Deadline for Lenny Stern, Peter Marabell [sneezy the snowman read aloud .TXT] 📗

to the floor. “Tell you what, give me ten minutes to put my car across the street.”

I shook my head. “No need for that.”

“Maybe not, but it’s too late for a lunch crowd. The place could be empty.”

“Except for Joey’s people, you mean.”

“Exactly,” Henri said. “I’ll sit in the car, watch you go in, hope you come out.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“How ‘bout I come to the rescue when the shooting starts?”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Well, get a move on.”

Without a word, Henri was off the couch and out the door. I followed him a few moments later. He’d have his car in place at the restaurant by the time I arrived on foot. Such is street congestion in the Gaslight District in July.

I walked two blocks to Bay Street. Cars and trucks inched their way through the narrow streets. The sidewalks were full of people who’d collected in town for a steamy day of shopping. I turned on Lake Street and spotted Henri’s SUV parked near a fire hydrant, almost across from the restaurant.

The driver’s window slid down, and he looked over at me with no sign of recognition. The window went back up.

The restaurant occupied a narrow space in the middle of the block. The front door sat between two large windows. Heavy maroon curtains held up by thick brass rods covered the lower half of each window.

Above the door hung a simple sign, red letters over black: ENZO.

I went inside and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior.

The room was a narrow rectangle, front to back, with a long, heavy bar of wood and brass on the wall to the right. Small tables filled the space across from the bar, with larger tables at the back of the room. The previous iteration of an Italian eatery, Ristorante Bella, was mauve carpet and white tablecloths. Ristorante Enzo was oak floors, dim lights and red-checked tablecloths. The mellow strains of Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “Lady is a Tramp” filled the dead air usually taken up by noisy diners and hustling waiters. The feel was all 1950s New York rather than 21st century northern Michigan.

Leaning on the bar near the door was a tall, gangly kid in jeans, a watch cap atop a thin face, baggy print vest barely concealing a large shoulder holster. Jimmy Erwin: a teenage shooter from Indiana I’d last seen being hauled off the streets of Petoskey in handcuffs.

“Jimmy,” a voice said from the back of the room.

Erwin stepped away from the bar and moved in front of me. He put his hands on his hips and nodded.

I spread my arms out to each side and he frisked me, moving from arms to torso to legs.

“He’s clean,” Erwin said, loud enough to be heard in the back of the room.

A few feet down the bar stood Roberta Lampone (AKA Bobbie Fairhaven), tall and angular, her black hair pulled into a ponytail. Her face said sorority girl, her body said Army Rangers, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her father, and before him her grandfather, ran the Lampone crime family, a frequent Windy City competitor of the DeMio family.

I nodded as I went by her toward the back of the room. A beam of light spread out on the floor, cast beneath saloon-like swinging doors fronting the kitchen. The staff was busy cleaning up after lunch and prepping for dinner. Muffled conversations blended with banging pots, whirring mixers and noisy fans.

At a four-top in the right rear corner sat Joey DeMio and Donald Harper.

DeMio took over the Baldini crime family after his father, Carmine, retired to spend more time on the front porch of his East Bluff cottage on Mackinac Island. Joey’s typical outfit — dark slacks, silk t-shirt and gray V-neck — always seemed more suited for someone hosting a cocktail party, rather than running drugs or prostitution rings. His salt-and-pepper hair was brushed back, like his father’s; his face featured close-set oval eyes, framed in an olive complexion. Joey didn’t react as I approached the table.

Not so for Harper, the family’s Ivy League lawyer. He stiffened as I came up. I couldn’t read his face. Was it derision or irritation? Did it matter? He looked every bit the part of an attorney featured in Vanity Fair. Expensive suit; sharp movie star features, rimmed glasses. The works.

“Joey … Don.”

“Counselor,” Joey said. “Sit.”

I pulled out a chair, aware that the two empty chairs put my back to the room, to Lampone and Erwin.

“Nice place.”

“First visit?”

“Yeah, I don’t get out much. It’s got a good feel, Joey, a city feel.”

I thought I detected a small smile.

“Surprised you opened a restaurant here,” I said. “The island could use an honest Italian menu.”

Joey shrugged. “Petoskey’s a good town.”

“You looking to expand your reach to the mainland?”

“Mr. DeMio’s vision for business expansion is not limited by geography.”

That was Harper.

“He’s guided by a sense of community need and opportunity.”

“Did they teach you to talk like that at Harvard, or do you make it up as you go along?”

“Yale, Mr. Russo. Y-A-L-E.” A vivid reminder to a Big Ten guy like me that the distance between our schools, between us, was calculated in more than just miles.

I started to say something, but Joey interrupted.

“What can I do for you, counselor?”

I leaned forward, elbows on the table.

“I’ve got a problem.”

“And you’ve come to me.”

I nodded.

“Why do you think I can help?”

“You might be the problem.”

Harper glanced toward the front of the room, toward Erwin and Lampone. It was a subtle move, but I caught it.

Joey caught it, too. “Easy,” he said while looking at Harper, loud enough for the others to hear.

“I might be your problem, counselor?”

“You heard about the murder last night?”

Joey nodded ever so slightly.

“The woman who was killed, Kate Hubbell. You know her?”

He shook his head.

Joey was holding back. He wasn’t sure where I was going with this, so he was being more cautious than usual.

“You know Lenny Stern, the reporter?”

A nod.

“You know about his book?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

I did.

“Stern writes