“Yes, do,” came the response, also in English.
Antonio felt the jab as it came through the seat of his pants into his left buttock. That was followed quickly by a tingling iciness radiating down in his backside, from the middle of the left buttock outward. Within seconds, the iciness exploded into a warmth that enveloped his whole body. Antonio had tried opium once and the sensation was similar. Suddenly, nothing hurt as much. Suddenly nothing mattered much at all. His vision blurred. All hands seemed to be off him now, and he lay in one big puddle, his own wrists manacled behind his back. He felt as if the sun was only a few feet over his woozy head.
The young woman stood. Then his eyes widened. An angel, he thought to himself in his incipient delirium. The blonde had come to deliver him, but he couldn’t decide whether he was to be delivered to death or to somewhere else. That was his final thought. The whiteness exploded like a couple of big steel gates slamming shut. Then everything went black.
TWENTY-SIX
Alex met Sam Deal in the vast street-level floor of one of Manhattan’s biggest jewelry emporiums, a fortress of a building on New York’s 57th Street. Alex arrived a few minutes before 2:00 p.m. and slowly wandered among the display cases, one eye on the diamond rings and the other looking for Sam.
She spotted him as he emerged from one of the elevators east of the lobby. The store employed him as one of their heads of on-site security.
Sam was burley and had an eager bounce to his gait as he approached her. He was wearing a suit. He was pink-faced and glowing. He smiled when their eyes met.
“Alex, right?” he said. “Beautiful as ever.”
“Hello, Sam,” she said.
MacPhail and Ramirez lurked in the background. Sam noticed them right away. “What’s with Sonny and Cher?” he asked, jerking his head toward them.
“I got backup today,” she said. “I’m on a case. They’re watching my back.”
“Lucky you,” he said.
“Not a problem, is it?” she asked.
“No. Shouldn’t be. We sit at one table, they sit at another, right?”
“That’s how I pictured it, Sam,” she said.
“Okay, that’s kosher,” he said. “I’m doing a late lunch. We’re getting out of here, right? You want to talk?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“I know the place,” he said. “Come on.”
For years, Sam had been the presumed head of an unofficial group of CIA-financed operatives known as “the Nightingales.”
They worked out of Miami, focused on Latin America, and were far too disreputable for Alex’s tastes. But they had their uses. For years they’d handled hit-and-run jobs that were too dirty for the CIA to touch directly. They knew things, they knew people, and Sam, now in his late sixties, was the poster boy of the whole operation.
Semi-retirement agreed with him. He seemed busy, content, and eager to display the dark knowledge he had accrued over a lifetime. He let Alex go through the revolving door first; then they were on Fifth Avenue. Ten minutes later they were seated in the back of a small, noisy delicatessen on West 56th Street. A waiter, without being asked, placed a Corona directly in front of Sam. Alex declined. MacPhail and Ramirez settled into a table close to the door as Sam started his oily schmooze.
“You should have been a model, Alex, really. You got the face, the legs, the figure. You wear clothes as if they were invented for you. Why did you choose to get into our scummy line of work when you could have been sitting by a pool in Malibu having your picture taken? Answer me that before I answer anything for you.”
“Just crazy, I guess, Sam.” In spite of herself, flirtatious Sam made her laugh.
“Yeah, yeah,” he snorted, “aren’t we all?” He sipped directly from the green bottle.
“So who you work for? I know it’s government. It always is unless it isn’t, right?”
“Fin Cen, New York.”
“Oh, yeah. Financial crimes. Money. You’re down on Wall Street, right?”
“Nearby. Right,” she said.
“Yeah. That’s right. You got brains too. That’d disqualify you from modeling. Wall Street, huh? Plenty of financial crime there. The whole place is a financial crime. Banks. Stock markets. Convertible debentures. Predatory lending. Bailouts for people who shouldn’t even be out on bail. They should all be in jail, but I don’t run the world. Plus, I wouldn’t put them in jail; I’d just have them shot. Anyway, what’s on the plate today?”
“For starters, does the name Paul Guarneri mean anything to you?” she asked.
“No. Should it?”
“Probably not.”
Sam thought for a moment. “Mafia guy?”
“Connected family,” Alex said.
“New York?”
“The city and Long Island.”
“I don’t know him,” Sam said. “Does he say he knows me?”
“I never asked.”
“Then don’t. He’s probably connected. Italian. If he’s on some list of yours and he’s Italian, he’s connected. I’m Italian, did you know that?” Sam asked. “All Italians are connected to the Mafia in some way, large or small.”
“Really?” Alex asked, bemused.
“No,” Sam countered. “But why you asking me?”
“Because I want to pick your brain about Cuba,” Alex said.
“Ha! What about it?” Sam asked.
“I heard you’ve been there,” Alex said.
Sam sipped more of his beer and smiled. “You’re a clever little fox, Alex,” he said. “You going to Cuba?”
She remained silent. She winked.
“Enjoy your trip,” Sam said. “The rum is
“You were around for the Bay of Pigs in ‘61, weren’t you?”
“I was a kid. I was around for the aftermath. So what about it?”
“I’m a newbie on Cuba, Sam. Impress me with your inside knowledge.”
It was just the encouragement that Sam needed. He laughed.
“What do you want to hear about?” he asked. “The really bad old days of the ‘40s, when Lucky Luciano came back to the island after exile in Italy, or do you want to hear about how Sinatra used to be a courier for money from the American mob to the Havana casino operators, then would sing at private performances for his mobster friends?” Sam laughed again. “Or how about when JFK was a U.S. Senator and a hood named Santo Trafficante set up an orgy for him at the Hotel Comodoro?”
“Start with JFK, but skip the rest,” Alex said.
Sam smirked. “That’s the best part. But I’m not surprised. Get down to business, no fun and games with you, Alex LaDuca.”
“Why don’t you take me to the Bay of Pigs?” she said.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Sam shrugged. “But I don’t know too much more than anyone else,” Sam said. “Kennedy was president by then because Mayor Daley in Chicago stuffed all those ballot boxes and tipped Illinois to the Dems. Anyway, it’s a year after the election, and JFK rushed an invasion plan into play on the idea that Castro would later acquire a stronger military capability and be able to defeat it. Fact was, Castro already had that capability. The CIA also told the president that Castro only had an obsolete, ineffective air force. The agency said they weren’t in combat condition and had no communications in the Zapata Swamp area and had no forces nearby.
