A Brew to a Kill (29 page)

“Caramel apple.”

I met Matt’s gaze. He was right about this coffee, even though in the roasting he went too far—an all-too common occurrence for my lack-of-impulse-control ex. He’d given the green beans a long, lusty lip-lock of heat, when a much more careful kiss would have gotten him to a higher plane of ecstasy.

“Next time,” I advised, “you should go a little lighter on the roast.”

Matt shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

I paused to finish my cup. “Okay. The coffee is superb.”

“Thank you.”

“But you still haven’t explained—”

“The processing?”

“No, Matt. The other part. The Brazilian-drug-lord part. Tell me how this coffee is going to get me
killed
.”

He nodded, refilled both our cups. “You said it yourself. This coffee goes down like crack. Well, you were closer to the truth than you knew.”

“You’re scaring me.”

Matt rubbed the back of his neck. “I never talk about the places I go and the things I see.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Okay, but mostly I tell you about the good times. In reality, some of the best coffee is cultivated in the worst geopolitical regions on the planet. Wars, murder, terrorism, revolution… you name it, I’ve seen it, heard about it, or witnessed the aftermath…”

Matt liked to think of me as naïve, but I was as familiar as he with the infamous history of brown gold. And I respected his efforts. In fact, I couldn’t help flashing on his mother’s remark earlier this afternoon—about the hard work of digging gemstones out of the darkest mines.

“When we were married, I didn’t want to scare you so I kept my mouth shut about the worst of it. Then not talking about it got to be a habit, and habits are hard to shake.”

“I know you’ve been in some bad situations.”

“And bad places, too… Lately, Brazil has become one of those places…” Matt pushed his cup of ambrosia aside,
reached for the wine. This time I didn’t stop him. “Don’t get me wrong. I still love Rio, and the Brazilian people are warm and good-hearted. But something’s gone very wrong in that country, and things are deteriorating fast.”

Matt poured a heady glass. “There are more than fifty thousand murders a year in the urban areas, and because of the economic gap between rich and poor, the violence is escalating. Jobless and hopeless, lots of young Brazilians are turning to a new form of crack cocaine. The
traficantes
get rich dealing it; the rest use it and die young… Too young.”

“And you met with one of these
traficantes
? Why, Matt, what were you thinking?”

“I was ambushed.”

“How?”

“Have you ever heard of
oxidado
?”

“No. Is it Spanish?”

“Portuguese. It means
rust
, and this drug is so toxic it really does rot your body. It’s like crack 2.0, too. Smoke it once and you’re hooked. The Brazilian police claim
oxidado
kills three in ten addicts within a year of regular use. It’s gotten so bad that a chunk of São Paulo’s ghetto was known as
Cracolândia
—Crack Land—until the cops drove the junkies into the streets with tear gas and clubs…”

Matt’s tale brought back my worst memories of New York City during the days of crack cocaine. “With that kind of rampant drug abuse, you get all of kinds delightful consequences. Muggings, burglaries, robberies, turf wars, gang shootings…”

Matt nodded. “I’m pretty careful when I visit Brazil these days. I have no desire to run afoul of
oxidado
dealers or their violent, desperate customers. So imagine my surprise when Nino invited me to breakfast one morning to meet a very special guest.”

He paused for a long moment, as if he’d forgotten the rest of the story—or desperately wanted to.

“Matt, tell me. Who did Nino want you to meet?”

“The biggest cocaine
traficante
in São Paulo.”

I
closed my eyes again, but for a very different reason. I no longer cared about heightening my other senses. I simply didn’t want to see what was coming.

“You took a meeting with a drug lord over your morning coffee?”

“Not willingly.”

I opened my eyes. “Does this drug lord work for Nino Duarte, or does your friend work for him?”

“I don’t know exactly how Nino got involved with him. My best guess is loan-sharking. Nino probably needed money to develop his land—this man has plenty of it. The dude calls himself O Negociante, and he kept things pretty formal during our meeting.”

Matt’s eyes glazed as his focus melted into memory. “I’ll never forget this guy. Neck as thick as his head. Lots of gold teeth, scars, and prison tattoos. A smile wider than a killer shark.”

“What did he want?”

“What do you think? He made me an offer I had to refuse, and I did refuse. But until my flight lifted off from São
Paulo’s Guarulhos International nine hours later, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of Brazil alive. Once I was in the air, I thought the whole thing was over. But after shots were fired this afternoon, I got to thinking that maybe it isn’t over after all.”

“O Negociante wanted you to smuggle drugs, right?”

“Right.” Matt nodded. “Two shipments a month of
oxidado
. I was supposed to traffic this new Brazilian crack into New York City. He knew I’d been shipping through customs for decades and was seen as a legitimate importer, so he expected me to be given a pass—or provide money to bribe whoever I needed to.”

“My god…”

“This guy really did his homework, Clare. He said he’d been informed that I was financially stretched, and he could make my money problems go away forever. And just to show he was a swell guy, he would pick up the tab for Nino’s coffee in exchange for my immediate cooperation.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth. First I told him I wasn’t interested—that my financial problems were seasonal and would vanish soon. But that tack failed, and he really began to pressure me, so I said…”

Matt paused, and I tensed. He was suddenly wearing that bad-boy pout again.

“What did you say?”

“I said that it would be too dangerous for me to go into business with him because…”

“Because?” I prompted.

“Because my business partner, the manager of the Village Blend, was romantically involved with a high-profile narcotics cop in New York City.”

I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hurl my favorite cast-iron skillet at my ex-husband’s thick skull. Instead I just clutched my head and nearly bounced it off the table.

“So you used
me
as your excuse, because of my relationship
with Mike Quinn! And now you think O Negociante has put out a contract on my life?”

“I had to think on my feet.”

“Think on your feet! Matt, take note: there are no brains in your feet!”

“Let’s not overreact, Clare.”

“Overreact? Someone took a shot at me today! But that’s not the worst and you know it. Lilly Beth is lying in a coma because Buckman was right! Some murder-for-hire scumbag thought she was me! And you say
I’m
overreacting?”

“I’m going to make this right,” Matt promised. “I’ll do everything I can to help Lilly. And you know I won’t let anything happen to you—”

“Drug smugglers?
Madre santa!
In Brazil of all places…” I buried my head in my arms again. “And for years I was agonized about your trips to Colombia.”

“Colombia is so last century,” Matt said with a dismissive wave. “With pressure on in Bogota, Brazil has become a safe haven for the next generation of cocaine growers and traffickers. And business is booming. There’s a new Medellín Cartel growing in Brazil’s Amazon jungle.”

“And one of these Amazonian drug lords wants me
morte.”

I shook my head. Mr. Hon was right. Now I knew how Rudy Giuliani felt. But when gangsters put out contracts on him, New York’s esteemed former mayor had trained bodyguards watching his back.

“Matt, what am I going to do? I’m not a government official! I don’t have a security detail! I have an espresso machine!”

“You share a bed with an NYPD lieutenant who’s an expert in drug trafficking and has friends in the Justice Department. Big Foot will fix things when he gets home.”

“I should call Mike right now.” I lifted my head and lunged for the phone.

Matt blocked me. “No. We’ll both tell Quinn when he gets back here. Face it, the guy’s going to have a
reaction
to this story. Don’t you want to be in the same room with him when he does?”

“I do, but I’m not sure you should.”

“Why not?”

“Because when Mike hears this story, he’s going to fold you in half and crumple you into a ball.”

“Fine! Let him—as long as it’s
after
we both know you’re safe.”

An hour ago I couldn’t wait to crawl into bed. Now my flesh was crawling.

I felt so helpless, like a sitting duck a l’orange.

I rose from the table, began pulling out ingredients. Maybe it was my emotions. Maybe the super-crack coffee. Or maybe just the knowledge that some Pablo Escobar–wannabe had put a contract out on me. Whatever it was, I had to move around!

“What are you doing?” Matt asked.

“I’m going to make my special Oatmeal Cookie Muffins. Quinn loves them, and I’ve got enough bad news to dump on him. The least I can do is bake for the man, but the first stage is a long soak.”

Matt groaned. He looked as though he wanted to soak his head. I would have obliged him, but I didn’t have enough buttermilk—and the container was too small.

Done. Now what?

Looking with pity on my pathetic ex, I tapped his shoulder. “You said there’s a bag of those golden nuggets in the basement?”

Cheek against the table, he murmured: “A hundred-and-fifty-pound bag, just waiting to be roasted.”

“Great. I’m wide wake. I’m going to fire up the Probat.”

Matt’s spirits lifted, along with his head. “I’ll go with you.”

T
HE
Village Blend’s roasting room was in its basement, an expansive space with stone walls and thick rafters. For a coffee lover, the aromas down here were psychotropic. For the Allegro family, they were legacy.

Generations of roasting had gone on in this chilly
underground, and Matt and I wanted it to keep going on for generations to come. Tonight was just one more little turn of the drum batch roaster. At least, that’s what I thought it would be.

While Matt moved to hit the starter button on our shiny red Probat, I examined Matt’s magic beans.

The bag itself was jute, with “Terra Perfeita” stamped in faded black ink beside the tiny hole Matt had cut to extract a few cherries. I used the razor cutter to open the bag from the top. With a scoop, I began transferring the green beans to an empty plastic holding container. About one quarter of the way down, I looked at the beans and gasped.

Matt, who was turning up the Probat’s gas, called out, “You’re impressed, right?”

“Oh, I’m impressed.” In fact, I was wide-eyed.

“Do you see how the cherries look like little golden nuggets?”

“I see nuggets, all right.”

“How about defects? Are there any rocks, twigs?”

“Yeah. I see rocks. Lots and lots of big white rocks wrapped in cellophane bundles—the kind that get you six figures on the street!”

“Clare, what are you talking ab—”

He finally saw them, the flat white bricks mingled with those golden beans. His face turned as purple as I imagined
terra roxa
to be, and his lips moved like a Chinatown catfish gasping for air.

Finally Matt blew his top, and the coffee-scented rafters rattled with the sound of curses, mostly—but not exclusively—in Portuguese.