Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE
Franco runs the long way through the garden, past the swimming pool and reenters the breakfast room through the open French doors. He returns to his place at the table and sits down out of breath. He wants to laugh but doesn’t have the air. His plate of scrambled eggs and three pieces of crisp bacon remain in front of him just as he left it. Sweat slides down the sides of his face and down his back and his heart is thumping in his ears, and he can only smile. You made it; you made it, goddamn it! You made it! He tells himself this and tries to believe it.
Franco is, of course, today of all days, sitting in his usual chair, mid-table, his back to the arched entryway across from the marble floor and the white-carpeted staircase Silo Pol will soon descend. It is pleasant in this room in the morning without his father. The Sunroom is what his mother calls it: a long glassed-in porch with high, black walnut beams on the ceiling. The beams are cool as fuck and must have taken years to carve. How he has never noticed them before seems impossible.
Eight French doors run the length of the room and are standing open behind translucent white curtains, each vaguely aflutter in the lazy morning breeze. Through the curtains he can see the swimming pool and the expanse of neatly cut lawn. He can see the mist rising out of the jungle beyond the lawn and beyond the 300-year-old ivy-covered stone wall the Spanish had built. Past the wall, and past the jungle and the cliffs, the Pacific Ocean shimmers with silver stars. Franco closes his eyes and pictures himself sailing through the silver stars with the blue ocean behind him, and ahead, nothing else but the ocean forever. He is about to be free. He will do it today. He will leave Colombia and he will be free of the horror that is his father. One last breakfast…
Silencio tells him, “Just act natural,” which is great advice. Stupendous advice! But Franco knows he has never acted “natural” around his father. Not once in eighteen years.
The third step from the bottom of the staircase creaks and Franco sits up straight. He taps his iPad to read about Silo Pol’s beloved New York Mets. The Mets are a safe subject. He sees that they played last night. And lost to the Dodgers. Six-two.
Now he hears his father speaking to the two supercharged, tail-thumping yellow Labs waiting for him in giddy expectation at the bottom of the staircase. His voice echoes off the marble floor and reverberates up Franco’s spine.
“One more breakfast, one more breakfast, one more breakfast,” he tells himself.
Now he hears his father calling to Rosita in the kitchen, in flowing musical Spanish that white toast and fruit would be magnificent. Then, “Doesn’t that sound magnifico? It does, doesn’t it? Huh? Huh? Yes, it does! Yes, it does!”
The sound of rubbery squawks on polished marble now join with the happy prancing sounds of clicking toenails, all coming straight for Franco alone in the Sunroom at the seat he always sits at, drinking coffee with cream and sugar as he always does, acting just as natural as anyone would ever be expected to act waiting for a father who is Silo Pol coming straight at him.
Franco can feel him standing behind him in the archway. Just standing there. Just staring at him. And he thinks, who does that? Who would just stand there?
“Come on, Mets! Jesus Christ!” Franco says. He considers pounding the table with his fist, and the preposterous idea makes him almost smile.
“Buenos dias, Franco," Silo Pol says. All previous enthusiasm is now gone from his voice.
“Oh!” Franco says. “Buenos dias.” He closes his iPad and tries to sit up straight and finds he is already sitting up straight.
Silo Pol goes to the sideboard and pours coffee from the silver set. His jet-black hair is slightly wet and slicked back. There’s a tinge of silver-gray on the sides. He looks slim in his un-tucked white dress shirt. His sleeves are rolled up showing muscular, hairy forearms. His white cotton slacks are creased sharply. Upon seating himself at the head of the table, he sighs a familiar hum that clearly says, Here-We -Go-Again, and sets a cloth napkin on his lap with delicate care.
The usual silence follows.
“Mets lost last night,” Franco says, breaking the silence. He takes a small bite of cold bacon and feels himself being looked at. When he looks up, he does his best to hold his father’s eyes with his own. “Six to two,” he adds. His voice is solemn, befitting the news.
“The boat.” Silo Pol says. He spins his fingers around, meaning let’s hear it. His eyes are dark and steady. They offer no solace. No mercy. They don’t take prisoners.
“The buyer’s going to buy it,” Franco says, then thinks how lame that sounded. “The guy, Rule. He’s the buyer. I’m pretty sure he’s going to buy it.” Oh, boy…
“George should be here for the paperwork.”
“He is here!” Franco says too loudly, too quickly. He slows himself down. “He wrote up the contract and now has to notarize the signatures. Then we’re all done.” He sees his father staring at him. “They’ll be gone after lunch,” Franco says, then raises and lowers his shoulders.
Silo Pol is looking at him like he’s about to disagree with something, maybe everything Franco just said, and Franco looks at the ceiling beams. He thinks about asking about the carvings but tells himself not to ask. Not to speak. Wait. Just Wait. But if the silence lasts much longer, he knows himself well enough to know that he will speak. He’ll have to. He won’t be able to stand it much longer.
“Tell me the name of the buyer again,” Silo Pol says.
“Reuben Rule."
“R. U. L. E? What is that? Jewish?”
Franco says, “Maybe,” then shakes his head.
“You have him checked out like I asked?”
“Very carefully,” Franco says and takes another bite of bacon.
“Well, tell me, Franco, I think I would like to hear what you have so carefully uncovered.”
Franco chews the last of the bacon in his mouth and swallows it completely. “His name is Reuben Rule. Sixty years old. He’s retired. Divorced. Has a daughter living in San Francisco. I understand they don’t speak to each other. He made a lot of money in pencils.”
“Pencils?”
“His company manufactures them in the Philippines.” Or Thailand? Franco thinks now it might be Thailand but leaves it alone.
“That’s interesting. There’s money in pencils, you say?”
“I guess. He did all right.” Franco brings a strawberry to his mouth, bites into it, and holds the other half with his fingers.
“I want this man out of here, Franco—fast. Okay? You got that?”
Franco chews the strawberry more quickly and swallows it as soon as he can. He takes the last possible sip of coffee-dregs to speed up the process. Then, with his head tilted like a swimmer coming up for air, he says, “I got it!” and nods his head. “Absolutely.”
“Good. I’m taking a business trip. I’ll be back tomorrow late. I’ll probably be calling you, so be here.”
It is information Franco already has. “What time will you be back?” he asks. Then he thinks, Good God!
His father is now looking at him like he can’t quite make him out in the distance.
“Sorry. I meant… what time are you leaving? I meant leaving.” Franco sees that his father’s perplexed expression is not going anywhere soon. “Sorry,” he says again.
Silo Pol lets his stare last long enough to become painful, then says, “I’m leaving today about ten, and I will return tomorrow late in the evening. I’m not sure what the exact time my arrival home will be, but again, it will be fairly late. Is that okay?”
“Okay,” Franco says.
“You got it?”
“I got it, yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely!” Franco says.
“And get rid of this Reubin Rule! He sounds like a cartoon character.”
“Got it.” Franco says and stands from the table. Rosita has come in with a plate of buttered white toast and a clear bowl of multi-colored fruit. Franco thinks he’s home free, but his father holds up his index finger as Rosita sets the food in front of him. Franco sits back down with that feeling of utter defeat he knows so well. You can never fool this fucking guy. His heart is back thumping in his ears. He sees himself falling off his chair and lying under the breakfast table with his eyes frozen open. He sees his father staring down at his dead body, shaking his head. Fed up.
As Franco waits for the inevitable question. “Do you think I’m stupid?” Or maybe, “Did you really think you’d get away with it?” His father starts in on watermelon slices, and after two bites of that, and one of the cantaloupes, his eyes look up, find Franco, and swarm in like angry black bees.
“What?” he says.
“You went…,” Franco says, holding his finger in the air. “But okay. No. We’re all done.” He stands up again.
“Oh, yes,” Silo Pol says, and still chewing, holds his index finger in the air again.
Franco sits back down saying something so quietly and under his breath, even he can’t hear it.
“What? What was that?” Silo Pol is now staring at his son with all the paternal fondness of a man ready to snap open a switchblade. “I didn’t catch that…”
“Nothing,” Franco says.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Again, Silo Pol lets silence last longer than necessary. Silo Pol, a man deathly afraid of whispers and secrets. A man who doesn’t like anyone standing behind him—ever. If you knew Franco’s father, you’d know never to stand behind him. And to not whisper.
Silo Pol had raised himself out of the streets, first on the West side of New York City, and later, the South side of Chicago. “A white boy with a funny accent. You don’t think I had to be strong? You don’t think I had to fight every day of my life?” These were words Franco seemed to hear daily.
“How many people have you got down there? On the boat.”
Franco feels his chin quivering. He puts his hands up to his face and rubs his eyes to hide his chin. “Three,” he says through his fingers. Both legs are bouncing now. He doesn’t know if he is talking too loudly or not loudly enough. He takes his hands away and sees he is being studied.
“There’s Rule, the buyer. Oh, the other two...there’s the yacht broker, Donna Torme, and their surveyor, Dick Webb, expensive and well recommended. The broker is ex-military, twenty-seven years old. Single. Lives in Panama City.”
There is more to say about the yacht broker; for one thing, the investigator’s report said she was trans. Franco doesn’t want to go into all that. When he sees his father is still waiting for more, he goes on, “I flew them in yesterday afternoon from Panama City. I told Mr. Rule it was a free ride if he buys the boat. He put ten thousand dollars down in escrow. I insisted on it. I wanted to see some genuine interest before I let him come here.” Franco looks to his father, thinking there might be a small nod of approval coming. There is not.
“They spent the night on the boat last night?”
“I have two men watching on the dock,” Franco says. “But yes, they slept on the boat. Right now, they’re getting ready for the test drive, or whatever you call it—the sea trial. Shouldn’t last more than a couple of hours and then Rule is going to wire the rest of the money to our Nassau account.”
“Who flew them in?”
“Martin flew them in from Panama City. He has a pick-up today, the three Syrians out of Mexico. I was playing with the idea of him dropping the surveyor off first, but that’s a bad idea, so—”
Silo Pol uses his favorite double-barreled shotgun stare. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Franco says, “Okay, I said I was playing with the idea. Relax!” Then couldn’t believe he just told Silo Pol to relax.
“Don’t tell me to relax. I don’t relax. You think I would be where I am if I—”
“Martin can pick up the girls tomorrow, okay? Take the surveyor today. Will that work? They can wait, right? The girls? Until tomorrow?”
“I advise you not to fuck that up, Franco.”
Franco nods, though his father doesn’t see it having gone back to his bowl of fruit. Again, Franco stands up and moves without hurry away from the table. He begins the hazardous ritual of navigating past two overweight dogs lying under the archway. There’s a fifty-fifty chance one of them will rise up as he’s being stepped over then yelp like it’s been trampled on, at which point, Silo Pol will come un-glued. Franco speaks to the dogs softly, “Easy…Easy.” Their eyebrows tighten as he stretches a leg over first one and then the other, and now he is past them both, and he is walking lightly, silently, victoriously, up the circular staircase to his bedroom. He shuts the door, sits on his bed, and lets out a breath of air he thinks he might have been holding since the day he was born.