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It didn’t take long for Teddy Sinatra to find the person he came to see in the sea of people inside the midtown bar. For one thing he wore an old-fashioned three-piece suit in the mostly hip, thirtysomething crowd, and for another thing he was smoking some Cuban shit most in that joint would have viewed as beneath their more urbane tastes. But mainly, Teddy noticed as he made his way to the table, the guy he was there to see looked as if he was going to piss in his pants.

“Hey good looking.”

Teddy glanced back at the woman as she walked by, and she gave him that I’m interested if you’re interested grin, but he didn’t return her smile. The last thing on his mind was some random female. He was in a bar, but he was in that bar to handle business.

Jerry “Bugs” Cartelli was there for business, too, as he straightened his coat lapel on his three-piece polyester suit and kept squirming in his chair. He hated meetings like these. Especially with an asshole like Teddy T, which supposedly meant Tower of Strength , as if Teddy was this towering figure while Bugs, who hated his own nickname, was a bug on that tower.

But Teddy T was nothing more than a showoff if you asked Bugs, as he rode around town in a Bugatti like he was Sal fucking Gabrini. Whose muscles always strained the suits he wore and whose good looks he went out of his way to make sure got the attention of every woman in the room, including Bugs’ old lady once upon a time. And he had the nerve to be rich and powerful too? And flaunted it every chance he could? Bugs couldn’t stand the sight of the man.

But he was nobody’s fool. He knew Teddy hated everything about him, too, from the fact that he was a former cop kicked off the force years ago, to how he had to make his living now. Wiseguys like Teddy used to be his pleasure to take down. Now he needed him, and needed to keep propping him up.

“If it ain’t Teddy T in the flesh.” Teddy had arrived at the table. “How you doing? You looking more and more like your old man every day. Anybody ever tell you that? Have a seat, my friend. Have a seat.”

They weren’t friends and never would be. Teddy despised snitches. Especially ex-cop snitches like Bugs Cartelli. But he needed intel. He sat down. “What you got for me, Bugs?”

Bugs knew it was coming, but still hated it. “Why you keep calling me that, Teddy? How many times I got to tell you I don’t like that name?”

“When did I care what you like? You’re a fucking snitch, who gives a shit? Just tell me what you got.”

“I’m an informant, not a snitch,” Bugs corrected him as he took a drag on his cigar. “There’s a difference. I’m trying to help your organization over here, not hurt it. Don’t I deserve some respect for that?” Then he glanced over at the two bodyguards that had entered the bar with Teddy. Although they sat at different tables nearby, as if they weren’t with Teddy at all, Bugs had been around that mob life long enough to know security when he saw it. He also knew Teddy T never went anywhere with bodyguards unless problems and situations were going on. “And from what I’m seeing,” Bugs added, “you need the help I’m here to give or you’d be flying solo.”

Teddy hated bodyguards. He hated that two of his capos had to follow him around like he was some fucking starlet. But it was on his old man’s orders and nobody disobeyed the old man’s orders. Teddy ran the Sinatra crime family with ironclad rule, and everybody respected that. But his old man ran him.

But Bugs wasn’t wrong. Teddy needed his help. He needed more intel before he gave the final go to his men. They had a target already, and was planning a strike, but his gut kept telling him it might not be the right target, or the right strike, or both. And nine times out of ten Bugs Cartelli, as despicable a human being as he absolutely was, always gave good intel. “What you got for me? Don’t waste my time.”

Bugs hesitated as if he was regretting his decision to snitch on Sinatra’s behalf already. But he needed the money. And nobody paid better than Teddy T. “It’s not who you think it is,” he said.

Teddy stared at Bugs. “How do you know what I think?”

Bugs didn’t respond. He could tell by the changed look on Teddy’s tortured face that he had struck a chord.

And he had. He hit the nail on the head. Teddy needed to know he had the right target. Bugs was telling him he didn’t. Bugs was telling him more than the normal street chatter he expected to hear from him.

But before he could respond, the waiter came to their table and placed two whiskey mugs in front of them. Bugs, being the asshole Teddy knew him to be, had already ordered before Teddy arrived, and had ordered for Teddy too.

“Anything else?” the waiter asked them.

“No, we’re good,” said Bugs with a smile, and the waiter left.

“If I’m on the wrong track, who’s the right track?” Teddy tried to sound as if it was a throwaway question, although it was the million dollar question, as he picked up his mug and smelled the whiskey.

Bugs was unbothered by Teddy’s sudden casualness. He knew he had that bastard exactly where he wanted him. “It’s Potter Rarsi,” he said.

Teddy, who was about to take a swig of his whiskey, stopped his mug at the tip of his bottom lip when he heard that name. Then he sat the mug back on the table altogether.

Bugs knew it was going to be a hard sell. He knew the relationship Rarsi had with the Sinatra family. “I know you don’t wanna hear that, but I’m not fucking with you. I’m telling you it’s Rarsi.”

“Potter Rarsi? Bullshit!”

“Why would I lie, Teddy? Think about it. You got three capos dead. One after the other one: bam, bam, bam. All three were made men. All three supposedly died by suicide, according to the cops, which we both know is the real bullshit. But all three got one thing in common. You know what that is?”

“Hell yeah I know what it is. They all worked for me.”

“And Rarsi,” said Bugs.

Teddy didn’t expect to hear that. “They what ?”

“All three were on Rarsi’s payroll too.”

“Are you trying to tell me that my guys, my capos, were two-timing me ?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, yes.”

“They wouldn’t dare. And neither would Rarsi go along with something that whacked. You gotta give me more than that, Bugs.”

“I’m telling you what I know. Not what I think. What I know.”

“How you know it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Yeah right.”

“But I’m telling you the truth. My intel is the best intel in this town and you can’t tell me it’s not. That’s why you keep coming back for more.”

“Okay, hotshot, answer this,” said Teddy. “What Rarsi had to offer them? You tell me that. They were making fifty times what his capos make. They were with the biggest and most powerful organization in the underworld. They were dead men walking if they two-timed me and they knew it. What Rarsi had to offer them?”

Bugs didn’t hesitate. “Revenge.”

Teddy frowned. “What revenge? What are you talking?”

“Revenge against you and your old man. That’s what Rarsi could give to them. And it was an easy buy. They feed him intel on the what and the where with shipments from your various ports of call, and he keeps their double-dealing undercover while Rarsi works his destruction.”

“What’s he trying to destroy?”

Bugs smiled. “Obviously you and your old man.”

“Why would a man that’s been my father’s friend for decades suddenly want to destroy him?”

“I don’t know that yet. But whatever it is, it’s big.”

Teddy had a gruff look on his face. But even Bugs could tell it was more out of frustration by what he just heard than anger toward him: the messenger. But Teddy was thrown. There was no getting around it. “What you expect me to do with news like that?” he asked Bugs.

“Believe it. I wouldn’t put my reputation on the line, not to mention my life on the line, by coming up in your face telling you a lie. I need the money too bad. And I actually like my life.” Then Bugs took a long swig of his whiskey and then sat the mug down. “I’ll get more intel soon enough. More precise intel. But I already gave you way more than you already had.”

That was a fact. But Teddy needed more. There was no way he could go up in Rarsi’s face based on what? Some ex crooked cop spilling tea? He had to have more.

“But how much more intel I’m willing to risk my neck over,” said Bugs, “is entirely dependent on how much you’re willing to pay for what I’ve already given. Which would be a good indicator to me of what I can expect once I get more intel and give it to you.”

It was a no-brainer that Teddy was going big. He needed that intel and Bugs seemed to be the only one with some. “Twenty-five grand. Triple that when you bring me more.”

Bugs smiled. It was more than he could have hoped for. “That’s why I like working for you, Teddy T. You look out for your people.”

“Number one, you don’t work for me. Number two, your kind will never be my people. This is a business transaction. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Bugs knew he was scum. He knew he was a crooked ex-cop that did a lot of crooked shit in his day. But he hated the way Teddy never let him forget it. The way Teddy always treated him like he was slime. But the money made him smile. “Glad doing business with you,” he said. Then he stood up and made his way toward the restrooms where the actual transaction would take place.

Teddy motioned for one of his capos to come over to him. When the capo arrived, he leaned down to the boss. “Twenty-five grand,” Teddy whispered to him. “And pace-make his ass.” Which meant the capo was to plant a bug on Bugs while he was handing him the cash.

“Got it,” the capo said, and headed for the restroom to handle the transaction.

But the money was the least thing on Teddy’s mind. Because that news had blown him away. It was like he had said Sal Gabrini or Monk Paletti was double-crossing Pop. That was how close Potter Rarsi was to the Sinatra family. Their organizations never had an issue with one another ever. But if what Bugs said was true and Rarsi’s syndicate did have footprints in his syndicate, then Teddy knew he had bigger trouble than some idiot offing three of his capos and making it look like suicide.

But what if Bugs was full of shit and had another agenda? Or was purposely dishing out disinformation? The fact that Teddy had ordered his capo to place a bug on Bugs would help them get an idea where he was getting his intel from. But as a demonstration of how seriously Teddy was taking the intel, he text his third in line and ordered him to put a tail on Cartelli. They needed all they could get.

“I thought that was you!”

Teddy looked up and saw a blast from the past standing near his table. His bodyguard had stood up and stopped her from completely approaching him, but it was undeniable who she was: A gorgeous lady he used to know intimately, and one he had actually considered marrying, if he was ever to marry at all, before he met Nikki.

But there she was, in every ounce of her gorgeous flesh, after all these years.

As if he didn’t have enough shit on his plate already.