“What was that?” I ask.

“Iguana,” says Canek Panti.

Above me I notice a pack of thick-bodied lizards crawling along the outstretched branch of a tree. They are playing, scampering one around the other, and suddenly another falls off, splashing into the river. As I sit in the canoe, watching the iguanas and heading ever closer to the murderous lizard I am chasing, I can’t help but see the parallels in the death struggle over the Reddman fortune and the war between Raffaello and Calvi for control of the Philly mob and its river of illegal money. How much all have sacrificed to Mammon is stunning. For now the mob is at peace, the deadly battle for control fought and decided on Pier Four of the Naval Shipyard. What was surprising was that, with all the missing soldiers, there wasn’t much fuss in South Philly. Oh, there was some talk about a war, and the Inquirer’s mob correspondent raised some questions in an article, but it all subsided rather quickly and life went on as if the dead had never been born. I am out of it now, just as I wanted to be out of it, and am grateful as hell for that.

There was a final meeting with Earl Dante at Tosca’s in which the rules of my separation were made clear. Files were handed over, vows of secrecy were established. We looked at each other warily. He didn’t trust that I wouldn’t betray him if I had a chance to make a nickel out of it and I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t kill me just for the sport when came his ascendance to absolute power.

“One other thing,” I said, after my obligations under the separation arrangement had been made clear. “I promised Peckworth that you would reduce his street tax.”

“Why did you promise such a thing to that pervert?” Dante asked.

“It was the only way to find out what I needed to find out.”

“We already knew what it was you were finding out.”

“But I didn’t know that. Why did you get him to switch his story in the first place?”

“This was a problem for us, not for some headline-happy prosecutor. We knew how to handle it on our own.”

“I promised him you’d lower his street tax.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he dropped his eyes and shook his head. “Stay out of our business,” he warned before he agreed.

My last job for the mob was an appearance as Peter Cressi’s counsel at his trial for the attempted purchase of all those guns, the crime that started this story for me in the first place.

“Where is your client, Mr. Carl?” the judge asked

“I don’t know, Judge,” I answered and, as befits an officer of the court, my answer was perfectly truthful because as far as I knew he could be in a landfill in New Jersey or in a landfill in Chester County or on a garbage barge floating slowly south looking for a place to dump. I didn’t know where he was but I did know that no matter how many bench warrants were issued in his name he wasn’t going to be found. So ended my last case as a mob lawyer. In the defense bar it is considered a victory if your client is not convicted and so I guess I went out a winner.

There is a bend in the river coming up. A huge black bird with a cape of white feathers around its red face swirls above and alights on a branch overhanging the water. The branch bends from the creature’s substantial weight. Canek tells me it is a king vulture and I don’t like the idea of it following us like that. I yell, but it holds its place on the branch, not interested in anything I have to offer until I am dead. We are close now, I can feel it. At each spot when the river turns I look anxiously for the pile of rocks and the tall cottonwood that will tell me we have arrived. I expect I’ll recognize it right off, I have imagined it in my mind ever since I heard Rudi tell of it over a Belikin in Eva’s, but even if I miss it I know that my trusty guide, Canek Panti, will find it for me. He is still standing behind me, stalwart and strong and able. The carved machete rests valiantly in the loop of his pants.

“Tell me something, Canek,” I say as I feel us getting ever closer. “When I was mugged in the streets of Belize City was that the real thing or had you just set that up for my benefit?”

He is quiet for a long moment. His pole in the water gives off an ominous swish as he pushes us forward.

“It was the real thing,” he says, finally. “Belize City can be a dangerous place for foreigners, though if those two had not come along I would have set it up much like that the next day.”

“Well, then thank you again for saving me,” I say.

“It was nothing,” says Canek Panti.

I’m not sure exactly when I knew about Canek. I suspected him when he seemed too perfect to be true, precisely the man I had hoped to meet in my quest through Belize. The idea grew when he stayed outside while I went into the Belize Bank branch in San Ignacio, as if he were afraid that the tellers would recognize him as the man making the withdrawals from the account I was so interested in, and it grew even more when he volunteered to be somewhere else while I made my foray into the market at San Ignacio. And when Rudi, the Mayan, spoke of the man who was not a foreigner, with the intricately carved machete, who took supplies to the distant jungle camp, I was certain. I don’t mind it actually, it is comforting that I am on the right track, that I won’t get lost, and that, no matter what happens, Canek will be by my side.

“He’s a murderer,” I say.

“What he did in a foreign land is not my concern.”

“Do you know what he wants with me?”

“No, Victor.”

“You’re not going to let him kill me, are you, Canek?”

“Not if I can help it,” he says.

Just then we round the curve of the bend and I see it, plain as a street sign, the pile of large rocks and the huge cottonwood, its thick walls of roots reaching down to the water. There is a place on the bank that appears a bit worn and Canek heads right toward it. He steps into the water and secures the canoe with the rope around a sapling and then I step out onto solid ground with my heavy black shoes. Despite the heat, I take my suit jacket out of the canoe and put it on. I button the top button of my shirt. The collar rubs against the swelling where the humpbacked botlass fly bit me, but still I tighten my tie. I intend to look as officially benign as an accountant. Is it only wishful thinking that I imagine it harder to kill a man in a suit? I lift out the briefcase and nod to Canek and then follow him as he slashes us a path up from the river and into the jungle.

Branches brush my legs and face as I climb behind Canek Panti. Birds are hooting, bugs are circling my face. Beneath our feet is a path, but the thick green leaves of the rain forest have encroached upon the space we need to move through and we have to swing the leaves away, as if we were swinging away the shutter doors of a Wild West saloon. On and on we go, forward, through the jungle. Canek hacks at vines, I protect my face. Something brutal bites my cheek. I see a small frog leap away, splay-footed, its face and torso daubed with an oxygen-rich red. Then, above the normal calls of the jungle, I hear the humming of a motor, a generator, and then another sound, rhythmic and familiar, shivery and dangerous.

Suddenly, we are at a clearing. There is a long patch of closely mowed grass and atop a slight rise is a cottage, old and wooden and not unlike the Poole house, except that the porch of this cottage is swathed in mosquito netting. It is an incongruous sight in the jungle, this lawn like in any American suburb, this house, gray and weathered, surrounded by perfectly maintained bushes bright with flowers of all different colors.

And there he is, in overalls, a straw hat, with long yellow gloves on his hands, standing in a cloud of tiny yellow butterflies as he holds a pair of clippers from which the rhythmic sound emanates, shivery and silvery, the opening and closing of his metal shears as he clips at a tall thorny bush.