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The smirk grew bigger. “Once or twice. Single women watch another gal getting hitched, it does something to their hormones.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d never attended a wedding as a guest before, but back when I lived in Kentucky, I used to wait tables at Jack’s Roadhouse, and when Sindy Delvecchio had married Rowdy Carlson in front of the bar—so classy—I’d spent most of the night cleaning up broken glass and vomit. The idea of hooking up with one of Rowdy’s buddies made me want to puke.
But a fancy New York affair held by folks who could afford to hire Every Step? Maybe Kaylin had met an eligible bachelor at one of the receptions.
“Okay, we’ll need to go through the guest lists, working backward from early July. We have the Musson-Voyce wedding, the Janes-Lopez wedding, the Calder-Gibb wedding, the Bender-Theobald wedding, the Anderson-Moss wedding, the Cavallaro-Bucci wedding, the Gutiérrez-Tremblay wedding, the?—”
“Did you say Cavallaro-Bucci?”
“She worked that one the last week in June. Why?”
Collier tipped his head toward the front window. “See Mamma Mia’s over there?”
“Yes?”
“The Cavallaro family owns it.”
I choked on a piece of pasta. “Are you saying Kaylin worked at a Mafia wedding?”
“Seems that way. Even criminals get married, and they got the cash to pay for a flashy ceremony.”
“Yikes. Do you think that’s a coincidence? That she was there, I mean.”
Collier shrugged and forked another piece of ravioli into his mouth. “Objectively speaking, ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ would fit half the Cavallaro boys. And they sure aren’t the type of man you’d want to take home to meet the family.”
Could it be possible? Had Kaylin gotten involved with the New York Mafia? I began to get a bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, and suddenly, I wasn’t so hungry anymore.
“Tell me more about the Cavallaros.”
“You heard of the five families?”
I was a true-crime aficionado; of course I had.
“Yes.”
“Unofficially, there’s a sixth one, and that’s headed by Vito Cavallaro. They’re dirty as fuck, but as well as the money laundering, the drug- and people-trafficking, the counterfeiting, the corruption, the loan-sharking, the extortion, and the illegal gambling, they have an empire of legit businesses that give them a veneer of respectability.” How could Collier keep eating? “Heard Renzo Bucci’s papa is into arms deals, so maybe they’re expanding their horizons.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“It’s my job, same as Dan di Grassi knows half the assholes in Richmond by sight. The Cavallaros keep a lower profile than, say, the Gambinos or the Genoveses, but they’re like rats in a sewer. Never far away.”
The thought made me shudder. Next time, I’d suggest we visit Wonder Burger for lunch. Prices around Times Square might be criminal, but at least we’d be farther from the Mafia’s heartland.
“Do you think we could get pictures of the men in the Cavallaro family? Anisha might be able to pick out the guy she saw with Kaylin.”
“Bet there were a few reporters at the wedding, plus we can go through the police mugshots, but good luck in getting Kapoor to cooperate.”
If we managed to put together a photo line-up, I’d try anyway. She could only say no, right? And we might be able to narrow down the suspect list beforehand—how many thirty-year-old Cavallaro men could there be?
I set Providence to work and picked up my fork again. We were getting closer; I could feel it.
10
DASHA
Most people only live one life. They spend early childhood with their family, followed by some sort of education, and then they work a humdrum job until they die. Perhaps they fall in love along the way. Get married, have kids, start the whole miserable cycle again.
Programmed to endure mundanity, my former mentor used to say. To accept the status quo.
