The Millionaires (26 page)

“Sorry, wrong number,” Noreen said in Joey’s ear.

Gallo shut his phone and headed back to his car. As he pulled the door open, he squinted up the dark block. Joey was sitting
on the hood of her car.

“Any luck up there?” she called out.

Gallo ignored her, dumping himself in the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut. In a blink, the dome light clicked off.
Joey sat back and grinned.

S
tepping off the plane at Miami International Airport, I stick to the crowd and lose myself in the mass of recently arrived
passengers being smothered by loved ones. It’s not hard to tell the difference between natives and guests—we’re in long sleeves
and jackets; they’re in shorts and tank tops. As the group fans out toward baggage claim, I scan the terminal, searching for
Charlie. He’s nowhere in sight.

All around us, the airport shops and last-minute newsstands are closed. Metal bars cover every storefront; lights are off.
It’s past midnight and the whole place is nothing but a traveler’s ghost town. Spotting the sign for the men’s bathroom—and
knowing Charlie’s tiny bladder—I make a sharp right and weave my way toward the urinals. The only one there is an overweight
man in an aqua Florida Marlins jersey. I keep going and check the stalls. All empty.

Racing back into the terminal, past the Christmas tree and menorah that’re on display, I double my pace and fly down the escalator.
Charlie knows he was supposed to wait for me when we got off the plane. If he didn’t… I stop myself. There’s no reason to
think the worst.

With a leap from the escalator, I’m down in baggage claim, checking every corner. Past the rental cars… around the conveyor
belts… still no Charlie. On my right is a phone bank, where a Hispanic woman is laughing into the receiver. Beyond the phones,
there’s an e-mail and fax stand, where a man in dark sunglasses—

Dark sunglasses?

I slow down, tempted to turn the other way. If he’s with the Service, I’m not serving myself up on a platter. But just as
I’m about to switch direction… just as I get close… he turns away like I’m not even there. I pass right by him. He doesn’t
even look up. And that’s when I realize—this is Miami—sunglasses are just part of the landscape. As long as no one knows who
we are, there’s no reason to—

“Excuse me… sir?” a raspy voice asks. He puts a strong hand on my shoulder.

Wheeling around, I spot a black man in a skycap uniform. He looks me dead in the eye and slowly hands me a folded-up sheet
of paper. His voice is dry and cold. “This is for you…” he says.

I take the paper and unfold it in a frenzy. Inside are three words written in black pen: “Wait for me.” No signature at the
bottom.

The block print handwriting reminds me of Charlie’s, but it’s a little off. Like someone was trying to copy it.

I look over my shoulder. The man with the sunglasses is gone.

“Who gave you this?” I ask the skycap.

“Can’t say,” he tells me. “They said it’d ruin the surprise.”

“
They?
”I ask anxiously. “Who’s
they?
”

The skycap turns and walks away. “Merry Christmas…”

A loud buzzer rips through the room.
An alarm.
A second later, the conveyor belt starts to whir. Our luggage is finally here.

Catching my breath, I stare at the skycap, who rolls his luggage cart right up to the belt. All around him, fellow passengers
angle into place. A college kid with a “Capitalism Rocks” T-shirt. A lawyer with a pen stain on the pocket of his suit. An
angry-looking mom with a New York City fake-tan. I swear, everyone glances up and studies me.

I look down at the note, which is shaking in my hand. What the hell is going on? We had a plan—in and out together. There’s
no way he’d go off on his own… not unless someone made him…

My whole chest caves. I rush to the closest door, angling my way through the crowd—but the moment I step outside, I’m pummeled
by a wave of Florida heat that reaches straight into my lungs. As a puddle of sweat soaks the small of my back, I realize
for the first time I’m still wearing my overcoat. Throwing my arms back, I fight furiously to get it off. All I want to do
is find Charlie.

Behind me, someone else grabs my shoulder. I tighten my fist, ready to swing. Then I hear the voice.

“Y’okay there, Ahab?” Charlie asks.

I spin around, checking for myself. There he is—dimples and his goofy grin. I don’t know whether to kill him or hug him, so
I settle on a hard shove in the shoulder. “What the h—” A woman by the taxi stand glances our way, and I drop it down to a
whisper. “What the hell is wrong with you? Where were you?”

“Didn’t you get my note?” he whispers back.

“So you…” I steer him aside, down the taxi line and out of earshot. “Were you even listening to what Oz said? No contact with
anyone! That includes skycaps!” I hiss.

“Well, no offense, but this was an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

He looks up, but won’t answer.

“What?” I ask. “What’d you do?”

Again, no answer.

“Oh, jeez, Charlie, you didn’t…”

“I don’t wanna get into it, Oliver.”

“You called her, didn’t you?”

His voice is so low, it almost disappears. “Don’t worry about it—I got it under control.”

“
We said we weren’t going to call her!
” I insist.

“She’s our mother, Ollie—and more important, one of us still lives with her. If I didn’t check in, she would’ve been grabbing
her chest in a heart attack.”

“Yeah, well what do you think’ll upset her more—missing us for a few nights, or setting up our funerals after the Service
hunts us down and buries us? They’ll be tracing every call.”

“Really? I didn’t even think about that—even though it’s in, like, every
single
man-on-the-run movie that’s ever been done.” Losing the sarcasm, he adds, “Can you please trust me for once? Believe me,
I did it smart. Whoever’s listening… they’re not gonna hear a word.”

H
ow we doin’?” Gallo asked.

“Just gimme a sec,” DeSanctis said from the passenger seat. In his lap, his fingers pounded the keyboard of what looked like
a standard laptop. A closer examination, however, revealed that the only working keys were the numbers along the top, which
DeSanctis used to adjust the receiver that was perfectly hidden inside. It was just like tuning a radio: Find the right frequency
and you’ll hear your favorite song. Hunting and pecking across the row, he typed in the numbers the Technical Security Division
guys gave him: 3.8 gigahertz… 4.3 gigahertz… The closer they got to microwave frequencies, the harder it’d be for outside
parties to intercept. Add some encryption with a frequency-hopping signal and it was next to impossible. With the signal always
moving across the dial—it was now a radio station built for two.

Stabbing the keys, he punched in the final digits. Onscreen, a window in the bottom left corner blinked to life. As it faded
in and the colors became crisp, they had a perfect digital feed of Maggie Caruso bent over the coffee table in the living
room, looking like she was about to throw up on it. Her tight fists rubbed against the table. Her legs buckled and she slowly
sank to her knees.

“What’s wrong?” Gallo asked. “Is she sick?”

“Just another second…” DeSanctis keyed in one final number and Mrs. Caruso’s voice echoed from the built-in speakers.

“… ank you… thank you, God!” she shouted as the tears flooded. She shook her head and unleashed a pained, but unmistakable
smile. “Just take care of them… please take care of them…”

“What the hell is going on?” Gallo barked.

DeSanctis’s mouth dropped open.

“They called her!” Gallo blurted. “The bastards just called her!”

Furiously clicking at the keyboard, DeSanctis opened another window on the laptop.
Caruso, Margaret—Platform: Telephony.
“That’s impossible,” DeSanctis said, reading from the screen. “I got everything right here—it’s blank—nothing incoming; nothing
outgoing.”

“Fax? E-mail?”

“Not for the seamstress. Doesn’t even have a computer.”

“Maybe the brothers called it in to a neighbor.”

DeSanctis pointed to the video picture on the screen. In the background, behind Mrs. Caruso, was a clear view of her front
door. “Tech boys were watching since we got here. Even for the two minutes it took to set this up, we’d see someone coming
and going…”

“Then how the hell did they get to her?”

“I have no idea—maybe—”

“Don’t give me
maybes!
This isn’t time for guessing games!” Gallo shouted. “She’s clearly got something in there that’s letting her talk to her
boys—now I don’t care if a neighbor’s tapping the radiator in Morse code, I want to know what it is!”

* * * *

“She’s clearly got something in there that’s letting her talk to her boys—now I don’t care if a neighbor’s tapping the radiator
in Morse code, I want to know what it is!”

Staring up the block at Gallo and DeSanctis’s car, Joey sat back in her seat and lowered the volume on her walkie-talkie-sized
receiver. For a single mike stuffed in a dome light, it did the job just fine.

On her lap, she flipped up the screen of her laptop computer and opened up the photos of the offices she had downloaded from
her digital camera. Oliver’s, Charlie’s, Shep’s, Lapidus’s, Quincy’s, and Mary’s.Six in all, plus the common areas. One by
one, she studied each room, raking through the details. The cheap reproduction banker’s lamp on Oliver’s desk… the Kermit
the Frog poster in Charlie’s cubicle… the photos on Shep’s wall… even the lack of personal artifacts on Lapidus’s desk.

“Sounds like you were right,” Noreen interrupted through the earpiece. “They’re already calling in to mom.”

“Yeah… I guess.”

Noreen knew that tone on her boss. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Joey said, still digitally flipping through the photos. “It’s just… if Gallo and DeSanctis are treating this like
a real manhunt, why’re they the only two people doing surveillance?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just protocol, Noreen. The FBI may bumble it, but when it comes to surveillance, Secret Service is top dog. When they
sit on a house, they send four people at a minimum. Why’s it suddenly two guys sitting alone in a car?”

“Who knows? They could be shorthanded… or over budget… maybe the rest are coming tomorrow…”

“Or maybe they don’t want anyone else around,” Joey challenged.

“C’mon, now—you really believe that?”

Joey stopped to think. Through the receiver, she could hear Gallo and DeSanctis arguing.

“When Shep was killed, they lost a former agent,” Noreen pointed out. “Ten bucks says that’s why they’re keeping it personal.”

“I hope you’re right,” Joey said, pulling the receiver in close. “But if I were Charlie and Oliver, I’d be praying we’re the
ones who find them first.”

L
ying on my stomach and hiding from the morning sun, I hug my pillow like a best friend and refuse to open my eyes. The futon’s
about as comfortable as a sack of doorknobs, but it’s still not as bad as the garbage truck outside, which is scraping against
my eardrums like broken glass.