20

Frank Tallarico is in the solarium, sitting in his rattan chair. A nearby servant—a talent-pool girl, it seems, petite and Asian and otherwise nondescript—waves a large Polynesian fan back and forth, moving the warm air of late summer across his body in this otherwise stifling room.

“Forgive the heat,” he says, welcoming me back into his abode. “Our air went out a day ago and they haven’t fixed it yet.”

I toss a bag of Florida oranges on the table in front of him, and he nods in appreciation.

“A lovely gift,” he says. “As you know, I’m a man who appreciates fine citrus. I trust you had a pleasant time in Miami?”

There’s no reason to beat around the bush; I didn’t come here for chatter.

“I know what you’ve done.”

“Well,” says Frank, “that’s quite a way to start a conversation. Would you like an herb?”

He snaps his fingers, and another servant arrives with a familiar platter. I shake my head, and Frank snaps his fingers again, as if he’d just remembered something crucial.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re the one who can’t hold it down, aren’t you?”

“It was a setup all along,” I say, realizing that for a split second, I really didn’t want that herb. That it just wasn’t all that important to me in the grand scheme of things. A moment later, the desire returns, but that single second of nonchalance is something to build on. “The whole plan from the beginning was to bring me in.”

Frank Tallarico shrugs. “You’re boring me, Rubio. Did you come here to tell me stories?”

“Just the one. About how you were upset that the Dugans were using your talent-pool girls for their own ends.”

“It was disgusting,” he spits. “He told me all about it. Cutting off their tails, using them as guinea pigs. Even tried to convince me we could market some kind of drug outta these gals, use it to get cripples back on their feet. The things I deal with . . .”

I don’t want to get into a discussion of morals; I’m deathly afraid that Frank and I will come out on the same side. I don’t condone what Jack and Noreen did, but then I’ve never been without the use of my limbs, never been up against the wall like that.

“So you decide to foster a gang war over it?”

Tallarico scratches his nose; I’m no more than a housefly to him.

“Those girls took six, seven weeks to get back on their feet. That’s a lot of scratch in banged-up help. Dugan wanted ’em all for himself, for his little science project. Wanted to buy me out. No way was that gonna happen.”

There’s an ethics lesson for you.

“What better way to gid rid of the Dugans and your annoying brother in one fell swoop? Get Eddie all riled up and let him start killing. Both sides get decimated, then you walk right in and fill the vacuum.

“Only, you need a catalyst, something to play from both ends. A little research, and you turn up a private eye who knew Jackie Dugan back when he was just Jack. And he’s a Velociraptor—all the better to egg on the racial angle. Better still, he has a corruptible friend, a Hadrosaur, who owes one of your business associates in New York a lot of money.”

Frank laughs, shrugging it off. “Took me a while, too,” he boasts. “I went through three different scenarios before you came along.”

“And my situation was too perfect to pass up.”

“Perfect, I dunno. But it fit. It fit real nice.” Frank leans back in his chair and stretches; the talent-pool girl increases the velocity of her fanning. “So that’s it? That’s what you came here to tell me—that you figured out my big evil scheme? That you’re some kind of fucking genius?”

I reach down and pull out the velvet bag I came in here with, the same one that was given to me the first time I left Tallarico’s mansion. His guards make a move toward me, but Frank waves them off, and I toss the bag into his lap.

“Twenty thousand dollars,” I tell him. “Count it if you want, it’s all there.”

He doesn’t make a move for the money. “But you did your job,” he says. “You did it beautifully, and you didn’t even know it till now.”

I take a step forward, edging in on that rattan chair. “I don’t want to work for you. I don’t want to have ever worked for you. I’m giving you back this money because I never took it. I went down to Miami for a vacation, and whatever happened down there happened because I wanted it to.”

“That’s what you’re going with?” he asks.

“That’s what I’m going with,” I reply, now only a foot away.

Tallarico shrugs. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Rubio. Me, I’m content. I’ve got what I want, and the resources to back it up. South Florida is ripe for the picking, and I can run it all from three thousand miles away. The Dugans are gone, and Hagstrom doesn’t have the manpower or the smarts to outplay me.” He leans forward and smiles broadly; the same grin that made Eddie’s face look too big makes Frank’s look too small.

I lean in and grab the sides of the chair, pressing my fingers into the rattan strands themselves.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” I growl, and suddenly Tallarico’s men are on me, pulling me away, wrestling me toward the door.

“You have a good afternoon now, Mr. Rubio,” Frank says, grabbing an orange from the bag I brought him as his goons hustle me toward the exit, through the mansion’s hallways, and back out to the front lawn.

I straighten up my jacket, brush off the wrinkles, and start the walk back to my car when I hear Frank’s voice behind me. I turn to see his head sticking out of the solarium window, his body still lounging in the seat.

“One more thing,” he calls out. “I’m curious—where’d you get the money to pay me back?”

I shoot my cuffs and adjust my watch—a new Rolex, actually, a recent gift. It shines in the afternoon sun, the light glinting off Frank’s shiny head.

“I did a favor for a friend,” I call back, then get in my Lincoln and drive off the property, content in the knowledge that I just delivered my very last package for the mob:

Florida oranges, filled with dissolution powder.

As I make my way out of the vast Tallarico compound, I believe I can hear a bird warbling a song loud and clear across the manicured grounds. It’s that, or the screams of Frank Tallarico as swarms of bacteria begin to feast upon his lips and throat.

Either way, it sounds like freedom.