The Piranhas Read online

  Book One

  ANGELO AND ME

  1

  I WAS SWEATING from every pore, even though it was supposed to be cooler in the late afternoon. I wiped myself with the soaking towel dipped in warm Amazon river water. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. It wasn’t the heat, it was the humidity. But this wasn’t humidity, this was wet. And hot. I stretched out on the shelf of the stern.

  I had fucked myself. I never should have listened to my cousin Angelo. It was two months ago, June to be exact. We sat in the Pool Room of The Four Seasons in New York, at a poolside table. Just Angelo and me. I had just graduated from the Wharton School. “You don’t have to go to work right now,” Angelo said. “What you need is a vacation, an adventure.”

  “You’re full of shit,” I said. “I have offers from two of the best stockbrokers on Wall Street. They want me right away.”

  “What are they offering you?” he asked, finishing his vodka rocks and ordering another.

  “Forty grand a year for starters.”

  “Chicken shit,” Angelo said. “You can get that anytime.” He looked at me. “You hurtin’ for money?”

  “No,” I said. He knew as well as I that my father had left me more than a million dollars.

  “Then what’s the rush?” Angelo looked across the pool at a girl on the other side. “That’s class,” he said appreciatively.

  I looked at her. I didn’t know what he was talking about. She was ordinary Radcliffe. Long brown hair, large eyeglasses making her eyes seem enormous, no brassiere, soft titties. I didn’t say anything.

  He turned back to me. “I’m going to South America next month,” he said. “I would like you to come with me.”

  “What the hell for?” I asked.

  “Emeralds,” he said. “Worth more than diamonds in today’s market. And I have a line on a suitcaseful of them for pennies.”

  “Illegal?” I asked.

  “Shit, of course,” he said. “But I have arranged everything. Transportation. Customs. We walk through.”

  “That’s not my game,” I said.

  “We could split two million,” he said. “No hassle. The family’s covering me. Blanket all the way.”

  “My father walked away from that many years ago. I don’t think I should go into it.”

  “You’re not going into anything,” he said. “You’re just being company for me. You’re family. Anybody else I might take along might get some big ideas.” He looked across at the girl again. “You think it’s okay if I send a bottle of Dom Perignon to her?”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I know that type. Cold ass.”

  “That’s what I like. Warm them up and turn them on.” He laughed. He turned back to me. Serious. “Coming with me?”

  I hesitated. “Let me think about it.” But even while I said that, I knew I would go with him. Burying my nose in books for the last few years wasn’t my idea of great living. It was fucking dull. Wharton was not excitement, no action. Not like it was in Vietnam.

  My father was pissed off when I enlisted. I was nineteen and had just finished two years in college. I told him that the draft would get me even if I didn’t beat them to it. At least this way I had the choice of services. That’s what I thought, but that was not the army’s idea. They didn’t need PR men. There were enough people shoving bullshit to the media. What they wanted was grunts, and that was I. Grunt number 1. Asshole.

  I took all four months of basic training. I jumped out of planes and helicopters, dug foxholes until I was sure that South Carolina was slipping into the ocean. Then to Saigon. Three whores and five million units of penicillin. Seventy pounds of armament: an automatic rifle, a Colt automatic .45-caliber pistol, a disassembled bazooka and six hand grenades.

  I jumped into the middle of the night, four hours away from Saigon. The night was quiet. Silent. Not a sound except for us assholes groaning as we hit the ground. I got up and looked for the lieutenant. He was nowhere to be found. The grunt in front of me turned around. “This is a cinch,” he said. “Ain’t nobody here.” Then he stepped into a field mine and pieces of him and shrapnel blew back in my face.

  That was the end of my career in the army. Four months later, after I got out of the hospital where they fixed up my face, leaving only two small scars on either side of my chin, I walked into my father’s office.

  He sat behind his big desk. He was a small man and he loved his big desk. He looked up at me. “You’re a hero,” he said without expression.

  “I wasn’t a hero,” I said. “I was an asshole.”

  “At least you’re admitting it. That’s a step in the right direction.” He rose from his desk. “Now what are you going to do?”

  “I haven’t thought about it,’ I said.

  “You had your turn, you went into the army.” He looked up at me. “Now it’s my turn.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “When I go, you’ll be rich,” he said. “Maybe a million or more. I want you to go to the Wharton School.”

  “I haven’t the credits to get into it,” I said.

  “I’ve already got you in,” he said. “You start in September. I figure that’s the place to learn how to handle your money.”

  “There’s no rush, Dad,” I said. “You’re going to live a long time.”

  “Nobody knows,” he said. “I thought your mother would live forever.”

  It was six years since my mother had gone, but my father still hurt for her. “Mother’s cancer is not your fault,” I said. “Don’t be so Italian.”

  “I’m not Italian, I’m Sicilian,” he said.

  “They’re the same thing to me.”

  “Don’t tell that to my brother,” he said.

  I looked at him. “What’s happening to the Godfather?”

  “He’s okay,” my father answered. “The Feds couldn’t lay a hand on him.”

  “He’s something else,” I said.

  “Yes,” my father said disapprovingly. When my father was young he split with the family. It was not his way of life. He went into the car-rental business and in a short while had thirty locations in airports around the country. It wasn’t Hertz or Avis, but it wasn’t bad. Twenty million gross a year. He hadn’t heard from his brother for years, and didn’t hear from him until my mother died. Then my uncle sent a roomful of flowers. My father threw them all out. My mother was Jewish and the Jews don’t have flowers at their funerals.

  “Do you know what Angelo is doing?” I asked. Angelo was my first cousin, just a few years older than I.

  “I hear he’s working for his father.”

  “That figures,” I said. “Good Italian boys go into their father’s business.” I looked at him. “Do you expect me to go into your business?”

  My father shook his head. “No, I’m selling out.”

  “Why?” I was surprised.

  “Too many years,” he said. “I thought I would travel around a little bit. I never saw anything of the world and I plan to start from where I was born. Sicily.”

  “You got a girl to go with you?” I asked.

  My father flushed. “I don’t need anyone to travel with me.”

  “It would be good company,” I said.

  “I’m too old,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a girl.”

  “Find the right one and she will show you,” I said.

  “Is that any way to talk to your father?” he asked indignantly.

  * * *

  IT HAPPENED. I went off to Wharton and my father sold his business and went off to Sicily. But something went wrong. His car went off the curving, winding road coming down from Mount Trapani to Marsala.

  My uncle called me before I left for Sicily to bring my father’s body home. “I’m going to send two bodyguards with you.”

  “What for?” I asked. “Nobody’s going to bother me.”

  “You don’t know,” he said heavily. “I loved your father. Maybe we didn’t agree but that doesn’t matter. Blood is blood. Besides
, I heard that somebody has tampered with the brakes on your father’s car.”

  I was silent for a moment. “Why? Everyone knows that he was straight.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything in Sicily. They don’t know about those things, all they know is that he was family: my family. I don’t want them to get to you. You’re goin’ to have two bodyguards.”

  “No way,” I said. “I can take care of myself. At least I learned that in the army.”

  “You learned how to get your ass blown off,” he said.

  “That was something else,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Then would you let Angelo go with you?”

  “If I’m hot,” I said, “then he’ll be hotter. He’s your son.”

  “But he knows the game, and besides that he speaks Sicilian. Anyway he wants to go with you. He loved your father too.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then I had a question. “Angelo’s not doing any business over there?”

  My uncle was lying. “Of course not.”

  I thought for a moment. It really didn’t make any difference. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go together.”

  My uncle was smarter than I was. I didn’t need any bodyguards. But Angelo always had four men with bulged armpits under their jackets, and since he was always with me, we had bodyguards. There was no trouble in Sicily. The small funeral service we had in the church in Marsala was quiet, with only a few people attending, none of whom I knew, even though we were supposed to be relatives. I received their condolences and embraces as the hearse carried the coffin to Palermo, where it was then transported by plane to New York. My father’s wishes were to be buried beside my mother. It was done.

  * * *

  A WEEK LATER I stood in the cemetery as the coffin was placed in the ground. Silently I threw a handful of dirt on the coffin and turned away. My uncle and Angelo followed me.

  “Your father was a good man,” my uncle said heavily.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “Finish school. I’ll get my degree in business administration in June.”

  “Then what will you do?” my uncle asked.

  “Get a job,” I answered.

  My uncle was silent. Angelo looked at me. “You’re an asshole,” he said. “We have many businesses that you could fit into.”

  “Legitimate business,” my uncle added.

  “My father wanted me to go my own way,” I said. “But I thank you for the offer.”

  “You’re exactly like your father,” my uncle growled.

  I laughed. “Exactly. As Angelo is exactly like you. Like father, like son.”

  My uncle embraced me. “You are my family. I love you.”

  “And I love you,” I said and watched him go to his car, then turned to Angelo. “What are your plans?”

  “I have a date in town,” he said. He gestured toward the limousine. “I’ll go in with you if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay.” We sat silently as the limo drove back into Manhattan. Not until we had gone into the Midtown Tunnel did I speak. “I want to thank you for coming to Sicily with me. I didn’t know it then, but I needed your support. Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “You’re family.”

  I nodded without speaking.

  “My father means it,” he said. “He would like you to be with us.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “And I’m grateful, but it’s not the way I’m going.”

  “Okay.” Angelo smiled. “I was always curious—why did your father change the name from Di Stefano to Stevens?”

  “That was far enough from the family name,” I answered.

  “But Stevens, that’s an Irish name. I don’t get it.”

  “My father explained to me,” I said. “All Italians change their names to Irish when they change them.”

  “And your name, that’s not Irish.”

  “It was my father’s idea. He wanted me to be as American as I could.” I laughed.

  The limo came out of the tunnel. He looked out the window. “Drop me off on Park and Fiftieth.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want to have dinner tonight? I have a couple of cute chicks.”

  “I’m packing tonight. I’m going up to school tomorrow. But thanks anyway.”

  “You’ll graduate in June?” he questioned.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be in touch with you,” he said. And he did so. Almost before I knew it, I was sweating on the back of a dilapidated old riverboat on the Amazon while he was down in the cabin screwing a crazy, beautiful Peruvian girl he had hired as a translator in Lima.

  I stared up at the sunlight shining through the trees hanging over the riverbank. I was soaking wet with perspiration. I reached for a cigarette. Angelo had to be a better man than I if he could fuck in heat like this.

  2

  FROM THE BENCH at the stern of the boat, I watched as the monkey moved expertly through the dense greenery on the shore. It swung gracefully from vine to vine. Suddenly it stopped and sat down on its haunches. It eyeballed me. It knew I was an amateur. Then it quickly disappeared when Angelo came up from the cabin. He was naked except for his designer bikini shorts, and the hair over his chest, shoulders, and back was matted with sweat. He took a bottle of beer and sucked on it. Disgustedly he threw it overboard. “Crap,” he said.

  “No ice,” I said, looking up at him.

  “Balls,” he said, throwing himself down beside me on the bench. He stared at me. “The bitch fucked me out,” he said with disbelief.

  I smiled and reached for another beer.

  “Why are you laughing?” he said angrily.

  “I wasn’t laughing,” I said.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  “She’s used to the heat. You’re not,” I said.

  “Got a cigarette?” he asked.

  I gave him the pack and watched him light up. “When are we getting out of here?” I asked.

  “In the morning,” he said. “We should be loaded by ten o’clock, then we’ll take off.”

  “I thought we were coming up for emeralds,” I said. “Now we’re sitting on two tons of coca leaves.”

  “The Colombians don’t want our money, they want coca. We give them the leaves and they’ll give us the emeralds.”

  I stared into his eyes. “You’re full of shit,” I said. “Now that I’m into it, why don’t you give me the straight story?”

  “You won’t like it,” he said, returning my stare.

  “Try me,” I answered.

  “It’s the difference between two million and twenty,” he said.

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “There were never any emeralds,” I accused.

  He shook his head. “You’re family,” he said. “The only one I could trust.”

  “Did your father know about it?”

  “He didn’t want you to go. But it was my idea.” He shot his cigarette overboard. It hissed as it hit the water. “Besides you owed me one for Sicily.”

  “Nothing happened there,” I said.

  “Because I was there. I had four men to keep a blanket over us. Alone, you would have been wasted.”

  I was silent. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Maybe I would never know. But it was over. “Now what do we do?”

  “We go downriver to Iquitos. I have a DC 3 to take us to Panama. From there a Cessna Twin takes us to Miami, where we make the drop. We’re booked on Eastern to New York.”

  I shook my head. “I was really an asshole.”

  “I’ll never tell anybody.” He grinned. “It’s all in the family.”

  “Do you know the people we’re meeting?” I asked.

  “Not personally,” he said.

  “How will you find them?” I asked.

  “They’ll find us. It’s all been arranged. Customs has been paid off through Miami.”

  �
��I want out,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not my game.”

  “You can’t quit now,” he said. “All the charters are in your name. I had to do it. My name is on too many lists.”

  “I still don’t like it. Too much could go wrong. We could be hijacked, we could be fingered by some snitch. It makes me nervous.”

  Angelo looked at me, then went back into the cabin. He came up a moment later and placed a Colt automatic in my hand. “That’s insurance,” he said. “Do you know how to handle it?”

  “I had one of these in Vietnam.”

  “If anyone even looks suspicious, waste them.”

  I handed the gun back to him. “No,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. He put the gun on the bench beside me. “I’m going in for a swim,” he said and dived off the back of the boat.

  Alma came up from the cabin as he dived into the water. Angelo’s cotton shirt covered her down to her thighs. She looked at the gun, then at me. “Why did he bring a gun?” Her voice reflected only a faint Spanish accent.

  “He wanted me to have it,” I answered.

  She was a pretty girl, but her face looked worried. “Does he expect any trouble?”

  “No,” I answered. I looked at him swimming in the water. “How is it?” I called.

  “Great,” he yelled back. “Come on in.”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  He called to Alma. “Come on, baby. The water’s fine.”

  She hesitated, looking at me, then dropped his shirt to the deck and posed for me. “You like?” she asked in a teasing voice.

  I laughed. “You’re a cunt.”

  “And I think you’re a fag.”

  “You’re not my girl,” I said.

  “But you never even look,” she said.

  “I have rules.” I reached for another cigarette.

  She dived into the water. She disappeared beneath the surface and came up in front of Angelo about twenty yards from the boat. She grabbed him and pulled him down under the water.

  “Loco,” the heavyset Peruvian captain of the boat spoke from behind me.

  I looked at him.

  “Tell your friends to get in the boat,” he said in his halting English. “It is not safe.” Something in the sound of his voice meant business.