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Dammit!

Delgado bolted out of the chair and grabbed the black plastic bag.

“Throw everything important into the trucks!” he said.

“What? Why? And about them?” El Cheque said, gesturing in the general direction of the bedrooms.

Delgado nodded at the black plastic bag.

“This is all we need. We leave them. Let’s go.”

Holding the top of the black plastic bag, Delgado spun it to make a gooseneck, then secured it closed with another overhand knot. When he picked it up, he saw the envelope with FINAL NOTICE! “Fucking moron!”

From inside the black plastic bag, the pink phone with the heart of rhinestones began ringing.

TWO

Society Hill, Philadelphia Thursday, September 10, 8:36 A.M.

Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV drove up South Third Street in his cobalt-blue BMW coupe. He’d just left his home at Number 9 Stockton Place in Society Hill and was headed for his office at the corporate headquarters of Nesfoods International. He wore expensively tailored slacks and blazer, a custom-made French-cuff dress shirt, and a fine silk necktie.

Nesbitt was talking on the telephone with his secretary, Catherine Taylor, going over his calendar of appointments and meetings for the day. She had just said, “You have a nine o’clock with Feaster Scott, the art director on the new international line of organic soups.” Then, as he approached Lombard Street, he heard the phone beep in his ear and he checked the screen.

It read: CALL WAITING-PACO ESTEBAN.

He said, “Let me call you right back, Cate. Or I’ll see you in a minute.”

Then he hit the button and took the incoming call.

“Hello?”

“Meester Nesbitt, this is Paco Esteban.”

I know that. But it would take more time explaining I have caller ID than it would to ignore the obvious.

“How are you, Paco? Better? Is everything okay?”

“Is bueno,” Paco Esteban said. Then, in a tone that revealed both his pride and his determination, he added, “I have found the evil man.”

“What!” Nesbitt said, the news causing him almost to drive off the street. “Hold on.”

He braked heavily, came almost to a stop, then, because there was no on-street parking, gently rolled up over the low curb and onto the sidewalk to get out of traffic.

He had stopped shy of Pine Street, right across from the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial. The Polish-born soldier had bitterly battled the Russians-in the Kosciuszko Uprising-before coming to fight in the American Revolutionary War. As a colonel in the Continental Army, he became a hero-later rising to a one-star general-and then had become an American citizen.

Wonder what ole Thaddeus would think of this craziness that’s come to the country he fought so nobly for?

These new immigrants only seem to fight and kill among themselves…

“Okay, Paco,” Nesbitt said somewhat calmly. “Tell me all that again.”

“I know where El Gato is,” El Nariz said.

“This is the evil one?”

“S?. The evil one. El Gato. Means ‘The Cat.’ ”

“And you have seen him?”