Uncle Oscar, as he was called among the Calderóns, had a freckled bald dome of a head on which artful swirls of dark-dyed hair reclined. His bright black eyes flicked in disconcerting magnification behind huge thick black-framed lenses. He spoke a thickly accented English, interlarded with frequent spates of Cuban idiom. Clemente was a classic green-eyeshade type, a legacy from the previous generation of Calderóns, who’d won his spurs sneaking Victoria’s grandfather’s millions out of the island just before Satan took over Havana. According to him, the pyramid of interlocking loans was holding up and would cover the company’s burn rate well into the following year, assuming a whole list of good tidings: the prime rate low, labor available and docile, all contractors diligent and smartly on schedule, the banks willing with the usual rollovers, and…

Victoria’s eyes darted to a set of asterisked entries that seemed to balance out the spreadsheet to create this miracle of financial solidity. She added them up mentally and said, “Wait a second, where does this five point five mill come from? Investment income?”

They all stared at her, and she felt her face flush. “I mean…it doesn’t appear on the latest financials, and without that it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to service the major loan from First Florida. Does the bank have this as part of our collateral?”

Oscar looked at Calderón, and it was clear to Victoria that the CFO didn’t know the source of the money either. Calderón said, “It’s Consuela Holdings money. It’s there. Let’s move on.”

“Consuela? There’s no cash flow from Consuela. It’s a speculative outside investment. Why’re we claiming it as an asset against which we’re proposing to borrow?”

Calderón chuckled. “My little girl’s a financial genius now. A year ago she couldn’t tell an asset from a baby buggy and now she’s running the business for me. Kids, huh?” Everyone around the table had a good laugh at that, and now Calderón stared at her with his special macho gaze until she dropped her eyes and he said, “When I want your advice I’ll ask for it, understand? Now, Oscar, let’s get this finished.”

Calderón observed his daughter shrink into submission, which reaction made him feel somewhat more in control, and after the meeting he retired to his office, having told the secretary to hold calls. He sat behind his desk squeezing a little red ball said to be good for relieving tension and thought about the real problem, the one closely related to the $5.5 million the stupid girl had mentioned. Clearly, someone had killed Fuentes, and this someone was now trying to threaten him by last night’s vandalism. Fuentes had been torn by what was supposed to have been a big cat, an obvious scam, and someone had marked his property, as if by a big cat. They were trying to frighten them away from the Puxto, that was clear enough, and therefore it was necessary to find the people who were doing this and stop them or frightenthem off. He had applied fear before this, including physical fear on occasion, and he understood that once the decision was made, there was no point in holding back. He dialed a number in Colombia, not the one he had used some days ago, but a special one, a cell phone, for emergencies only.

“Yes?” said the quiet voice.

“Hurtado?”

“Yes.”

“Calderón. Look, the situation we talked about the other day? I think you need to be involved.”

“I’m listening.”

“There was an incident at my house last night. It’s connected with the death of Fuentes, I think.”

“Someone contacted you?”

“No, just some vandalism, a warning. The marks of a big cat, just like there were around Fuentes’s body.”

A hissing silence; then, “And what is it you expect me to do about it, Yoiyo?”

Calderón took a deep breath. “Well, you know they killed one of us and threatened me. This is not the work of some little environmentalistcabrón. This has to come from your end, despite what you said before.”

“Really? What about the man and his Indian at Fuentes’s office?”

“A distraction. These environment crazies, they climb up and live in trees, they drive spikes, at worst maybe a bomb, and then they’re all over the papers with their manifestos. This is different. Forgive me for saying so, but it has a Colombian feel to it.”

“A Colombianfeel?”

“Yes!” Calderón’s voice rose. “They tore Antonio topieces, goddamnit! They ripped the heart from his body, his liver…Americans don’t do things like that.”

“No, that’s true. But calm yourself, my friend. I’m sure something can be arranged. We need to find who’s doing this business and make them stop, this is the important thing, yes?”

“Of course. So, you’ll organize this in some way?”

“I will. My people will be in touch with you. And Yoiyo? You’ll let me handle this quietly, yes? No publicity, no fuss, and no contact with the authorities. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. My best regards to your family.”

The line went dead. Calderón wiped his face with his handkerchief. It was some minutes before he trusted his legs to carry him to the little bar in his office.

Victoria Calderón returned to her much smaller office, where there was no bar. Her body was damp with a nasty fear-sweat. She plucked at her clothes and wished for a shower. She sat behind her desk and tried to work. The words and figures danced wrongly across the page, and she mouthed an unaccustomed curse, and another, and then gave vent to her quite considerable store of Spanish profanity, learned mainly during her brief marriage, but not of course loud enough to be heard through the flimsy walls of her office. Yes, it was still true: he could with a word and a sneer turn her into the brainless ornament of his fancy.

Now, almost without thought, she found her fingers punching the buttons of her phone, and in a moment she was listening to the warm, humorous voice of her favorite person in the world, her mother’s crazy sister, Eugenia Arias, who, blessed with a perfect ear for tones of woe suppressed, cut through the attempted small talk with “What’s he done to you now?”

After listening to her niece for some time, she said, “Come down to Eskibel’s and I’ll buy you a drink. Three drinks. Then we’ll go to the fronton and make piles of cash, and then maybe we’ll both get lucky with apelotero.”

Victoria giggled. “Oh, God, I should! It’d drive him crazy.”

“It’d serve him right, the bastard. Oh, come! You can be here in half an hour. We can grab a bite and be in our seats by seven. Yes?”

Victoria actually thought about it for a long moment. Aunt Eugenia, the younger of the two sisters, was a jolly, fleshy woman, as unlike her sib as nature and temperament could arrange. She was unmarried, screwed around with low, beautiful, worthless men, drank copiously, kept an antique Jaguar saloon with a chauffeur to drive it, and made, to the dismay of her family, an excellent living as a professional jai alai gambler. She was tolerated at the larger family gatherings, but Yoiyo Calderón did not approve of her, and so his daughter was strongly discouraged from her society.

Victoria answered, “I don’t know…I’d have to lie to him, and to my mom, and he’d find out and then I’d be in the doghouse for weeks…”

“What, he’s going toground you? Vicki, I have news for you: you’re an adult. You’re twenty-eight. Let him kick you out. You’ll move in with me, I’ll teach you to bet jai alai. You’ve got a good head for figures, you’d be a natural at it.”

A laugh caught Victoria by surprise, the suggestion was so outrageous, so not her. She changed the subject and they talked on, of family and Eugenia’s louche life, and when they ended the conversation, Victoria felt herself again. Which was? She didn’t quite know, but it was not as an escapee like Eugenia, she decided as she turned again to the close-ranked numbers, not escape, but victory. Her father’s daughter, after all.