The Kumquat Hustle

By Danny Corey

Rogue Wall Street trader Marty Bekoff has achieved the impossible and stolen sixty billion dollars from his investors. Too bad the FBI is onto him. Moments before the feds take him into custody, Marty squirrels away forty million dollars in several unknown locations in the wilds of Florida.

When word of the hidden loot leaks out, the chase is on. Redneck dopers, bloodthirsty mobsters, and crooked cops join the hunt for the spoils, as do octogenarian hookers and frantic ex-cons. In other words, it’s just another typical day in Florida.

In the footsteps of esteemed authors Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey, Danny Corey weaves a tale of a multi-billion-dollar theft gone awry, ritual murder, meth labs and kittens. Add to that dirty cops, high-end prostitution, and the Irish and Italian mob. What could possibly go wrong?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665713245

Danny Corey

In a legal career spanning thirty-four years, Daniel Corey has defended over eight thousand defendants charged with major felonies, trying jury trials ranging from prostitution to murder. Prior to his vocation as a civilian trial lawyer, he served as a U. S Army Judge Advocate. He splits his time between homes in Charleston, West Virginia and the Florida Keys.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

THE PRESENT

The detective found the little male prostitute sliced open from his Adam’s apple to his crotch. He’d been hung from the warehouse ceiling with two-hundred-pound-test fishing line. The line descended to a big-game shark hook skewered through his left eye socket, like a champion swordfish hanging on the dock. The poor bastard looked as though he’d been painted dark red. If the detective had forgotten how much blood the human body held, the stiff reminded him: six quarts. He’d been brushstroked with it.

Spray-painted on the wall behind the corpse was a Bible verse:

If a man has sexual relations with a man, as one does with a woman, both have committed an abomination: they shall be put to death, their blood shall be upon them.

—Leviticus 20:13

There’s something you don’t see every day, said the detective. Not even in Key West. He’d taken his time in phoning the chief of police; now he had to answer for it.

You’re out of your jurisdiction, Detective Dipshit, said the chief.

"That’s Mister Detective Dipshit to you, Chief."

How’d you find him, anyway?

Dead.

A human heart and intestines lay at their feet below the hanging corpse. Blood dribbled onto the hardwood floor; the Key West chief of police gagged at the stench. He’s crawling with maggots and mosquitos. Why didn’t you call us earlier?

Didn’t want to miss my grandmother’s shuffleboard game, said the detective. She’s in the playoffs.

The chief shook his head. "All right, smart-ass. Just what are you doing all the way down here from Vero Beach? What, no killers to chase up there?"

Too many old people. The detective shrugged. And all they’re killing is time.

You got a cause of death yet? said the chief.

Sure. His heart and intestines are down here, and he’s up there.

You have some moxie, Detective. I like that in a cop. The chief stepped behind the victim to the wall beyond. Looks like our suspect is a homophobe.

"Gee, you should go on Jeopardy, sir. The detective flipped a Lucky Strike to his lips. Listen. I’ve got a strong lead on this. A scoundrel I’m investigating for an intensely unrelated crime."

The chief cracked a wary smile. Our own homicide boys will be here any second. Wanna tell me about your suspect?

I’ll double down the ten-hand for the boys, Chief. And I’ll go you one better. I’ll give you the collar. But first you’ve got to buy me a strong gin and sin—or five.

1

CHAPTER

PALM BEACH, FLORIDA

APRIL 7, 2003

7:50 P.M.

Every major felony should begin with wet, misty sea fog, the kind that now settled ghostlike over Palm Beach’s grand oceanfront estates. The setting sun cast a phosphorus glow across the mist, blurring the symbols of wealth. Second, even third homes to captains of industry, the idle rich, the oldest money. America’s wealthiest town. Median home value, eight million dollars—too many square feet, too few people.

South Florida’s prevailing spring winds streamed up from the balmy Caribbean—light, warm, and dry. Tourist season. But tonight, a rare northern breeze lingered, gusting down the shoreline. Nippy for April. On the beach, young couples in long sleeves packed it in.

Through cheap binoculars Nate Lindsey scanned the horizon from the opposite side of the island. The slate-gray sky fused into the sea’s gloomy, blue swells. In forty minutes, his view eastward to those mansions would reveal a jet-black Atlantic Ocean. Finally, a moonless night, thick with damp, fair weather clouds. Low pressure, minus the rain.

Ugly out, but dry. And with no moon, no light. No shadows. Inky and dark.

Blackout won’t be for a little while, Nate thought. It’s still light out.

Zero hour, 8:30 p.m.

To burn time, he withdrew a notepad from his back pocket. Within its well-thumbed pages were scaled floor plans he’d sketched weeks ago. He examined them, yet again. Satisfied the layouts were ingrained in his memory, he stowed them away.

Unlike most burglars, Nate had walked to the scene of the crime. His journey across Flagler Bridge from his mother’s home in West Palm had taken fourteen minutes. He viewed the bridge as the pathway to the wrong side of the tracks—the gap between prosperity and poverty. Between Disneyland and Wasteland.

South Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida: America’s most exclusive address. Billionaires’ Row. The Vanderbilts, the Hearsts, the Kennedys. Home to the haves.

Here, the Hollywood elite were shunned as new money.

The oceanfront Mediterranean chateau of Wall Street tycoon Marty Berkoff sat unoccupied. Nate discerned this—he occasionally worked off-hours for the rich old buzzard, bartending his aristocratic house parties. He bartended full-time, however, at the exclusive Palm Beach Polo Club. Nate didn’t envy the wealthy. He wore his lower-class childhood like brushed flannel boxer shorts. No, the job yielded an unforeseen windfall: intelligence. Namely, inside knowledge unavailable to the common thief. The Berkoffs were visiting their Manhattan home and were too tight to hire Palm Beach security staff.

Having first worked Berkoff’s Christmas party three years before, he’d marveled at the abhorrent luxury. The estate straddled both sides of South Ocean Boulevard, twelve acres of shameless, Florida-meets-Versailles opulence: lush European gardens, lion’s head fountains, two tennis courts, three swimming pools. Inside, fourteen bedrooms, sixteen bathrooms, five kitchens, a home theater, two juice bars, and a sauna room. And the party room loomed larger than his mother’s entire home. Stage, dance floor, pool tables, vintage slot machines. Next, a massive wet bar with keg taps, and a kitchen large enough to accommodate weddings and bar mitzvahs. The walls displayed stuffed fish Berkoff hadn’t caught. Plush leather furniture sighted on twelve huge televisions and, of course, an indoor putting green. Why not? The old boy often boasted of being a billionaire. Nate had assumed he was full of shit.

Perhaps not.

It had taken more than cocktail courage for Nate to execute his crime’s preliminary phase. He’d bartended Berkoff’s recent St. Patrick’s Day bash. The guest list included highbrow shitheads, blue-blood bores, and new money suck-ups. Fucking parasites. His tip jar barely made the trip worth it. White-gloved waiters made rounds with silver-plated trays of champagne and caviar with tiny golden spoons. In all directions: Tiffany perfume, Cartier watches, air-kisses—a pretension overload. He greeted his break in the festivities with relief and dread. He’d breached the banks of the Rubicon; to cross it, he needed to scour the estate’s private floors.

Desperate to secure the security system’s passcodes, he narrowed his search down to Berkoff’s bedroom. He found nothing in the dressers or nightstands, and the hunt began eating too much clock. Jittery, near the end of his break he figured his nerves would trigger a stroke. He probed the closet’s bottom drawer. Inside a cufflink box, handwritten on a Post-it note—jackpot.

Echoes of the evening’s entertainment, Wayne Newton, filtered up from the party room. Nate scribbled the combinations on his order pad. Knees quaking, he scurried back to the bar with moments to spare.

In hindsight, the door keys had been effortless: weeks earlier, he’d generated duplicates from originals loaned to him for booze deliveries.

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Now in his mid-twenties, Nathaniel Hawthorne Lindsey had lived a tolerably clean life. He’d grown up in West Palm’s badlands, child of a single mother. Service sector jobs, two-year Navy hitch. Easygoing, five-eleven, and trim, he was South Florida, white-guy, surf-bum handsome. Smooth features and sandy-blond hair made him almost pretty, which he offset by sporting light facial stubble. He had no trouble getting women in the sack, but affably avoided commitment. Carefree, apparently to the point of indifference.

Yet working for Marty Berkoff unnerved him. Nate sensed dread. He wasn’t certain, but he had a hunch—Berkoff was so crooked he could eat clam chowder with a corkscrew. The bigwig’s boasts stirred a tad too smarmy. Affluent winks and nods radiated when his tightlipped Wall Street pals converged.

Nate had racked up a lifetime of minor street hustles for weed money. He could recognize a scam. Long ago, he’d concluded investors were taking it straight in the ass in Berkoff’s mutual fund machine. At the Palm Beach Polo Club, money didn’t just talk, it played lots of tennis and plenty of golf. But mostly, it drank. Countless Wall Street heavyweights owned second homes nearby, and their bartenders heard everything. Established stock and bond traders insisted—all Wall Street players sporadically experienced monstrous losses, as an accepted business risk. Even seemingly honest traders were shady.

But how in hell could all Berkoff fund’s investors win, hand-over-fist, year after year? Old Marty could make Scrooge McDuck blush.

Plying his trade in Palm Beach’s country clubs since high school, Nate caught all the stories. The rich couldn’t resist talking money. Over the last thirty years, Berkoff’s fund had averaged a fourteen-percent annual return. Every year. Including the savage bear market years of 1990, 1998, and 2002. Not even ultra-profitable Vegas casinos could generate such returns. As followed, he guessed, the ass-hosing.

Enough daydreaming. Back to committing a Class-A felony.

Nate glanced at his watch. 8:26 p.m. Close enough. His grandfather had lectured him, everywhere you go, you belong. Accordingly, he brought along a clipboard. The clipboard bore the markings Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department, as did his collared work shirt. His chemical-resistant latex gloves carried no logo. He wandered up to the estate’s landward, street side. No pedestrian observers visible. Straight through the front door. At the first keypad station he disengaged the alarm, motion sensors, and video surveillance. Next, he killed the X server, deleting the hard drive and tapes. He strolled beyond the entryway and living room, past the kitchen and pantry. Down the stairs, into the party room, along the library, into the office. The area rug’s design covering the floor unsettled Nate— the Pied Piper of Hamelin, luring the children away from the town, never to return. Rolling it aside, on the keyboard concealed beneath he entered the underfloor vault’s combination. The items he retrieved barely fit in his backpack and two overnight bags.

Unwieldy and heavy, his plunder narrowly permitted him to limit it to one trip. He fled the office to the private tunnel beneath South Ocean Boulevard. Through the tunnel and up the stairs to the foyer of Berkoff’s beach cottage. Out the door and onto sandy Palm Beach. He locked the door behind him.

The path of his home invasion consisted of a giant U-turn, exiting across the street from where he’d entered. Nate didn’t look back.

In the home less than six minutes, he hadn’t left a trace of his visit.

Ninety-six hours and two hundred fifty miles later, Nate Lindsey was arrested in Key West. Alone, holed up in an airless motel room on Duval Street. Upon his person, state and local agents seized $5,592 in cash and twelve South African gold coins, valued at $4,356. He surrendered without a struggle.

On the scene, the task force’s ball-busting of Lindsey had been instant and merciless:

Relax, son, the handcuffs are tight because they’re new. They’ll stretch out after you wear them awhile.

Ha! You pussy! A lousy ten-thousand-dollar haul? Marty Berkoff’s a billionaire. He must be laughing his nuts off!

If you run, you’ll only go to jail tired.

That was Palm Beach, douchebag! For a burglary in that town, you’ll be getting ass fucked by Rufus Fudgepacker for fifteen-to-life!

And on it went. As the police celebrated their high-profile Lindsey collar, they remained unaware of one small fact.

It had been the largest heist in U.S. history.

2

CHAPTER

THE PRESENT

EARLY APRIL

4:00 A.M.

Last call at the Last Chance Saloon in Florida City. Mainland Florida’s southernmost point; the hardest of Florida’s already hard-edge. A rough bar in a rougher town.

Everyone is familiar with the southernmost point in the Continental U.S.—Key West. The final island in a long, long chain of islands. The Conch Republic. Overrun with colorful sailboats, beautiful sunsets, ersatz pirates and their chatty parrots. Beach weddings, piña coladas, hot-air balloon races. One might ride the cute little Conch Train, or carouse with Parrot Heads on the Duval Crawl. Or enjoy Sunset Celebration, the nightly party to watch the sunset. Low crime, lower stress.

What passes for hard news in the Conch Republic? College kids kidnapping the hog at the Hog’s Breath Saloon and holding it for ransom on Facebook.

Key West, an actual Disney Cruise Ship destination. A feel-good place, with safe, postcard moments to please everybody.

Well, not quite everybody.

Leisure City, Homestead, and Florida City comprise the southernmost point of Florida’s mainland, making news of a different sort. Random freeway shootouts, bales of cocaine crashing through roofs, pet pythons escaping the terrarium and swallowing the baby. Crystal-meth labs, shirtless white guys in handcuffs, octogenarian gang violence. Carjackings of chartered tour buses. Crack-binge motels, carpetbaggers, heroin seizures, hurricane-razed trailer parks. Copious sunshine.

And that’s the soft news.

In the bars: wet panties contests, alligator races, cockfights, bare-knuckle boxing matches for the bar tab. Casket-box derby rallies, wet T-shirt challenges for women over seventy. Evening crowds include prostitutes, pimps, beggars, con men, pickpockets, grifters, and swindlers. Enough crippling gambling addictions to make Vegas jealous. Bountiful sunshine.

And the dives are packed every night.

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For some, the Last Chance was the last chance. Felony sheets, five ex–trophy wives, multiple bankruptcies. But not for Algie and Cooter. It wasn’t precisely that they flew under radar. Radar just didn’t know to look for them.

The two men clinked shot glasses—Bushmills, followed by Budweiser chasers. A fitting end to a ferocious night of boozing. Algie checked his watch and waited for the expected question from his drinking buddy Jasper. Jasper also happened to be the bartender, and drinking on the job was a given in South Florida bars.

Join me in one last shot, said Jasper. Then you and Cooter come to my place after I close up. We’ll grill out T-bones. I got plenty o’ booze and three live chickens left. We’ll feed the chickens to the gator.

Though tempted by the antics of his pal’s pet gator, Algie’s skull said sack time. Thanks, Jasper my boy, but we are, as one says, scrupulously inebriated. Gotta snooze.

Jasper slammed a shot of Dickel, solo. Suit yourself. Oh, Algie, that reminds me. Some old lady from that Miami seafood store called for you …

Algie waited. He appreciated Jasper had a difficult time finishing a sentence. Maybe it required too much energy. And did this lady leave a message, Jasper?

Yeah. Said to remind you to remember your meeting tomorrow. What the dickens you got goin’, anyway?

A minor and boring deal, my friend. Algie slid a fifty across the bar. Shalom, pal.

Give my best to your sister, said Jasper.

Certainly.

And don’t forget this time, dumbass.

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On white trash autopilot, Algie covered one eye navigating the jaunt to his double-wide in Homestead. Why did his house always seem four times farther from the Last Chance on the way back? His timeworn, multicolored pickup truck crunched gravel as it approached a manufactured home. Algie parked and gathered empty beer cans off the floorboard.

Cooter, has she got any frozen pizzas left?

Cooter misjudged the imperative first step out of the truck. He collapsed toward the gravel like a two-hundred-pound toddler, but made an admirable save by banging his chin on the running board. Oomph! Conversation continued from ground-level. Three double-cheese meat-lovers in the icebox, last I checked.

Floyd Algernon Algie Hickney was considerably more intelligent than the semi-mentally defective Cooter. He was the outfit’s unofficial leader and idolized by his younger cousin. Excellent, I’m powerful starvin’. At the front door, Algie’s keys jangled, and he dropped them twice before jiggling the right one into the lock.

Inside the living room sat Algie’s younger sister, Naomi, watching a Hee Haw rerun, painting her toenails. Passion Fruit Pink. You two speds. Still ridin’ the short bus, I see.

The men popped beers and opened a frozen pizza. Algie flung the cardboard pizza box, Frisbee style, over his sister’s head. She have a paying customer in there, Naomi?

Yep. When’re you window-lickers gonna drop this dumbass scheme?

Just do it, please. Algie handed his sister a digital camera. Oh, and your friend-boy Jasper says hello.

He’s a treat, Jasper is. Be right back. Naomi followed a narrow, faux-paneled hallway to their grandmother’s bedroom. She thumped the hallway wall with her behind, disengaging the lock. She stepped into the master suite where sixty-nine-year-old Chastity Breedlove was pounding the farm grit out of one very sweaty Mexican. Cowgirl style. Naomi snapped a photo, mid-stroke. Howdy, Grandma. Your devoted grandsons are back. They wanna know if you want any pizza.

Late the next morning

A new black Cadillac limousine cruised south on Florida’s Turnpike. Blinding sunshine penetrated the armored car’s tinted windows. Destination: the end of the road in the Everglades. It was business.

Four men sat facing one another in the rear compartment. The crew was divided into two teams: brains and violence.

The two thugs—violence—were Killian Kane and Boogan O’Bannon, two true sons of Ireland: pale skin, black hair, blue eyes. They were Samuel Sam the Clam Squillante’s bodyguards, hard-drinking, short-tempered, and moody. In unscrupulous street deals or a beef with another crew, bloody turf feuds often followed—with the Clam’s crew on top. The fact that O’Bannon possessed the brains of a houseplant mattered little. Solely critical was their absolute loyalty to Sunshine State gangster Samuel Benito Squillante. They’d bashed more than skulls for their boss and would take his odorous, fishy secrets to their graves.

Also crucial to the paranoid mob boss regarding his bodyguards was what they were not. Killian and Boogan were not Italian, not family, and unable to survive in the real world without the Capo’s good graces. At age nineteen, while living in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, the boys had found themselves in a dilemma. Leave New York forever or get whacked. Squillante hastily recruited them as a favor to their former boss. That was fifteen years ago, and they’d since lived in his Miami guesthouse. Occasionally, an outside Irish friend busted their chops for laboring as soldiers in the Italian mob. To this they consistently replied—a proper Irishman shouldn’t be too picky whom he gets in a fight with.

Too bad for Squillante, circumstances weren’t so simple regarding family.

Michael and Giuseppe, the ostensible brains, had both graduated from some pushover New England college. Their four-thousand-dollar Armani suits and Ferragamo wing tips made the Clam want to barf on his sweat suit. But there was worse. It galled the tropical Don that Michael and Giuseppe were family. Italian family. The sons of his two worthless sisters. And one sure lesson the long-standing crime lord had learned in forty years in the business is you can never, never trust family. Squillante had hired the prima donnas out of tribal loyalty—they were his nephews. But his two mean-leprechaun sergeants kept tabs on them. The Irish boys wore cheap suits, kept receipts, and only boozed off-hours. Squillante inherently trusted them.

The Clam’s apprehensions toward his nephews often intensified because he occasionally couldn’t tell them apart. Both men were full-blooded Italian wiseguys, bloodlines back to Puglia, Italy—the bootheel on the map. Both loved linguine, wine, and women, and detested heathen non-Catholics. But the similarities ended there. Michael Little Z Zamboni and Giuseppe Big Tuna Terranova were as mismatched a pair as Fred Astaire and Fred Flintstone. Their mob nicknames confused the Clam. He regularly addressed the scrawny one as Little Z and the moose as Big Tuna. And he was always wrong. Little Z stood six-foot-four and a solid two-forty. Weekly boxing regimens at Miami Beach’s Fifth Street Gym maintained his physique. His head of lush, black Italian hair made for an expensive haircut. He suffered a perpetual five o’clock shadow, even after a shave. An intimidating figure. While well-spoken, he was the more cautious and less violent of the two cousins.

Big Tuna came in at a whopping five-foot-three, one hundred twenty pounds, wringing wet. Prematurely balding, bespectacled, meticulous, and fussy, he was more often mistaken for an accountant than a mobster. But he was a verbose cutthroat. Little Man’s Disease, on steroids.

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At age sixty-two, Samuel Squillante reigned fearless over South Florida’s most powerful crime syndicate in decades. Individually, his goons were just your average, vicious, gangster thugs. Collectively, they were psychotic. The snippy Miami press had christened them The Clam’s Four. Their operation ran narcotics, extortion, and robbery out of Happy Clam’s Discount Seafood on the Miami River. Over fifteen years their brutality and violence became legend. If the boss ordered a deadbeat debtor’s car demolished, they’d firebomb his home. A command to rough up a police informant found the unfortunate witness comatose. Between jobs they ruthlessly robbed rival drug dealers and random prostitutes. Their mere survival in Miami’s cruel, drug-ridden underworld was a statistical improbability. If the law of averages were straight, they’d all be dead. Some thought the Clam’s Four lucky; others considered them charmed. The simple truth was they’d outlived the competition. However, fearing a jinx, they avoided talk of their luck dodging death like a grand jury indictment.

Sam the Clam himself carried a jellied three hundred pounds on an egg-shaped, five-foot-five frame. Even he couldn’t recall how he’d earned the nickname shared with the harmless shellfish. Use of the byname alone took titanic gonads. If the feds indicted Squillante for racketeering, he’d be helpless to disclaim the mafia tag. But, as the corny moniker of a wholesale seafood business, it was harmless. The press worked it; the FBI loved it. And it spelled fear in Florida’s criminal underworld.

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Earlier that day, the Clam had bigger fish to fry. His wife, Phyllis, had placed him on a sadistic diet. He was in no mood to be hassled by his vulture-hag-bitch older sister, Louise, visiting from Jersey. The portly Squillante dreaded seeing the old battle-ax. That fucking Louise ridiculed his sense of gangland respect.

"Why’re you such a cretino, Sam? asked seventy-year-old Louise. At 7:50 a.m., they sat at the kitchen table of his Coral Gables home. Why outsource the job? You know Michael and Giuseppe need the work."

Because the shits leave me hanging. The Clam snuck a chocolate truffle off a side table. They’re trigger happy with those mega-cannons they carry in their spiffy little suits. Their lousy weakness for broads makes even my paddies blush. And they can’t keep their mouths shut.

"Watch your mouth, Samuel. Those boys are family."

The Clam suddenly longed to advise Louise to go back to Jersey and die of face cancer. Instead, he said, "Louise, you been to South Beach lately? You been to the airport or Bayside Market Place? Anywhere in Miami? It’s all spics and wetbacks. Only these wetbacks ain’t Messican beaners that swam the Rio Grande to creep into Texas. No, these hombres’ backs ain’t wet, they’re waterlogged, considerin’ most of ’em floated up here from Cuba. The Julios are like gnats in Miami, they’re everywhere, no escaping it. I got thirty-four employees at the fish storehouse, thirty of ’em are spics. The others are three coon truck drivers, plus old Petula McPherson, my secretary, and she’s ninety-nine. She’s white. The Cubans heavily outwork the Anglos here, and they’re taking all the decent jobs. It’s simple economics. For what I pay Michael and Giuseppe, I could employ ten border-bunnies, and they’d work ten times harder."

All right, Sam, enough self-pity. You’re already rich as Rockefeller, except Rockefeller wasn’t fat. Tears welled. She dabbed her eyes with a handy tissue. As a favor to me, give the boys another chance. After all I’ve done for you.

"Merda, Louise. I can’t believe I sponsored those two Testa di cazzo gettin’ made. I gotta be the laughingstock back in Jersey."

Please, Sam.

The Clam eyeballed Louise’s voluminous blob of blue hair. Having family could prove burdensome. Italian family. Louise would prevail. She’d been ruthless in calling in her last marker, nearly exhausted. She’d cared for their ailing father, the Capodecina of New Jersey, during the deathwatch. All right, I’ll send Michael and Giuseppe. But my micks go with ’em.

It was a bloodthirsty choice.

3

CHAPTER

SOUTH OCEAN BOULEVARD, PALM BEACH

APRIL 7, 2003

8:36 P.M.

The prime philosophical difference between the poor and the rich in America is simple. While the poor must bear the cross of their suffering, the rich must pretend to enjoy it. Beyond that, the only true distinction between billionaires and normal people is the nine zeros on their bank statements.

All neighborhoods, even ultrawealthy ones, have their busybodies.

On the same black night Nate Lindsey engaged in burglary, Hilda Clitoruvich walked her boss’s pet Pomeranian, Penelope, two doors down from Berkoff’s estate. Ordinarily, the cautious maid returned home before sunset. But the snotty little dog gyrated in place, constipated. She’d warned the mistress of the house against peanut butter and anchovy doggy treats, but hey, who listens?

Hilda stopped to allow Penelope a moment to attempt a bowel movement off the sidewalk. As she turned her head to give the dog a bit of privacy, her gaze fell upon a silhouette entering the grounds of her boss’s neighbor, Mr. Berkoff. What’s this? Freshly armed with the thrill of holding the secret to another’s misfortune, Hilda chose to investigate further. She gathered the dog and made her way toward the Berkoffs’. Aren’t the neighbors in Manhattan? No parties scheduled? Kurba! A recent immigrant from Slovenia, Hilda cherished her job and desperately sought her superior’s approval. Events witnessed in the next thirty seconds convinced her—time to act. She telephoned her boss, a billionaire heiress to a feminine hygiene products fortune. Although anxious, Hilda figured, what the hell, better safe than sorry. She frowned; her domestic labor Mexican friends would simply ignore the intrusion. Their primary source of entertainment was gossiping of the misfortune of others. The bitches.

The heiress, known affectionately as Princess Douche, was in residence at her winter home in Aspen. Packing for her return from spring ski season, she received Hilda’s call with alarm. She hastily telephoned Marty Berkoff in New York.

The call caught the Wall Street legend in evening dress, alone, on his terrace. His breathtaking view overlooking Central Park and the Plaza Hotel preoccupied him. He’d been enjoying cocktail hour, waiting for his wife to finish primping for dining out. Berkoff blinked at the telephone in annoyance. Who calls this late?

Hello? said Berkoff.

In a hurried clip, Princess Douche described what Hilda had witnessed eight minutes earlier.

He thanked her and hung up.

The moment Berkoff disconnected the line with the heiress, Nate Lindsey locked the door of Berkoff’s Palm Beach cottage. He stood thirty-five yards across the street from the main chateau, behind Hilda Clitoruvich. The midday sun’s warmth still lingered on the sand beneath his feet.

4

CHAPTER

APRIL 7, 2003

8:42 P.M.

Fernandez Miranda was a man annoyed by the foreign sound of his own name. Born in Delray Beach, he spoke about as much Spanish as he did Swahili. In the Palm Beach Police Department supervisor’s office, Miranda received the call. Lieutenant Miranda speaking.

Now you listen close, boy, ’cause this is one god-awful-holy-fuckin’ emergency. I’m Marty Berkoff. Do you know who I am and my Palm Beach home’s address?

Yes, sir.

Don’t fuck this up, because I’m calling the governor next. Right now, I’m in New York. Ten minutes ago, a man broke into my vacant home at 810 South Ocean Boulevard, right through the wretched front door. You writing this down, son?

Yes, sir, and recording it. Please hold while I alert all units. Static police radio chatter squawked in the background. Units are en route. One cruiser is only three blocks from your house.

Right. Mobilize the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department and the FDLE. My neighbor’s maid said the shithead waltzed in the front door like he owned the place—

"The maid’s boss, your neighbor. What’s his or her name?"

What fucking difference does it make? She’s Eileen Potman, but everyone calls her Princess Douche. Anyhow, the maid said she got a damn good look at the guy. Hell, he might still be in there!

Understood, Mr. Berkoff. Who, precisely, has proper access to your home?

"Only three outfits have keys to the estate—Honeywell Alarm, Kensington Cleaners, and Ritz-Carlton Catering. All three exceedingly bonded and insured. I’ll contact Honeywell now. They’ll meet your officers pronto with keys and codes. The maid who witnessed the creep is there waiting on you. This is A-1 priority, Sergeant Gomez. You do exactly as I say. If you don’t, you’ll be giving political correctness lectures to meter maids in Lake Buttfuck in