“Anything you want.”
Ken ordered a feast for them both, but Jennifer was too excited to eat.
“Do you know what Abraham Wilson said to me the first time I met him? He said, ‘You crawl into my skin and I’ll crawl into yours and then you and me will rap about hate.’ Ken, I was in his skin today, and do you know something? I thought the jury was going to convict me. I felt as though I was going to be executed. I love Abraham Wilson. Could we have some more wine?”
“You haven’t eaten a bite.”
“I’m thirsty.”
Ken watched, concerned, as Jennifer kept filling and emptying her glass. “Take it easy.”
She waved a hand in airy dismissal. “It’s California wine. It’s like drinking water.” She took another swallow. “You’re my best friend. Do you know who’s not my best friend? The great Robert Di Sliva. Di Sivla.”
“Di Silva.”
“Him, too. He hates me. D’ja see his face today? O-o-oh, he was mad! He said he was gonna run me out of court. But he didn’t, did he?”
“No, he—”
“You know what I think? You know what I really think?”
“I—”
“Di Sliva thinks I’m Ahab and he’s the white whale.”
“I think you have that backwards.”
“Thank you, Ken. I can always count on you. Let’s have ‘nother bottle of wine.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“Whales get thirsty.” Jennifer giggled. “Tha’s me. The big old white whale. Did I tell you I love Abraham Wilson? He’s the most beautiful man I ever met. I looked in his eyes, Ken, my frien’, ‘n’ he’s beautiful! Y’ever look in Di Sivla’s eyes? O-o-oh! They’re cold! I mean, he’s ‘n iceberg. But he’s not a bad man. Did I tell you ‘bout Ahab ‘n’ the big white whale?”
“Yes.”
“I love old Ahab. I love everybody. ‘N’ you know why, Ken? ‘Cause Abraham Wilson is alive tonight. He’s alive. Le’s have ‘nother bottle a wine to celebrate…”
It was two A.M. when Ken Bailey took Jennifer home. He helped her up the four flights of stairs and into her little apartment. He was breathing hard from the climb.
“You know,” Ken said, “I can feel the effects of all that wine.”
Jennifer looked at him pityingly. “People who can’t handle it shoudn’ drink.”
And she passed out cold.
She was awakened by the shrill screaming of the telephone. She carefully reached for the instrument, and the slight movement sent rockets of pain through every nerve ending in her body.
“’Lo…”
“Jennifer? This is Ken.”
“‘Lo, Ken.”
“You sound terrible. Are you all right?”
She thought about it. “I don’t think so. What time is it?”
“It’s almost noon. You’d better get down here. All hell is breaking loose.”
“Ken—I think I’m dying.”
“Listen to me. Get out of bed—slowly—take two aspirin and a cold shower, drink a cup of hot black coffee, and you’ll probably live.”
When Jennifer arrived at the office one hour later, she was feeling better. Not good, Jennifer thought, but better.
Both telephones were ringing when she walked into the office.
“They’re for you.” Ken grinned. “They haven’t stopped! You need a switchboard.”
There were calls from newspapers and national magazines and television and radio stations wanting to do in-depth stories on Jennifer. Overnight, she had become big news. There were other calls, the kind of which she had dreamed. Law firms that had snubbed her before were telephoning to ask when it would be convenient for her to meet with them.
In his office downtown, Robert Di Silva was screaming at his first assistant. “I want you to start a confidential file on Jennifer Parker. I want to be informed of every client she takes on. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Move!”
9
“He ain’t no button guy anymore’n I’m a fuckin’ virgin. He’s been workin’ on the arm all his life.”
“The asshole came suckin’ up to me askin’ me to put in the word with Mike. I said, ‘Hey, paesano, I’m only a soldier, ya know?’ If Mike needs another shooter he don’t have to go lookin’ in shit alley.”
“He was tryin’ to run a game on you, Sal.”
“Well, I clocked him pretty good. He ain’t connected and in this business, if you ain’t connected, you’re nothin’.”
They were talking in the kitchen of a three-hundred-year-old Dutch farmhouse in upstate New Jersey.
There were three of them in the room: Nick Vito, Joseph Colella and Salvatore “Little Flower” Fiore.
Nick Vito was a cadaverous-looking man with thin lips that were almost invisible, and deep green eyes that were dead. He wore two hundred dollar shoes and white socks.
Joseph “Big Joe” Colella was a huge slab of a man, a granite monolith, and when he walked he looked like a building moving. Someone had once called him a vegetable garden. “Colella’s got a potato nose, cauliflower ears and a pea brain.”
Colella had a soft, high-pitched voice and a deceptively gentle manner. He owned a race horse and had an uncanny knack for picking winners. He was a family man with a wife and six children. His specialties were guns, acid and chains. Joe’s wife, Carmelina, was a strict Catholic, and on Sundays when Colella was not working, he always took his family to church.