Giancarlo heaved a heavy sigh and lay the watch back down on the table. He stood and went to the window. There he stayed for quite some time, staring blankly off into the distance, turning things over and over in his mind, his thoughts racing back and forth across the vast ocean that separated the continents. When at last he brought his ruminations home to a conclusion, an idea came to him, and he realized that there was at last a possible solution to what was vexing him. His mind made up, he went to his study and retrieved from his satchel the piece of paper on which was scrawled the phone number he sought. He picked up the phone, dialed the number, and waited until the recorded message of the answering machine he had reached finished.

“Mister Carter,” he said when he heard the beep. “This is Giancarlo Rosa. I’m calling to see if you are still interested in Italian lessons.”

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6

The position of construction laborer was not one Carter Quinn had ever envisioned as a serious career option during his four years of college study. He liked to think that despite his less-than-inspired efforts in the academic realm, he was meant for something greater than stacking sheets of plywood, lugging about heavy equipment from place to place at a work site, and sweeping bent nails and other debris from sawdust-covered floors. Nonetheless, such was the description of the duties he was called upon to perform that Monday morning working for R & D Home Construction, his first post-graduation employer. Ron and Dave, the two principals of the little firm—and the only other workers—took on Carter in spite of his lack of carpentry skills, or more likely because of it. His educational background in finance, as impressive as it might have looked on a résumé, was of no value whatsoever to them. What they needed was a sturdy, reasonably intelligent man with two good arms and a strong back, one who didn’t mind hard, simple work and who would follow instructions without complaint.

In this last regard, they could not have hoped to find a more suitable candidate than Carter. Construction, the young man quickly discovered that first morning on the job, especially for someone in so lowly a position as his, could be grueling, spine-warping, mind-numbing labor.There seemed no end to the calls for him to move this stack of boards from that place to another, or to cart that pile of gravel away from the foundation, or to clean up that area in the back right away. From the moment he set foot on the property to start work in the morning till the moment he walked off it at the end of the day, Carter Quinn worked harder and shed more sweat for a day’s pay than he ever had in his entire life.