Blood of Paradise by David Corbett Page A

digging into Malvasio’s story. Not that he’d felt a pressing need, he’d resigned himself to the risk. Maybe that was rash but it was how he felt—and nothing that had happened since he’d agreed to go had changed that. He didn’t want to call any more attention to his trip than he already had, but as long as he had Fitz at his disposal, why not one quick question? Just be careful, he told himself.
    Fitz mulled it over. “Why do you think I’d hear about it?”
    â€œNo reason. I was just curious. It seemed odd, given the way coffee prices have been, that somebody’d be expanding.”
    â€œThere’s a whole lotta odd in the economy down here.” Fitz drained the last of his coffee and it seemed a chore—closing his eyes to concentrate, holding the cup steady, putting it down slowly, like it might explode. “But if it’s not a threat to anybody, I’m not going to pay much attention. I’ve got plenty to focus on as it is.”
    â€œSure,” Jude said. “Understood.”
    â€œYou were thinking what—they were building an airfield? Drug labs?”
    â€œI wasn’t thinking anything, really. Like I said, I just wasn’t sure it made sense.”
    â€œSome of the coffee producers have figured out how to turn a profit by growing a lower-grade bean, the robusta variety instead of arabica . I know that much.”
    â€œOkay. That explains it.”
    â€œI mean, I don’t know for sure.”
    â€œBut it makes sense.” Come on, Jude thought. Let it go.
    â€œIf only making sense were the better part of normal down here.” Fitz pushed out his chair and rose from the table to rinse his cup in the sink. “But I guess that’s why guys like you and me have work.” He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “Have a safe trip home, by the way.”
    Two hours later, as Jude sat aboard the TACA airliner at Comalapa preparing for takeoff, that one word came back to him again and again: home . And as the moments ticked past, the things around him began to melt away—the other passengers gaggling about, the stewardesses slamming shut the overhead bins, the baggage handlers loading the hold below—and he found himself back on the living room couch beside his mother, listening as the FBI agents tore the old abode apart like it was a crack house.
    He remembered the sound, like carpentry in reverse, the havoc punctuated with snide repartee and occasional laughter. The tall agent with the milky green eyes circled back from time to time, retaining an air of stoic calm, almost sympathy, but Jude saw through that. And the local cops, the ones who knew his dad, they just lumped around, unable to meet his eyes.
    His mother sat there in a fierce stillness as the ransacking of her home dragged on. Jude, sitting beside her, made a show of complaining twice on her behalf, but all he earned for the bother was a phony promise the first time, a threat the next. He joined her in tight-lipped rage after that, feeling useless, and his torn-up ankle just made that worse.
    The injury to his ankle, that was a story in itself, a kind of morality tale in miniature.
    It was the day before, and right up to the moment he got hurt, things had been edging toward perfect: summer two-a-days, not too hot, first practice in full pads. Jude responded to the coaches’ constant goad to punish that man by pasting some faceless sophomore on the hamburger squad during one-on-ones. Getting low and square, he drilled the kid so hard it turned heads—even the coaches flinched a little at the sound of the hit. But he wasn’t done. He hoisted the kid clear off the ground, carried him back five yards, and, driving with his shoulder, planted him in the dirt with one of those fierce snot-gurgling thuds you dream about.
    The showboating cost him. His ankle buckled under and almost snapped. He bolted up like it hadn’t happened but he’d