We got comfortable on the couch—the living room couch, not his questionable office couch—and we took turns reading aloud. The writing was pedestrian, but not annoying. As a novel, it was terrible. He basically laid out the facts of his life in first-person novel form, but with little artistic flair. Every character seemed to be a character from his real life. The names weren't even changed. If he had any illusions of becoming a bestselling novelist, it wouldn't have been with this book. Besides the poor grammar, the book was laced throughout with profanity, more than any conventional publisher of the time would tolerate. We were just hoping it would give us something we could use.

It started out slowly … oh so slowly … describing his—or his fictional character's—childhood in New York and his slow integration into a life of crime. It was the "good boy caught up in events he couldn't control" type of story. He didn't like the life of crime, but was in too deep to escape it. None of it was of any interest to us, but we continued to read every word for fear of missing an important clue. None came for most of the book.

Finally, at around the three-quarter mark, he began the story we had so patiently been waiting for. It was the story that would answer so many questions. And in the process, would raise so many more.

Chapter 26

It started with the Russian. The damn Russian. He wasn't even one of us. Tony met him down there and he convinced Tony to help him look for the treasure. Now Tony is dead, Bruce is dead, John is probably dead, and they think I'm dead. All because Tony got greedy. Vlad (we never did know his real name, but he was Russian, so that's what we called him) thought he was so smart, but in the end he wasn't.

It was supposed to be an easy job. Flanagan had a friend who told him he'd get rich delivering booze to this place in the middle of nowhere down in South America. I didn't see it the same way, but I was low man on the totem pole, so what I thought didn't count. Well, you didn't have to say the word rich to Flanagan twice. He put the four of us on a boat with the biggest shipment of booze we'd ever delivered. We were going to a town in Brazil owned by Henry Ford. Imagine, the guy was rich enough to own a whole town in another country. I guess he didn't allow booze in the town, but there was a place upriver that did. That's where we were going.

I could have told him he wouldn't make any money, but as I said, nobody cared what I thought. I looked the place up on a map. It was going to take us three weeks in the ship just getting to Brazil, then another week to get where we needed to go. And what if they didn't need our hooch? Or what if they paid us in Pesos, or whatever worthless shit money they used down there? It was a big risk, but when Flanagan saw dollar signs, you didn't argue.