The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [154]
“I’m not kidding. But Annie, understand. This isn’t a game like it was when you were a kid.”
She said, “If you’re going to warn me my dad’s a real crook, I’ve known it longer than you have. Oh by the way, he says he admires your persistence.”
Dan gave a wry salute. He described how he had spent months gathering proof about a racket of her father’s in which eager Miami investors had been sold revenue-producing ten-hectare parcels of a 500,000-acre Brazilian tree plantation named Cortina de Sueños. This plantation didn’t exist. The man ostensibly selling shares in the venture, Bruno Salvador, didn’t exist either; he was Jack Peregrine. Jack’s attention to detail included providing his victims with official letters about their land purchases, seemingly mailed from Brazil, with elaborate bond certificates, deeds, detailed maps, even glowing articles in (fictitious) magazines about the fabulous profits to be made from Cortina de Sueños.
“I had the evidence on Jack. But when the time came, I had no witnesses.” Dan wriggled his fingers. “My case fell through like rain on a bad roof. Tossed. Your dad walked. Nobody wanted to testify about what morons they’d been, buying land that was pure sueños.”
It didn’t surprise her. Dreams are what Jack sold; he’d boasted of it to her.
“Yeah, Jack was always one step ahead of us.” Hart closed his fist in air. “You think you’ve got him”—he opened his hand, blew the emptiness away—“all of a sudden, poof.”
“Poof,” nodded Annie wryly. “I’d say you just summed up my whole relationship with my father.”
Dan slid his finger through the fish netting, spun the wheel on a miniature white Mustang that sat in a blue martini glass. “So tell me why, when I get close to Peregrine this time, when I get close to you, wham, all of a sudden the Feds shut me down? What gives? Jack’s palling around here in Miami with men like Feliz Diaz and Archbishop de Uloa. I start to hear his name all over the place, but he’s not hanging with the usual con game type associates. These new friends of his are into crime so big they could be the fucking government. Before, he was a sting. Now he’s an operation.”
She wasn’t sure what the detective meant.
“I mean he’s not self-employed anymore. Somebody bigger than he is runs this thing.” Dan used his thumb to add more salt to his margarita. “Look at it. Your dad’s thrown in prison in Cuba, which ought to mean it’s the last place he’d want to show his face again. But apparently he keeps managing to slip in and out of Cuba no problemo. In fact, he’s flying not just there but all over everywhere. Mostly he’s flying to very rich places, Anguilla, Jupiter Island, Caneel Bay. Why? How? Because somebody’s running interference for him. Here and in Cuba both.” He poured her glass full from the clay pitcher.
“He’s flying everywhere? You know this for a fact?” Annie was more interested in the extent of her father’s flying than the cause of it. Plus all these places were islands, so maybe he was making amphibious landings. She was bizarrely proud of him.
Dan’s cell phone went off. It played Oscar Peterson’s “Night Train”; he checked the number but decided not to answer it. “Damn right, he’s flying. And who’s letting him? I think the interference is tied to Feliz Diaz.”
Annie said she’d heard from Rafael Rook that her dad played poker with Diaz.
“This is not just about your dad making powerful pals because he plays high-stakes poker. And it’s not just about Diaz wanting to whitewash his image by giving his local church a pretty little gold statue of the Virgin Mary, though why’s an archbishop mixed up with your dad too?” He smiled at her. “Maybe we could