Tony leaned over and put a small piece of paper on Louie’s desk, which was closer to the sofa than Sal’s.
The door opened, and Gaetano’s head popped in. “You want me or what?”
“Yeah,” Louie said, as he picked up the paper with the phone number and glanced at it.
Gaetano stepped into the room and closed the door.
“Any change in the company’s prospects?” Sal asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Tony said. “If there had been, my accountant would have told me.”
“It’s like this twerp’s flipping us off,” Louie said. He laughed mirthlessly. “Nassau! I still don’t believe it. It’s like he’s asking us to beat the crap out of him.”
“Is that what you are going to do?” Tony asked.
Louie looked over at his twin. “We want him to get his ass back here and save the company and our investment. Am I right, brother?”
“Damn straight,” Sal said. “We’ve got to let him know who’s involved here and emphasize we want our money back, come hell or high water. Not only does he have to get his ass back here, he’s got to have a clear idea of what the consequences are if he ignores us or thinks he can hide behind a bankruptcy filing or some other legal shenanigan. He needs to be knocked around good!”
“What about my sister?” Tony asked. “She’s not blameless in this mess, but if she’s going to be knocked around, I want to be the person doing the knocking around.”
“No problem,” Louie said. He tossed the slip of paper with the phone number onto his desk. “Like I said Sunday: Our beef’s not with her.”
“Are you ready to go to Nassau, Gaetano?” Sal asked.
“I can leave first thing in the morning,” Gaetano said. “But what should I do after I deliver the message? Should I hang around or what? I mean, what if he doesn’t get the message?”
“You’d better be damn sure he gets the message,” Sal said. “I don’t want you to have the mistaken impression this is some sort of paid vacation. Besides, we need you up here. After you give him the message, you get your ass back to Boston.”
“Gaetano has a point,” Tony said. “What will you do if this asshole ignores the message?”
Sal looked at his brother. There was an apparent immediate meeting of the minds as each nodded. Sal looked back at Tony. “If this twerp wasn’t around, could your sister run the company?”
Tony shrugged. “How am I supposed to know?”
“She’s your sister,” Sal said. “Doesn’t she have a Ph.D.?”
“She’s got a Ph.D. from Harvard,” Tony said. “Big deal! All it’s done is make her impossible to get along with, thinking she’s so high and mighty. And as far as I know, it only means she knows a ton of stuff about germs and genes and all that crap, not how to run a company.”
“Well, the twerp’s got a Ph.D. too,” Louie said. “So it seems to me the company wouldn’t be much worse off if your sister were running things. And if she were, you’d have a lot more influence about how things were going.”
“So what are you saying?” Tony asked.
“Hey, am I not talking English here?” Louie questioned.
“Of course you’re talking English,” Sal added.
“Look,” Louie said. “If the head of the company doesn’t get the message, which I think we can count on Gaetano making very clear, then we whack him. Simple as that, and end of story for the professor. If nothing else, that should send a very specific message to your sister that she’d better mend her ways.”
“You’re right about that,” Tony said.
“Are you okay with this, Gaetano?” Sal asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Gaetano replied. “But I’m confused. Do you or don’t you want me to stay down there until we’re sure what his response will be to getting roughed up?”
“For the last time,” Sal said threateningly. “You’re to deliver the message and get back here. If it goes down easily and if the flight schedule is copasetic, maybe you can do it in one day. Otherwise, you’ll stay over. But we want you back here ASAP, because there’s a lot going on around here. If he’s got to be whacked, you’ll go back. Understood?”
Gaetano nodded, but he was disappointed. When the task was first suggested on Sunday, he’d hoped to get a week in the sun out of the deal.
“I’ve got a suggestion,” Tony said. “Since we can’t rule out Gaetano having to return, then I don’t think he should do what he has to do at their hotel. If the professor turns out not to be cooperative, we don’t want him on the run, which he might do if he thinks the hotel is not safe. In the Bahamas alone, there are literally hundreds of islands.”
“You’re right,” Sal said. “We don’t want him to disappear, not with our money on the line.”
“So maybe I should stay down there and keep an eye on him,” Gaetano suggested hopefully.
“What do I have to say to you, you moron,” Sal spat while glaring at Gaetano. “For the last time, you’re not heading south on a holiday. You’re going to do your thing and get the hell back here. This problem with the professor isn’t the only one we’ve got.”
“Okay, okay!” Gaetano said, motioning as if surrendering. “I won’t have my meeting with the guy at the hotel. I’ll just use the hotel to spot him, which means I’ll be needing some photos.”
“I thought of that,” Tony said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out several snapshots. “These were taken of the lovebirds just this past Christmas.” He handed them over to Gaetano, who was still standing at the door.
Gaetano glanced at the photographs.
“Are they okay?” Louie asked.
“They’re not bad at all,” Gaetano responded. Then, looking at Tony, he added, “I have to say, your sister’s a looker.”
“Yeah, well forget it,” Tony said. “She’s off-limits.”
“Too bad,” Gaetano said with a crooked smile.
“One other thing,” Tony said. “With all this airport security nonsense, I don’t think it’s advisable even to pack a gun in a checked suitcase. If Gaetano needs one, it would be better to make arrangements to get one on the island through contacts in Miami. You do have contacts in Miami, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Sal said. “That’s another good idea. Anything else?”
“I think that’s about it,” Tony said. He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up.
fifteen
9:15 A.M., Friday, March 1, 2002
It had been a long, delightful, and rejuvenating morning. With their circadian cycles awry, compliments of their brief European trip, both Stephanie and Daniel had awakened well before the sun had brightened the eastern horizon. Unable to fall back asleep, they’d gotten up, showered, and taken a protracted stroll around the hotel grounds and along the deserted Cabbage Beach, as a cloudless, tropical dawn broke. Back at the hotel, they’d been the first guests for breakfast and had lingered over their coffee while discussing the schedule for creating Butler’s treatment cells. With only three weeks until his scheduled arrival, they knew they were up against a significant time constraint, and they were eager to get started, although they recognized they could do little until the package arrived from Peter. By eight o’clock, they’d called the Wingate Clinic to tell the receptionist they were in Nassau and would arrive at the clinic at about nine-fifteen. She said she’d let the doctors know.
“This western part of the island looks different than the eastern part,” Daniel observed, as they drove west along Windsor Field Road. “It’s much flatter.”
“It’s also less developed and a lot drier,” Stephanie added. They were passing long, low stretches of semiarid pine forest infiltrated with palmettos. The sky was a deep azure, dotted with a few wispy white clouds.
Daniel had insisted on driving, which Stephanie didn’t mind until he’d suggested she might have more trouble driving on the left than he. Her initial reaction was to challenge what seemed to her an unwarranted, chauvinistic assertion, but then she just let it go. The issue wasn’t worth an argument. Instead, she climbed into the passenger seat and contented herself with getting out the map. As had been the case when they’d fled Italy, she’d be the navigator.