Day 6: Write a Scene: your MC knows a mafia don
We closed up the diner at eleven, as we usually did on weekday nights. Bash turned on the local evening news as we started the process of cleaning up and shutting everything down. It was my turn to mop the dining room, so I had a good view of the parking lot. The lights of a big town car were visible before it was, and I looked up in surprise when I realized it was pulling into the handicapped space at the front of the diner.
Bash was wiping down the tables and saw it too. “What the hell is this?”
“I got it,” I said. It wouldn’t be the first time that an erstwhile customer arrived after we’d shut down the kitchen. Tourists always seemed to think the world should revolve around them and their desires.
A guy wearing a leather jacket over a polo and slacks had gotten out of the car, and he ran a hand over his greased hair as he approached the door. I waved my hand and pointed to the closed sign, mouthing “sorry” at him.
“Aw, c’mon!” he shouted through the glass. “It’s barely eleven, can’t you make an exception?”
Definitely a tourist. He had a Jersey accent and that sense of entitlement that tourists packed into their luggage to take with them on vacation.
“Kitchen’s closed,” I yelled back to him.
He turned back to the car and raised his arms in a shrug. I squinted, trying to get a good look into the car, but the interior light had gone off. Jersey Guy apparently couldn’t see anything either; he went back to the car and opened one of the rear doors to talk to someone inside.
Bash joined me at the door. “Tell them Cecilia’s is still open, she’ll feed them.”
“Maybe they’ll just leave.”
“Nope.” He pointed at the car. Jersey Guy was helping out a very old man. Another younger man got out as well and opened the trunk to retrieve a walker. “Oh, hell no. This ain’t happening right now.”
“Have a heart, guys!” Gerald called from the counter. As he was neither employee nor actual customer, Eva wouldn’t force him out at closing time. He’d leave with the rest of them. “Let the geezer in.”
Eva emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on one of the potholder towels that Mom keeps making for the diner. “What’s going on?”
I jerked a thumb at the door. “Just some tourists who don’t understand that some places try to close at a reasonable hour.”
“What, you mean the old man?”
He’d come up the curb with the help of his two companions. He moved at a snail’s pace, but he moved with determination.
“Oh,” Eva said in that voice she usually reserved for small children and puppies. “He’s probably chilly out there. Go ahead and let him in.”
“You can’t be serious,” Bash muttered.
“But we’re closed!” I said stupidly.
Eva was barely old enough to drink, but she owned the diner, and she wasn’t going to let us forget it. “Open the door, Sadie.”
I hesitated and looked over to Bash, but I should’ve known he’d side with her, no matter how he actually felt. I could see it in his face. Don’t ever ask a guy to betray his crush; he’ll hold it against you, even if you are his best friend and his crush happens to be your cousin.
The old man had made it to the door, and Jersey Guy knocked on the glass again. Eva gestured for me to open it.
I harrumphed, but I fished the keys out of my pocket. With the door unlocked, I swung it open just as Jersey Guy was about to knock again.
“Sadie Lennox!” the old man wheezed before I could say anything. He had a slight Italian accent, suggesting that he’d been born in the Old Country but he’d spent the majority of his life in America. “So that old ass you call a grandfather was telling the truth!”
Bash made a choking noise and grabbed my arm. I shrugged him off and peered at the old man. He was Bash’s size — 5’4” at the most — but he was scrawny where Bash was wiry and muscular. His skin was paper-white and thin, but his dark brown eyes were bright and intelligent and suggested that he didn’t miss a trick.
Something about him struck me as familiar, bolstered by the fact that he knew my name and apparently Zaydee as well. “Do I know you?” I asked.
“How is it,” he asked with a chuckle that became a wheeze, “that an old man has a better memory than kids who think they know so much?” He elbowed the other young man, who had a baby face and not even a shadow of facial hair. “How many winters have I spent in Boca, but you don’t remember me?”
I hadn’t seen him since I was in high school, but I was suddenly able to put a name to the face. He’d been one of my grandfather’s best friends when I was a kid. “Mr. Paulie?”
Jersey Guy stepped up next to Paulie. “That’s Mr. Fidanzi to you.”
I backed away, but Paulie smacked Jersey Guy on the arm. “You hush your mouth, Vin. I’ve known this girl since she was in diapers, and her grandfather saved my life back in the 80s. She can call me what she likes.”
“OK, OK. I get it.”
Paulie continued, “Moshe told me about this restaurant of yours.”
“Oh, it’s not mine,” I interjected. I pointed at Eva, who tucked her towel into her apron strings and moved closer. It’s my cousin’s. Eva’s.”
He shrugged. “But it was your father’s place to start, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. He and his brother — Eva’s dad — started the diner six years ago.”
“Survived all that virus trouble, I see.”
I hadn’t been in St. Augustine then, but Eva had been working in the diner since it opened. She said, “It was a tough time, but we managed.”
“Good, that’s good. We all had to adapt, didn’t we? Me, I used to fly to Miami in the winter. I got that house in Boca that Moshe sold me. You remember?”
I nodded. Zaydee had been a real estate agent covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton, and the house he’d sold to Paulie had been a real showstopper. Eight thousand square feet right on the beach, probably worth twelve million bucks in the 2020s. What I couldn’t recall was what Paulie had done to make all that money he knew how to spend. That fancy town car in the parking lot suggested he still had a lot of it.
“I never did like to fly,” Paulie said, “and I had to sell the private jet. I don’t trust them airlines either, so my grand-nephews are driving me down to Boca.” He reached out to the younger man, who winced as Paulie pinched his cheek. “You’re good boys, aren’t you, Saul?”
“We hit more traffic than we expected,” Vin explained. “We thought we’d be in Boca Raton by now.”
“We’ll get there,” Paulie said with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t want to stop if we could help it, but even I’m getting hungry. And I know if I’m hungry, these boys must be starving.” He dug his fingers into Vin’s ribs; he grimaced but said nothing. “I remembered that Moshe’s son-in-law had a restaurant here, so I called him for directions. He told me what happened; I’m so sorry for the losses you’ve both suffered. I knew I must come here, because I trust Moshe, and I trust his granddaughter.”
Eva and I glanced at each other. No way could I launch a defense against that, not when Eva was so aggressively sending me mental directives to get back into the kitchen and start making food for these guys. My cousin had the softest of hearts, and she wasn’t going to say no to this man who had gone out of his way to come to this diner that our fathers had built and that she had grown into one of the beach’s hot spots.
“Please,” Eva said, pushing past me and guiding Paulie into the dining area. “Let’s get you a booth, and Sadie will get to cooking for you. Our specialty is burgers, but I’m sure she could whip you up something else if you’d like.”
Saul’s eyes lit up. “A big, juicy burger sounds good to me!”
Vin didn’t seem quite as excited. “I don’t mind a burger either, but Uncle Paul’s gonna need something a little easier to eat.”
Without missing a beat, Eva said, “We’ve got some meatloaf and mashed potatoes left over from the dinner rush. It’s not a juicy burger, but it’s just as good!”
“Fine, fine,” Paulie said as he hobbled over to a booth. “Let’s get it moving. We have miles left to cover, and I’m sure these fine young people want to get to bed eventually.”
“Burgers and fries for the nephews?” I asked as I moved toward the kitchen.
“Whatever’s most convenient,” Saul answered. “We don’t wanna be trouble.”
Too late for that, I thought. But it’d be worth it in the end. Paulie was a generous guy, and he’d make this worth everyone’s while.
Besides, Paulie had always been good to me when I was a kid. I owed him some meatloaf and a couple of burgers.
*
They ate fast at least. Saul and Vin must’ve been hungry because they wolfed down those burgers in less than ten minutes. They had plenty of praise for the food, so I couldn’t complain. I’d just made them my Plain Janes with provolone and tomatoes and our house mayo — sometimes simple food is the best food. They also sample the meatloaf and proclaimed it the best they’d ever had. Maybe it was, or maybe they were just so hungry that anything would’ve tasted like the best they’d ever had.
Whether they were exaggerating or they meant it, they ate, and they had no complaints. Eva soaked up the praise, which I didn’t begrudge her. I may have made the food, but she approved every menu item and chose each ingredient herself. The diner was her child, I was just helping her raise it.
When he’d finished his meal, Paulie wiped his mouth and pointed a bony finger at Saul. “Help me out to the car, kid. Saul will handle the check.” He followed that with rapid Italian, to which Saul nodded knowingly.
Saul helped Paulie out of the booth and walked with him to the door. Eva trailed behind them while I rushed ahead to open the door for him
“You make your fathers proud, ladies,” Paulie said as he paused at the door. “I like seeing women in charge of their business. Show these boys how it’s done.”
Eva practically glowed as she clasped her hands in front of her. “Thank you so much, Mr. Fidanzi.”
“Thanks, Uncle Paulie.”
He smiled up at me and hobbled out the door. “Ciao, girls. You let me know if you need anything! Have a good night.”
“Safe travels!” Eva called after him.
Vin stomped past us. “I left the check on the table. Thanks for the grub.”
“Thank you!”
I pulled the door shut and locked it again. We watched Vin and Saul help Paulie into the car and secure his walker.
“Don’t seem to have much with them,” Eva observed. “But at least they’re traveling in style.”
“He has everything he needs at his Boca home,” I said. “A whole separate wardrobe from what he’s got in New Jersey. The whole house is stocked like he lives there all the time. He has a full-time housekeeper year-round.”
“Must be nice.”
“Eva!” shouted Bash, his voice high and tight in that way it got when he was on the verge of panic.
We turned away from the window, and Eva walked toward him. “What? Please tell me that apparent multi-millionaire didn’t stiff us.”
Bash gaped speechlessly at the check and held it out to her as she got closer. She snatched it from him and inspected the check.
Her mouth fell open. Several syllables tumbled out, but none of them made sense. She stumbled backward and had to reach out to steady herself on the booth.
“What?” I asked. Surely they’d left something.
Eva put a hand over her mouth and handed me the check.
The fact that it was a check was hilarious enough — who writes checks nowadays? I skimmed it, but it was pretty obvious what had shocked both Bash and Eva into speechlessness.
Two thousand dollars.
Paulie had left two thousand dollars.
“What the hell,” I muttered. I looked at Eva, and she plucked the check from my hand.
“Right? Two thousand dollars. Two thousand. Who does that?”
Gerald leaned his elbows back on the counter. “Sadie, you know who that guy is, right?”
“Sure, he’s Paul Fidanzi. My grandfather’s known him for decades.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean, do you know who he is. What he does.”
“I knew him as a kid, Gerry. I wasn’t interested in his particulars.”
“So you don’t know that he’s the boss of an Italian crime family that’s also got deep roots in Jersey and New York?”
“What!” shouted Eva. She let the check drop from her fingers, and Bash made a dive for it before it hit the floor.
I glared at Gerald. “Very funny.”
“Dead serious. Look it up.”
Eva already had her phone in her hands and was frantically typing on it. “Oh, my God, he’s right. Look at this.”
She passed me the phone, and there on the screen was a grainy picture of Paulie, under which was a headline proclaiming something about “the old mob king” getting away with tax evasion and demanding to know what “the Feds” were doing about it. I gave back the phone, and we stared at each other for a moment.
“Let’s never speak of this again,” Eva said. “Agreed?”
Bash and I nodded and simultaneously said, “Agreed.”
Gerald just laughed and shook his head. “You kids are hilarious.”