stuff down while the geek from Texas explained what he needed to know. Once he parked this huge deal in the family’s driveway, Tommy was absolutely, for damn sure, through taking shit off of Joe. From now on, his little brother would have to admit that it was Tommy who had brought this good fortune home.
He leaned back in his seat and adjusted the air nozzle over his head. He closed his eyes…. Being smart wasn’t all that difficult, he mused. He had let Joe convince him that he’d always fuck things up if he didn’t let Joe run things, but he was about to prove that piece of horseshit wisdom wrong. Anybody could be smart. Doing deals was a lot like clipping guys. All you had to do was be careful, make sure you had good accomplices, and get rid of all the Dixie cups. He had decided that the two geek doctors from Fresno were definitely Dixie cups.
In the cockpit of Joe Rina’s Challenger jet, the phone rang, and the pilot, Scott Montgomery, picked it up immediately. It was a new airphone that got its calls off of the Satcom 9 geosynchronous satellite. The calls cost twenty dollars a minute, and the only person who ever used this phone was Joe Rina.
“Yes, sir,” Scott said into the receiver while his copilot, Daniel Rubin, looked over.
“Is Tommy aboard?” Joe asked from his house in upstate New Jersey. He was looking out through the windows of his den at a shallow man-made lake that was beginning to freeze in the unusually early winter.
“Yes, sir, he’s on board. We’re headed to San Francisco.”
“I don’t want you to tell him I’ve spoken to you,” Joe said firmly. “I want you to give me an estimated time of arrival in San Francisco and the name of the F.S.O. you’re going to use there.”
“We’re scheduled to land at Pacific Aviation Flight Service Organization in two hours, at about ten P.M.,” Scott said, wondering what the hell this was all about. Tommy and Joe never worked behind each other’s backs. Their trust in one another was legendary.
“Okay,” Joe said, “if that changes or if Tommy diverts you to another field, I want you to call me. And Scott, I’m warning you, if you tell him anything, I’m going to deal with you harshly and personally—you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Scott said, and hung up the phone.
In New Jersey, Joe stood in his den, seething. It was a little past eight as he looked out at the last glimmerings of twilight playing across the glistening gray body of landscaped water. He couldn’t believe that Tommy had turned on him. Black anger churned like boiling asphalt.
Then Joe extinguished these emotions. He would deal with this methodically, not emotionally. So far, all he had was some pictures given to him by Victoria Hart, who was, after all, a mortal enemy. She could be trying to fool him. He still wasn’t convinced she hadn’t played a role in the jewelry store scam. Tommy said she had, that it was on tape, but Joe hadn’t been able to see it yet and now Tommy was making some very spooky moves. Maybe there was another explanation. He would give Tommy a chance to explain. If the explanation made sense, then he would have Victoria Hart killed for her treachery. But if Tommy had been stealing from him, if he’d arranged to put the card sharp into the game in Greenborough, like Victoria had said … if Tommy had been involved in the tat at the Sabre Bay casino and had stolen money from the dead-drop without an overwhelming personal reason, then Tommy would have to pay the Sicilian price. He would no longer be Joe’s brother and would die in agony.
Joe was now moving impatiently around his den as these thoughts consumed him. He was waiting for a phone call from San Francisco. His mind played across the facts once more, searching for a plausible explanation he might have missed: He knew for sure that Tommy had taken the money from the bank in Nassau. What possible reason could Tommy have for stealing five million dollars? Why would he do that? If he needed money, Joe would give it to him. No matter from which angle he surveyed the question, there seemed to be no answer except one: Tommy must have done it to show disrespect. Tommy had broken their bond of faith, and that fact tortured Joe. He could not excise it