Chapter 6 #3
Of course I would. He didn’t wait for me to answer, however, just went on. “Or maybe—listen to this!—maybe business is bad, and Sal has a hard time coming up with the protection money. Maybe everyone’s waiting for the guy in the Porsche to start breaking kneecaps.”
I laughed. “That’s very cinematic of you.”
“I write thrillers for a living,” Greg said. “Of course it’s cinematic.”
Of course. “I’m not sure we have a huge mob presence in Nashville, to be honest. Russian mafia, yes. I ran into some of them a couple of months ago. But I don’t think the Cosa Nostra has a big foothold, and the guy looked Italian.”
Just as Sal was Italian, and the restaurant was, too. And Nick, for that matter. There was clearly an Italian element here. Too much of one to be a coincidence.
“Fair point,” Greg conceded. “All right, then. Theory four: Nick is running some kind of side business out of the shop. Stolen car parts, maybe, or VIN swapping. Megan is helping him cover it up. But Sal is starting to suspect something, and is talking to the mystery-man about it. He’s a lawyer, or some sort of government agent, and that’s why Nick and Megan are nervous. ”
“That’s a good idea,” I said approvingly. “Although if that’s the case, Nick is most likely doing it on his own. Megan hasn’t been working at the Body Shop for more than a month or so. I don’t think that’s long enough for Sal to catch wind of what’s going on and involve the government.”
Greg nodded thoughtfully. “How about this? What if Megan is the government?”
Megan? “What do you mean?”
“Well, she doesn’t have to be the government.
But listen to this, Gina: Nick is doing something to jeopardize Sal’s business, like skimming off the top or ‘forgetting’ to enter repairs into the system so he can pocket the money.
Sal realizes that something’s wrong, and brings in Megan to go over the books.
Nick realizes that Sal and Megan are on to him, and that’s why he’s nervous. ”
“Why doesn’t he just quit? If he’s afraid of being fired?” Or worse, arrested? “And who’s the mystery man in this scenario?”
“Government agent,” Greg suggested, “if Nick’s crimes reach that level. There are some that do.”
Of course some did. However— “Have you ever met a government agent who drives a vintage Porsche worth at least seventy-five thousand dollars?”
I hadn’t had a lot of experience with government agents, admittedly, but Mendoza, who was the closest thing to it that I knew of, drove a line of government-registered economy cars, none of them over twenty-five thousand dollars, and none of them new.
“Can’t say I have,” Greg said cheerfully, “but that doesn’t make it impossible.”
No, of course it didn’t. “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.”
“Happy to help.” He grinned. “In all seriousness, though, Gina, it definitely sounds like something weird is going on. Normal body shops don’t get visits from guys in thousand-dollar suits carrying briefcases full of money.”
No, they didn’t. Even if—
“I don’t know that the briefcase was full of money,” I cautioned.
Just because Sal and Megan went to the bank with a fat deposit bag just after the guy’s visit, didn’t mean that the money had been in the briefcase.
It probably hadn’t. The deposit likely was just a week’s worth of income for the Body Shop, in the bank in time to cover that week’s paychecks, and paperwork made more sense for the contents of the briefcase than money.
If the briefcase had been full when Porsche-guy left, Greg’s idea about protection money might work, but it hadn’t been.
Porsche-guy had walked in with a full briefcase and out with an empty one.
I made a face. “It’s probably nothing. Or you’re right and it’s personal. Something to do with Nick and Megan and the kid. The mystery-man is a lawyer, and he was delivering a custody agreement or a subpoena for a paternity test for the kid or something like that.”
Based on coloring, any one of the men could have been the kid’s father. Nick, Sal, or the mystery-man.
And to go with the most likely scenario: if Nick had just discovered, since Megan came to work at the Body Shop, that he had a child he hadn’t known about, it was probably something he would want to keep from Jacquie, at least until he’d figured out what to do about it.
“So what happens now?” Greg wanted to know.
“To the case?”
He nodded.
“More of the same, I guess. Jacquie didn’t pay me to worry about a guy with a briefcase. All she wants to know is if Nick’s cheating on her. So I’ll do my job and find out.”
“Let me know if you want company. It’s been a while since I did any surveillance.”
“That’s very generous of you,” I said, even as I wondered whether surveillance usually was a part of thriller-writing. Maybe he did it for fun, just to see what it felt like, so he could describe it.
“I’m a generous man.” His smile was warm, and so was his hand when he reached out and covered mine. “And I like spending time with you, Gina. Even if it’s just sitting next to you while we’re watching a body shop.”
He gave my hand a meaningful squeeze. I smiled back, and tried to look like I meant it.
When the waiter reappeared to clear our plates, I was able to retract my hand. I declined dessert—the Branzino had been more than enough—but Greg ordered tiramisu for us to share, along with two espressos.
“I’m going to freshen up,” I said, standing, “if you don’t mind.”
Greg started to stand as well, but I waved him back down. “Sit, finish your wine. I’ll only be a minute.”
I headed toward the back of the restaurant, ignoring the way he tried to get my attention to tell me I was going the wrong way.
I knew perfectly well where the restrooms were, thank you very much—right up front by the ma?tre d’s stand, just as I remembered from my last visit. But I wanted a look behind the scenes, at the part of the restaurant where the mysterious man had entered yesterday.
The lighting grew dimmer as I moved towards the back, and the current crooner—not Sinatra this time, maybe Johnny Mathis or Perry Como—faded to a barely audible murmur.
Something more modern, with more rhythm, picked up the beat as I turned into the hallway where the waiters came and went.
To my left, I could hear the sounds of the kitchen through a swinging door—the clatter of pots and pans, the rapid-fire Spanish of the cooks, and the occasional burst of laughter, all accompanied by what sounded like Mexican rap.
Directly ahead was a hefty steel door with an exit sign above it, clearly the way out to the parking lot and dumpster. To the right was another door: solid and well-fitting, with the words Office and Private nailed to it at eye-level.
Or eye-level for me, anyway. Standing in front of it was one of the largest men I had ever seen, and the notice hit him roughly in the middle of the chest.
He was at least six-four, maybe taller, with shoulders that spanned most of the width of the hallway.
He had no neck to speak of, just a massive head that sat directly on top of those shoulders like whoever made him had forgotten to include the connecting piece.
I was pretty sure the bulge under his jacket meant he was wearing a gun, although honestly, I couldn’t care less.
He could easily kill me with his bare hands if he chose. A gun was superfluous.
“Help you?” His voice was surprisingly high for someone his size. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it would sound perfectly normal coming out of a normal-sized man, and I only thought he sounded like Mickey Mouse because he looked like he ought to speak in a deep bass.
“Oh. Um…” I gave him my best confused-tourist look and tried to pretend that my heart wasn’t beating out of my chest. “Ladies’ room?”
“Front of the restaurant.” He jerked his head in the direction I’d come from. “By the front door.”
“Right.” I managed a smile. “Wrong direction, then. Sorry about that.”
He didn’t move, and I took a step back. I didn’t want to turn my back to him, at least not until I was out of reach of those long arms, but I also wanted to get away as fast as I could.
When he stayed where he was and I had back up ten feet, I swung around on my heel to head back the way I’d come.
But somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that as I’d backed away, I’d come closer and closer to the kitchen.
The sounds from behind the swinging door had grown louder as I approached, yes, and they reached zenith just as I turned, but I hadn’t really processed what that meant.
And that was why I walked right into one of the waiters, who was on his way out with a plate in each hand.
We slammed into each other, and the food he was carrying slipped out of his hands and crashed to the floor. Shrimp and butter-lemon sauce splashed my suede boots all the way to the ankles—good luck getting that out—and mushrooms splashed against my skirt and dropped to the floor.
“Merda!” a voice muttered, or maybe it was, “Mierda!” From behind me, the giant let out a high pitched giggle.
I stared at the carnage for a second before I raised my head, just to feel my jaw drop when I met the eyes of the man I had just assaulted.