“Knock yourself out,” said Jack.
Mika pointed at Jack with his gun. “You move, you shit. Understand?”
Jack could have explained that “shit” could be either a noun or a verb, but he assumed he meant the noun. “Understood,” said Jack.
“Good.”
Mika thumbed through his magazine, went into the bathroom, and closed the door almost all the way, leaving it open just a crack.
The televised soccer game played on, and the world suddenly felt surreal to Jack. A half Cuban man and a Sicilian woman held captive in a Coral Gables hotel room. A Mexican sportscaster calling Brazil versus Argentina on the television. A Russian mobster “making shit” in the bathroom. All they needed to complete the quintessential Miami moment was a disgraced politician and a dead body-and in a matter of hours, the Greek would probably be that body.
“He doesn’t learn,” Sofia said, speaking softly so that Mika would not overhear.
“Who doesn’t learn?”
“Demetri. Whether it’s the casino, the track, or whatever business they asked him to run, he always thinks he can take a little extra for himself.”
“Is that what happened with the Russians?”
“Of course. And before that it was the Sicilians.” She shook her head. “He never learns.”
“He told me it was the Mafia looking for you.”
“Yes,” she said. “But it all goes back to Demetri.”
“How do you mean?”
She breathed a sigh, as if not sure where to begin.
“You can tell me,” said Jack. “I can’t get us out of this mess if I don’t know the players.”
She hesitated, but only for a moment longer. “I know of three times for sure. This is the latest. The last time was with the Sicilians.”
“When?”
“Right before the election.”
“President Keyes’ election?”
Sofia nodded. “They were going to kill Demetri. But he talked himself out of it.”
“How?”
“Demetri gave them the power to control him.”
“To control the president?”
“Yes. He told them the truth about Daniel Keyes.”
“Which is what?”
She looked Jack in the eye but said nothing. It was clear that she had no intention of telling him.
Jack said, “How do you know about this?”
“Demetri told me when he came to see me last week.”
“Demetri also says that he told you the secret about Keyes.”
Sofia didn’t answer.
A shout came from the bathroom: “Quiet out there!”
Sofia waited a moment, then lowered her voice. “There is more history,” she whispered. “It was in Cyprus. We were young, married less than a year.”
She stopped, as if reluctant to continue.
“It’s all right,” said Jack. “You can tell me.”
Jack listened as she described that night in their apartment. The noise outside that woke them. Demetri naked and leaping from the bed. The pounding on the door, and their panicked good-bye before the door burst open, the armed men rushed in, and Demetri escaped out the window.
“One of the men stayed with me,” she said. “When the others finally came back, they told me they had thrown Demetri off the roof. I thought he was dead.”
“So did they, I’m sure.”
Sofia nodded.
“Then what happened?” said Jack.
“When?”
“After the men came back to your room and told you about Demetri. What happened?”
She shifted uncomfortably, and Jack could read her body language. He’d seen it in many clients before. It was something Sofia clearly didn’t want to talk about.
“There were five of them,” she said. “Do you really want to know?”
“Only if you want to talk about it.”
“I’ve never actually told this to anyone.”
“You don’t have to. Really, it’s okay.”
“No. I want you to know the truth.”
Chapter 36
The Greek stared at the telephone on the table.
“Go on, use it,” said Vladimir. “Make your big money phone call.”
They were in a conference room at a ground-floor office suite somewhere in North Miami Beach. The Venetian blinds on the picture window were shut, but a few slats were twisted and out of place, offering Demetri a glimpse of the courtyard and the parking lot beyond. It was impossible to tell what kind of business had once been conducted in this place. The cubicles outside the conference room were vacant. Employees were nowhere to be found, and there were no computer terminals, telephones, office supplies, or other signs of an active workplace. Some desks didn’t even have chairs. The Greek figured that it was the ghostly remains of a
“You think that’s all it takes?” said Demetri. “I make a phone call, and I can pay you back?”
“I don’t care what it takes. One call is all you get. So make it count.”
“You need to work with me. I’m close, really close to making a deal. This is money in your pocket. What good am I dead?”
Vladimir pushed the phone toward him.
“One call,” he said. “If you’re that close, then pick up the phone and seal the deal.”
Demetri lifted the receiver and then put it down. “Why should I do this for you? You said you were going to kill me even if I get the money.”
“You get the money, you save Sofia.”
“I don’t care about her,” he said. It hurt to say it, but a bluff was his only way out.
Vladimir smiled. “Nice to see you haven’t changed.”
“Come on,” said Demetri. “I’ll make the call, but if the money comes in, we’re square. No need to kill me.”
Vladimir’s smile drained away. Some men were capable of showing no reaction, putting themselves in the emotional equivalent of “neutral.” Vladimir, however, was always in gear. When he was happy, he was the life of the party. His every other waking moment, however, seemed to be driven by contempt or anger, albeit in varying degrees. It all depended on how much the poor slob on his hit list reminded him of the bastards who had cut open his nine-year-old son and left him on the doorstep to bleed to death.
“I’ve had it up to here with your disrespect,” he said. “We give you a job, you steal from us. We give you another chance, you steal more from us. This is the end of it. You pay your debt, and you go out with no pain. You don’t get the money, I take you to the Kamikaze Club.”
