her toast. "It pleases me."
"Then consider it done. By the way, anyone ever call you anything but Graciela?"
"What would they call me?"
"I dunno. Gracie?"
She made a face like she'd sat on a hot coal.
"Grazi?"
Another face.
"Ella?" he tried.
"Why would anyone do such a thing? Graciela is the name my parents gave me."
"My parents gave me a name too."
"But you cut it in half."
"It's Joe," he said. "Like Jose."
"I know what it means," she said as she finished her meal. "But Jose means Joseph. It does not mean Joe. You should be called Joseph."
"You sound like my father. He would only call me Joseph."
"Because that's your name," she said. "You eat very slowly, like a bird."
"I've heard that."
Her eyes rose at something behind him and he turned in his chair to see Albert White walk through the back door. He hadn't aged a day, though he was softer than Joe remembered, a banker's paunch beginning to form over his belt. He still favored white suits and white hats and white spats. Still had that saunter that suggested the world was a playground built to amuse him. He walked in with Bones and Brenny Loomis and picked up a chair as he came. His boys followed suit, and they put the chairs down at Joe's table and sat in them - Albert beside Joe, Loomis and Bones flanking Graciela, their impassive faces fixed on Joe.
"What's it been?" Albert said. "A little over two years?"
"Two and a half," Joe said and sipped his coffee.
"If you say so," Albert said. "You're the one who went to prison, and if there's one thing I know about convicts it's that they count days real keen." He reached over Joe's arm and plucked a sausage off his plate, started eating it like it was a chicken leg. "Why didn't you go for your heater?"
"Maybe I'm not carrying."
Albert said, "No, truly."
"I figure you're a businessman, Albert, and this place is a bit public for a gunfight."
"I disagree." Albert gave the place the once-over. "Looks perfectly acceptable to me. Good lighting, nice sight lines, not too much clutter."
The cafe owner, a nervous Cuban woman in her fifties, looked even more nervous. She could read the energy between the men and she wanted that energy to leave through the windows or leave through the door but leave soon. An older couple sat at the counter by her and they were oblivious, arguing over whether to see a flicker tonight at Tampa Theatre or catch Tito Broca's set at the Tropicale.
Otherwise, the place was empty.
Joe checked on Graciela. Her eyes were a fair bit wider than usual, and a vein he'd never seen before had appeared, throbbing, in the center of her throat, but otherwise she seemed calm, hands as steady as her breathing.
Albert took another bite of sausage and leaned toward her. "What's your name, hon'?"
"Graciela."
"You a light nigger or a dark spic? I can't tell."
She smiled at him. "I'm from Austria. Isn't it obvious?"
Albert roared. He slapped his thigh and slapped the table and even the oblivious old couple looked over.
"Oh, that's a good one." He said to Loomis and Bones, "Austria."
They didn't get it.
"Austria!" he said, thrusting both hands out at them, the sausage still dangling from one. He sighed. "Forget it." He turned back. "So Graciela from Austria, what's your full name?"
"Graciela Dominga Maela Corrales."
Albert whistled. "That's quite a mouthful, but I bet you have plenty of experience with mouthfuls, don't you, hon'?"
"Don't," Joe said. "Just . . . Albert? Don't. Leave her out of this."
Albert turned back to Joe as he chewed the last of the sausage. "Past experience would suggest I'm not good at that, Joe."
Joe nodded. "What do you want here?"
"I want to know why you didn't learn anything in prison. Too busy taking it up the ass? You get out, come down here, and in two days you try to muscle me? How fucking stupid they make you in there, Joe?"
"Maybe I was just trying to get your attention," Joe said.
"Then you were a smashing success," Albert said. "Today we started hearing back from my bars, my restaurants, my pool halls, every speak I got tucked away from here to Sarasota that they don't pay me anymore. They pay you. So naturally I went to talk to Esteban Suarez, and he's suddenly got more armed guards than the U.S. Mint. Can't be bothered to meet with me. You think you and a gang of wops and, what, niggers I hear?"
"Cubans."
Albert helped himself to a