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I idly notice how faint his French accent sounds. But little need for him to turn on the charm for me.
“Like a lot of other restaurant owners in the city, no matter what I did, I was still drowning.”
“And Licata popped out of a bottle like a genie?”
“Sarcasm never suited you.”
“Still working on that.”
“More sarcasm.”
“Why didn’t you ask one of your rich customers for help?”
“Because,chérie,none of those customersgotrich backing failing restaurants during a pandemic.”
Now that he’s talking, I think about going back for the bottle and just leaving it on the table, not wanting to slow his roll.
“But,” he continues, “one of my rich customers did suggest there might be someone who could throw me a life preserver, at least in the short run. He described him as a broker for people in situations like mine.”
“You care to tell me the customer’s name?”
“Edmund McKenzie.”
And I think:If my world gets any smaller, I’ll be able to fit it inside Martin’s empty shot glass.
“Even though I got my money,” Martin Elian says, “I have been paying ever since.”
“With interest.”
He nods. “He never called himself a silent partner. Referred to himself instead as a member of my board. With what he said were full voting privileges.”
“Do you think Licata was the one calling the shots?”
He shakes his head. “I never thought so. It had to be someone doing the actual bankrolling. But the one time I asked, he grinned and said that if he told me, he might have to kill me.”
He holds up his empty glass. I go get the bottle and leave it in front of him.
“Everything was fine until the last couple of months, because the new restaurant, after an excellent beginning, began to underproduce. So I reached out to Anthony for more money. Which he gave me.”
“Have you paid him back?”
“That’s the thing,” he says. “I paid him back everything I owed him the night you saw me with him. With all the interest. In cash. So, while I was surprised that he wanted to see me tonight, I never considered saying no.”
“Neither borrow nor a lender be, at least not with the First National Bank of Anthony Licata,” I say. “Polonius said that, by the way, inHamlet.”
He closes his eyes. “Of course he did.”
“Sorry, sometimes I can’t help myself,” I say. “Please continue.”
“Thank you so much,” Jimmy says. But he grins. “We were just passing through East Hampton when the man sitting next to me in the back seat reached around and I felt the jab. The next thing I know, I’m here.”
“They never told you why he wanted to see you?”
“They did not.”
It’s past two in the morning and I’m tired, more than somewhat. Maybe exhausted suddenly that my ex-husband’s problems have become my problems. Or that mine have become his. Either way. And that one of the connecting lines on my grease board now runs right through Martin Elian.
Maybe this is Licata’s last warning for me to stay out of his business.
