulas. He worked in nuclear physics, so I could guess what kind of formulas. George said if I didn’t pay, he would take the information to the press.” I thought about George appearing on all the talk shows. I could see him on
Morning in America
in his red smoking jacket, and a new wave of nausea hit me.

“How did George know about the tapes in the first place?”

Sally frowned. “You know, I don’t know that. I never asked.”

“Sally, George is bottom-feeder, a weasel. He’ll probably sell the information to the press anyway.”

“That’s why the contracts. That was my idea. I agreed to pay him huge commissions on all the royalties from all my work. I knew no matter what I’d pay him, he’d always ask for more. So I made a deal that would keep on paying anyway. I wanted him out of my life.”

“But Peter is dead, Sally. I know you loved him, but he’s gone and you can’t do this to yourself to protect someone who’s not here.”

“I’m not doing it for Peter or for me. It’s his sister, Ruth. The dear old thing practically raised Peter after their mother died. She never married so she could be there for him. She’s so proud of him, brags constantly about him to everyone. If she knew this it would kill her.”

“Jesus, Sally. This is a crime. George has to go to jail. He’s not only the dregs of humanity, he’s a criminal. Extortion is a crime. You have to put a stop to it. And you probably have a better chance of keeping this quiet by going to the FBI or CIA. I don’t know which one handles this stuff. But whatever, I doubt that they would want this to get to the press. You have to let the authorities deal with it.”

“If I had found this out when Peter was alive, I would have immediately gone to his superiors to stop it.” She fell silent, and I imagined by her expression that she was struggling with the horrible thought of turning her husband in to be jailed or worse. “Peter is dead and can do no more harm. But I want to see the rest of the tapes. To see if he had actually sold anything to that Boris. In that case, I’ll go to the authorities.”

“And if not? What? You’ll just pay George for the rest of your life?”

She lifted her chin and spoke with vengeance. “Ruth is eighty-two and not in great health. The minute she passes on, I plan to turn George in.”

“Can I watch?”

She laughed. “I’m sorry that you have to be around him at all, honey.”

“Me too. When I passed him outside the hotel, he said that I would be out of the picture soon.”

Sally looked away for a minute. When she turned back to me, her voice was stern. “He is trying to include that awful Carol Hanger in the contracts. I’ve told him I won’t go for it.”

“Are you sure you can call that shot?”

Her voice became small. “No.” She went on, “But I’m doing all I can.” She gave me a positive look. “I did tell him he was not welcome this evening at your party.” I mustered the best smile I could. You have to be grateful for small favors.

T
HAT NIGHT
, I
WORE
a dress that Mary had picked out for my trip. I had told her that I wouldn’t need anything that dressy, but she’d convinced me otherwise. “You don’t know who you’ll meet, since you’ll be with Sally and American TV. It could be a count or a prince or Marcello from
Under the Tuscan Sun
.” As soon as she’d mentioned Marcello, I’d put the dress in my “take it” pile. The pinkish-brown dress was a very thin, satiny silk weave that Mary said was “charmeuse” and I said was the next best thing to foie gras and white truffles. The neckline plunged into a deep V, revealing nothing but suggesting everything. The skirt ended midcalf and would have totally met Nonna’s approval were it not for the slit to my thigh.

We all piled into the van, scrunching ourselves so we would fit. Sally had a method for making this work. “Alternate: one person sit forward, the next back, and so on.” I was in the forward group, trying to keep Rocket, in the back group, from parting my slit with his knee. I was losing.

When we got to the restaurant, the maître d’ said, “There is a problem. There is couple who will not leave the room.”

We all looked through the main dining room into a smaller room off to the side and could see two people sitting alone at the sole, large table. The woman had her back to us and was wearing a floppy purple hat over her long, straight black hair. She had a pleated pink chiffon scarf wrapped around her neck in such a way that from the back it looked as though it must be covering her mouth. The man sat to her side with his face visible. He had a mop of blond curls, thick black-rimmed glasses, and an incongruous bushy black mustache.

Rocket asked the maître d’ if he had told the couple that the room was reserved for the night. He said he had but that they still refused to leave.

“I’ll handle this,” Rocket said, and he walked into the room and up to the table. At first, he spoke quietly to the couple; then his voice grew louder and angrier. I glanced into the main part of the restaurant to see if other customers had noticed. If they had, they weren’t reacting. I should know by now that loud angry voices are nothing to Italians. I looked back into our room just in time to see the woman raise a hot-pink gloved hand in a rude gesture.

“Maybe I should go in,” I told John. “Rocket’s Italian is not all that good, and he may have said something other than what he thought he said.”

“No, I’ll go,” John said, walking into the room. Within
seconds, he too was speaking in an angry voice to the couple. I couldn’t hear if either the man or woman said anything back, but I could see that she was still making rude gestures.

“Maybe we should just go someplace else,” I suggested to Sonya. “This is uncomfortable.” Looking around, however, I noticed that I seemed to be the only uncomfortable one. The rest of the crew was chatting quietly, the people in the dining room were scarfing down soup and pasta without so much as a glance our way, and the maître d’ was gone.

“I’ll take care of it.” Sonya stormed into the room in a take-charge manner. If anyone could take a situation in hand, it was Sonya, but before I could express that opinion to anyone else, she too was arguing with the couple. Worse, she’d grabbed hold of the woman’s hair and would have pulled her up out of the chair by it had the woman not held herself down by gripping her hat with both hands. “I’m going to find the maître d’,” I exclaimed to Sally and the rest of the crew. “This is ridiculous.”

“Don’t bother, Casey,” Sally said. “We’ll speak to them. You wait here in case he comes back.” And the rest of my group walked into the room, leaving me alone looking in at this mad scene of all my friends yelling at some weird couple who didn’t know when to leave but did know a lot of Italian hand swearing. It took about a half a minute for me to realize that I had been had. I began to laugh. As they saw me laugh, they yelled, “Happy Birthday” and the couple at the table stood up, removed hats, wigs, mustache, scarves, and glasses and I was looking at my cousin Mary and Danny O’Shea.