“Well, you don’t know,” Grossi said. “A guy’s a lightweight, sooner or later it shows. He gets nervous, starts to look around; he thinks, Jesus Christ, maybe I’m over my head. You understand? Just the idea, going out with Mrs. Frank DiCilia.”

Karen didn’t say anything.

“If I were you I wouldn’t worry about it,” Grossi said. “You got everything. What do you need some lightweight for? Right?”

Roland Crowe stepped over from the reception desk to hold the door open for Karen. She said, “Thank you,” and Roland said, “Hey, don’t mention it.” He stood hip-cocked in his tight pants and two-hundred dollar cowboy boots watching her ass and slim brown legs move down the hall. When he turned, letting the door close, all the guys in the Dorado lobby were looking at him. Roland winked at nobody in particular. Bunch of dinks, waiting around for the grass to grow.

He went back to the desk to pick up fooling around with the little receptionist, but she told him he could go in now. Roland gave her a wink, too. She wasn’t bad looking for a Cuban. That DiCilia woman wasn’t bad looking either. He remembered her face.

In Grossi’s office, Roland Crowe said, “Wasn’t that Frank’s woman just went out?”

Grossi was putting a sheet of paper in his middle desk drawer. He took out another single sheet that bore a name and a street address written in ink and locked the drawer.

“Was that who?”

“Frank’s old lady.”

“Her name’s Mrs. DiCilia,” Grossi said.

Shit. Little guinea trying to sound like a hardtimer, bit off words barely moving his mouth, more like he had a turd or something in there. Roland felt sociable-back in Miami after six months at Lake Butler State Prison, busting his ass chopping weeds, eating that slop chow-he felt too good to act mean, though he visualized picking the little guinea up by his blue suit and throwing him through the window-grinning then-hearing his guinea scream going down thirty-nine floors to Biscayne Boulevard.