Sports Bra? Please tell me he didn’t give some random one-night stand his phone number.
“Nice to know he’s focused on the task at hand,” I said.
“I told him it was fine. I could keep my eyes on them for a minute without his help.”
I swallowed and heard a click in my throat. “Did you see her?”
“Your ex-wife? Yes, briefly.”
“How did she look?” I asked, because I hate myself and enjoy being in pain, apparently.
I could feel Erica cycling through possible answers on the other end of the line. “She looked safe,” she said at last, taking the cop-out route. I was grateful for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Colonial Diner is quintessential New Jersey. In a state known for its all-night diners, this one hits every mark.
Stone façade with dark glass windows? Check.
Parking lot that’s way too small for its total occupancy? Check.
Bar in the back serving watered down cocktails and light beer? Check.
Servers that all look like they either just extinguished or are about to light up a cigarette? Check.
Booths with fake leather cushions that are cracking and bite into your legs in the summer when you’re wearing shorts? Check.
AMAZING food and coffee that could power a nuclear submarine? Of course.
Denise and I used to take the kids there once a week for dinner, although for me it was “dinner” in name only. A true Jersey diner aficionado knows you only ever order breakfast food when you’re in such an establishment. I liked to mix it up—waffles one day, steak and eggs another—but my go-to was the scrapple omelet.
Scrapple is a brick of mushed up meat mixed with cornmeal. Originally concocted by German settlers outside Philadelphia in the eighteenth century but adapted by the Pennsylvania Dutch into the artery-clogging perfection it is today, the meat comes from the parts of a pig even the pig didn’t want anymore. The kind of ingredients you don’t list to someone who’s never tried it when you actually want them to take a bite. It’s seared to a crispy golden brown on the outside, but remains warm and gooey in the middle. I could eat it by the pound, assuming I didn’t want to live to see fifty. Denise and the kids thought it was trash on a plate.
The Colonial mixed generous hunks of the stuff into a three-egg omelet with green peppers and onions. It might be the most perfect breakfast dish ever conceived. I hadn’t had one in over a decade, and it called to me from the menu. It took more willpower than I anticipated to tell the waitress all I wanted was black coffee when she came to take my order. I was not looking forward to the conversation I was about to have, and if I was going to enjoy one of my favorite meals for the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to worry about having to fight to keep it down right after I ate it.
I was on my second cup when Erica called from outside my house and told me Robert had left.
“Anyone with him?” I asked.
“Not right now, anyway. Sure you don’t want us to follow?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be fine.”
I had a booth by the wall of windows overlooking the sidewalk leading from the always-full parking lot to the front door. I’d never seen Robert Baglioni before in my life—Denise had never posted a single picture, and I’d kept the promise I made to myself not to use my connections to dig up info on him—but when he walked past me on his way inside, I knew it was him right away. I assumed he knew what I looked like from old photos, the asshole husband who abandoned his wife and kids. He scanned the room from the small waiting area by the hostess podium before he found me.
He was shorter than me, but a lot of guys are. His hair was jet black and thick on his head. Longer than mine, but still professional. It hung just past the tops of his ears and almost to his shoulders in the back. He was clean shaven, but the first sprouts of five o’clock shadow were starting to show. He wore a black leather jacket over a plain gray thermal shirt and blue jeans. His badge hung from a beaded chain around his neck.
I was very aware of the gun holstered on his belt. Not that he would put me down in the middle of the diner like a sheriff in an old-timey western but . . . let’s just say I was aware of it. Whatever bored annoyance existed when he first answered the phone—whether real or an act he put on to show how little he thought of his fiancée’s ex-husband—was gone. He was in full cop mode now, and he wanted me to know it.
He slid into the booth seat across from me and set his arms on the table hard enough to ripple the coffee in my mug.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I would have ordered you something, but I didn’t know what you’d—”
“How the fuck do you know those names?”
Right to it, then.
“I know a few more names, too,” I said. “David Lofton and Lewis Reed.”
“Those mean nothing to me.”
“What about Yosef and Leah Abrams?”
“No. Tell me about Frank and Nadia.” He punctuated both of their names with a finger stab on the table. My coffee rippled some more. “How do you know them?”
“I don’t. I only know of them. They’re FBI agents working as part of a task force. The other four are agents from MI5 and Mossad. They’re part of the task force, too.” This was progressing a lot quicker than I anticipated. I expected more time spent on how I was a scumbag who ran out on my family and couldn’t be trusted. Some measure of suspicion over my true motives for being here, or how I heard those names in the first place. Robert wasn’t in the mood to dick around, though. I had to make sure the conversation didn’t get away from me.
“How do you know all this?” he asked. “What, did you get caught up in some bad shit with the Feds? They got you in witness protection? Is that why you ran out on Denise?”
There was the shot I was expecting, tacked on at the end.
“Believe me, I’m the furthest thing from a snitch.”
“Then what, an agent? Undercover?” He waved his hand. “Bull SHIT.”
“How do you know Frank and Nadia?” I asked, trying to wrestle the wheel away from him.
He sat back. A spring creaked as he leaned against the booth. Chewed on his bottom lip. Let his hands fall to his lap. Then shook his head. “Nope.” He put his hands on the edge of the table as if he was planning to stand up. “We’re not having this conversation here. If you want to talk, we’re doing it on the record, down at the station. Let’s go.”
