The other reason Gaetano was nervous was because he didn’t like small planes. Big ones were okay, since he could talk himself out of believing he was up in the sky. Little ones were another story altogether, and the one he was on at the moment was the smallest he had experienced. To make matters worse, the plane was vibrating like an electric toothbrush and bouncing around like a billiard ball. Gaetano had nothing to hold on to, except the seatback in front of his nose. There wasn’t much room in the cabin. With his bulk, he was literally wedged in against the window.
Gaetano had caught an American flight down to Miami, where he’d transferred to the plane he was currently on. The sun was setting when he took off on this second leg, and now it was pitch dark outside his window. He tried not to think about what was below the bobbing aircraft, although every time the engines sounded as if they were slowing down, the mental image of a vast, black ocean involuntarily popped into his mind’s eye to add to his anxieties. Gaetano had a secret: He couldn’t swim, and drowning was a recurrent nightmare.
Gaetano glanced around at the other passengers. There was no conversation, as if everyone were as terrified as he. Most were blankly staring ahead. A few were reading, with individual, narrow beams of light coming from over their heads to form isolated shafts of illumination in the general murkiness. The cabin attendant was seated facing her charges in response to a directive from the pilots about turbulence. Her bored expression provided a bit of reassurance, although it was partially trumped by her considerably more substantial seat belt with shoulder straps, as if she expected the worst.
A particularly solid thump followed by the plane quivering made Gaetano start. It was as if they had struck some airborne object. For a minute, he didn’t even breathe, but nothing happened. He swallowed to relieve a suddenly dry throat. Resigning himself to his fate, he closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest. The moment he did so, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom to announce that they would be landing shortly.
With a burst of optimism, Gaetano pressed his nose against the window and looked down. Instead of a black void, he now saw twinkling lights ahead. He exhaled with relief. It seemed that he was going to make it after all.
The plane landed with a welcome, distinctive thud. A moment later, the whine of the engines magnified, accompanied by a sensation of rapid braking. Gaetano supported himself against the seatback in front of him. He felt so good about the plane being on the ground that he smiled at the passenger seated to his right. The man responded in kind. Redirecting his attention out the window, Gaetano was now able to concentrate on his worries about the gun.
With relatively few passengers on the plane, disembarking was rapid, and Gaetano was among the first on the tarmac. He sucked in the warm, tropical air while luxuriating in the sensation of being on terra firma. When everyone was out of the cabin, he and the rest of the passengers were herded into the terminal.
Clutching his small carry-on, Gaetano paused just inside the door. He didn’t quite know what to do. He thought his size made him stand out, but no one approached him. He was wearing the same upscale clothes he had worn on the last visit, which included the short-sleeve Hawaiian print shirt, light tan slacks, and dark blue jacket. Pressure from people behind him made him move forward. It was like being carried along in a river flowing toward passport control. When it was his turn, Gaetano handed over his document. The agent was about to stamp it when he caught sight of the notations of Gaetano’s recent visit. Not only was it a short time ago, it was only for a single day. He looked up at Gaetano questioningly.
“I was just checking the place out the first time,” Gaetano explained. “I liked it, so now I’m back for vacation.”
The man didn’t respond. He stamped the passport, pushed it toward Gaetano, and reached for the next person’s.
Gaetano pressed on, past the crowds at the baggage carousels and then approached customs. With his American passport in his hands and his carry-on, the agents waved him by. He walked out through a pair of double doors that were propped open. An attentive crowd of people stood behind a flimsy metal movable railing. They were all eagerly trying to see family and friends through the open doors. No one expressed any interest in Gaetano.
Unsure about what to do, Gaetano kept going. Initially, he had to move laterally to get beyond the railing before merging with the boisterous crowd. After walking a short distance, he stopped and scanned the terminal, hoping to make eye contact with someone. No one paid him the slightest heed. He scratched his head, wondering what to do. For lack of a better plan, he made his way to the car-rental area and waited in line.
Fifteen minutes later, he had keys to another Cherokee, although this time it was supposed to be green. He wandered back to the international arrivals area and was about to try to call Lou when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
By reflex, Gaetano spun around, ready to do battle. He found himself staring into the dark eyes of the blackest, baldest man he had ever seen. There were enough gold chains around his neck to make bending over a resistance exercise, and there was enough light reflecting off his scalp to make Gaetano squint. The man responded to Gaetano’s overreaction by stepping back and holding up both hands as if to parry a blow. One of the hands held a wrinkled brown paper bag.
“Easy, man!” the individual said. He spoke with the same colorful, Bahamian accent Gaetano remembered from his first visit. “I don’t mean no harm.”
Gaetano was embarrassed about his aggressiveness and tried to apologize.
“No problem, man.” The voice had a definite lilt. “Are you Gaetano Baresse from Boston?”
“Speaking!” Gaetano said, with a smile of relief. For a second, he felt like hugging the stranger, as if he were a lost relative. “You have something for me?”
“If you’re Gaetano Baresse, I do. The name is Robert. Let me show you what I have.” With that, the man unrolled the top of his paper bag and reached in with the intention of lifting out the contents.
“Hey, don’t whip that thing out here!” Gaetano forcibly whispered. He was horrified. “Are you crazy?” Gaetano’s eyes made a nervous sweep around the terminal. There were several armed but bored policemen in the immediate area. Thankfully, they weren’t paying any attention.
“You want to see it, don’t you?” the man asked.
“Yeah, but not here in the middle of everything. Did you come in a car?”
“Sure, I came in a car.”
“Let’s go.”
With a shrug, the man led the way out of the terminal. A few minutes later, they climbed into a pastel, vintage Cadillac with huge tail fins. The man switched on the overhead light and handed Gaetano the bag. Gaetano was expecting some sort of Saturday night special, but what he pulled out surprised him considerably. It was a nine-millimeter SW99 equipped with a LaserMax and a Bowers CAC9 suppressor.
“Okay?” Robert asked. “You happy?”
“More than happy,” Gaetano said. He admired the unmarred, black melonite finish, which suggested the gun was brand-new. It was an imposing weapon. Although it had only a four-inch barrel, the attached silencer made it more like ten inches.
After making sure no one was in the immediate area, Gaetano aimed the handgun out the windshield at a nearby car and briefly activated the laser. Fifty feet away, he saw the red dot flash on a car’s back bumper. He was thrilled with the weapon until he noticed the magazine was missing in the butt.
“Where’s the magazine?” Gaetano questioned. Without a magazine and ammunition, the gun was worthless.
Robert smiled in the car’s semidarkness. Against his burnished ebony skin, his teeth were truly pearly whites. He patted his left pants pocket. “I got it safely right here, man, all loaded up and ready to go. There’s even an extra one for good measure.”
“Good,” Gaetano said. He stuck out his hand. He was relieved.
“Not so fast,” Robert said. “It seems to me this is worth something to me personally. I mean, I did come all the way out here i
nstead of sitting home with a cold one. You catch my drift?”
For a moment, Gaetano just stared into the man’s eyes, which in the darkness looked surprisingly like two bulletholes in a dirty white blanket. He knew it was a shakedown of sorts, and probably the man’s idea. Gaetano’s first thought was to grab the guy’s head and bounce it off the steering wheel to let him know exactly with whom he was dealing, but clearer thoughts prevailed. The guy could have another gun, which could make things dicey and was certainly not the way this current trip should start. More important, Gaetano had no idea of this guy’s relation to the Miami Colombians who Lou had contacted to set everything up. The last thing Gaetano needed or wanted while he was in Nassau on business was to have a group of guys after his own ass, especially the Colombians.
Gaetano cleared his throat. He was carrying a significant amount of cash, since on such a foray, everything he did was for cash. “Robert, I suppose you deserve a small token of appreciation. What do you have in mind?”
“A c-note would be nice,” Robert said.
Without another word, Gaetano leaned forward to get his free hand into his right pants pocket. While he did so, he didn’t take his eyes off Robert. He peeled off a bill from a roll, pulled it out, and handed it over. Robert then produced the magazines. Gaetano slipped one into the butt of the handgun. It clicked home. Discarding a fleeting fantasy of trying out the gun on Robert, Gaetano stepped from the car. He put the second magazine into the side pocket of his jacket.
“Hey, man!” Robert called. “You need a ride into town?”
Gaetano leaned back inside the vehicle. “Thanks, but I have my own wheels.” Standing back up, he slipped the gun into his left pants pocket, which had a customized, hemmed opening at the bottom to accommodate the automatic’s silencer. Having the hole was a trick he’d learned from a mentor when he’d first started working for the New York family. The permanent hole’s only drawback was having to learn never to put anything else in the pocket, like coins or keys, which would tumble down his pant leg. As Gaetano walked toward the rent-a-car’s lot, he could feel the cold steel of the silencer moving against his bare thigh. For him, it was like a caress.
Twenty minutes later, Gaetano directed his rented Cherokee into the Ocean Club’s hotel parking lot. The drive had given him time to calm down after Robert’s mini-extortion episode. The crunching sound of the tires on the gravel was particularly loud with all the vehicle’s windows down. Enjoying the summerlike, evening air, Gaetano had opted to leave the air-conditioning off. Once in the lot, he took a full loop around. He wanted a spot that was not only close to the hotel but also afforded a direct shot out to the driveway. After whacking the professor, he wanted to be able to leave with dispatch.
Before getting out of the car, Gaetano flicked on the interior light and checked himself in the rearview mirror. He wanted to be sure he was presentable in the posh hotel. He smoothed his rather bushy eyebrows and adjusted the lapels of his jacket. When he thought he looked the best he could, he got out of the car. The car keys went into his right pants pocket, and he patted them through the fabric for good measure. The last thing he wanted when he was leaving was to have to search for the keys. Thus prepared, he started off.
Following the same approach he’d used on his first visit to the hotel, Gaetano headed for the building that housed suite 108. It was eight-thirty at night, so he expected the professor and his girlfriend to be at dinner, but he still wanted to check the room first. He walked at a leisurely pace and passed several smartly dressed guests going in the opposite direction.
At the appropriate location, Gaetano cut between two buildings to reach the lawn on the ocean side. He continued, almost to the tangle of sea grapes that covered the steep slope down to the beach. There, he turned to stroll parallel to the front of the appropriate building. He was close enough to the water to hear the gentle lapping of the waves on the beach to his right. The weather was glorious, with fast scudding clouds racing across a canopy of stars partially obscured by a bright gibbous moon. Soft ocean breezes rustled the palm trees. It was not hard for Gaetano to understand why people liked the Ocean Club.
As Gaetano came abreast of suite 108, affording a view into its interior, a shiver of excitement raised the hairs on the back of his neck and sent a chill up his spine. Not only were the lights blazing and the curtains wide open, but the professor and his girlfriend were there in plain sight! He couldn’t believe his luck that his mission was to climax so easily and so quickly, and for a moment, he merely watched while his pulse quickened in anticipation of the imminent violence. But then his arousal plateaued as he questioned what he was seeing. He blinked a few times to make sure nothing was wrong with his eyes. Something weird was going on with the professor and Tony’s sister, scurrying around like a couple of chickens and then flapping a blanket in the air. In the background, the door from the room to the hall was wide open, and a TV was turned on.
Irresistibly drawn toward the confusing spectacle, Gaetano advanced across the dark lawn. His hand had instinctively slipped into his left pocket to grip the handgun. Suddenly, he stopped, with a disappointing realization. The people he was watching were not his quarry but rather maids doing a turndown service. “Crap!” He groaned. Then he sighed and shook his head dejectedly.
For a few minutes, Gaetano stood in the darkness and rationalized that it was better this way. If he’d been able to walk up to the lanai, pull off a quick shot to nail the professor, and then skedaddle, it would have been less than satisfying. It would have been too easy and too quick. Far better was a more protracted stalking, involving a bit of danger that called upon his experience and expertise. That was when the process was truly satisfying.
Gaetano let go of the gun, wiggled his leg so the silencer dangled properly within his pant leg, and straightened his jacket. Then he turned around and headed for the hotel’s common areas: If the professor and the girl had not left the hotel for dinner, that’s where they would be.
The first restaurant was sited considerably closer to the beach than the buildings housing the hotel’s rooms, requiring Gaetano to walk along the edge of the sea grapes with the beach now to his left. The dining room’s French doors opened directly toward the ocean, and Gaetano was close enough to hear conversation. He picked up his pace to move quickly beyond the diners’ line of sight. His worry was the possibility that the professor would recognize him. That was where the danger lay, because if the professor saw him, security would be alerted, and probably the police.
Once beyond the French doors, Gaetano entered the restaurant by its front entrance, all the while keeping a sharp lookout for the professor. He walked past the hostess’s desk, where several couples were waiting to be seated, and paused at the entrance to the dining room, quickly and methodically scanning the room. When he was certain the professor wasn’t there, he left as quickly as he had arrived.
Next was the more casual restaurant with a bar at its center that Gaetano had strolled through on his first visit. It was built right at the edge of the beach, with a thatched roof like an enormous tiki hut. It was packed with guests, particularly the bar. Once again, being extremely careful, Gaetano made a loop around, walking between the center bar and the periphery tables. The professor was not there.
Resigning himself that his mark had probably left the hotel for dinner, Gaetano followed the walkway that traversed the lawn to the main building. His intent was to reoccupy the same couch he’d used on his previous visit, which afforded a view of the hotel’s entrance. He hoped the bowls of fruit would still be there. After walking through the two restaurants and smelling the savory aromas, Gaetano’s stomach was grumbling.
There were a few people in the main lounge. Unfortunately, Gaetano’s sofa was occupied by a couple carrying on a conversation with two others in facing chairs. Gaetano wandered over to the small bar and its bowl of peanuts. By coincidence, it was manned by the same gentleman Gaetano had chatted with on his previous visit. Gaetano could still see the
hotel’s entrance, although not quite as well as from the couch, yet it was good enough.
“Hey!” the bartender said. He extended a hand. “Long time no see!”
Gaetano was mildly disturbed that the man recognized him, with as many people as the man undoubtedly saw on a daily basis. Gaetano smiled weakly, shook the man’s hand, and took a handful of peanuts. The bartender was a transplanted New Yorker, which had been the topic of conversation a week and a half earlier.
“Can I get you something?” the bartender asked.
Gaetano saw one of the hotel’s beefy security men appear at the archway into the reception area. With his arms akimbo, he casually scanned the room. He was dressed in a nondescript dark suit. It was obvious he was security, because he wore an earpiece in his left ear, with the wire snaking under his jacket.
“A Coke would be nice,” Gaetano said. It was best to look relaxed and engaged so as not to appear as if he didn’t belong. He half sat on one of the barstools with his left leg straight, so as not to disturb the hidden gun with its silencer. “Ice with a twist of lemon would make it perfect.”
“You got it, pal,” the bartender said. He set to work opening the Coke and filling a glass with ice. He twisted the lemon peel, ran it around the glass’s rim, and put the drink in front of Gaetano. “Are your friends still staying here at the hotel?”
Gaetano nodded. “I was supposed to run into them here at the hotel tonight, but they’re not in their room or at either of the restaurants.”
“Did you try the Courtyard?”
“What’s that?” Gaetano asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the security person disappear back into the reception area.
“That’s actually our best restaurant,” the bartender explained. “It’s only open for dinner.”