The Tontine: A Novel About an Unbreakable Agreement

By Larry Wagger

A tontine is an investment scheme named after Lorenzo di Tonti, a neapolitan banker, who invented it in France in 1653. The basic concept is simple. All funds are invested and each member receives dividends. As each investor dies, his shares are kept in the tontine until only one survivor is left and he collects all the shares.
Once very popular it is now banned due to the fact that the members began to kill one another in order to receive all the shares.
Barry Howard an exporter of fine shoes from Spain and his partners, Kate Chimago, a Cuban expatriate, now a maker of super elegant sandals in China and Monty Oliver, who years ago had scraped the Mississippi mud of his tenured black ass and was now making millions with his line of urban clothing in Florence, Italy-- formed a guild to protect their product from poachers that stole their styles and sold them cheaper
Their desires to control all the shares mistakenly got them tied to an unbreakable tontine. When all the friendly shareholders began to disappear, fear began to tear into the confidence of the successful Guild.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456876531

Larry Wagger

After having attended 4 different colleges,one of which was Christ College at Oxford University without having a degree, I finally realized, at the age of 23 there would be no M.D. attached to the name of Larry Wagger. Compounding my age of discontent after getting out of a military hospital Fort Dix from the war to end wars, I headed to Hollywood. I stopped by Savannah, Ga to pay my respects to a family that gave comfort to me while I helped form the Eighth Air Force.but I was short-stopped by this four foot eleven inch angel with a halo that included a job at a shoe store where I must have been infected with a shoe disease caused by being punctured in the ass by a high heel. Whatever! It took! From traveling four years on the road as a shoe salesman, rising to sales manager of the company, buying a small shoe factory in Spain to making fifteen hundred pairs of shoes a day to traveling nearly four million miles all over the world making and selling shoes, and here I am. I hope you like the book..

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Copyright © 2011 by Lawrence Wagger.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011903129

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-7652-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-7651-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-7653-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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94356

I dedicate this novel to my

Dear adopted son,

Stuart Tromberg

Without whom this novel would

Never have seen the light of day

I also dedicate this novel to

My dear friend

Jonathan Rabb,

Professor of writing at the

Savannah College of Art and Design

Who saw something here only he could see

I also dedicate this book to

My wonderful and beautiful wife

Frances,

With whom I recently celebrated my sixty-fifth anniversary

And without whom I could no longer live

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY ONE

TWENTY TWO

TWENTY THREE

TWENTY FOUR

TWENTY FIVE

TWENTY SIX

TWENTY SEVEN

TWENTY EIGHT

TWENTY NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY ONE

THIRTY TWO

THIRTY THREE

THIRTY FOUR

THIRTY FIVE

THIRTY SIX

THIRTY SEVEN

THIRTY EIGHT

THIRTY NINE

FORTY

FORTY ONE

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Since this book rested and mustified in my office desk drawer after it was finished three years ago, I have forgotten too many names of the fine people who helped get it there except for Steve Traub who sweated the first year with good advice and the patience I needed.

To those of you who will forgive me, I humbly apologize and wont attribute it to the agonies of memory for people of my age.

Except for Thomas Coffey, retired editor and columnist of the Savanah Morning News. He lives in the same condominium, and I have to keep reminding him of how many times he said my book was good while we share evening martinis.

To the adorable and talented Cameron Belk who designed the book cover. For the many hours it took, I thank you again and again. It’s perfect!

And to my new found friend, Jonathan Rabb, professor of writing at SCAD and a best selling author of five novels who took me under his wings for months while telling me the book needed kiss… Keep it simple, stupid.

ONE

They have a great seafood restaurant here in Alicante that gained its national fame serving a sea trout baked in the salt of the sea. They take a fresh trout, best weighing about a kilo, gut it and fill the cavity with a stuffing made of ground almonds which are native to the province, as are the black olives they mix with some non native crab flakes. They then hand pack the fish—head, fins, scales and tail in sea salt 10 centimeters thick, and slow bake it at a very low temperature for four hours. It’s served at the table where they ceremoniously crack the hardened salt that’s been basted with red wine for the entire cooking time. The maitre d’, an expert with a scalpel disguised as a knife, deftly be-heads, de-tails, and de-nudes the de-salted body, leaving a steaming, succulent embodiment, fleshy, tender and savory, no longer resembling in any way its former self.

I was dozing, thinking of that dish again but this time when the Maitre D’ pulled out his scalpel, he stuck it in my side. I opened my eyes with a gasp and stared at an iconic Jesus on the cross. He was on a plaque of hand carved Capistrano oak wood attached to a lacquered white wall of a room brilliant in its starkness. I was in the Sidi San Juan clinic.

I stopped leaning on my elbows, fell back in the bed and recalled the dish. That was me. Maybe not savory, but surely fleshy and tender. I was covered in sea salt from head to toe. My eyes were encrusted. Every orifice was filled to overflowing. I felt like the Ancient Mariner, floating in a sea of salt everywhere. I was scrubbed, rubbed, showered, shampooed, bathed, defoliated, even pressure washed. I still felt itchy. Everything I ate needed a dash of pepper to neutralize the salty taste. My whole body had been basted with some kind of creamy lotion that at least smelled good but didn’t soothe as much as it advertised. I pushed the call bell beside my bed.

My ineffable charm and bell-like beseeching fell on deaf ears and unforgiving stares when I asked the Sisters for a wee bit of the heather to help relieve the pain. They kept putting their fore fingers to their lips, shushing me when I asked how long I had been here. I guess I would have to wait for a doctor or someone who could at least talk. I couldn’t get up as my arms were tethered to the bed, long enough to reach my toes and my head, but still locked in this fricking bed

My name is Barry Howard. To make a long story short, I sell shoes. Or rather, I make, export and then sell shoes, very high end: an eight on a ten expensive scale. So, how in the hell does a shoe expert end up half dead, caked in salt and in a bed in a clinic with deaf nurses? Beats the hell out of me.

It wasn’t always shoes. I had a great family life as a kid in the small town of Randleman, North Carolina, spent three and a half years of college looking for a pre-med course that Uncle Sam interrupted, spent all of the accumulated service funds in an eighteen months female filled drunken haze until I realized I was bare assed broke and got a job driving a car for a traveling shoe salesman.

It must have been more than good driving and being an attentive carnivorous sponge that soaked up all his accumulated life logic that caused Barney Grant to leave me his robin egg blue Cadillac when he dropped in his tracks. My supportive silence led to his imparting knowledge of the shoe business never printed in books. Over three years I watched this churlish, child-less, acerbic bald headed bachelor morph into a kindly uncle. A love-hate relationship made me the owner of a snazzy apartment in Sutton Place overlooking the East River and 10,000 shares in an import/export shoe business in Alicante, Spain. As I think back over those years, in a convoluted sense, I really enjoyed it. I guess I miss that old bastard.

I wanted someone to call my friend Fernando, but the Sisters again did their thing with the fingers. I couldn’t wait to get out of here and wrap my hand around a nice eight ounce lead crystal goblet with three fingers of Glennfittch and smooze with Fernando. He had been a translator for the U.S. Air Force stationed at Gibraltar for five years and spoke American English better than I did.

Where was he? I need to get the hell out of here. I reached over to call the sisters again but my tethered hands got twisted and I couldn’t reach the bell. Hello? Someone? Hey! Help me somebody, I yelled. Nothing. I fell back on the bed. My tethered arm got so numb it woke me up again and gave way to white walls… Jesus on the cross was still there… But, my situation was getting ridiculous. I needed to talk to someone and I finally got my elbow on the bell and held it until the door burst open with three sisters and the Mother Superior.

In her precise, proper and evidently oxford educated English, she said, "Please, Señor Howard, the constant ringing of the bell this late at night disturbs everyone trying to sleep."

Sorry, Mother, but I need to talk to someone. I need to find out why I’m here. I need to find out how long I’ve been here. I’m dry as Sahara sand and I need a drink of cold, cold water. And I need someone to call my friend Fernando Valera.

"Señor Howard, the doctor does not want you to have much water yet. You have swallowed a tremendous amount of salt. That is why you are drinking orange juice. There is no need to call Fernando; he has checked on you three times a day since you have been here; unless the doctor releases you tonight, it will be three days in our care.

I laid back. I closed my eyes. I wondered why the salt?

TWO

Jesus Christ, Barry, Fernando said the minute he walked in the door, you had us really worried. Mother Angelicus tells me you’re doing fine but I suggest you don’t look in a mirror.

You should see it from my side, I groaned, happy to see relief in sight.

"When you didn’t show up at Jose’s for two days, I found out none of the guys had seen you either. If I hadn’t called Juan in the portero’s office in your condo, I would never have known you were here in the clinic. I had to go through ten layers of city county and hospital officials to find out what happened to you."

Happened? I don’t know what happened. I can’t get anybody to tell me anything, nothing. All I know is that every bone in my body hurts like hell, I’m full of salt from asshole to appetite and can’t even get a drop of water.

You really don’t remember anything?

"All I remember is having two of the shittiest days of my life and I had to get the hell out of the office. I was still feeling low about Estanza leaving, and all the bullshit about getting everything ready for the shoe show. I needed some air, some freedom, so I went by your garage and picked up Von Mutzie.

"I just had to get away from the office, from the phone, from the city… from everything, so I started to drive by the airport. It felt so good to feel the wind swirling around the port, it really made me feel kind of free… and a little wild… I guess that is where I made my mistake.

"I hunkered down as I turned full speed into the viaduct looking right through the open space at the top of that enormous steering wheel. Normally it took extra strength to turn that monster but now as a gift it flowed easily into the turn… and it kept turning and turning and turning until I had realized I had no control at all as it slammed sideways into the viaduct. I was slung from my seat like a rocket and the whole world went black.

That’s all I remember. And speaking of that, where the hell have you been? I’m lying here like a depraved alcoholic and I can’t get a word out of anybody about anything and I’m mad enough fit to be tied… oh, I am… aren’t I? I giggled then I laughed.

Fernando didn’t laugh with me. He told me what had happened.

Barry, did you know you were going over 180 kilometers an hour in that car? You flew over the viaduct, landed in a salt flat and you were going so fast you slid through two more. They checked the odometer and what was left of the engine. Someone had sawed the shaft on the steering wheel in half.

Is there anything left of Von Mutzi? She’s built like a tank.

What’s left of her you can put in a fed ex box and ship back to Germany.

God, I loved that car.

"Look, if you don’t get your head out of your ass, you might as well draw a circle around your heart. The fucking steering wheel was sawed in half, for god’s sakes! Someone wants to kill you, Barry."

C’mon, Fernando, that’s ridiculous.

Yeah? You’re lying in bed in a hospital, you’re bound up like an Egyptian mummy. You’re lucky you’re alive and will be able to see. Everyone knew nobody drives that car but you. And that’s ridiculous?

I thought to myself: I don’t owe anybody any money. I haven’t been screwing anybody’s wife, I’m nice to old women, I wait for the light to cross the street, so, why would anyone want to kill me?

Fernando used his charm and money on the doctor, the Mother Superior, the sisters and the cashier and I was free. I felt like I had been rescued from a Spanish prison when I collapsed on the front seat of Fernando’s new Seat.

Barry, Fernando said, as we climbed the hill from the clinic and headed for the beach area. We’re good friends; I’ll do anything I can for you; I’m sorry about Von Mutzie, but you really pissed me off when you didn’t tell me about your selling her.

What are you talking about? I shouted at him as he niftily did a screwy slide dodging two small supply trucks entering the clinic area.

Do you remember when you brought the pamphlets from the car show in Madrid?

Vaguely

I still have them. I knew what she was when the pamphlet said it was a 1936 Borgward Hansa Sport 1700 roadster, handcrafted by Hebmuller Motor Works in Hamburg, Germany for Count Bernhard von Broustein. You know I’m a car nut. Fernando’s hands and arms were everywhere but the steering wheel.

You are scaring the hell out of me. Would you for God’s sakes watch where you’re going? Yes, I remember that and positively NO I did not tell anybody I would sell her. Sell her? Where did you get that crazy idea?

From the two guys you sent to look at her.

What two guys? I never sent any two guys and I told you I would give you first chance if I ever decided to sell, which I’m not. When? What did they say? What did they look like?

They were different; they had sort of funny looking skin and strange looking white hair. I can’t think of the name but I saw one of them once when I was in Indo China on maneuvers with the air force… wait! I know. They were Albinos.

Albinos? In Alicante? Albinos?? . . . looking for my car? . . . well, I can’t argue with Fernando… Over the five years he was in Gibraltar there couldn’t have been a more polyglot group than those who passed through there, so, if he said they were Albinos, they were Albinos and they won’t be hard to recognize.

Well, if they come by again, tell them I have agreed to sell her. Show them where she is.

Okay, be a smart ass, but those two guys were sure mean looking

THREE

He dropped me off at my apartment with an unusual admonition from him; get in bed. I aimed for the bar and collapsed against it. I gained some sense of recovery when I showered, shaved, and shined. The eight ounce lead crystal glass was chock full of Glenfidditch, and I was at my favorite spot for soothing solace, the railing of my patio. I hated losing Von Mutzie, but thanked the lord for saving me from my silliness. I raised my glass in thanks and noticed the gathering storm clouds. Chilled, I went back in the apartment, closing the sliding glass doors behind me, and stopped midstride. Something wasn’t right, I never close those doors. Rain never comes in that far; its thirty feet to the rails but I was too sleepy to give it more thought than that.

I was tired. I was cold. I was disshimbled, a nice ethnic made-up word describing my dis-coherentness, another made up word. Jesus, I’m a mess. I have to go to bed. I looked at the lead crystal glass and shook my head but ended up taking it with me. I must have been dreaming when I heard someone knocking on the door. Groggily, I realized I had fallen asleep in my clothes. The drink was on the night stand and all the lights were on. I looked at my watch. It was going on ten o’clock and nobody in their right mind would be knocking… then I thought of the Albinos! . . . the sawed steering wheel and I almost wet my pants. I opened the drawer in my night stand and got my gun… . The knocking again and then, again, incessantly.

ALL RIGHT, I’m coming, I shouted. I went to the door and looked through the peephole and saw nothing. Its located high in the door so someone real short could be beneath the peephole. I tried a sort of maneuver so I could look down, but I couldn’t see anything. Are Albinos short people? . . . Oh God! The knocking again.

O. K. O.K. I’m coming, I shouted again. I made sure the security chain on the door was attached and eased the door open. No one.

I slowly peeked around the opening, looking right and left and saw nothing. Nothing… nada . . . and then the damn knocking started again… in back of me. God!. What? Who could climb ten stories? The Albinos! I turned around; both arms raised in the police attack gun position ready to pull the trigger and blast through the glass door, and sank to my knees. I put both hands to my sweat covered forehead and started laughing and crying with blessed relief.

The knocking was coming from the closed sliding glass doors. A wrought iron metal stand was being thrust back and forth on the door. It had held a plant, now broken on the floor. Three more plants and three lounges were strewn helter—skelter. The rain that never before had left a drop was now running down the glass in rivulets racing to get ahead of each other to puddle on the floor. Maybe 330 nights a year I could lean against the rails of my patio and gaze over a placid sea. It would be impossible to count the millions of stars blinking through the gentle winds. But not tonight.

Tonight it was a thunderstorm. The rain was wind-driven and brought in some waves I had never seen before, switching from blindingly fierce to pond like calm. I fought my way to the rails of the porch where I held on for dear life, fascinated by the awesome strength of the wind. The stygian black almost wiped out every demarcation of the land and the sea, except for the white foam of the waves. The foam would wash up on the shore and disappear, sucked up into a hungry sea… except for one splash which refused to give up its hold on the sand.

I could feel the smell of the sea, that intangible genome that makes a sea-going man what he is. It was a fascinating storm, but I had to walk away. I had to pack.

Now packing is no fun. I recently lost one of my favorite roommates. A beautiful, gorgeous, sexy woman. Her name is Estanza Velaro-de Cartenga, and everywhere I go, everything I touch, my nose finds whiffs of Bellagio perfume, Estanza’s spoor. She had left for her villa in the south of France, successfully recovered from the untimely death of her husband… under six weeks of my tender loving care. I had helped to ease her pain and agony.

I had met her on one of my international flights. There had been a shoe show, working night and day, and I was exhausted. The plane from Alicante was late. I had to rush from terminal to terminal, dropping my briefcase and samples on the tarmac, tearing a hole in my pants and skinning my knee as I stumbled out of the bus taking us to the plane parked away from the terminal.

Using every cuss word in my dirty-word lexicon, I lurched through the passageway to the last seat in first class and collapsed, sweating, panting and pissed at the world. I closed my eyes and lay back in the seat completely exhausted. I must have fallen asleep.

Mister Howard, . . . It was my mother’s voice… but Mama always called me Barry…

Mister Howard, I’m sorry to wake you, but we’re ready for take-off. I looked up and saw wings. They were pinned on the ample breast of a uniform but should have been on the back of one of the most breathtaking beauties I had ever seen. I have put your case and shoe bag in the overhead rack. You missed out on the pre-takeoff drink, but I brought you one that’s on your armrest. I hope you like scotch. She went back to her fold down seat smiled and put her finger to her mouth as in ssssh because of the drink, . . . I suppose.

After take-off, I watched her do her thing with all the passengers and got a hard on every time she bent over to pass or pick up a glass. That uniform did as much for her as the "The Emperors New Clothes" did for the Emperor.

I was doing selective dozing when this angelic nurse appeared with a first aid tray and a new drink.

Thank you for the extra drink. I’m a Glenfiddich scotch drinker, but yours gives the nectar of the gods a good run for the money. I need the name

Sorry, she said as she pulled my knee closer to apply the antiseptic, It’s a single malt the airline has for very special VIPS, and for me, you qualify.

I told myself you can’t be stricken like a love sick teenager having a wet dream over the first pretty face. But it is me and it got worse when she came and kneeled in the aisle next to me and said, I peeked in your shoe bag before I put it up in the rack and saw two shoes I’d love to have. I really am a shoe nut. I have over sixty pair

That did it! Everything, plus a fan, for Godssakes. We talked a lot during the flight; she agreed to have dinner with me; it was a three day lay-over for her, and we made love, drank Brazilian dry champagne, used room service and never saw the light of day until her plane left.

We met every time she was in Madrid and for two years we would spend her vacations together, even tossing hints to each other about making things permanent… until we drifted apart while I was fighting a take-over of my factory from my Spanish partners. Time and distance are the greatest destroyers of romance. British Airways assigned her for a six month tour of duty for their flights to the Far East; politics, partners, protesters glued me to the south of Spain for the better part of a year. We saw each other rarely.

Her husband, Marco de Cartenga, was a kind man, considerate to the nth degree, handsome, distinguished and extremely hale for a man of seventy-four. It didn’t hurt that he was a billionaire over again from his portion of a tin mining consortium. Estanza’s quiet, worldly and subtle beauty of thirty-eight years was the perfect fit for Marco. His three previous wives were vapid toys for his turbulent youth and middle age. In addition to my tender loving care, her pain was also lessened by her pre-nupt of one hundred million, the villa in France, and the sprawling ranch in the hills outside of Buenos Aires.

I guess time is a healer but I don’t think I can ever get her… or her smell… out of my mind.

FOUR

I snapped out of my musings and thought I had better check again with Amparo Martinez, my secretary, to be sure to meet me with my tickets to New York, but when I reached for the phone, it rang. It was Kate Chimago, a friend and president and founder of her shoe business based in Hong Kong.

Hey, Kate, long time no hear, I said. I see by my caller ID you’re still in Hong Kong? I’m starting to pack for our meeting. Every year we would meet before the international shoe show.

Barry, we have a problem. Big, I think, maybe real big. Scary words softened by the languid delivery still tinged with a touch of Cuba. I don’t know if we are going to have a meeting.

What’s up? I asked.

Some sort of complaint of the members who are forced out of the Guild, but I sure in hell didn’t expect this.

What are you talking about? I asked again.

Turn your fax on and I’ll show you. I just had a message hand delivered to my office by a rag-tag little coolie who said ‘Big white man said give you. I asked him who was the man, and he had no idea. Some guy on the street gave him five Hong Kong dollars… just read it"

O.K., I’ll . . . The lined buzzed… she had hung up. The fax arrived.

Bitch madame president . . . I want to thank you and that son of a bitch CEO and the rest of your board for ruining everything I have. I am BROKE. Since the word is out that my company has been expelled from the Guild every major store in the U.S.A. and Europe has blocked all my salesmen and me from ever visiting them again. Everyone has cancelled their orders. All of you will regret this. I will ruin your precious guild.

Our guild… started with just three is now over 500 strong… and this guy thinks he can ruin it?

You weren’t joking, I said when I got back on the phone. He’s pissed but I think it’s hot air. Usually, if someone is going to do something like this, they go ahead and do it, not just blow off steam.

"HOT AIR? That message started with ‘Bitch Madame President.’ I fail to see any hot air anywhere around that."

Let’s put the meeting on hold. Can you take care of that?

Yeah, sure. I’ll have Ansonia get on it right away. I haven’t had a clear thought since I got that note, Barry.

Don’t worry, we’ll work this out. Now go put that gorgeous tush in the bed and we’ll talk tomorrow.

As if the night couldn’t get worse, my door bell rang. It was Paco, one of our security guards.

"Señor Barry por favor"

"Paco, que pasa?" Paco was dripping wet.

"Señor Barry, es importante usted venga a la playa."

On the beach?

"Si, Señor, On the beach."

I got my poncho and followed him out to his tiny Seat with the word seguridad printed on both doors. That’s all I got out of him until we reached the place where he had dragged a man’s body from the edge of the water.

So… Albinos, sawed steering wheels, death threats from coolies, and now a dead man on my beach… I guess being baked in salt wasn’t sounding all that bad right about now.

The beach was completely empty of people. The storm had taken care of that. Paco shone his flashlight towards the man, the beam catching the falling rain like liquid silver. I had to keep brushing the wet hair out of my face to try and see what was what. The man was lying face down in the sand. His starkly white shirt was the foam I had seen from my balcony.

This was on his coat, Paco said.

He handed me a plastic pouch with a plain envelope inside that had three words printed on it.

FOR BARRY HOWARD

I reached down to turn the body around and stared into the face of my friend and the auditor of our Guild, Alberto Salazar. The frozen expression and his wild, wide open eyes showed the shock he must have felt when the bullet caused the small round hole in his forehead.

Visibly shaken, I was saved from falling by Paco’s quick sturdy hand. He led me—dragged me to shelter under the lifeguard’s station.

Señor Barry ? Señor Barry… yo lo creo es necita sentarse. Ah, Señor, dimi . . . Señor Barry . . .

I heard him. I felt him gently slap my face once, two, three times. I tried to say something to answer him. I couldn’t open my mouth. I must have been catatonic.

Poor little Alberto. He wouldn’t have harmed a fly. I sat there immobile, still as stone. I heard Paco use his cellular phone to call the policia and the ambulancia.

The police came. The ambulance came. They loaded Alberto into the back. The cops asked the usual questions. They would be in touch. Paco said he would take me home. There was nothing more to do here he said, except to wait until tomorrow morning… but I underestimated the power of the press.

A local freelance stringer for the paper and TV station caught the call on the police band while trolling the streets. A real eager beaver, he was pounding on my door fifteen minutes after Paco left for the night. I opened the door to bright lights, a TV camera and endless questions. I finally pled exhaustion and they reluctantly gave in with a promise for more time tomorrow. Peace finally and thankfully came in the form of a coma, a sleep so deep it took unending rings on the phone to even stir me at nearly ten the next morning.

I finally broke out of my sleep filled with anxiety and sorrow. I picked up the phone and was thrown back into the real world when I heard a tinny, funny sounding voice say:

"Did you get the message I sent, you son of a bitch? Don’t give up your day job; You looked like shit on TV. I’m not through with the marvelous high and mighty guild or with any one of you. You ruined my life. I’m going to ruin all of yours, especially the bitch president. I’ll be keeping in touch. I’ll be traveling to all the shows with all of you just like the good old days . . . keep looking for me. I’ll be there. And don’t try to trace this call. I’m good at this.

FIVE

Kate was livid. International TV had picked up on the small interview I had given that stringer from the local station. Madrid grabbed the lead and it became fodder for every network in Europe. Do you think you could explain just how I had to find out about this on the goddamned television? Her voice burst through the phone. Kate, just a minute, I can explain…

Explain what? That I don’t have anything to worry about?

Dammit, would you just hold on a minute?

Yeah, right, I’ll hold on. I’ll hold on to my tits. I need to hold on to something—explain to me what you meant when you said that people who send messages like this don’t mean any harm. They are just blowing off, you said. If they were going to do something, they would have done it, you said. Good night and have sweet dreams, you said.

Well, I might have been wrong about that.

He killed Alberto, for God’s sakes. The sweetest guy in the world. For what?

Right now, I am as much in the dark as you are.

And why didn’t you call me right away? I had to see it on the evening news yet—its nine hours difference. By the way, you don’t televise too well, you looked like shit.

That’s what he said, too.

Who said?

The killer, the guy who killed Alberto

"WHAT?

He left a message for me on my answer-phone. Here, I’ll turn up the volume and you can listen to the tape—

She listened.

My God, she whispered. He’s crazy! Did you recognize the voice, anything? The accent? The tone? Anything?

"No, it was canned. A tinny sound, like he was talking in a box, or a tunnel or something.