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independently, had cooperated with the CIA to train assassins to go into Cuba and take care of some things from the top down. The bosses had compared notes and concluded that the government’s plan all along had been to effect a regime change in Cuba and blame the assassination on the so-called Mafia—although rumor had it that the Corleones had gotten fancy and tried, unsuccessfully, to pin one particular botched attempt on a caporegime named Nick Geraci. Geraci was said to have betrayed them, though there were other versions of that story swirling around, too. Tramonti had no way of knowing that both the Yale-educated Wasp, slumming in that cheap suit, and Joe Lucadello, the man with the eye patch, had worked on that project, too—with Geraci, in fact.
    The taxi came to a stop in front of the hotel.
    “Get out,” Lucadello said. “You have a reservation. In the restaurant here, my advice is, stick with the steak dinner.”
    The Hotel Miramar had a doorman, the sign of a reasonably classy joint.
    “You forgot my passport,” Tramonti had the presence of mind to say.
    Lucadello shook his head. “Sorry.”
    “You’re leaving me here,” he said, “just like that? No money, no passport, no papers, no real knowledge of Span—”
    “ Bisteca, the word is. Beefsteak. Pronounced the same as in Italian. Roger that? Charge it to your room, whatever you need to do. But right now, sir, you need to get out of the car.”
    Tramonti nodded and, because he had no choice, obeyed.
    He got out.
    The doorman closed the door for him and did not kill him.
    The bellboy did not kill him, either, or even seem to find anything remarkable in Don Tramonti’s lack of luggage.
    The desk clerk spoke serviceable English. The room was indeed reserved, but the hotel requested some kind of payment up front.
    Tramonti frowned. “Do I look like that kind of a bum, sir? The sort of man who doesn’t settle his accounts?”
    He did: unshaven, stained clothes, stinking of sweat and vomit.
    “No, sir,” the clerk said. He extended a key as if he might jerk it back at the last second. Tramonti grabbed it. The clerk’s smile oozed contempt. “Thank you,” he said. “The bill, it is in our futures.”
    The hotel was not the sort to have a menswear shop where Tramonti could buy clothes and charge them to his room. He went up to his suite.
    He sent his suit out to be cleaned and ordered fish from room service. Better to be sick than poisoned. He tried to make a phone call back to his wife and family, but the operator’s English and Italian were as weak as Tramonti’s Spanish. The call never had a chance. He ordered bottled beer as a way of not drinking the water. He spent a sleepless night tossing and turning in the too-soft bed and every so often going to the bathroom to vomit. The fish had not agreed with him.
    In the morning, the manager knocked on the door and said it would be necessary to address the issue of payment. Tramonti came to the chained door in his boxer shorts. The manager had the police with him and Tramonti’s dry-cleaned suit as well.
    They waited patiently for him to perform his ablutions and get dressed. Then they took him to jail, to his own private cell, which was clean and modern and, like his office back in New Orleans, did not contain a trash can. Out the barred window was a lovely view of the mountains. He was not formally charged with anything.
    His first caller was a government official who asked in impeccable English if it might be possible that Tramonti, as the most famous and indeed most prosperous person ever to come from the impoverished mountain town of Santa Rosa, would be willing to donate a hundred thousand of his American dollars to build a new elementary school. The school they had now was an unheated, rat-infested garage.
    Tramonti did not look at the man. He hunched over and stared at his shoes.
    The man repeated the request in Italian.
    “I am not a famous man,” Tramonti said in English. “Or a