A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [61]
‘I like this part of town.’ He’s decided to play the avuncular card right away. ‘It’s so… anachronistic, so Merchant Ivory, you know? Round here an English gentleman can still get his toast done on one side, have an ivory handle attached to his favourite shooting stick, get a barber to file his nails down and rub his neck with eau de Cologne. You got your bespoke shirts, your customized suits. Look at all this stuff.’
‘You like that, honey?’ Katharine asks, pointing at a smart two-piece ladies’ outfit in a window.
‘Not a whole lot,’ Fortner replies, his mood abruptly fractious. ‘Why, you wanna get it?’
‘No. Just askin’.’
‘Well I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘Let’s go eat.’
The restaurant has an outside staircase flaked with dried moss leading down to a basement. Fortner, walking ahead of us, clumps down the steps and through the heavy entrance door. He doesn’t bother holding it open for Katharine: he just wants to get inside and start eating. Katharine and I are left on the threshold and I hold the door open for her, letting her glide past me with a whisper of thanks which is almost conspiratorial.
The restaurant is only half-full. There’s a small clearing immediately inside the entrance where we are met by a paunchy, hair-oiled Italian in late middle-age. Fortner already has his arm wrapped around his white-shirted belly with a big, fulfilled smile all over his face.
‘Here they come now,’ he is saying as we come through the door, his voice hearty and full of good cheer. ‘Tucci, let me introduce you to a young friend of ours, Mr Alec Milius. Very smart guy in the oil business.’
‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ says Tucci, shaking my hand, but he hasn’t even looked at me. His eyes have been fixed on Katharine since we walked in.
‘And your beautiful wife, Mrs Grice,’ he says. ‘How are you, my dear?’
Katharine bends to meet Tucci’s puckered kiss, offering him a smooth, pale cheek. She doesn’t bother explaining that Grice isn’t her surname.
‘You look as beautiful as ever, madam.’
‘Oh you’re incorrigible, Tucci. So charming.’
The slimy old bastard leads us downstairs into a dark basement where we are shown to a small table covered in a red cloth and faded cutlery. The decor is very seventies, but it isn’t consciously retro. Cheap wood carvings line the walls and there are candles in old wicker flasks on shelves. Hardened wax clings to their sides like jewellery.
Fortner shuffles on to a sofa attached to the wall and Tucci pins the table up against his legs. I take the chair to Fortner’s right and Katharine sits down opposite me. Three of us in a booth. Rather than have one of his dumb-looking Sicilian studs do it, Tucci then goes back upstairs and brings down three menus and a wine list, thereby giving himself as much time as possible with Katharine. All of his pre-meal small talk is addressed towards her. That’s a lovely dress, Mrs Grice. Have you been on holiday? You look so well. By contrast, Former and I are treated with something approaching contempt. Eventually, Fortner loses his cool and tells Tucci to bring us some drinks.
‘Right away, Mr Fortner. Right away. I have a nice bottle of Chianti you try. And some Pellegrino, perhaps?’
‘Whatever. That’d be great.’
Fortner takes off his jacket to eat, tossing it in a crumpled heap on to the sofa beside him. Then he undoes the top three buttons of his shirt and inserts a napkin, mafia-style, below the nape of his neck. His chest hair is clearly visible, tight black curls like cigarette burns.
In the early part of the meal we do not talk about any aspect of the oil business. I am not tapped for information, for tips and gossip, nor do Katharine and Fortner discuss ongoing projects at Andromeda. I have ordered veal but it is tough and bland, a stubborn slice of calf with no flavour. The Americans are both having the same thing - plump breasts of chicken in what appears to be a mushroom cream sauce - but it looks a lot better then mine. We share out french beans and potato croquettes