Chapter 102: Maximum Capability
Ned stood in Aldrich's garden holding his badge and his gun, looking at Andrew with the expression of someone who had run the calculation and not liked the result.
"Mr. Sanchez," he said. "What would it take."
It wasn't quite a question.
Andrew looked at him. He'd been thinking about it since Ned had stood up and straightened his shirt — what the right resolution was, what he actually wanted out of this.
He didn't want Ned in legal trouble, particularly. That wasn't the point. The point was the behavior and the assumption behind it — that Andrew was someone you could quietly investigate based on a nephew's feeling, that the investigation was acceptable because of who Andrew was and who the nephew was connected to.
That assumption needed correcting.
"Your nephew," Andrew said. "Whoever told you I had inappropriate intentions toward his girlfriend. I want him here. In person. And I want an apology — from him, directly, to me."
Ned's expression cycled through something.
"That's it?" he said.
"That's it," Andrew said. "No court, no report to your department, no mention of any of this to anyone. Your nephew comes, he apologizes, we're done."
Ned looked at the ground briefly. Then: "Can I have some time to—"
"No," Andrew said.
A pause.
"Tomorrow," Andrew said. "Noon. Central Perk on the corner of Grove and Bedford. I'll be there."
Ned absorbed this. He was a man who understood leverage and its limits, and he could clearly see both from where he was standing. He had a career, a family, a reputation built over twenty years. Whatever he'd told himself about the investigation when he'd started it — protecting his nephew, due diligence, a cop's instinct — none of that survived the reality of being caught on a mob-connected property doing unauthorized surveillance on a private citizen.
"All right," he said. "We'll be there."
He picked up his things, walked through the garden gate without rushing, and was gone.
Andrew watched him go.
"What an unexpected afternoon," he said, mostly to himself.
Aldrich made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Come inside. There's more tea."
In the sitting room, Aldrich poured from a pot that had been steeping and handed Andrew a cup.
He was, Andrew had noticed over their three previous conversations, genuinely interested in things that had nothing to do with the world he'd spent his life operating in. Books, tea, the history of neighborhoods. He'd asked Andrew detailed questions about food — technique, regional variation, the difference between what a recipe said and what an experienced cook actually did. He listened to the answers the way intelligent people listened when they wanted to understand something rather than just be told about it.
Andrew had found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he genuinely enjoyed talking to him.
"The nephew," Aldrich said. "You have an idea who it is."
"I have a suspicion," Andrew said.
He turned it over in his mind. Someone who knew him well enough to be aware of his relationships with women in their social orbit. Someone possessive enough about a girlfriend to take the suspicion to an uncle rather than address it directly. Someone with an uncle who was both a cop and a part-time attorney, which was a specific combination.
He was fairly sure he knew.
He'd confirm it at noon tomorrow.
"Some things arrange themselves," Aldrich said. "You don't have to chase every problem. Sometimes letting it come to you is more efficient."
"I'm learning that," Andrew said.
They drank their tea and talked about the summer, and the conversation drifted, as it often did with Aldrich, into territory that had nothing to do with either of their immediate situations — the changing shape of the city, what the neighborhoods along the waterfront had been thirty years ago versus what they were becoming, the specific way New York reinvented itself every decade while pretending it had always been exactly what it currently was.
Andrew left at four with the particular feeling of having spent time in a room with someone genuinely worth talking to.
The next morning. Ten-forty. Central Perk.
Andrew had arrived at ten-thirty, claimed the couch, and was working through a piece of the coffee cake he'd brought — his own, the recipe he'd been developing for the past few months, the one Gunther had started stocking behind the counter after it had moved faster than either of them expected.
That had started, improbably, with Joey.
Joey had been eating a piece of the coffee cake while talking to a woman at the counter, and when he'd come back from the bathroom she'd taken a bite of it. The resulting situation had required Andrew to physically intervene before it became something Gunther would have to call someone about. Afterward, Gunther had looked at the remaining cake, looked at Andrew, and said: "People want what other people want. How much can you make per week?"
Andrew now made three deliveries a week. The margin was better than the food truck for the hours involved.
The food truck had been, in practice, less romantic than the idea of it. He'd imagined it as something out of a movie — the late-night service window, the city as backdrop, the specific freedom of a kitchen on wheels. The reality had been repetitive prep work, weather, parking negotiations, and the specific exhaustion of physical labor after a long day of everything else. He'd kept it going because it had paid the bills during the period when he'd needed it to.
Now he needed it less.
He'd parked it for the week. Possibly longer.
Chandler and Ross were on the adjacent couch. He'd called them last night — come in tomorrow at noon, there's something worth seeing — and they'd come, because they were both constitutionally unable to resist the promise of something worth seeing.
"Is this actually going to be interesting," Chandler said, "or is it going to be interesting in the way where we feel vaguely uncomfortable afterward?"
"Both, probably," Andrew said.
"Great," Chandler said.
Ross had his coffee and was reading the Times with the focused attention of someone who read newspapers as a daily practice rather than a reaction to events. He lowered it briefly. "Who are we waiting for?"
"You'll see," Andrew said.
The door opened.
Susan came in first.
Andrew raised his hand to wave and then registered, immediately behind her, Carol.
His expression did something involuntary.
Susan caught it and gave him the specific look of someone who had been outmaneuvered and was not entirely surprised by their own outmaneuvering.
Carol was visibly pregnant — further along than Andrew had tracked — and moved with the particular careful deliberateness of someone in the later stages of a pregnancy navigating a busy coffee shop. Susan helped her to the armchair adjacent to the couch with the attentiveness of someone who had taken on the role of primary support person and was executing it seriously.
Andrew leaned toward Susan while Carol settled. "I said."
"I know what you said," Susan said, quietly. "She found out and wanted to come. What was I supposed to do?"
"Not tell her," Andrew said.
"I tell Carol everything," Susan said, with the tone of someone stating a fundamental operating principle that was not subject to revision.
Andrew sat back and thought about Ross, who had spent years married to Carol and had been, by all accounts, relatively easy to manage in the direction Carol wanted him to go. He thought about Susan, who had been with Carol for less than two years and appeared to be operating at approximately the same manageability level.
He thought about whether this was a Carol skill or just a Carol quality — the specific gravity that organized people around her preferences without her having to particularly insist.
He decided it was both.
"Carol," Andrew said. "Monica's coming."
"I know," Carol said pleasantly. She had arranged herself in the armchair with the composure of someone who had decided how this afternoon was going to go.
"You and Monica—"
"I'll be fine," Carol said. "I'm very calm these days. It's the pregnancy." She smiled. "Everything is very calm."
Ross had lowered his newspaper fully and was watching Carol with the expression of a man who had lived with this woman for five years and was currently running a rapid threat assessment.
"Carol," Ross said carefully.
"Ross," Carol said. "Read your paper."
Ross looked at his paper. Looked at Carol. Looked at Andrew.
Andrew looked at the door.
Ned Lavie came in at twelve-oh-two.
He was in street clothes — civilian, off-duty, making a deliberate choice about the register in which he was showing up. Behind him, looking considerably less composed than his uncle, was a young man in his mid-twenties who Andrew recognized immediately.
Paolo.
Monica's Paolo. The Italian guy — charming, handsome, the one Monica had been seeing on and off since the spring, the one who'd been attentive and warm in company and whom Andrew had privately assessed as significantly less straightforward than his presentation suggested.
Who had apparently told his uncle that Andrew had inappropriate intentions toward his girlfriend.
Andrew looked at Paolo.
Paolo looked at Andrew with the expression of someone who had agreed to this meeting without fully understanding what it would involve and was now revising his understanding.
Chandler, on the adjacent couch, said very quietly: "Oh."
Ross had put the newspaper down completely.
Ned guided Paolo to the chairs across from the couch and sat down. He had the manner of someone completing an obligation — present, doing the thing, ready for it to be over.
Paolo sat with slightly less composure.
"Mr. Sanchez," Ned said. "We're here."
"Thank you for coming," Andrew said. He looked at Paolo. "I think you know why we're here."
Paolo straightened slightly. He had the specific quality of someone who was accustomed to social situations going well for him and was recalibrating for a situation that wasn't. "I was concerned," he said. "For Monica. I heard things—"
"You told your uncle I had inappropriate intentions toward your girlfriend," Andrew said. "Your uncle ran an unauthorized investigation on me based on that. I'd like to understand what you heard and from whom."
Paolo was quiet for a moment.
"I saw you together," he said. "Several times. The way you are with her — comfortable. Familiar. I thought—"
"You thought what you chose to think," Andrew said. "Without asking Monica. Without asking me. You went to someone with a badge."
Paolo's jaw tightened slightly.
"I was protecting—"
"You were managing," Andrew said. "There's a difference." He kept his voice even and his tone conversational. This wasn't a confrontation — it was a correction. "Monica is my friend. I've worked alongside her. If you have concerns about your relationship with her, the person to talk to is her. Not your uncle."
The table was quiet.
Ned, to his credit, said nothing. He was there to fulfill an agreement, not to defend Paolo.
Paolo looked at the table. Something moved across his face — not quite embarrassment, but the adjacent quality. He was a man who liked to manage situations, Andrew thought, and he was currently in one he hadn't managed.
"I apologize," Paolo said, eventually. Directed at Andrew. "It was — not the right approach."
Andrew looked at him for a moment.
"All right," Andrew said.
He meant it. The apology was adequate. The point had been made. There was no value in prolonging it past the point of resolution.
He looked at Ned. "Thank you, Officer."
Ned nodded once, with the dignity of someone who had come to do a thing and had done it. He stood, gestured to Paolo, and they left.
The door closed.
The couch was quiet for a moment.
"Paolo," Chandler said. "Huh."
"Monica's Paolo," Ross said, with a complicated expression. He had a specific history with the subject of Monica's romantic life and people who were wrong for her, dating back to the days when he'd been in a position to have opinions about it.
"Does Monica know about any of this?" Chandler said.
"No," Andrew said.
"Are you going to tell her?"
Andrew thought about it. Telling Monica meant telling her that her boyfriend had gone to a cop about Andrew based on jealousy, which meant a conversation about the jealousy, which meant Monica having to navigate a set of feelings about Paolo that were better navigated by Monica on Monica's timeline.
"Eventually," Andrew said. "When it's relevant."
Chandler accepted this. Ross looked like he wanted to say several things and was exercising restraint.
Carol, from the armchair, said: "He's not right for her."
Everyone looked at her.
Carol had her coffee and the specific composure of someone who had made an observation they stood behind completely.
"The Italian?" Susan said.
"He's managing her," Carol said. "The good-looking ones who manage — it always ends the same way."
She sipped her coffee.
The table was quiet again, for different reasons than before.
[Observation (Proficient): 85/100]
Andrew picked up his coffee cake and finished it.
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