DeBattista heard a plane flying overhead, raised his eyes in time to see it pass through a sketchy white wisp of cloud. One of his competitors taking off from an adjacent field, he thought. But fuck them all, big and small. Let them try and outdo his Love Cloud package.

It took a bundle to sustain an air charter outfit, but it took some kind of smarts and balls for somebody with his background to even think he could start one up. In America they usually belonged to holding companies formed by old money Mayflower families, people with nothing to do but play with their inherited fortunes. Eye-talians like him and his uncle found a different way, and it wasn’t always clean and pretty. But when doors were closed to you because your name ended in a vowel and you had to claw through the barriers by your fingernails, you allowed for getting some dirt under them.

Uncle Enzo had done Carmody some favors of his own, he thought. No small ones either. But suppose Carmody hadn’t helped with the Neapolitan zoo crew. Suppose he had told his uncle it was too dangerous. The pigs would have feasted on him.

DeBattista lowered his gaze to the Falcon, watched his maintenance people inspect the aircraft’s wing elevators, rudders and tires, watched the fuelers fit their hoses into its turbos. After a minute, he glanced at his Rolex. A few minutes past noon. Carmody had told him to be ready to leave around three o’clock.

He turned toward the trailer that served as his main office. In a couple of hours, he would climb into the Falcon and start his preflight. He trusted all his people, but if he was flying the plane would do his own instrument checks. Still, he had a little while to take care of some odds and ends at his desk... Who the hell knew when he would be back?

The whole thing smelled of calamity. But a debt was a debt, and the DeBattistas always repaid theirs. If Carmody wanted him in the pilot’s seat, he would fly it straight to hell, up the devil’s ass and out his pisshole.

With a smile.

“It’s lunchtime, Ki,” Musil said over the phone. He was calling from his fourth-floor office at the Terminal. “Are we still on?”

“All depends,” Marton replied. He was in his office one floor below. “You still treating?”

“I am.”

“Then, why ask a dumb question?”

Musil laughed. “Meet me out on Tenth. Say, in fifteen minutes? We’ll walk right over. The office crowd doesn’t usually show for another hour, so we won’t have to compete with anyone but the cabbies.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll find out.”