“Your phone rang while you were out there,” Coop said. “About twenty minutes ago.”
I checked the display and found that Janet had called. A large shadow crossed the window, and I looked up and saw Quinn standing a few yards away. Coop flashed him a signal, and Quinn opened the side door and joined me.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“Pretty much the way I thought it would. No sale.”
“What’s our next move?”
I motioned for Quinn to raise the privacy glass so we could talk. Though we trusted Coop, we were in DeMeo’s town. No sense forcing him to choose between us.
“DeMeo made you out there,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Quinn said. “He had nine guys surrounding the place.”
“Still,” I said.
“According to Tony,” Quinn said, “they been there since midnight.”
Midnight! No wonder they saw him. “Who’s Tony?”
“One of DeMeo’s guys. At the end, we talked some. He recommended a restaurant, Miceli’s.”
“He’ll probably be waiting there for you with an Uzi,” I said.
Quinn shrugged. “So DeMeo won’t pay. No surprise there. Got a backup plan?”
“We’re going to rob him,” I said.
“Joe DeMeo.”
“Unless you’re scared.”
“How much you taking?”
“Twenty-five million,” I said, “maybe more. Ten for Addie, two for each of us.”
Quinn cocked his head. “That leaves more than ten million on the table.”
“We’ll need some help.”
Quinn nodded. “I’m in.”
We lowered the partition, and I told Coop where to take us. Quinn said, “Hey, Coop, you know a restaurant called Miceli’s?”
“I do,” Coop said. “Pizza’s good; all the waiters sing to you. They got a pie they call the Meat House: pepperoni, sausage, meatballs, salami. If you decide to go there, get that one.”
We turned the corner and passed a couple of protesters holding global warming signs. “Not much of a turnout,” I said.
Coop chuckled. “There’s usually a bunch of them. They got a chart from the fifties, tells them what the average weather used to be. Every day it’s warmer than that, they gather at that corner to bitch about it. But when the weather’s this nice, most of them sneak off to the beach.”
I hit the voice mail button on my cell phone, and my ex-wife Janet shrieked, “You bastard!” She went off on me with such gusto I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Quinn laughed, and Coop just shook his head. I grinned. I mean, I wasn’t happy she was upset, even less happy she blamed me for it, but what was I going to do, right? She finished her screaming fit with a flourish, and Quinn said, “What the hell did you do to her, anyway?”
