was too quick for its own good, his all-too-ready wit had made him more enemies than friends. Once, for example, he had had a celebrated verbal skirmish with a
His hangdog appearance didn't help either. Balding, stoop-shouldered, and naturally woebegone-looking, with dark, droopy bags under his eyes, he was nobody's idea of the driving force behind a burgeoning and aggressive coffee empire. The fact was, amazingly enough, that he didn't even like coffee and wouldn't have been able to drink it if he did because the acidity gave him gas, or so he claimed.
Rudy's father—Nick's much-loved, long-dead kid brother, Jack—had been a vintner in California, and Rudy had grown up at his father's small winery in the Simi Valley. From the beginning, wine had been his passion, or the closest thing to a passion that he'd ever had. He had majored in enology at the University of California's Davis campus and returned to manage the winery's production process, expecting to take over the business eventually. But his father, drowning in debt, had sold out to one of the conglomerates that were then gobbling up the vineyards of the Pacific coast.
Shattered, Ruby had fled California for Tahiti, seeking a job with his uncle. The always-generous Nick had come through, putting him to work on the plantation (and, by the by, bailing his father out of his not inconsiderable remaining debts). Hardworking and intelligent, Rudy had learned the coffee business and had eventually taken over management of day-to-day operations. Later, when Brian Scott had arrived on the scene with a sackful of ideas for improvement and expansion and a knack for implementing them, Nick had asked Rudy to return to the States to see if he could turn the struggling Caffe Paradiso enterprise into something worthwhile. And here he had been ever since, successful beyond Nick's dreams, let alone his own, but in his heart of hearts never ceasing to regard coffee as a poor substitute for his beloved wines.
But no one had ever said he didn't know everything there was to know about the coffee business.
His office was still here in this eighty-year-old white frame building, a onetime feed store near Coupeville on rural Whidbey Island, two hours from Seattle by car and ferry. Now, however, there was a spanking-new twenty- thousand-square-foot warehouse and processing plant a few hundred feet up the highway, with eighteen employees and a big, shiny, three-bag roaster that held 335 pounds of beans and was fired up and roasting eight hours a day, five days a week.
In short, things were going like gangbusters. From what they'd told John earlier, they were now selling more than half a million pounds a year. There were sales to gourmet shops and restaurants, there was a thriving mail- order business, and now there were two Caffe Paradiso coffee bars in downtown Seattle department stores, one at the airport, and another two about to open in Portland, every one of them upscale and pricey. Only twenty percent of the beans that went into their numerous varieties came from the plantation in Tahiti these days; the rest were bought from other coffee growers around the world, mostly on Rudy's say-so. It was Rudy too who supervised the roasting, created the blends, and ran what Nick approvingly referred to as a highly innovative marketing program.
It seemed pretty innovative to John too. Who would have thought you could make money with slogans like “Paradiso—The World's Most Expensive Coffees” and “Pure Tahitian Blue Devil, the Highest-Priced Coffee in the World...Bar None.” But make money they did. Blue Devil, not a blend but solely their own plantation's product, was Paradiso's chief claim to fame.
They were always leaving a few pounds of it with John and Marti when they came. It wasn't bad, John thought, but at $38 a pound? At $4.50 a cup in the coffee bars? You'd have to be out of your mind. Which showed how much he knew about it.
'Look, people,” he said, “about these accidents—'
'Johnny, will you shut up?” Nick said amiably. “What else is there, Rudy?'
'One more, from the Celebes. This is a first issue from a Rantepao plantation that was revived four or five years ago.'
'I vote no,” Maggie said.
Nick laughed. “We haven't tasted it yet'
'We don't have to taste it. If it comes from the Celebes, it was processed with slave labor.'
'Oh, for God's sake, Maggie, they don't have slave labor in the Celebes,” Nelson said disgustedly.
'Well, they don't pay them a living wage. It's the same thing.'
'It's
'And what's more, they don't go in for organic processing on the Rantepao plantations. They use chemical nitrogen replacement.'
'So? So do we. What do you suggest, bee pollination?’ Nelson screwed up his face in case she couldn't tell he was being sarcastic.
Maggie screwed her face right back at him. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Bee pollination—'
'People?” Nick said with a sigh. It was enough to quiet them down. “What do you say we just taste the stuff, okay?'
'The master speaks,” said Rudy.
Happily, it didn't take long. The coffee was variously dismissed as “misty,” “grassy,” and “hidey.” The grower, Nelson suggested indignantly, was trying to palm off last year's crop. The others agreed. No sale.
John had thought it was just fine.
'Well, that's that, then,” Nick said. “Good job, gang.'
'About these accidents,” John said.
Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “We can talk on the way to your place.” He smacked his lips. “Hey, Rudy, pour us a cup of Blue Devil for the road.'
