safe in the States as long as he stayed with him, Li was like a shadow to the man. From his many fights, his fingers and hands were gnarled, and he limped from an injury incurred while kickboxing during some altercation, an altercation that Li had probably won anyway.
“Paul Hewlett for Mr. Rosario.”
Without so much as another word, Li put the receiver of the phone down. In a minute or so, Rosario came on the line. “Mr. Hewlett. Do you believe in ESP?” Before he had a chance to answer, Rosario said, “I had the strangest feeling that you’d be calling today. Is there a problem? Tell me there’s no problem with our new project.”
“No. No. Not as I see it. I need to see you, the sooner the better.”
“So there is an issue?”
“No. Just something that needs to be taken care of.”
“Six o’clock. The usual place.” Having said that, he hung up. The usual place was Mort and Saul’s, a twenty-four hour eatery only a couple of blocks from the offices of the investment firm. For a man with such a diminutive frame, Rosario had a cavernous leg. Every time they met at Mort and Saul’s they both would have the Key West omelet followed by what most considered the best item on the menu: the Coral Key lime pie. On rare occasions, Rosario would have pasta, some of the best in the city, but almost always he settled for the omelet. Each time they met Rosario would add a carafe of coffee, two glasses of orange juice before downing the key lime pie. Despite the generous calories that the offering provided, despite the fact that they met there at least once a week for at least a year, Rosario remained as lithe as a lynx, not gaining a pound.
By six-thirty, Rosario still hadn’t shown. Hewlett ordered a Heineken draft. Every five minutes of so, he’d glance at his Rolex Submariner. At twenty of seven, Rosario arrived. He strode in the door, limp and all, as arrogant as if he owned the establishment. Rosario was an adherent to arrive sociably late.
“Mr. Hewlett, have you been waiting long?”
“No longer than usual.”
With him, was Li Xiaoping, whom Rosario called Marco in the only hint he had a sense of humor. Unlike most Cantonese from the south mainland, he was a good six feet and a master of a number of the martial arts. Rosario liked to refer to him as his Oriental houseboy, a term that Li pretended not to hear, but most certainly understood each time his boss referred to him in those derogatory tones. Neither eating nor drinking, Li sat by himself at an adjacent booth, scrutinizing those who showed the temerity of walking past his boss’ booth.
What others preferred to do with a knife or a gun, Li preferred to do with his powerful hands or deft and devastating feet. Hewlett had seen the end result of his vented anger at dealers who fell behind in their payments to Rosario. No longer was there the pretense that the dealers were paying Hewlett and Townsend and their group the money at the end of each month. To each and every one, they now knew they were dealing with the mob. But just what they knew, they kept to themselves. Before, when it was just Hewlett and Townsend and company dealing with the dealers, they’d let a dealer slide for a month or two before getting serious about their intention of being paid. Then, they would send one of their old football friends by the dealer’s house to reason with him. They’d give the dealer another week or two to come up with the money. Not until months had passed without having been paid would they resort to physical violence. Through the years, Hewlett could recall only resorting to this in the past. But they would only go so far. Rosario seemed to know no bounds.
With Rosario at the helm, a dealer could go no longer than a week before having to answer to Li or one of Rosario’s other “business associates” about the payments that were in arrears. Whereas Hewlett and Townsend and their group had befriended the dealers, the dealers lived in terror when it came to working with the likes of Rosario. Li’s particular MO was to grab their arm dragging their body over his extended leg, tripping them up, sending them to the floor while simultaneously breaking their wrist over his outstretched leg. There was not a dealer who at one point had not come to Hewlett to see if he could intercede with Rosario. There probably was not a dealer who hadn’t shown up at one point with a cast on their right or left wrist. Plead with Rosario as he might, in the end, there was nothing Hewlett could do.
As soon as they had ordered, and the waiter was no longer in hearing range, Rosario turned to Hewlett and said, “So what is this little issue, Paul.”
“Well, it’s not so little and it involves money.”
“Then it is a problem. How much are we talking about?”
“It can be viewed as considerable”.
“How much money?” Right then, the waiter brought in a family with two kids. The waiter was going to set them at the table adjacent to the table that Hewlett occupied with Rosario, but Li said, “Next table,” to them. The waiter and the family looked a little more startled than puzzled, but settled into an empty table further away. One look at Master Li, and anyone would move on. Tonight, as usual, the family did not put up a fuss.
“We put more up front than is normal but can make much more on the back end.”
“Goddamn it, Paul. Stop talking around this thing and come to the fucking point.”
The waiter brought the carafe of coffee over and the cup of decaf. Placing the carafe in front of Rosario, he poured him a cup of regular coffee. The decaf he placed in front of Hewlett. “You sure that’s decaf?”
“You sure that’s decaf,” said Rosario in a mocking tone, imitating Hewlett. “Answer my fucking question.” Pivoting, the waiter hurried back to the kitchen.
“The pilot wants a million dollars for the haul and a percentage of the profit.”
“That’s complete horse shit. You know it, and I know it.”
“There are considerations. He’s got a Helio Super Courier. It’s a very unique plane that can go into strips none of the other planes at Miami International or any of the other regional airports use. I’ve checked. That plane can haul thirteen hundred pounds of product. Of course, in the payload you have to figure out the weight of the passengers and the weight of the fuel. A pilot with Davis’ experience can get in and out of airstrips as short as four or five hundred feet. The pilot has made some modifications so that it can haul an additional couple hundred kilograms of product. Not only that, but he has the range in that plane to make it to Colombia with one stop to fuel up. Right now, you’re talking about transporting what, about three thousand kilograms. By hauling extra product, Davis feels he deserves the increase in flying fee. He wants this to be his last trip. He wants one last run, then he wants out of the business entirely.
“The extra product is welcome. But it’s still one flight. A standard payment.”
“I’m just telling you.” He waited for Rosario’s indignation to bleed off. “The airstrip in Colombia is no more than a couple hundred feet long. There’s not a plane in these parts that can touch those numbers. A Helio Super Courier can get in and out of a strip that size, and they can haul that sort of freight and then some. A DC-3 can certainly haul that much, but they can’t get out of a strip that small. There’s no other plane that can do what the Helio Courier can do. Only the Pilatus Porter comes close, and they need almost a hundred percent more runway to take off. It’s that simple. To me it’s a no-brainer. We pay a little more. We make a lot more. I know you don’t want to hear anything about my calculations, but think about it: an extra one hundred kilograms of product. Furthermore, the pilot has a lot of experience in flying contraband. In fact, he’s flown into this very strip. He flew some in for Townsend back in January...”
“Don’t remind me. He tossed some of my product out over the Everglades.”
Hewlett was taken aback by the fact that Townsend had told Rosario about the operation, but had not bothered to tell him. What else had they not told him? He needed to get