“No one,” Simone replied dryly. “I just wandered in.”
The group laughed.
“She’s funny,” Willie Boy said. “Slash, is she your friend?”
“Yup,” Slash confirmed.
“Come to my restaurant,” Willie Boy said. “Ask for me.”
“He owns Willie Boy’s in Old Town,” Luciano explained.
“How’s Saturday?” Willie Boy guzzled his beer, then tried squelching his belch, but it exploded out of him anyway.
“I’m taking on a new client,” Simone answered, “and I don’t want to commit to anything until I get into a rhythm.”
“Are you a dancer or somethin’?” Willie Boy asked.
“I’m a personal shopper,” Simone replied. “I have a new client who’s very demanding. From what I can tell, he’ll be monopolizing all my time.”
“I don’t get the rhythm thing.” Willie Boy shoved too much lasagna into his mouth. “Swing by anytime,” he said his mouth crammed with food. “I’m there every day.”
While the chatter continued, Luciano found himself peering over at Simone throughout the meal. He expected she’d be quiet, but the crease between her brows had deepened. She didn’t strike him as someone who would get unnerved about work, but The Bomb Maker case was personal to her.
Very personal.
After dinner, Luciano poured a small amount of Santini Whiskey into several lowball glasses. While the family started cleaning up, Luciano suggested he and Willie Boy talk outside on the screened porch.
Willie Boy sank onto the sofa, tipped the glass of top-shelf booze to his mouth, and tossed the alcohol back. Then, he relaxed back, clasped his hands behind his head and said, “She likes me, I can tell.”
Luciano chuckled.
“What? You don’t think someone as sophisticated as Simone is into me?”
No, I don’t.
Luciano leaned against the chair rail, sipped the whiskey that bore his name.
“I promised your dad I’d watch out for you,” Luciano began.
“Yeah, well I don’t need no babysitter. We ran the business, fifty-fifty.”
ThebusinessWillie Boy was referring to was his family’sillegalbusiness, the one Luciano got out of years ago. The same one that his father and his uncle co-ran before his father got murdered and his uncle was sent to prison. But what Willie Boydidn’tknow was that his uncle had told Luciano to manage the business solo.
He’d said, “I love my boy, but he doesn’t have the business smarts you do, so give him somethin’ to keep him busy, and you take care of things.”
The Santini crime family was once the most revered and feared families on the east coast. Now, they were a bunch of disorganized hoodlums. Luciano didn’t give a damn about any of that. That was Willie Boy’s problem.
“I don’t want you offering counterfeit money to strangers,” Luciano said.
“He’s anassociateof mine and you got the bills,” Willie Boy pushed back. “It’s a legit business opportunity.”
“Counterfeit moneyisn’tlegit, Willie Boy.”
“If you’re worried Dante’s law enforcement, he’s not.”
“How do you know him?”
“We go back a-ways.”
