Alejandro's eyes sparkled. "Ay! Blue eyes? And..." Expressively Alejandro traced her outline in the air with his hands.

Lomas had found her at the roulette wheel a year ago, underage for Nassau gambling, and had let her play. She was a classic Anglo beauty, with clear skin and a mother who was always jetting somewhere else. She had lost, refused to divulge her identity, and tried to pay him in another more traditional way. When he'd tired of her amateurish sex and threatened to go to her parents for her debts, she'd threatened to kill herself.

She had killed herself, all right, on this very spot, with a speedball of brown Mexican smack. It had all been too pure for her purebred blood, which was as blue as the skies above.

Lomas had sat at the desk with el Viejo's picture, taping her moans and her cries, for the office was quite soundproof and no one below could hear. He had watched while she writhed on this very rug and shuddered and finally died, and he'd called for Alejandro.

They had doused her with rum in case Alejandro was seen carrying her out. Then the youth carted her from the back door to the dock, tied her slim and tapered ankle to a twenty-pound anchor, taken her for her last Cigarette boat ride, and dumped her past Nassau Light.

That story—of a man with cojones enough to watch his mistress die before his desk—was well known among the traficantes.

Lomas knew that by nightfall Newcombe's death would be known, too, both here and on Spanish Galleon Cay. It was such tales as this that would drive from their feeble minds the memory of their patrón, and his ski, and abandoned weapon, and his panic at the shark.

When Alejandro left, Lomas put on his shirt, then took it off again. Why should he dress for the English pig? Let him see what a real man looked like, just once before he died.

He went to the office closet and opened the door. Inside was a gun cabinet he had discovered when he'd had the mafioso murdered. He had given away the weapons and stocked it with his own. Now he selected a silenced .22, built on a .38 frame, with a six-inch barrel.

With so little weight and shocking power, it would give el Inglés a long, unhappy death. He drew a tiny recorder from his desk. He would tape the Englishman's dying words for the amusement of his grandfather; such things showed the old man that he was in control, and it would take el Viejo's mind off rumors he might hear from Spanish Galleon Cay.

He placed the weapon behind el Viejo's picture on his desk. He sat down to wait, wondering why Newcombe had invaded his lair, unprotected and alone.

***