"Take as much as you want. Get me out of here. Fast!"
The tires squealed, and the cab launched like a rocket. Through the rear window, the Greek saw Madera's men huffing and puffing, cursing one another at the curb.
He was smiling, feeling smug and even a little full of himself over the getaway. But then reality hit, and the smile ran from his lips. The bottom line was that he still owed the Russians five hundred thousand dollars. And if there was one thing worse than having the Russians out to kill you, he had just found it.
Now it was the Russians and the Italians.
Chapter
30
The biscotti were selling like hotcakes. That was the noon report from Sofia's nephew, the assistant manager at Angelo's Bakery.
"Hot cakes should be so lucky to sell like my biscotti," said Sofia.
It's wasn't bragging. Angelo's was the go-to bakery in the neighborhood, but people drove miles out of their way for the biscotti, which had always been a point of personal pride for Sofia. The famous cannoli recipe was from her late husband's family, a treat reminiscent of Old World Sicily with traditional thin crust and ricotta filling. The biscotti, however, were her own baby--her way of proving that a Sicilian baker could outdo the Tuscans on their own invention. Sofia came up with something completely new every week, from cranberry-orange -
pistachio to vanilla-chocolate chunk. Her latest creation was a softer biscotti with tasty lemon frosting and a texture between a crispy cookie and crunchy biscotti. The secret ingredient was the leavening agent for a controlled release. Customers who hadn't touched biscotti in years for fear of breaking a tooth were addicted.
"Any more of the amaretto cookies?"
It was one of Sofia's regular customers, a tailor who had been making suits in the same shop across the street for thirty years. Sofia smiled from behind the counter.
"All gone, sorry."
"Will you have more tomorrow?"
Sofia's gaze had shifted back to the storefront window--and her attention shifted along with it.
"Sofia, will you make more tomorrow?"
She turned back to her customer, embarrassed. "What? Oh, sorry. Sure. I'll hold you a dozen."
"Grazie."
"Prego."
He left happy, and Sofia went to the window and pretended to watch him cross the street and disappear into his tailor shop. But her gaze wasn't following him. She was focused on the midnight
-
blue Mercedes-Benz parked a few doors down on the other side of the street.
Sofia's worries had started with Demetri's return. Just the fact that he'd tracked her down and shown up at her bakery, completely out of the blue, had been unsettling enough. Asking her to commit blackmail was unconscionable. She'd refused. He remained determined to convince her, and that was when the confusion had begun. She'd served him cappuccino with hazelnut biscotti, and he'd turned on his charm. She allowed him to talk about the old times, the happy times--that brief period in her life when she had thought everything was possible with Demetri. Back then, it was unheard of for a nineteen-year-old girl to leave Villa Rosa and run off to Cyprus with a foreigner, but Demetri had literally and figuratively swept Sofia off her feet. He was strong, handsome, and filled with the confidence of youth. She'd believed him when he vowed never to make her cry, when he promised on his honor to take her back to Sicily someday and buy the biggest house in Villa Rosa. She had been a willing and passionate partner in his plan to conquer the world. But that was all so long ago. Two old lovers separated by decades and reminiscing about such nonsense had given Demetri an emotional opening, a reason to hope that she would come around to see things his way. . It wasn't that he had any real claim to her affection, and sh e h ad certainly never regretted her life with Angelo at the bakery. But even after all these years, the good side of Demetri was an undeniable piece of her lonely heart. She only wished that she had never known his bad side.
"You're asking me to be a criminal," she had told him. "Think of another way, and maybe I will try to help you."
He had been sweet to her as long as possible, even shown her a tear--his heart breaking at Sofia's mere insinuation that he would use her. The weird thing was, she had almost stepped into his web, almost believed in his sincerity. For a moment. Then his notorious temper flared, and it had frightened her to the core. He left in a huff, and Sofia had been worried ever since. She'd barely slept last night, but a busy morning at the bakery could cure just about anything. By mid-morning she had just about convinced herself that she was being foolish and paranoid. If Demetri was in as much trouble as he'd claimed to be in, surely he had no time to waste prevailing on his ex-wife for help. It seemed almost inevitable that she had seen the last of him and his way of life.
Then that dark Mercedes had cruised slowly past her bakery and parked across the street. It had been there for over twenty minutes. Something told her that the two men inside hadn't come for the biscotti.
Sofia wiped her hands nervously in her white apron. One of the men on the street was talking on a cell phone. She wondered who he was calling.
Stop it, Sofia.
The telephone on the wall rang, and it gave Sophia a start. Her nephew was about to answer it, but she hurried past the cash register and grabbed it first. He gave her a funny look, but Sofia had a strange intuition about this call.
"Angelo's," she said.
She glanced out the window. The man standing by the Mercedes was no longer on his cell phone.
"Hello?" she said, trying once more.
"Sofia, is that you?"
It was Demetri's voice--not the stranger on the cell phone.
"Sofia is not here," she said.
"Amore mio, I know it's you."
"Please don't call her anymore."
She was about to hang up.
"It's life or death, listen to me!"
His desperation gripped her. Her nephew glanced over from behind the counter.
"Hold on," she told Demetri. "Let me go to the other phone."
"No! There's not time. Just listen to me!"
"But--"
"Don't talk, listen. I've done a terrible thing, a terrible, terrible thing. And I am so sorry."
Sofia shifted uncomfortably. Again her nephew seemed to sense her distress, and she turned away, burrowing herself in the corner behind the pastry display cabinet.
"Demetri, please."
"You have to go. Get out!"
"What?"
"I was so desperate when you turned me down, but I knew in my heart that you wanted to help me. I told them that you were the one who tried to sell the secret to Harry Swyteck's son and to that reporter. I told them I could--for money, I said I would . . . eliminate that threat."
The phone shook in her hand.
"I was bluffing," he said. "I was never going to hurt you. I could never do anything to hurt you. Please, please believe me. My plan was to take their money and take you away--back to Villa Rosa, just like I promised you forty-six years ago."
"I have to hang up," she said, her voice quaking.
"No, Sofia! You have to run. Dont you understand? They believed me when I told them you were trying to sell what you know. Now they are going to kill me, and they are going to kill you, too!"
Sofia's heart was pounding. She looked out the plate-glass window, between the lines of the hand-painted name of her late husband. The man on the street who had been speaking on the cell phone was coming down the sidewalk and walking toward the bakery. His partner was at his side. Sofia had seen men like these before, with their felt hats, expensive Italian-made overcoats, black leather gloves, and icy-cold eyes. It frightened her to the core to think that they were coming for her.
"Where can I go?"
"Just go! Now!"
Sofia hung up the phone. Her nephew was pretending to be busy rolling out pastry dough on the marble slab, but Sofia knew he had been watching her out of the corner of his eye. She untied her apron and hung it on the hook.
"What's the matter?" her nephew asked.
She grabbed her purse from under the counter, and pulled on her winter coat. Then she punched open the cash register and grabbed a handful of bills.
"Tid, where are you going?" he said.
She went to him, held his face in her hands, and kissed him on the lips. Her answer was an old Sicilian saying:
"Quandu si las (a vecchia p'a nova, sake die lasa ma non sabe che trova"
When you leave the old for the new, you know what you are leaving but not what you will find.
With a tear in her eye, Sofia turned and ran out the bac
k d
oor.
Chapter
31
Jack went into the office early on Saturday morning to pack boxes.
Technically his lease wasn't set to expire for another six months, but the rent was more than he could afford, and the landlord had agreed to let him out early--if he could be out before December 31. Under that kind of deadline, he was willing to take help from anyone. Even Theo.
"Do you know where you're going yet?" said Theo. He was wearing a vintage 1970s Allied Van Lines moving shirt that he'd picked up at Miami Twice clothing store, which made him look all the more authentic loaded down with a stack of boxes as high as the ceiling.
"There's a little place on Main Highway that I really like. Hope to sign a lease this week."
Theo went to the lobby and dropped his stack on the floor beside other packed boxes. It sounded like breaking glass.
"Those were my framed diplomas," said Jack.
"Emphasis on were" said Theo. "Sorry, dude. But I can make it up to you. In fact, I'm gonna make you rich."
"Spare me. I still have a garage full of Y2K survival kits from the last time you promised to make me rich."
"This is different, dude. I been thinking about it since I called you at Grayson's funeral and we talked about Tara Lee and porn addicts."
"Vivien Leigh."
"Whatever. It's the addicts that's important. I registered the domain name last night: BringBackPorn dot com."
"I didn't know it had left."
"Your father isn't vice president yet. Once he gets confirmed he'll have nothing but time on his hands. All we gotta do is convince him to outlaw Internet porn. And then what do you think the most valuable domain name on the planet will be?"
"Get a Life dot com?"
"BringBackPorn dot com, baby. And we own it. It's like money in the bank, dude."
"Really, what planet are you from, Theo?"
There was a knock at the door. Theo went to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and peered outside.
"Can't really see, but I think it's your abuela."
Jack's maternal grandmother had a way of showing up at his office whenever it had been too long since he'd last visited her. Sometimes it was to wonder aloud if she was going to live long enough to teach Spanish to the great-grandchildren who, by the way, Jack needed to hurry up and give to her. Other times, it was to remind her gringo grandson that half the blood in his veins was Latin. Usually, however, it was just to give him a kiss and make sure that he wasn't starving to death.
"Probably bringing us her famous tres leches," said Jack. The tasty dessert was a running joke to just about everyone in Miami but Abuela, who regularly phoned in to Spanish talk radio and told the world that she'd invented tres leches, which the Nicaraguans had stolen from her.
Jack opened the door. It was not his grandmother.
"Mr. Swyteck?" the woman said.
"Yes. Who are you?"
"My name is not important. May I come in, please?"
"The office is not really open today." Especially to people who won't tell me their name.
"Please," she said. "It's important. It's about your father becoming president."
"You mean vice president?"
"No," she said. "I mean president."
The woman suddenly had Jack's complete attention. It was odd that she wouldn't share her name, but compared to everything else that had happened to him lately, it wasn't that odd. He showed her inside and closed the door.
"Excuse the mess," he said. "I'm moving."
"To Washington?"
"No, I'll be staying in town."
Theo said, "Jack's father fired him."
Jack shot him a deadly look.
"Fired you?" she said.
"This is my friend Judas "Jack said to her. "He was just leaving."
"Nice to meet you, Judas."
Theo nodded. "Later, dude," he said, then left through the front door.
Jack showed his guest into his office and took her coat. It was heavy, he noticed, and even though it was a cool December day by Miami standards, it wasn't winter-coat weather. He moved the boxes out of the way and offered her a seat in the armchair. The clutter made it impossible to get behind his desk, so he leaned on the front edge, facing her.
She sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap as she gazed down at the floor. Jack took a moment to size her up. She was younger than his grandmother, but he could see how Theo had mistaken her for Abuela. Both were attractive, elderly women with dark eyes and olive skin that seemed younger than their years. She had the delicate features of a former beauty, but her hands were those of a working woman. At bottom, however, it wasn't her beauty or her subtle resemblance to Abuela that gnawed at Jack. There was a deeper familiarity--a distinct sense that he had seen her somewhere before.