It had arrived before Christmas on his father's freighter, which was carrying other cargo of considerably more value. Under seventeen tons of green bananas was thirty tons of marijuana—Santa Marta Gold. Under the marijuana lay a thousand kilos of coke, worth six million dollars once it reached the streets of Jackson Heights, New York.

Rico off-loaded the dope on Spanish Galleon Cay, which he'd virtually bought last year from Bahamian politicians. From there he shipped it, load by load, on the family's fleet of light planes to their airstrips in the Okefenokee Swamp. But el Viejo's office furniture had stayed in Nassau.

He hated the desk: It smelled of the grass of los llanos and reminded him that his grandfather had started as little more than the patrón of a run-down cattle ranch. He wanted something shiny, modern, like the executives had in Fortune magazine.

But to get rid of the desk would be suicidal. Rico thought of himself as a brave man: race-car driver, sky diver, hotdogger on water skis. He had killed, to the delight of his grandfather, a National Policeman in a knife fight mano à mano in a cantina in San Juan de Gracia. But he would no more dare to throw out el Viejo's desk than jump without a chute.

He ground out his cigarette on the time-polished surface, wishing he had time to crush it out in the aging hit man's eyes.

Hiding his rage at the Kingston Street fiasco, he sauntered across his thick carpet to the one-way mirror overlooking his latest enterprise, the casino, grand bar, and restaurant of the Loma Bella Club.

He looked down at the restaurant. Slow night. He'd thought running the place would amuse him. He was bored because he was forbidden by his family to leave Nassau, except to go to Spanish Galleon Cay—because the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency might grab him on any other island.

He had needed what amusement he could find, but the club was a drag.

His maître d' was making a play for one of the bunny-hopper drink girls, dressed in the Playboy Club costumes he'd inherited when he took the place over. The previous owner was an Italian mafia chieftain who had died trying to take a piece of his own action in the Bahamas.

What would he inherit from el Inglés? Nothing but the aging Cessna, and he had plenty of those.

Peace of mind, perhaps...

He turned back to Carlos Flores. For the first time he noticed that beneath the white mustache the old man had buck teeth. He laughed.

"I have heard that on los llanos they call you the Big Rabbit."

Carlos understood little English, but he understood that. His neck grew stiff and his eyes turned cold. "Sí, señor? And who has told you that?"

Rico grinned. "They call you el Conejo Grande, I have heard."

"I asked you," Carlos muttered tersely, "who has told you that? Alejandro?