Robin Cook - Seizure

Fifteen minutes later, he had keys to another Cherokee, although this time it was supposed to be green. He wandered back to the international arrivals area and was about to try to call Lou when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

By reflex, Gaetano spun around, ready to do battle. He found himself staring into the dark eyes of the blackest, baldest man he had ever seen. There were enough gold chains around his neck to make bending over a resistance exercise, and there was enough light reflecting off his scalp to make Gaetano squint. The man responded to Gaetano’s overreaction by stepping back and holding up both hands as if to parry a blow. One of the hands held a wrinkled brown paper bag.

“Easy, man!” the individual said. He spoke with the same colorful, Bahamian accent Gaetano remembered from his first visit. “I don’t mean no harm.”

Gaetano was embarrassed about his aggressiveness and tried to apologize.

“No problem, man.” The voice had a definite lilt. “Are you Gaetano Baresse from Boston?”

“Speaking!” Gaetano said, with a smile of relief. For a second, he felt like hugging the stranger, as if he were a lost relative. “You have something for me?”

“If you’re Gaetano Baresse, I do. The name is Robert. Let me show you what I have.” With that, the man unrolled the top of his paper bag and reached in with the intention of lifting out the contents.

“Hey, don’t whip that thing out here!” Gaetano forcibly whispered. He was horrified. “Are you crazy?” Gaetano’s eyes made a nervous sweep around the terminal. There were several armed but bored policemen in the immediate area. Thankfully, they weren’t paying any attention.

“You want to see it, don’t you?” the man asked.

“Yeah, but not here in the middle of everything. Did you come in a car?”

“Sure, I came in a car.”

“Let’s go.”

With a shrug, the man led the way out of the terminal. A few minutes later, they climbed into a pastel, vintage Cadillac with huge tail fins. The man switched on the overhead light and handed Gaetano the bag. Gaetano was expecting some sort of Saturday night special, but what he pulled out surprised him considerably. It was a nine-millimeter SW99 equipped with a LaserMax and a Bowers CAC9 suppressor.

“Okay?” Robert asked. “You happy?”

“More than happy,” Gaetano said. He admired the unmarred, black melonite finish, which suggested the gun was brand-new. It was an imposing weapon. Although it had only a four-inch barrel, the attached silencer made it more like ten inches.

After making sure no one was in the immediate area, Gaetano aimed the handgun out the windshield at a nearby car and briefly activated the laser. Fifty feet away, he saw the red dot flash on a car’s back bumper. He was thrilled with the weapon until he noticed the magazine was missing in the butt.

“Where’s the magazine?” Gaetano questioned. Without a magazine and ammunition, the gun was worthless.

Robert smiled in the car’s semidarkness. Against his burnished ebony skin, his teeth were truly pearly whites. He patted his left pants pocket. “I got it safely right here, man, all loaded up and ready to go. There’s even an extra one for good measure.”

“Good,” Gaetano said. He stuck out his hand. He was relieved.

“Not so fast,” Robert said. “It seems to me this is worth something to me personally. I mean, I did come all the way out here instead of sitting home with a cold one. You catch my drift?”

For a moment, Gaetano just stared into the man’s eyes, which in the darkness looked surprisingly like two bulletholes in a dirty white blanket. He knew it was a shakedown of sorts, and probably the man’s idea. Gaetano’s first thought was to grab the guy’s head and bounce it off the steering wheel to let him know exactly with whom he was dealing, but clearer thoughts prevailed. The guy could have another gun, which could make things dicey and was certainly not the way this current trip should start. More important, Gaetano had no idea of this guy’s relation to the Miami Colombians who Lou had contacted to set everything up. The last thing Gaetano needed or wanted while he was in Nassau on business was to have a group of guys after his own ass, especially the Colombians.

Gaetano cleared his throat. He was carrying a significant amount of cash, since on such a foray, everything he did was for cash. “Robert, I suppose you deserve a small token of appreciation. What do you have in mind?”

“A c-note would be nice,” Robert said.

Without another word, Gaetano leaned forward to get his free hand into his right pants pocket. While he did so, he didn’t take his eyes off Robert. He peeled off a bill from a roll, pulled it out, and handed it over. Robert then produced the magazines. Gaetano slipped one into the butt of the handgun. It clicked home. Discarding a fleeting fantasy of trying out the gun on Robert, Gaetano stepped from the car. He put the second magazine into the side pocket of his jacket.

“Hey, man!” Robert called. “You need a ride into town?”

Gaetano leaned back inside the vehicle. “Thanks, but I have my own wheels.” Standing back up, he slipped the gun into his left pants pocket, which had a customized, hemmed opening at the bottom to accommodate the automatic’s silencer. Having the hole was a trick he’d learned from a mentor when he’d first started working for the New York family. The permanent hole’s only drawback was having to learn never to put anything else in the pocket, like coins or keys, which would tumble down his pant leg. As Gaetano walked toward the rent-a-car’s lot, he could feel the cold steel of the silencer moving against his bare thigh. For him, it was like a caress.

Twenty minutes later, Gaetano directed his rented Cherokee into the Ocean Club’s hotel parking lot. The drive had given him time to calm down after Robert’s mini-extortion episode. The crunching sound of the tires on the gravel was particularly loud with all the vehicle’s windows down. Enjoying the summerlike, evening air, Gaetano had opted to leave the air-conditioning off. Once in the lot, he took a full loop around. He wanted a spot that was not only close to the hotel but also afforded a direct shot out to the driveway. After whacking the professor, he wanted to be able to leave with dispatch.

Before getting out of the car, Gaetano flicked on the interior light and checked himself in the rearview mirror. He wanted to be sure he was presentable in the posh hotel. He smoothed his rather bushy eyebrows and adjusted the lapels of his jacket. When he thought he looked the best he could, he got out of the car. The car keys went into his right pants pocket, and he patted them through the fabric for good measure. The last thing he wanted when he was leaving was to have to search for the keys. Thus prepared, he started off.

Following the same approach he’d used on his first visit to the hotel, Gaetano headed for the building that housed suite 108. It was eight-thirty at night, so he expected the professor and his girlfriend to be at dinner, but he still wanted to check the room first. He walked at a leisurely pace and passed several smartly dressed guests going in the opposite direction.

At the appropriate location, Gaetano cut between two buildings to reach the lawn on the ocean side. He continued, almost to the tangle of sea grapes that covered the steep slope down to the beach. There, he turned to stroll parallel to the front of the appropriate building. He was close enough to the water to hear the gentle lapping of the waves on the beach to his right. The weather was glorious, with fast scudding clouds racing across a canopy of stars partially obscured by a bright gibbous moon. Soft ocean breezes rustled the palm trees. It was not hard for Gaetano to understand why people liked the Ocean Club.