Slam! goes the phone, rrrrrump go the wheels of my desk chair, sssswish goes my messenger bag over my shoulders, and I’m halfway across the outer office when I see the baby, and I swear to God, at that exact moment the sun does that thing where it sends about a hundred rays out around the edges of a cloud. I think I may hear a choir of angels, too, very faintly. The baby is that cute.

“My Lord but that is a cute baby.”

“Thank you,” the baby’s mother says. “Say hi to the boss lady, Wesley.”

“Ack ga na!” Wesley says, and stuffs his foot in his mouth.

“Hi, Wesley. Would you like to come work for us?”

“Na!”

Man. So cute.

The baby’s mother asks what he’d have to do, exactly, and I explain to her that, basically, we deploy Incredibly Cute Babies as distractions, and also to soften up the occasional uncooperative mark. We always send ICBs out with their moms, and we always provide back-up so that nobody gets hurt or ‘napped.

“So, Wesley just has to do his thing. Be cute.” I point to his shirt, which has a very tiny, very cute panda on it. The panda is wearing very tiny, very cute sailor shorts and holding a very tiny, very cute balloon. “Does he have more clothes like that?”

“Oh, tons.”

“Outstanding. Listen, thanks for coming in, welcome to the team, and Marie here is going to get you started on some paperwork in just a minute. Bye, Wesley.”

“Na.”

Cute!

I wave Marie into my office.

“Sorry I didn’t come in before, but that baby…I couldn’t stop staring at it.”

“I hear you. That’s the cutest one we’ve had in a while.”

“For sure. What are we going to tell the Hannigans?”

“Oh, man, the Hannigans. Hell if I know. Maybe we could move him to Screaming Toddler duty, but we haven’t needed one of those in ages.”

“I was gonna say.”

“Well, let’s just not tell them anything for now until we can clear this McKittrick thing, which reminds me, I need you to call that Ally girl and get her down here.”

“Diz already did that, he said.”

“Oh, and! Did Diz say where he was going for lunch?”

“The Americana. Said they added a corn chowder.”

Diz is writing a book about soup. Nobody cares, but he’s writing it anyway, and not only is it taking forever — he started it three years ago — but each individual “soup module” is a whole procedure with sips of club soda to clear his palate and actual mathematical formulas for when he adds the oyster crackers and on and on and on, he has an Excel-file checklist which he keeps changing so he has to retest all the soups he already ate, I’m not even kidding with this. Diz goes out for lunch, I get shooting pains in my stomach.

“He already had that one. Didn’t he already have that one?”

“You’re thinking of the one at Zeppo’s.”

“Zeppo’s has soup now?”

Marie looks like she ate a bug all of a sudden.

“Oh, don’t tell me that, Marie.”

But I already know. I already know Diz went in there to get coffee and a buttered roll and told them about the book and then they added soup to the menu for him, this happens all the time.

“Well, he said he only mentioned it to them…”

“Why, why does he — okay, you know what, I can’t get into this now. When is that Ally girl coming in?”

“Half an hour. Also, Gio needs to talk to you, he says he didn’t get an expense check so he’s coming in after the job, which is over, so –”

“Okay. I’m going to Starbucks, I’m going to drag Diz’s ass out of the Americana, I’ll be back in twenty minutes, do not let Gio put the chickens in my office, do not let Gio put the chickens in the bar, do not let Gio put any chickens anywhere, the chickens stay in the truck.”

“But he always starts crying!”

“Well, he needs to get over it, those are ventilated cages and I’m tired of giving out free beers when people get a feather in their Sierra Nevada.”

“They’re real tears, Shelley, I don’t think he’s fak–”

“Marie. I find poultry on these premises when I get back, I’m going to be very very angry. No chickens in the building.”

“Not even Bella? She does tricks.”

“Not even Bella, and picking up a piece of string is not a trick.”

“But she twirls it, though, you know? Like a –”

“Marie.”

“Okay, but you have to explain it to him.”

“I will explain it to him. Start Wesley’s paperwork, I’ll be right back.”

We both go out into the outer office. Wesley is gnawing on a finger. The choir of angels busts a quick chord. I wave to him and head out through the bar.

Our office is in a former opium den in Kips Bay. The back office is my office, mine and Diz’s when Diz isn’t off playing Soup Hunter, and it has a trapdoor in the floor that goes down to the basement and through a little catacomb-type hallway to an alley one street over, but I never use it because it’s a bitch to roll up the rug and I keep forgetting to oil the hinges on the door. I usually just go through the front office, where Marie sits, and there’s a connecting door there to the kitchen of the bar out front, which we also run. It’s quiet right now, just a couple of having-an-affair-at-the-office types drinking grappa and Little Andy, washing glasses.

“Hey, Shell.”

“Hey, And. That kid come in yet, the Navigator kid?”

“Not yet.”

“All right, let me know.”

“Will do.”

“Gio’s coming in, by the way. He tries to sneak a pullet past you, kick his ass out.”

“Roger that.”

It’s glarey out, but across the street at the Americana, I can see Diz at a window table. He’s taking up a whole four-top with his graphs and water glasses and shit. Bastard.

At the counter, I order a mozzarella hero and stomp over to Diz’s table.

“Please tell me you’re almost done.”

“This corn chowder, it’s nearly inedible.”

“Then you’re almost done.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m almost done, but –”

“No ‘but.’ We’ve got an ICB sitting in the office doing paperwork you were supposed to prep, the kid still hasn’t come in yet, Gio’s on his way, and I have to hear from Marie that that Ally girl is coming in in half an hour? You’ve got to starting getting this shit to go, Diz, we don’t have time for this right now.”

“Well, like I said. The to-go container affects –”

“Diz, I could not give less of a shit if I were dead and in the ground. I need all hands on deck this week. Did you talk to the Russian?”

Diz scrapes his soup bowl.

“About that. He’s in Perth Amboy. That’s all I know right now, but Mrs. Marino is on it.”

Mrs. Marino is an Eavesdropper. She’s good on certain jobs, but this is the last thing I’d put her on, which I tell Diz.

“You couldn’t get Tanisha?”

“She’s downtown today, remember?”

“Yeah, shit. So you couldn’t get anybody but Marino?”

“Tanisha’s in court, Olive’s kid’s got pneumonia, and Mr. Sharp is on bocce duty.”

“Ohhhh, that. Anything turn up on that yet?”

“Not yet. He says the other guys suck at bocce, so they don’t like him, but he thinks they’re warming up.”

“You tell him to bring a Danish ring?”

“What am I, new? Yeah I told him.”

“Good, good. So, Marino’s in Perth Amboy — what is the Russian doing in Perth Amboy?”

“Whatever it is Russians do all day? I don’t know. Anyway, Marino’s hitting all the butchers today and she’ll call in at five.”

“He’s not a vegetarian anymore?”

“His friends’ mothers aren’t. We’ll turn him up.”

“So, you’re almost done?”

“Yep. The kid come in?”

“No sign of him.”

“What does Gio want?”

“Says he didn’t get his expense check.”

Diz pushes back from the table and belches quietly.

“You going to Starbucks? Pick up your sandwich, let’s walk to Starbucks.”

We walk to Starbucks, slowly, and smoke. Diz spits a few times.

“That bad, huh?”

“Worst I’ve had, I think. Bottom three, for sure.”

“So.”

“So. No sign of the kid, Gio and Duff on their way in, Ally Logan on her way in, all points on the Russian.”

“Logan, that’s her name.”

“That everything?”

I flick my butt into the street.

“That’s everything.”

There’s the moment where we both think about saying it, and then there’s the moment where we both decide not to say it — that we can’t do it without the Russian, that without the Russian it’s all a moot point and we can just go back to punking ex-husbands. That we have to find the Russian.

“When we get back…call Jenny. Tell her The Nose needs to prep.”

June 23, 2004

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