TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS in $100 bills.
He couldn’t resist it. He had to look.
He took out a stack of bills. He split the paper band containing them and they spilled on the floor.
He was still too numb to react. He’d never ever seen this kind of money before, not even on a drug bust.
He slipped a couple of hundreds into his wallet and scooped the rest up and put it away in the bag. He checked the other one.
More money—and a white envelope with his name on it.
He opened it.
It was a Polaroid. He barely recognized it—the where and when it had been taken; then he remembered the last time he was in La Coupole: the photographer’s flash.
He was standing staring straight at the camera, rum glass in hand, looking tired and drunk. One of the two whores who’d accosted him was standing close to his left, the other was mostly out of the frame.
In her place, pointing a gun at his head, with a huge smile on his face was Solomon Boukman.
Max turned the photograph over. YOU GIVE ME REASON TO LIVE was written on the back in Boukman’s unique capitals, same as the note they’d found in his prison cell.
Max’s heart began to race.
He remembered how he’d been surprised to find the trigger guard of his holster undone. He looked at the photograph again. Boukman was holding his Beretta to his head. He could have pulled the trigger. Why didn’t he?
YOU GIVE ME REASON TO LIVE.
A chill swept through Max, right then. His insides turned ice-cold. There was a note from Paul inside the envelope:
Max—We found this in the villa you were staying in. On the pillow. He got away from us. I didn’t tell you then, because of what was happening. We’re looking for him. Don’t worry. He won’t get away again. Be safe. VP
No you won’t. You won’t get him, thought Max. You should’ve killed him when you had the chance.
Max looked back at the photograph and studied Boukman’s face.
They’d meet again, he knew it—not tomorrow, not even soon, but sometime down the line. It was inevitable, the way some things simply are. They had unfinished business.
Christmas Eve.
Max walked out of Miami airport and found a cab. He put the bags in the back and got in.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
Max hadn’t given his next move any thought. He considered going back to the Radisson Kendall again, maybe for a week, to get his head together and a few things straight.
Then he thought better of it.
“Home,” Max said, giving the driver the address of his house in Key Biscayne. “Take me home.”