"Yeah," Daffy said, and changed the subject: "Well, since we all can't fit in your car, I'd better see about ours."
"Either this child has terminal B.O., or it needs a diaper change," Matt said.
Daffy picked up her baby and walked out of the room with her. Chad appeared a moment later, walked to the bar, poured whiskey in a glass and tossed it down, then held his finger in front of his lips in a signal that Daffy was not to know he had a little predinner drink.
Daffy reappeared, and they went down the stairs. The rent-a-cop was not in sight, and Matt wondered where he was.
When they went outside, the rent-a-cop was standing beside an Oldsmobile 98 sedan, the doors of which were open.
Daffy and Chad got in the backseat, the rent-a-cop got behind the wheel, and Matt got in the front passenger seat beside him.
"You know the La Bochabella restaurant?" Chad asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Where'd you get this?" Matt asked when they were inside. "It's new, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Chad said. "Tell him, Mr. Frazier."
"The statistics show," Frazier announced, very seriously, "that there are far fewer incidents involving Oldsmobiles and Buicks than there are involving Cadillacs and Lincolns. Presumably, they don't attract the same kind of attention from the wrong kind of people."
"You're telling me your old man is going to turn in his Rolls Royce on an Olds?" Matt asked. "To avoid an incident?"
"No." Chad laughed. "But he's stopped going anywhere in it alone."
"You seem to feel this is funny, Matt," Daffy said. "I don't. We don't."
"Straight answer, Daffy?"
"If you can come up with one."
"As a cop, I'm a little embarrassed that Chad's father, and your mothers, and you really feel it's necessary."
"That brings us back to my ounce of prevention," Chad said.
Matt confessed to the maоtre d' of La Bochabella that he didn't have a reservation, and asked how much of a problem that was going to be.
The maоtre d' consulted his reservations list at length, frowning, and shaking his head.
If this son of a bitch is waiting for me to slip him money, we'll be here all night.
"I'm afraid, sir…" the maиtre d' began.
A chubby, splendidly tailored man in his late twenties walked up to the maоtre d's stand.
"Ricardo," he announced, "Mr. Brewer just phoned and canceled his reservation." He looked at Matt. "If you're willing to wait just a few minutes, sir, we'll be happy to accommodate you."
"Thank you," Matt said.
"And your name, sir?"
"Payne," Matt said. The maоtre d' wrote that at the head of his list of reservations.
"Initial?" the splendidly tailored chubby fellow said.
"M," Matt said.
"Perhaps you'd like to wait at the bar," the splendidly tailored chubby fellow suggested. "It will be a few minutes."
"Thank you," Matt said, and led the way to the bar, which occupied most of the left side of the corridor leading from the door to the dining room. When he had slid onto a stool, he saw Frazier sitting at the end of the bar, near the door.
He wondered, idly, what Frazier was drinking.
Can you sit at the bar of an expensive place like this and drink soda? Or does a rent-a-cop on duty order a scotch straight up with soda on the side, and not drink the scotch? Or pour it on the floor, when no one's looking?
The bartender appeared.
"I'll have what that gentlemen is drinking," Matt said, indicating Frazier.
"The gentleman is drinking soda with a lemon slice, sir," the bartender said.
"In that case, I think I'd better take a look at the wine list," Matt said. "We can take a bottle to the table later, right?"
"Of course, sir."
"What are we celebrating, Matt?" Daffy asked.
"Nothing, so far as I know. Why?"
"I don't trust you when you are charming. You asking for the wine list?"
"Then screw you, baby! You don't get no wine."
She smiled.
"Better. That's the old Matt, the one I have always loathed and despised."
Chad chuckled.
The chubby, splendidly tailored man in his late twenties, whose name was Anthony Joseph Desidiro, waited until he saw that Mr. Payne and party had taken seats at the bar, and then he walked to the rear of the dining room. Against the rear wall was a table shielded by a light green silk screen. The screen's weave was such that people seated at the table could see the dining room but people in the dining room could not see who was sitting at the table.
There were two men at the table. One was Mr. Desidiro 's cousin, a large, well-muscled, equally splendidly tailored gentleman whose name appeared on the liquor and restaurant licenses of La Bochabella as the owner. His name was Paulo Cassandro. His mother and Mr. Desidiro 's mother were sisters. Mr. Cassandro had provided his cousin Tony with both his tuition at the Cornell School of Hotel amp; Restaurant Administration, and a generous allowance while he was there so he would be able to devote his full time to learning the hotel and restaurant administration profession.
On his graduation, Mr. Desidiro spent two years working-he thought of it as an internship-at the Ristorante Alfredo, another of Philadelphia's more elegant Italian restaurants, on whose liquor and restaurant licenses Mr. Cassandro was also listed as owner.
Two months before, Mr. Desidiro had been named manager of La Bochabella. He had told his cousin Paulo that it was his plan that La Bochabella would become known as the best Northern Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, catering to the social and economic upper crust of Philadelphia.
He wanted to raise prices sufficiently to discourage the patronage of those who thought Italian cuisine was primarily sausage and peppers and spaghetti and meatballs, and that fine Italian wine began and ended with Chianti in raffia-wrapped bottles.
"You got eighteen months, Tony," Cousin Paulo had told him. "Mr. S. thinks maybe you got a good idea. You got eighteen months to make it work."
Mr. S. was what his intimates called Mr. Vincenzo Savarese, and Mr. Desidiro was aware that Cousin Paulo's name on the licenses notwithstanding, Mr. Savarese had the controlling interest in both La Bochabella and Ristorante Alfredo.
Mr. Desidiro thought it was fortuitous that Mr. Savarese had chosen tonight to have dinner in La Bochabella with Cousin Paulo-he came in only every couple of weeks, and then mostly for lunch, not dinner-and he would thus have the opportunity to prove to Mr. Savarese that his philosophy for the successful operation of the restaurant was bearing fruit.
He stepped behind the curtain. Both Cousin Paulo and Mr. Savarese interrupted their meal to look at him.
"Is everything all right?" Mr. Desidiro asked. "Do you like the lamb, Mr. Savarese?"
"Very much," Mr. Savarese said. "The garlic-how do I say this?-is delicate."
"We throw garlic buds, crushed but in their skins, directly on the coals when the leg is still raw," Mr. Desidiro said. "It delicately infuses the meat with the flavor, I think. I'm pleased that you like it."
"Very nice," Mr. Savarese said.
"Yeah, Tony," Cassandro said.
"You know who we have outside, waiting for a table?" Mr. Desidiro said, and went on before a reply could be made. "Mr. and Mrs. Nesbitt the Fourth, of Nesfoods International. "
"Yes," Mr. Savarese said. "I saw them. I was going to have a word with you about them."
Mr. Desidiro tried not to show his surprise that Mr. Savarese recognized the heir to Nesfoods International and his wife.
"Yes, Mr. Savarese."
"They have a friend with them," Mr. Savarese said.
"A Mr. Payne," Mr. Desidiro said.
"Yes, I know," Mr. Savarese said. "You should be very careful around him, Tony."
"Yes, sir?"
"He is not only a policeman, but he shoots people in the head," Mr. Savarese said. "Isn't that so, Paulo?"