Not only had he told me he wasn’t, but I hadn’t seen any sign of it in the two days I had spent watching him. I added, “I just have to prove it to Jacquie.”
“It’s hard to prove a negative,” Mendoza said. “You can prove someone’s cheating by bringing in a photo of them cheating. You can’t prove someone’s not cheating by not having a photo.”
No, you couldn’t. “I’ll just have to keep sitting there and reporting that nothing’s going on. Eventually, she’s just going to have to accept it.”
Mendoza seemed doubtful, but he didn’t say anything.
“So tell me what’s going on,” I added. “You know you have to.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Mendoza told me. “Although I might as well. If I don’t, you’ll just keep being a bother. This way, I can at least tell you enough that you won’t accidentally stumble into my investigation and get hurt.”
“Big of you,” I said dryly. As if I hadn’t stumbled into his investigation already.
Chapter Eight
“So you know it’s mob related,” Mendoza began. “Somehow, you decided that Gio Abruzzi was worth following.”
“He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would patronize a dinky body shop on Charlotte Avenue.”
“The Body Shop is not dinky,” Mendoza said. “Although you’re right. Gio babies that car. When something’s wrong with it, he takes it to a guy who specializes in luxury and foreign. That isn’t Sal Gomorra.”
Clearly not. The Body Shop dealt with a lot more Chevys and Jeeps and Fords than anything foreign or luxury.
“Is Sal Gomorra part of the mob?”
Mendoza shook his head. “Sal is a nice guy who just wants to make a living. He’d have nothing to do with any of it if it weren’t for Nick.”
“So Nick’s the one who’s connected.”
He shook his head. “Nobody’s connected. Not at the Body Shop. Nor at Sambuca, in case you were thinking there are people being fitted with concrete shoes in the back room.”
“The man-mountain—” I began, and Mendoza made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a burst of laughter.
“That’s Izzy Spataro, and yes, he’s connected.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Izzy?” That seemed rather girly for such a big guy.
“Isidore,” Mendoza said. “Good, old-fashioned Italian name.”
Sure. “What does Izzy do?”
“Whatever Izzy wants,” Mendoza said, and shook his head. “Izzy’s harmless. They’re all harmless until you get in their way. So don’t get in their way.”
I had no plans to get in Izzy’s way, and told him so. “Just give me an idea of what’s going on so I know what to tell Jacquie to get her off my back. And off Nick’s.”
“I’m not concerned with Nick’s back,” Mendoza said, “or with Jacquie’s. I would like to keep you from doing something that gets you killed, though.”
Yes, so would I. I made a demanding sort of ‘get on with it’ gesture, and he snorted.
“Earlier this year, Nick got in trouble with some people over some debt. Since he couldn’t pay, they persuaded him—” he made quotation marks around the words, “—to offer up his employer’s business for a bit of money laundering.”
“And Sal went along with it? Or didn’t fire him when he found out?”
“By then it was too late,” Mendoza said. “And Nick’s been working there for ten years. He’ll probably take over when Sal retires.”
I wished I could see what made Nick so appealing to people like Jacquie and Sal. If it were me, I would have kicked him to the curb at the first sign of anything like gambling debt or inviting the mob in for coffee.
Then again, it wasn’t just them, was it? I had the gravest forebodings about Daniel and Kenny and the bar, and I couldn’t even convince my own business partner not to throw in with them.
