Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [32]
"What I wanna know is—who do I have to fuck to get a beer around here?"
"Here she comes," said Sullivan, indicating a ruddy-faced blond woman with big hips headed their way.
"All done with that?" she asked Sullivan. "Can I get anything for anybody else? Some dessert? Coffee?"
"I'll have another Bass," said Al, curtly.
"Anything for you, sir?" she asked Sullivan.
"Same for me," he said.
After she had returned with their drinks, emptied the ashtray, and left with their empties, Sullivan leaned forward, elbows on the table, and inquired in a hushed voice, "So what's happened?"
"What happened," said Al, "is a couple of our local geniuses supposed to be watching the restaurant go chasing Tommy Pagano halfway across town to some shooting gallery on the Lower East Side. They leave their post, they follow him over there in the surveillance van and then they collar him when he comes out. Oh, they called in first, spoke to some pimply-assed AUSA and told him they got Tommy Pagano comin' outta there and he's gonna be dirty. Problem is—it ain't Tommy Pagano, it's somebody named Michael Ricard. He's the chef down there."
"They didn't get some ID?"
"By this time, they had such a collective hard-on they didn't bother to look."
"How did they—"
"Detective Rizzo says he left the photos home that day. He says he was sure it was Tommy, he just got mixed up."
"Son of a bitch," said Sullivan.
"They were pretty pissed off when they found out. They must have been 'cause they scared the shit out of him. By the time I got down there the guy was ready to deal his own mother."
"So he's agreed to work with us. Is that necessarily a bad thing?" asked Sullivan.
"It's a colossal fuck-up," said Al. "What's this guy gonna tell us we don't already know? What's he gonna tell us we're not hearing from the other guy? I got one fuckin' flake on the payroll already I gotta worry about. I need some junkie dirt-bag?"
"So why didn't we just throw him back?"
"We have to keep him. We couldn't have him running around talking about how two detectives just happened to see him coming out of the restaurant and decided to follow him across town. He's been around, this guy. He's not stupid."
"So why didn't they just say they saw him coming out of the building. They just happened to be there."
"That's what they said they said, the detectives. But who knows? They were starting in on the pitch right after they got him in the van. They called him Tommy for Christ's sake. There's no way they get the toothpaste back in the tube. We have to keep him now," said Al.
Sullivan winced. Al took a long drink of ale.
"Anyway, I talked to him. Why not? I can always use a new friend, right? Right away he wants to give us Harvey. Harvey cheats on his taxes, he says. Harvey's got something sinister going with Sally Wig. Harvey meets with strange men in suits. Yawn."
"So he didn't tell us anything useful?"
"Well, he says he's good friends with young Tommy. He says they're close. Says Tommy's a good kid, doesn't even like his uncle, says he's embarrassed by him."
"I don't blame him," said Sullivan. "Anything else?"
"One point of casual interest," said Al. "Seems they got two kinds of dinner checks at the Dreadnaught—You got your white ones and you got your off-white ones. End of the night, Harvey throws all the off-white ones in the garbage."
"So your dentist friend is skimming," said Sullivan.
Al shrugged. "Personally, I don't give a shit. He's a restaurateur, right? If he didn't steal it would look suspicious."
"So like it or not, since this chef fell in our lap, we have to keep him," said Sullivan.
"He's ours now. For better or worse," said Al.
"What a mess."
"I tried to make the best of a bad situation," said Al. "I told him, he's such good pals with Tommy he can get next to him for us. I reminded him of the thousand and one delights of a detox out at Riker's. We had a nice talk. I told him to go back there and concentrate on Tommy. I said I don't care if you have to suck his dick for him but get close to him."
"What does Tommy