But I didn’t see it. Neither did Tiffany.
“Hmmm. I guess he wasn’t here that day,” she said. “That’s unusual for him.”
“Who wasn’t here what day?” came a sharp voice over Tiffany’s shoulder.
Chapter 37
IT WAS THE manager of Lombardo’s. Jack, was it? No, Jason, I thought. Given his tone, though, his name might as well have been Mr. Royally Pissed Off. Tiffany froze at the reservation stand, like a deer in xenon headlights.
I took that as my cue to help out. “My fault. I was just checking to see if Vincent Marcozza had eaten here the day before he was murdered. That’s all. Nothing sinister.”
I was expecting the guy to ask me why I wanted to know that. He didn’t. Instead, he said, “Reservations made by our guests are considered private. It’s restaurant policy, Mr. Daniels.”
Jason knew my name. That was a little strange. We hadn’t officially met. Or exchanged business cards.
“Then my apologies,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“Yes, but Tiffany did,” he said, turning to her.
She raised her palms apologetically. “Jason, I know you told me —”
He cut her off. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“But —”
“Shut up!” he barked at the poor girl. “You’re fired.” Fired? You’ve got to be kidding.
“What are you doing? She was only trying to help me,” I said, dumbfounded. “I was a customer here, too. Actually, I am a customer. I was about to have a steak.”
My new best friend, Jason, gave me a drop-dead stare. “Was I talking to you?”
“You are now,” I said.
He took two steps forward, getting right smack in my face. He was so close I could tell what flavor gum he was chewing. Wintergreen.
“In that case,” he said, pushing the words through his clenched teeth, “I want you to listen to me real closely, okay? Get the fuck out of my restaurant. Don’t come back.”
So much for the customer always being right … or even tolerated.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Call the cops?”
“I won’t if you won’t,” he fired back at me.
I wasn’t exactly the technical adviser on the movie Fight Club, but I’d been in enough scuffles to more than catch his drift. This prick was challenging me.
Keep your cool, Nick. Diplomacy first.
“Listen, there’s no reason this thing needs to get out of hand,” I said.
No sooner had I said it, though, than he suddenly grabbed the lapels of my jacket, pushing me backwards. “I don’t think you heard me,” he said.
Oh, I heard you all right …
Screw diplomacy!
I dug my heels hard into the floor and gave Jason the shove back he so richly deserved. Then he raised his fists. Suddenly, this might as well have been a Rangers hockey game down at Madison Square Garden.
The gloves were coming off, whether I wanted this to happen or not.
Smack!
He threw a right-handed jab, tagging my cheek. It was a sucker punch, completely uncalled for. So I let fly with one of my own — only to catch nothing but air. Jason wasn’t big but he was quick. Too quick to go toe-to-toe.
Time to improvise.
“Nick, be careful,” Tiffany called from the sidelines. Well, that was my plan for sure.
Dropping my head, I charged him straight on and wrapped my arms around his waist. We went hurtling into the dining room, his feet barely skimming the floor as I kept pushing and pushing him like a football tackling sled.
Then, crash!
Table for two, please!
Make that two tables. We upended the first and kept right on going, landing squarely on the table behind it. Plates and silverware went flying above our heads as we hit the floor, barrel-rolling back and forth while trading punches.
I gave a whole lot better than I got now, too. A good right to Jason’s jaw. Another right on the cleft of his chin. “You asked for this,” I yelled in his face. “You wouldn’t let it go.”
Hey, this was even better than a hockey fight. If we were on the ice, the refs would’ve broken it up by now.
But no.
Jason and I were just getting warmed up.
Chapter 38
“BOY, YOU’RE HAVING some kind of week,” said Courtney, gently dabbing at the dried blood below my nose with a damp paper towel. “Keep this up and they’ll have to name an action figure after you.”
We were sitting together on the couch in my office at CitiZen magazine. Me, the patient. Courtney, the concerned, and quite beautiful, nurse. With a surprisingly soft touch, too. And she was wearing Chanel.
As it turned out, some referees did break up the fight. The sous-chef and a dishwasher heard all the commotion and came running out of the kitchen. Otherwise, I’m fairly sure I would’ve won big-time on points.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
At least for the guys at Jimmy D’s Pub. Courtney was another deal. There was no way I’d jeopardize this sudden warm and affectionate outpouring of sympathy. I’m not that stupid. Besides, I’m in love with her. Deeply and hopelessly, I suppose.
“I guess I’ve always been more of a lover than a fighter,” I said with an eye roll.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed, playing the same game on me. “Why would the manager pick a fight with you like that?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “It’s very strange — everything is, Courtney. Mystery on top of mystery.”
I couldn’t help but suspect that Jason was under some kind of orders. Someone didn’t want me snooping around. But who?
That was just one question I had. There were so many others in the aftermath of my recording from Lombardo’s.
But as I laid my head back and closed my eyes, all I could really focus on was how amazing Courtney was. She was sitting so close to me, her hair grazing my shoulder. Finally I couldn’t help myself.
“I love you,” I blurted out.
I just said it — boom! — like that. I didn’t know what I was thinking. Actually, that was it. I wasn’t thinking.
For a second, there was some hope that she would answer, “I love you, too.” But in the next second, that hope was beaten down — worse than Jason at the restaurant.
It was as if I had suddenly become contagious with Ebola or the swine flu.
Courtney sprang up from the couch, practically darting to the other side of my office. She was shaking her head. “No, no, no,” she said. “Don’t say that, Nick. I wish you hadn’t said that. I really wish you hadn’t.”
“Why, Courtney? Tell me why.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nick, because I’m engaged!”
“But you don’t love him.”
“You’re wrong, Nick. I do love him. I love Tom very much. I do.”
It hurt to hear her say that — worse than any of the punches I’d just taken — but I wasn’t about to stop now. She meant too much to me. If I hadn’t known that before, I sure did now.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t, Courtney.”
“You need to, Nick.”
“No. You may want to believe that you love him.”
I looked at her. That’s all I had to do. The big white elephant was back in the room. I hadn’t meant for it to happen; neither had she. But it had happened. Courtney and I had slept together. We had made love. Not just lust — which had been part of it, I’ll admit — but love. We’d been intimate with each other. Very much so. We had talked until dawn.
“I told you, that was a mistake,” she said.
“It didn’t feel like a mistake. Not to me, anyway.”
“Nick, it did to me.”
I got up from the couch. That one hurt, too.
“Do you really mean that?” I asked her. I was trying desperately not to let my eyes plead.
“Yes,” she said again.
“Are you sure?” I asked, taking a step
toward her. She raised her hand. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t.”
I took another step toward her. She didn’t say Stop this time. She didn’t say Don’t. She didn’t say anything. All she did was stare at me with those amazing blue eyes.
But before I could take another step, the door to my office suddenly swung open.
“There you are!” said Thomas Ferramore, Courtney’s fiancé, the man she said she loved.
Chapter 39
I GUESS I couldn’t blame him for not knocking or, for that matter, acting as if he owned the room the moment he stepped foot in my office. Thomas Ferramore literally did own the room. The entire building, in fact. What better way to cut down on rent for his Citizen magazine than to buy the building that housed it?
I stood and watched as Ferramore, with his salt and pepper hair and perennial tan, strode over to Courtney, planting a kiss on her lips. It seemed to last for a couple of eternities, and probably would’ve had Courtney not finally pulled back.
“Tom, what are you doing here?” she asked. Very good question. Didn’t Ferramore realize that Courtney and I were falling in love now?
“What else would I be doing here? I’ve come to see the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes playfully. (Ugh.) “You told me you were coming home tomorrow.”
“Change of plans,” said Ferramore. “Aren’t you happy to see me, Courtney?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? Even here at work.”
He was still supposed to be in Paris making his latest acquisition. For all I knew he was buying the Eiffel Tower.
Now here he was in my office. You do know this is my office, Mr. Ferramore, right? Or that I’m standing here, too?
Apparently not.
Not until Courtney shot me the world’s most uncomfortable glance. She didn’t say a word, but I could read her mind like the first line of an eye chart. Did my fiancé just walk in on another man professing his love for me?
Yeah, he sure as hell did.
“Sorry, Nick, I didn’t see you standing there,” said Ferramore before his eyes immediately collapsed into a squint. “Holy shit, what happened to your face?”
“You should see the other guy,” I said, dusting off the old joke, which happened to be accurate in this case.
Ferramore humored me with a quiet chuckle, but as he resumed his full attention on Courtney, it was clear he couldn’t care less what actually had happened to me or my face.
He reached out, taking both of Courtney’s hands in his. (Ugh again.) “Actually, sweetheart, there is something I need to discuss with you.”
I took that as my cue. (Shit.)
“Why don’t I leave the two of you alone,” I said with a step toward the door.
“Nonsense. This is your office, Nick,” said Courtney. “Come, Tom, we’ll go to mine. Nick has a lot of work to do.”
Before Ferramore could even nod in agreement, though, my office filled with the sound of Courtney’s cell phone. Instinctively, she reached into the pocket of her Chanel suit to check the caller ID.
Out of the blue, Ferramore’s entire personality changed. He looked anxious and concerned. Now what was going on? Was it about me? Or Courtney and me?
“Who is it?” he asked Courtney.
She seemed momentarily baffled that he would want to know, let alone ask her outright. “It’s Harold Clark,” she finally answered him.
Clark was a seasoned reporter with the Associated Press. His nickname was “Baskin,” short for Baskin-Robbins. In other words, he was known for his scoops.
“Don’t answer it!” Ferramore practically shouted at her.
“Why not?” asked Courtney. “What’s going on, Tom?”
“That’s what I need to talk to you about, sweetheart.”
Chapter 40
“MORE COFFEE, NICK?” asked the waitress behind the counter at the Sunrise Diner near my apartment the following morning. She had the glass pot hovering and ready to pour as she waited for my answer.
“Absolutely,” I told her. “Thank you, Rosa.” I was going to need the extra caffeine today.
There was no way I could’ve known what Courtney and Ferramore had discussed once they’d left my office. Even if I had been so nosy as to approach Courtney about it afterward, there was still no way I could’ve known.
That’s because I couldn’t find her.
Courtney had basically disappeared — poof! — for the remainder of the day. Her terrific assistant, M.J., said she’d stormed out of the office without saying a word. That night she didn’t answer her phone at home.
But then came the morning. And now I understood everything.
So did the rest of Manhattan, if not the world.
Someone had posted a video on YouTube. It starred the French supermodel Marbella, backstage a few days earlier at the Hermès fashion show in Paris. The stunning brunette had a cigarillo in one hand, a glass of champagne in the other — and next season’s must-have Jimmy Choo shoe planted firmly in her mouth.
A voice off camera asked the supermodel who the richest man she’d ever slept with was.
After a sip of the champagne and a puff of the cigarillo — removing the shoe from her mouth first — she looked straight into the camera and answered with her French accent. “Thomas Ferramore. Far and away, him!”
“When was that?” the off-camera voice asked.
She giggled and whispered, “Last night.”
Whoops.
I hadn’t actually seen the video, but news of it was splashed all over the papers, especially the New York Post that was opened on the diner counter in front of me as I gobbled up my fried eggs over easy and a stack of wheat toast. How do I stay at my current weight of 175? A very good gene pool. There’s no other possible answer.
Anyway. Of course I felt horrible for Courtney that she would have to endure such a public humiliation, but at the same time I couldn’t help selfishly hoping that this would change everything between her and Ferramore.
“Excuse me, is this your phone?” I suddenly heard to my left.
I turned to see a man sitting on the stool next to me. He must have just sat down, because I hadn’t noticed him. He was pointing at my iPhone on the counter between us.
“I’m sorry,” I said, moving it closer to me.
“No, it’s fine, it wasn’t in my way. I only wanted to make sure it was yours and not the person who was sitting here before me.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks. It’s mine, all right.”
I was about to turn back to my newspaper when he motioned to the article about Ferramore.
“That’s pretty amazing,” he said, “don’t you think?”
“Yep, it sure is,” I said, if only to be polite. I knew diner counters were prone to communal chitchat, but I really just wanted to finish eating and reading in peace, then get off to work and whatever else awaited me at Citizen that morning.
But the stranger wasn’t finished with his spiel. “That’s the thing about gossip. Everybody loves to stick their nose into other people’s business,” he said. “Then again, how much sympathy can you have for an engaged billionaire who sticks his prick in some Euro-trash supermodel’s business, right?”
I said nothing. I didn’t want to encourage the guy too much.
Not that it mattered.
“Isn’t that right, Nick?” he asked again.
Huh?
Not only did he not need any more encouraging, he clearly didn’t need an introduction.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“No, Nick, you don’t. But I know you,” he said with a dead stare. “I also know you’re in a shitload of danger. The two of us should talk.”
Chapter 41
OKAY, YOU’VE OFFICIALLY got my attention. Now let’s rewind the tape a bit. Who the hell are you?
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It does to me. Especially if you want this conversation to continue.”
He smiled, a real shit-eating New Yorker’s grin. He was enjoying this. “You can call me … Doug. Don’t you want to hear why you’re in danger, Nick?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But for sure the cops sitting at the other end of the counter might. Would you like me to call them over?”
I have to admit I felt pretty smug pointing out the two policemen in uniform saddled up to the counter with their coffees about a dozen stools away.
But the stranger — Doug? — didn’t even bother to look. He kept his eyes trained on mine.
“The last time you were in a restaurant with two cops — that didn’t work out too well, did it? I don’t think so.”
I suddenly didn’t feel so smug, or protected, either.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Why did you follow me here?”
He casually pulled back the lapel of his sport coat to show me his holster. It sure wasn’t empty, and I was getting tired of seeing guns lately.
“What I want is for you to ask me nicely why it is that you’re in danger, Nick Daniels,” he said. “Say please. Better yet, say pretty please.”
I glanced at all the people around me. The Sunrise was packed for breakfast as usual, just like Lombardo’s was for lunch.
I could literally feel the sweat beginning to seep out from my pores. Not so good.
“Please tell me why I’m in danger,” I said, my voice nearly cracking. The stranger stared at me, saying nothing. He was waiting.
“Pretty please,” I added.
He leaned in close.
“You see, that’s what’s so intriguing,” he whispered. “Because I think you already know the answer, Nick.”
He tilted his head, inspecting the bruises around my eyes and mouth. They were now ripening to a soft purple. “In fact, you might say it’s written all over your face.”
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
“What makes you think I work for someone?”