The First Billion

He was standing at the back door of Ray Luca's house, a run-down clapboard cottage with dormer windows, a weather vane, and paint peeling by the bucketload. Bougainvillea, ferns, and frangipani grew untended on three sides of the small home, enough vines and vegetation to qualify the place as a jungle. Frustrated, he took a step back, looking for spots where Luca might have hidden a key. He ran a hand along the door frame; his only rewards a splinter and a dead beetle. A few potted plants dangled from exposed rafters. His fingers probed the moist dirt, again without success. Behind him, a redbrick patio stretched twenty feet in either direction. A hot tub occupied one corner, a rusted hibachi and a flimsy set of lawn chairs the other. He walked to the hibachi and removed the lid. Fired charcoal briquettes dusted the interior. He replaced the lid carefully, his grasp that much tighter because of the sweat rolling down his forearms. The heat and humidity, coupled with his anxiety, made him feel plugged in, electric. He held out his hand and it trembled slightly, not so much with fear as with adrenaline.

He had parked two blocks up the road and walked boldly to Luca's front door, calling out his name to show the world he was a friend. He'd decided that noise was less suspicious than silence, and that an innocent visitor wouldn't think to camouflage his arrival. The neighborhood was sleepy bordering on comatose, with quaint cracker box houses spaced twenty to thirty yards apart and a scarred macadam road shaded by a palm canopy. Though he hadn't seen a soul, he could be sure someone had laid eyes on him. He figured he had fifteen minutes before his window of safety closed. After that he had no idea who might come- police, the FBI, a nosy neighbor.

His anxiety growing as the seconds ticked by, Gavallan returned his gaze to the rear of the house. A watering jar, a can of insecticide, and a terra-cotta pot holding a spade and a trowel sat a few feet from the door. Taking out his handkerchief, he wiped his forehead and dried his palms. Eeny-meeny-miney-mo. He chose the watering jar. Wrong again.

The key was under the insecticide.

***

Inside the kitchen, Gavallan stood with his back pressed to the door, listening. He heard the tick of the oven clock, the whir of the ice machine, the deafening static of abandonment. Mostly, though, he heard the draw of his own shallow breathing and the boom-boom-boom of blood thumping in his ears.

Satisfied the home was deserted, he made his way through the dining room, past the front door, and into the den, or what his daddy would have called "the parlor." A sky blue La-Z-Boy recliner occupied pride of place, four feet from a big-screen television. Luca hadn't watched TV; he'd bathed in it.

Blinking, Gavallan remembered his father's recliner, an olive velour "EZ-cliner" from Sears, armrests threadbare but spotless after fifteen years. The Captain's Chair, his daddy had called it, though it was strictly for enlisted men. He saw, too, the fifteen-inch black-and-white television, the creatively mangled wire hanger that served as its antenna, and the TV's cinder-block perch, prettied up with a pink pillowcase and a shiny glass jar filled with freshly picked daisies. Cleanliness alone had rescued the Gavallans from poverty.

A curtain fluttered and a faint breath cooled the room, but instead of catching a hint of jasmine and wisteria, he tasted the day-old scent of red beans and rice and the wet, ambition-robbing heat of a Texas summer.

Keep moving, he told himself.

Luca's bedroom lay at the end of a narrow corridor. The queen-size bed was neatly made, colorful stitched pillows strewn over a white bedspread. Poster prints of Monet's water lilies tacked to the wall supplied the culture. Gavallan spotted a few photos of three young girls he presumed to be Luca's daughters- skinny little things with pigtails and overalls, around four, six, and ten. A personal computer sat on a long desk that took up one wall. A screensaver flashed a field of racehorses with the header "254 days until the Flamingo Stakes."

Ray liked the ponies, mused Gavallan. And his "victory burger" with jalapeños.

Six piles of neatly stacked paper were laid out to the left of the computer. Technical charts. Analysts' reports from bulge bracket firms. Typewritten notes. His eye stuck on a page with strangely familiar script. Craning his neck, he looked closer. The header was written in Cyrillic and the body of the text in English. The fax was dated two days earlier, and addressed to Assistant Deputy Director Agent Howell Dodson, Chairman, Joint Russo-American Task Force on Organized Crime.

As he dropped a hand to pick it up, something creaked in another part of the house. It was a distinct sound, high-pitched and whiny, lasting a second or more. It was the kind of noise that made you shiver. A door closing? A footstep?