Irene nodded. “Teeth.”
“He knocked a few of them loose. Nick’s hand started bleeding, which only made him angrier.”
“He gets angry easily,” Teddy explained to Irene.
“I’m getting that impression,” Irene said.
“My husband told me that Nick Senior went a little crazy then. He started pulling Mazzione’s teeth out with a pair of pliers. All of his teeth. Except for the molars. He couldn’t get the molars.”
Irene looked at Teddy. “You were friends with this guy?”
“Work friends,” he said. “Not the same thing.”
“Then Nick shot him. Not my husband. Nick Senior.”
“Your husband told you this?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you believe your husband.”
Teddy almost laughed. The secondhand-story problem, in action.
“Nick Senior made my husband bury the body on his own,” Graciella said. “When they found it, months later, it was missing those teeth, and they weren’t at the crime scene. My husband had saved them. He kept them in a cigar box in his sock drawer.”
“Because keeping souvenirs of human body parts is a normal thing to do,” Irene said.
“Monks keep bones of saints,” Teddy said reasonably.
“You don’t have to defend him,” Graciella said. “My husband’s not perfect. And he doesn’t always think through his actions. But in this case, it’s a good thing.”
Irene raised an eyebrow. “Because…”
“Nick Senior’s blood is on Mazzione’s teeth. They put him at the scene of the crime.”
“They wouldn’t take Junior’s word for it?” Irene asked.
“My husband won’t testify against his father. He’d never do that. But I will absolutely turn the teeth over to the district attorney. I’ve already hinted to the police that I have proof. That may have been a mistake, though. Nick Senior seems to know I have something.”
“You can’t get cops to shut up,” Teddy said. “Plus, Nick Senior may have bought a few of them.”
“Or a lot of them,” Graciella said.
“So why haven’t you done it?” Irene asked. “Turned them over. Gotten Nick Senior charged.”
“Because the charges may not stick, and I want something more than his arrest,” Graciella said. “I want independence.”
Somehow, when Graciella was melodramatic, it worked, like orange on green. Who knew?
“I want my own life after my husband goes to jail,” Graciella said. “I want a clean business with no Outfit connections. And I want my boys to grow up without seeing their grandfather’s face ever again. I’ll trade the teeth to him for that.”
Teddy watched his daughter’s face. Her eyes had gone squinty. It was the look Maureen used to give him when he came home with liquor on his breath. Damn it, had Graciella lied to her—lied to them both?
“How many photocopiers are in this building?” Irene asked.
“Three,” Graciella said. “One is color.”
“I’m going to need copies of all the tax returns, and all the paper ledgers you can find,” Irene said. “Oh, and blank floppy disks. A lot of floppy disks.”
He used to love the feel of cards in his hands. There was no finer pleasure than to sit around a table drinking and smoking and telling lies with a group of well-heeled men, dealing them exactly the cards he wanted them to hold. Of course, those men weren’t friends, could never be friends. The next best pleasure was to sit around a table drinking and smoking and telling lies with men who knew him well enough never to let him deal a deck of cards, or even cut them.
“Tell ’em about Cleveland,” Nick Senior said.
“That’s okay,” Teddy demurred. He’d only returned from Ohio a couple of nights before.
“No, really. Guys, you will not fucking believe this story.” The Guys being Charlie, Teppo, and Bert the German. The regulars. Their usual Tuesday-night routine was to camp out in the back of Nick’s restaurant and eat pizza and drink Canadian Mist until dawn. They played, Teddy watched.
“What happened in Cleveland?” Charlie asked. Not the sharpest knife, Charlie. It was a miracle that he could talk and deal at the same time.
“Nothing,” Teddy said. He glanced at Nick, who was rolling out pizza dough at a big table. The best part of playing in the kitchen was that Nick kept them fed. The worst part was that every game was on Nick’s home turf. “A little trouble with a card game.”
“Come on, what’d you do?” Charlie asked. Already laughing. He was the group’s official fuckup, a kind of mascot who’d lost Nick almost as much money as he’d made him. He sensed that Nick was mad. They all moved carefully when he was in a mood, for the same reason that you played gently with nitroglycerin.
“Tell ’em,” Nick said. His stevedore arms were white to the elbow with flour. He was a big man, and determined to stay as big as he’d been in the fifties. He kept his hair in an oil-black D.A., wore the same shirts and tight pants he’d worn as a teenager, and listened to the oldies channel on the AM. The fixation on his youth was beginning to look ridiculous, but of course nobody was going to point this out to his face. “It was a hell of a setup,” Nick said. “I put Teddy in a tough spot.”
Teddy shrugged. He was not going to complain to Nick in front of these guys. “Why don’t we just play cards?” he asked.
“See, I sent Teddy down to help my cousin Angelo,” Nick continued. “He’d gotten himself into a game with a couple New Yorkers, Castellano guys.”
“Castellano,” Charlie said. “Shit, why?”
“Angelo was forced into being polite,” Nick said. “I said, hell, if you’re stuck playing with these fuckers, the least we can do is take their money. I said, I’m sending you a guy. I’ll bankroll him myself, twenty grand of my own money. I said, this guy’s the best fucking mechanic in the business.”
The guys looked at Teddy, who offered a self-deprecating smile.
Charlie laughed. “They let you be dealer?”
Teddy shook his head. “I was playing the whale.”
Nick said, “I told him to wear that fucking Newman Rolie. Flash it around.”
Teddy was wearing it now. A 1966 “Paul Newman” Rolex Daytona with a diamond dial. Worth twenty-five grand, and the thing would only gain in value. It was like walking around with a Lakefront condo on his arm. Teddy dropped his hand below the table. “My job was to lose, but mostly to Angelo,” Teddy said. “Angelo, though, was struggling to keep up with the New Yorkers.”
Nick snorted. “For good reason, it turns out. But to make it worse, the New Yorkers have two backup guys in the next room, hanging out with Angelo’s guys. Everybody’s armed to the teeth.”
“Holy shit!” Charlie exclaimed.
“But tell ’em the real problem,” Nick said.
Teddy kept his face still, projecting calm. Good humor.
“Go on,” Nick said. A commandment.
“The real problem,” Teddy said finally, “was that the New Yorkers were tag-teaming us. They were signaling to each other, trying to cheat Angelo and me. One of them even tried bottom-dealing.”
“On you?” Charlie said. “He’s trying to out-mechanic the mechanic?”
“Fat chance,” Teppo said. He was five-foot-squat, a hundred and forty pounds, but Teddy had seen him crush the windpipes of men twice his weight. “So what’d you do? Start cheating back?”
“Of course,” Teddy said. “But I couldn’t make any big moves during my deals, because I can’t tip ’em off that I’m a plant. But I can’t let the game keep going, because Angelo’s losing money every hand.”