But the biggest wonder had to be that table of wise guys over there, mooning over Joybelle and Frankie's duet. Just six months ago, those guys wouldn't have crossed the road to piss on his heart if it'd caught fire. Crazy fucking mobsters. And now they were ringing him up, asking him if they could come to his club. And the hell of it was, they were really asking.
Oh, sure, they'd rolled in here like kings of the fucking hill that first time. He didn't know what O'Brien had done or said to them, but after that you couldn't have asked for a quieter, more well-behaved pack of wops. He'd been terrified, expecting them to muscle in on his action. But no, they came for the show and the food. They couldn't get enough of the fucking food.
They'd also liked staying behind after the place had closed, to watch The Sopranos and all of his Mafia movies on the big flatscreen. But Ms. O'Brien had put a stop to that pretty quickly. She said it was "inappropriate."
Well, a lot of people would look around this place, with its mixed races and nightly parties, and they'd swear on the Bible that the Bayswater redefined inappropriate. But Slim Jim Davidson called that "bull talk from a one-eyed fat man." That was his new favorite phrase, ever since he'd seen John Wayne in True Grit.
"Hey, darlin'!" he shouted to Marilyn over the noise of the band and the bar crowd. "You think John Wayne worries about turning into such an ugly, fat old prick?"
"Well," she said, sipping at a cocktail he didn't recognize, "at least he got to grow old."
Slim Jim rolled his eyes and gave her a squeeze. "Now you know we ain't lettin' that happen to you, sweetheart. You ain't marrying that drunken ball player. You ain't fucking those Kennedy boys. And you-"
A painful grip on his bicep tore his hand off Marilyn's ass. "Out in the back. You're with us, Romeo."
He recognized the voice, and his heart skipped a beat. It was the two bozos. The feebs who'd rousted him in his crib.
The unfriendly one-at least they'd kept their roles straight-had made some sort of Chinese burn on his elbow. It hurt like hell. Before he knew it, he was up on his tiptoes and being hustled away from Marilyn as fast as they could handle the move without attracting attention. Even so, there were plenty of patrons beginning to point and stare.
The Bureau men shoved him through a set of doors and into the first office on the left.
A push sent him into the desk, and he corked his thigh painfully. "Ow! You didn't have to-"
"Shut up, shit head. What the fuck are you doing here?"
Rubbing at his leg, his mind racing, Slim Jim played dumb. "I got an interest here. It's strictly legit. If you guys were as smart as-"
"You know what we mean. You're supposed to be in California. You're supposed to be working for us now. You were supposed to have ditched that bitch, and-"
"Why, gentlemen, I do believe my ears are burning."
The two bruisers spun to find Maria O'Brien standing in the doorway, flanked by Marilyn and some couple Slim Jim didn't know. They must have been the friends O'Brien said she was meeting for a late supper, he guessed.
"Agents Geraghty and Swinson, I presume." She smiled, but not in a friendly way. "You'd know them as Good Cop and Bad Cop, in that order, Mr. Davidson. Now, would you care to cease your criminal assault on my client?"
"We never touched him!" Swinson protested. "Did we?" he asked, turning a baleful eye on Slim Jim.
"The hell you didn't, you fucking assholes. You frog-marched me in here and then you threw me into the desk, and I'll bet I got a big bruise out of it. I could prove it, too." He started to undo his belt.
"That won't be necessary, Mr. Davidson," said his lawyer. "I'm sure we can find a doctor who'll testify in the civil suit."
"There won't be any suit," Swinson blustered. "A two-bit hustler like Davidson. Done time for chiseling somebody's grandmother. Good luck, sister."
Slim Jim winced uncomfortably. That goddamned rubber check was always bouncing back in his face.
It didn't seem to bother Ms. O'Brien, though. She still had that nasty smile on her face: the one that reminded him of feeding time at the zoo. "Well now, Agent Swinson, I don't believe Mr. Davidson has ever made a secret of his former life. In fact, it's very much public knowledge. Just as his efforts to reform himself, and to make amends for his past misdeeds, are also public knowledge. You may not be aware of it, but Mr. Davidson has made an ex gratia payment of five thousand dollars to Mrs. Durnford, the grandmother to whom you refer. A significant return on the twenty-four-dollar check he wrote to her grocery store, when he was unfortunately unaware of a shortfall of funds within his account.
"You may also be aware of-"
Swinson cut in over the top of her. "Hey, we know all about your client, Miss O'Brien. You might have earned a pretty penny turning him into the new fucking Santa Claus, but water still finds its own level, lady. And he's a crook. Always has been. Always will be."
"I guess we'll see about that," said O'Brien. "In the meantime, I'll be pursuing an order against you gentlemen, and any other agents of the Bureau who are sent to harass my client concerning anything other than legitimate government business."
"We're just doing our job," Swinson growled. "Some people still work for their country, O'Brien."
Slim Jim wondered how she'd take that. Ms. O'Brien was inordinately proud of her time in the Marine Corps-much more than he was of his hitch in the navy. If they meant to get under her skin, though, they failed. She simply raised an eyebrow and produced a large leather folder. It contained a data slate. She powered up, opened a file, and there was Slim Jim's apartment on screen.
There he was in his bathrobe.
And there were the two feebs, muscling him.
It was the surveillance footage from the microcams hidden all over his home. Geraghty was administering a savage, unprovoked blow to the back of his head.
"Hmm, not such a good cop after all, are we, Agent Geraghty?" Ms. O'Brien teased with a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. At that moment, Slim Jim thought he might just be in love with his scary lawyer.
The others had crowded into the small room and were also watching, which only added to the agents' awkwardness. The video made them look and sound like a couple of stupid thugs. Marilyn gasped when Swinson threatened to tell her ex-husband where he could find her.
"You bastards," she said. "That was just a marriage of convenience. If I hadn't hooked up with him, I would have been sent back to the orphanage. My guardian used to pay him to go out on dates with me!"
Slim Jim wasn't the only one who found himself caught out by that. Every man in the room, and even the other two women reacted with obvious surprise. Norma turned a cold, level stare on the feds. When she spoke, it didn't sound like her at all. There was nothing soft in her voice. It sounded like she was grinding up rocks with her teeth.
"Don't you imagine for a second that you can involve me in any of your grubby schemes," she went on. "You have no idea of the life I've just escaped. Or what I will do to avoid going back there. You can expect to hear from my lawyers."
Slim Jim began to wonder whether it was such a good idea dating someone like Norma. She apparently had hidden depths.
Hidden depths were not good. Not in his experience. He began to wonder if she'd been using him all the way along.
The man and woman who'd come in with her remained silent. But he could tell they were fascinated. The chick, in particular. Davidson didn't doubt she was twenty-first. Her clothes told him that much. But he began to wonder what angle she had. She didn't strike him as the soldierly type. Ms. O'Brien spoke up while he was wondering.