Gagliano,Anthony - Straits of Fortune.wps (22 page)

his outstretched arm, and handed Vivian a business card. I could tell by the tightness of his mouth that he had read the name on it and was trying hard to act unimpressed. Vivian read the card as we drove away from the gatehouse. I watched the guard through the rearview mirror, wondering if he might already be going for the phone. Vivian put the card on the dashboard. "Agent Hackbart," she said. "FBI. Shit. What now?" "Same as before," I said, "only quicker. I want to be in and out in ten minutes. Get your key ready." "I don't want to go to jail, Jack." "Why not? I thought you liked girls." Vivian didn't say anything. She was leaning forward, looking straight ahead, as though we were on a roller coaster that was sweeping downward at full speed. The mansion of glass had already captured the sunlight and was sitting quietly on the rise with its glistening back to the sea. The flagpole still had no flag, and the Bentley, still parked outside the garage, was covered with drops of dew. I looked over at the small guesthouse where Dominguez, the Colonel's chauffeur, lived. His little white Toyota was gone, and the windows were covered with hurricane shutters. I parked the car behind the massive garage and killed the engine. Vivian watched me intently as I took Space's .45 out from beneath the seat. Just to be sure, I checked the clip and snapped it back in again. Despite the gun I felt vaguely un- armed, and for a moment I didn't want to get out of the car. "Let's use the back door," I said. "The one by the pool." Vivian followed behind me, her stiletto heels typing away on the pavement. We went quickly along the side of the house, down a path flanked by rosebushes, until we emerged in the backyard. I stopped suddenly. "What's wrong?" Vivian asked. I had expected to see the welcoming, jewel-blue water of 191

the swimming pool just as I had a few days before, but it was empty. The pool had been drained. "I guess your father doesn't plan on doing much swim- ming here for a while," I said. My heart beat out a mild version of the fandango as we stepped through the French doors and into the house. I grabbed Vivian's wrist and put my finger to my lips as I listened to the nothing there was to hear. Then, very quietly, like a pair of thieves, we scurried down the hall that led to the living room and main stairway, and I couldn't help thinking about the last time I'd raced up a staircase with a gun in my hand. There was a lot more light this time around, yet in another way just as much darkness. It occurred to me that nothing in me had changed. I shook the thought from my head and turned back to Vivian. Her dark eyes glowed with fear. The sound of her heels clicking on the marble tiles had begun to drive me crazy. "Take off your shoes," I said. "You're making too much damned noise." "That gun of yours is making me nervous," she told me in a tight whisper. "Can't you put it away? There's nobody home." "Sorry, I don't believe in concealed weapons," I said. "Sends the wrong message." The faces in the paintings stared at us as we approached Vivian's bedroom at the end of the hall. The house of glass felt empty, but in a place that big it was hard to tell. Vivian unlocked the door while I stood facing back down the hallway. Then we were inside. Vivian locked the door behind her while I scanned the room with eyes and gun. The closet door was open, as were most of the drawers, and there were heaps of clothing on the floor just about everywhere you looked. 192

The place had been gone through, no doubt by Williams. Otherwise everything looked as it had a few days earlier: The teddy bear still reigned from atop the satin pillows stacked on the waterbed and the big-bellied brass Buddha was still smoking his cigarette amid an audience of dead flowers. "Hurry up," I said. "This place has a bad feel to it." Vivian, still carrying her shoes by their skinny straps, darted to the bed, grabbed the teddy bear as though it were a delinquent child, and began twisting its small, brown, dis- believing head. I watched in amazement as she unscrewed the head and tossed it onto the floor next to her shoes. Then she got the decapitated bear by its leg and shook it over the white quilt. Something that looked like a gray seedpod fell out and bounced on the quilt. It was one of those extremely compact, extremely portable minidrives with a USB connector at one end. Vivian reached down to pick it up, but I was faster and scooped it up before she could grab it. I checked it out for a second, then put it in my pocket. "I'll hold on to this, if you don't mind. Nice trick," I said. "The bear, I mean." "My mother gave it to me. I used to keep pot in it when I was a kid." "Put the head back on, and let's get out of here," I said. "No need for anyone to know we were here." We were halfway down the stairs when I heard the sound of tires crunching on the white gravel that bordered the drive. A moment later there was the sound of a car door slamming shut. Vivian froze on the steps behind me. I looked back at her. Her eyes were bright with fear. "Who?" she asked. "Williams . . . ?" "Maybe. Come on," I said. "Out the back." The doorbell rang just as we hit the first floor. We ran 193

along the hall that led back to the pool, Vivian's bare feet padding away on the marble tiles. We sprinted past the Colo- nel's failed Japanese garden and headed out toward the back of the garage where I had parked. There was a space be- tween the mansion and the garage that looked out toward the driveway. I peeked around the corner. Only a fraction of the driveway was visible, but the space was wide enough for me to spot the rear end of a black sedan. In a way I was relieved. "It's not Williams," I said. "It's the cops." "Now what?" Vivian demanded desperately. "We can't take the car. They'll nail us before we hit the causeway." I looked back over my shoulder at the ripple-free expanse of the ocean behind us. Then I saw the seawall. It went beyond the house and disappeared from view behind a blockade of hedges. "Where's that seawall go?" I asked. "Not far. We share it with the neighbor next door, about three lots away." "All right. That's it, then." We ran down to where the seawall stood futile guard against the ocean. One good-size hurricane and the Colo- nel's glass house would be an aquarium. The cement wall, four feet high and two feet wide, made about as much sense as the stunted bonsai trees, but for now it was our only road out. I helped Vivian onto the seawall, then climbed up after her. The hedges at the end of the Colonel's property were backed up by a wrought-iron fence that extended to the edge of the wall. The hedges were too wide to step around, so the only way to the lot next door would be to grab hold of one of the bars with my left hand. I could do it easily enough, but I wasn't sure about Vivian. I told her to stand as close to me as possible, then pressed the left side of my body as far into 194

the hedges as I could. I reached out with my left hand and grasped a single rusty iron bar. With my right arm, I took Vivian by her waist. The plan was to swing out and around the fence to the vacant lot next door. I stretched out my left leg as far as it would go and told Vivian to grab me around the neck. I felt her arms trembling against my chest. "Are you sure you can do this?" she asked. "Hold on." I braced myself, measuring my strength. Vivian weighed about 110, and I would have to support her weight as we swung out over the ocean. "Why don't we just give ourselves up?" she asked plain- tively. "Not yet." I tightened the muscles in my left leg and pushed off with my right leg extended about forty-five degrees, like the pencil end of a compass, as it swung out over the water. Vivian's weight added to the swing's momentum. We did a complete 180-degree turn around the hedges, with so much force that I nearly lost my grip. My right foot swung around and down, begging for a foothold on the seawall on the other side of the fence. Vivian screamed as her legs trailed behind us in midair. My foot tapped on the far wall, slid a bit, then found traction. I twisted my body with everything I had and whipped Vivian around with such force that the arc of the swing propelled us both into the lot next door. I landed on my back in the dirt with Vivian on top of me. After a moment of cautious silence, Vivian got up and began brushing the dirt and sand from her bare legs. I didn't get up right away. The fall and her weight had knocked the breath out of me, and I'd strained my left shoulder. I sat up and rotated the arm. There was a slight pop, and all was right with the world. 195

Vivian, oddly enough, was smiling with obvious delight. "That was wild," she said. "I thought you were going to drop me." I got up slowly and winced at the pain in my lower back. "Maybe I should have." The lot we had landed in was also owned by the Colo- nel, but he hadn't done much with the acreage except keep anyone else from buying it while he made up his mind what to do with it. About a hundred yards away, a solitary crane leaned over the rubble like a dinosaur looking for something to eat. To the left, near the street, a Cyclone fence stretched toward the next house, about 150 yards down the beach. Vivian couldn't run in her bare feet, and her heels were out of the question, so it took us a while to reach the fence. When we finally did, we had to follow it almost until we reached the next mansion before we found a hole someone had cut into the fence. The traffic was light on the causeway, but with no other pedestrians around to keep us company, we were far too con- spicuous. It would only be a matter of time before whoever it was who had come calling on the Colonel would head back to the mainland again, in which case we might easily be spotted. We had to get off the causeway, and fast. We walked east toward the beach, with me glancing back praying for a cab but seeing nothing. I was starting to lose all hope when I saw a yellow taxi heading our way. It was illegal to pick up passengers on the causeway, but, fortunately, for us, the Haitian driver swooped in like a hawk, did exactly what he wasn't supposed to do, and was off again even before I had the door closed. The driver looked us over through the rearview mirror, his eyes lingering on Vivian with obvious approval. "Where you come from?" he asked. "West Hell, New Jersey," I said. "We need to get to the 196

Holiday Inn up in Hollywood. You know where it is?" "West Hell, is this a real place?" "Sure." "The devil. He live there?" "No," I said. "He moved to Miami." "When he move?" the driver asked. "About the same time I did." The Haitian laughed. He thought it was funnier than I did. Vivian laid her head on my shoulder as I gazed out the window. The sun was beaming through the early morning haze, and a cruise ship was sliding toward port. A row of passengers stood outside their cabins, staring at the traffic on the causeway. Take away the cops, the FBI, and Williams trying to kill me and it would have seemed liked the begin- ning of a pretty nice day. I let my head fall back and allowed myself to fall asleep. I came back to myself when the cab swerved into the driveway of the hotel. While I had dozed off, the ten miles had slipped away like a silk scarf sliding off a stripper's neck. I nudged Vivian to awaken her. I paid the driver, and he swung out of the parking lot and back into traffic without so much as a single glance in any direction. The hotel lobby was quiet, but the little coffee stand was already opened when we walked in. Vivian insisted on some espresso, so we helped ourselves to two cups along with a crusty bar of Cuban toast slathered in salty butter, then went out to the pool and sat at a table under a green-and-white umbrella while the sky put on its makeup. "How do you think this is all going to end, Jack?" Vivian asked. "I can't keep going on like this. I can't keep running." "A lot depends on your father and Williams," I said. "And a lot also depends on how much the cops know or think they know. I'm betting that at this stage of the game all they care 197

about is your father's drug business. You can be sure they've been watching him for a long time. So far as I know, the feds have no idea what happened to Matson or Duncan. Let's hope it stays that way. It'll be better for everybody." "What about you?" Vivian asked. "If they catch Williams and ask about the yacht . . . well, let me put it to you like this: Either Williams can tell them the truth--in which case I go down--or he can plead igno- rance. If I had to put money on it, I'd pick the second choice. Not to protect me, mind you. Williams doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone except the Colonel. It would just be less complicated to say he didn't know what happened to The Carrousel. That's what I would do." I took the flash drive out of my pocket and held it up for Vivian to see. "What happens next depends on this," I said. "I'm pretty sure that once Williams gets hold of this, he and your papa-- wherever he is--will disappear, fade away, go off somewhere and find a friendly Third World country that will help them manufacture Morphitrex and whatever else they can come up with. My money is on Cuba." "Why Cuba?" Vivian asked. I looked out past the pool and east toward the ocean just as a pelican made a nosedive into the sea. "A couple of things. One, it's close. Two, Duncan, Mat- son's boat buddy, was a Cuban spy. Three, and juiciest of all, is that Cuba has a world-class biotech industry--as good as anything we have here, or damned close. A party drug like Morphitrex would mean a lot of money for Castro. Of course, he wouldn't be involved in it directly. He's too smart for that, but you can bet he'll have a hand in it, like a puppet master, from a distance." I took one last sip of my coffee. The sugar at the bottom of the Styrofoam cup slid into my mouth as slowly as maple 198

syrup, and I gulped a glass of water down to wash away the harsh sweetness. "Go get your brother," I said. "I thought you were going to go into business with Nick and me." "You're not the only one who can lie." "But you'd look so good in money, baby. Now you'll have to work." She made it sound like I was doomed to a life in the tin mines of Bolivia. "What's with you and the money thing?" I demanded. "You still have that cash in the Caymans, don't you?" I asked. "How can I get it now, with Matson dead? It's in escrow, and besides, he never gave us the account number." "Go up and get your brother. Forget the money. We'll be lucky if we get out of this alive." Vivian stood up, hooked her thumbs under the spaghetti straps of her dress and straightened them out, then gave her miniskirt just enough of a downward tug to keep it from be- coming a sash. Every time I looked at her, I understood once again why hell would always be crowded. "I'm not sure I trust you anymore," she said. "Now we're even." When the door of the elevator closed, I walked quickly out of the lobby and across the street to the cybercaf�n the corner. They had just opened up, and the sleepy-eyed kid behind the counter moved in slow motion as he set me up at a desktop near the front window. I wasn't high-tech enough to know exactly how to do what I wanted to do and had to ask him for help downloading the information on the drive we'd swiped from Vivian's room into an e-mail attachment, which I then sent to Susan with a brief explanation of its contents. All this was to buy myself a little leverage with the feds when everything hit the fan. 199