Invasion of Privacy

treated him that way. And my father gets rewarded not by loyalty, but fucking betrayal. So, we’re here in this filthy fucking city, and it’s just as easy to do two as one.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    Ianella looked to Cocozzo, but the balding man just kept watching me, which seemed to bother Junior enough to turn back in my direction. “All right, dickhead, where’s DiRienzi?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “The fuck does that mean—’I don’t know’? Primo here showed us the picture you took of him.”
    “I’m going to tell you some things, Rick. You’re patient, I’ll tell you some more.”
    Zuppone closed his eyes for a moment. Cocozzo, so far as I could tell, came from a species that didn’t need to blink.
    Ianella crossed his arms, bunching the fabric of the suit jacket. “Just start talking, dickhead, and don’t fucking stop.”
    I said, “A woman asked me to look into the background of her boyfriend. I started to, finding out he wasn’t what he seemed. I gave her a hint of that, and she seems to have disappeared.”
    Junior coughed impatiently. “Look, I don’t give a shit about—”
    I took a little leap. “And your bookkeeper seems to be gone, too.”
    Ianella stopped, the eyebrow twitching again. “Gone where?”
    “Like I said before, I don’t know.”
    “The fuck you mean, you don’t know.”
    Old ground. “I was out of state, Rick, checking on this guy’s supposed education for my client. After learning he wasn’t who he claimed to be, I called her long-distance, and she said, ‘Thanks, don’t do anything more.’ Now I’m starting to think that she contacted her boyfriend and something happened. I don’t know what, and if they’re really gone, I don’t know where.”
    Cocozzo, still watching me from the wall, said, “She tells you to butt out, how come you know she’s taken off somewhere?”
    Damned sharp question, since it was Zuppone’s information on the ride to the airport about who Dees really was that prompted me to try contacting her again. I thought Primo was holding his breath.
    “One of her friends called me,” I said. “Worried about her.”
    Cocozzo nodded. “And how did you know DiRienzi was a bookkeeper?”
    “What?”
    The balding man inched his right hand a little closer to his beltline. “A minute ago, you said ‘And your bookkeeper seems to be gone too.’ How’d you know what DiRienzi was to us?”
    I looked at Cocozzo, then to Ianella. “Rick here used the word ‘bean counter.’ That’s what makes me think bookkeeper or accountant.”
    Junior uncrossed his arms, waving off the cross-examination. “Look, ‘bookkeeper,’ ‘bean counter,’ whatever the fuck he was, that’s none of your concern, dickhead, you hear what I’m saying to you? What your concern is, you had this fucking Judas, and now you say you can’t find him, am I right?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well, then, here’s what you’re gonna do for us. You’re gonna get up from behind your shit-eating desk here, and out of this shithole of an office, and you’re not gonna sleep till you find him. And when you do, you’re gonna sit the fuck on him till we get there. I got to clarify any of that for you?”
    “Maybe the part about why you think my office is a shithole.”
    The mottled face, with the twitching now more like jumping jacks and the grip that set the chair to groaning. “ Coco , how’s about you clarify that for dickhead here.” Cocozzo still hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “Not a good idea, Boss.”
    Ianella acted as if he’d never heard the phrase before. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    The balding man said, “I’m ninety percent sure he’s holding a piece in his lap.”
    “What?”
    Cocozzo sighed just a little, like he’d had to explain a lot to the younger man over the years. “His hands, Boss.”
    “His hands?”
    “Yeah. We been here ten, fifteen minutes, talking away. You seen his hands yet?”
    “No.” Junior watched me now too. “No, I haven’t, now that you mention it. Show us your hands, shit-for-brains.”
    “Uh-unh.”
    “And what if I stand up and come over and look for myself?”
    I said, “Then you’d maybe come between Coco there and me, in which case he’s going to draw whatever he’s got under his coat, and I’m going to have to shoot him.”
    “Shoot Coco ?” said Junior.
    “Yeah. I don’t have to worry about you, Rick, because you’re having him do the carrying.”
    Ianella looked at