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“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 & 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.”
