earnest efforts to help at every turn, enduring much nonsense from their
visibly deranged partner.
It was, in retrospect, a useful experience for me, one I relied on for later
works of fiction. I'd seen mobsters around before, of course, but I'd never
worked in a place that was out-and-out mobbed up, where I came to
know on a personal basis real wise guys, whose names I recognized from
the papers. Everyone was astonishingly up front about their connections.
My boss was fond of yelling into the phone when discussing prices with
a purveyor: "You know who I am? You know who I'm with?!"
We did things differently at Billy's.
My cooks, for one: every one of them came from the Fortune Society,
guys who spent their off-hours in halfway houses, allowed out only to
work. I was used to working with a fairly rough bunch, a lot of whom, at
one time or another, had had problems with the law—but at Billy's,
every single one of my cooks was still basically a convict. I can't say that
it was an unhappy arrangement, either; for once I knew my cooks were
going to show up at work every day, if they didn't, they went back to
prison.
And credit was easily obtained. I knew, from previous experience, how
difficult it is to set up terms for a new restaurant; even getting a week's
credit with some of these companies was usually a lengthy process,
involving credit applications, a long wait, initial periods of cash on
delivery. At Billy's, no sooner was I off the phone than stuff was
arriving, often on sixty-day terms. Produce and dry-goods people who'd
been loath to offer even two weeks at other places I'd worked were
suddenly all too happy to give me all the time I wanted.
My boss spent a lot of time on the phone, investigating the serious
business of horses and their bloodlines, and how well they ran in mud or
on grass. Billy himself, at eighteen, was happy to drive his sports car