The Successor (2 page)

There was a smattering of applause from those around him who hoped he might notice.

“I’m sure he’s expecting me to thank him for this.” She held the Oscar up again, already sensing a sudden unease racing around the auditorium. “Probably expects to be first on my list.”

People were shifting in their seats and glancing at each other with raised eyebrows.

“But I’m not going to.”

Her smile transformed into an expression of steely determination. Thirty-three hundred people and it was as if the ceremony had suddenly been transported to the surface of the moon. There was no sound at all inside the huge theater. This was going to be one of those moments that would go down in Hollywood history, she realized, blood pounding in her brain. The clip would be played over and over. Not just tomorrow, but down through the years.

“In fact, I’m going to tell him in front of the whole world what a piece of garbage he is for leaving my mother and me eight and a half years ago.” Her voice rose as she sensed the shock wave burst through the audience, heard the collective gasp, watched hands cover mouths, saw her father’s face twist in rage.
“Right after my mother got sick!”
she shouted over the growing noise.
“Just so he could move in with another woman. Just so he could—”

Like a peal of thunder, the orchestra cracked the room in two, breaking into a deafening fast number and drowning Melissa out. She smiled triumphantly down at her father despite being cut off. He was beside himself, standing now, waving his arms wildly, pointing at her and yelling something she couldn’t hear over the music even though they were less than thirty feet apart. He’d try to screw her career now, no doubt, but what was he going to do? She was an Oscar winner, one of the youngest of all time, one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. She was untouchable.

The woman in the long black dress who’d handed Melissa the Oscar when she’d first come onstage grabbed her arm and began tugging her to the right. Melissa resisted at first, then relented. She’d done what she’d come to do, said what she’d come to say. It was over. She raised the Oscar above her head one last time, waved to the crowd, and trotted offstage. The vision had been fulfilled. Her mother could rest in peace.

2

YEARS AGO,
before the Revolution, when Gustavo Cruz was a young boy, his grandfather and four brothers had owned this sprawling cattle ranch—one of the largest in Cuba. Owned it outright. Then Castro had seized power—and with it their ranch. Since then the Cruz family had been just a tenant on land that had rightfully been theirs for centuries. Of course, before that his forefathers had slaughtered the native Taino Indians almost into extinction, Cruz reminded himself as he moved through the darkness toward the run-down wooden barn. Maybe they’d lost everything to karma.

The choice in 1958—when the Revolution kicked into overdrive—had been clear. Flee with nothing and probably get caught as they tried to make it out of Cuba to Miami, or stay behind and work within the new system. Cruz’s grandfather had stayed, hoping that the new Communist regime’s power wouldn’t last long, but his four brothers had decided to run. They’d all been caught a hundred yards off a beach near Cárdenas in a small rowboat with three other refugees. None of them had ever been heard from again. There were rumors that one of them had been seen in Quivican Prison a few years ago, a broken old man. But Cruz assumed the rumors were false. Started by someone inside the Party—probably inside the Ministry of Agriculture—who hated them and wanted to torture them with a shred of hope that a long-lost family member might still be alive.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of billions in agricultural subsidies to Cuba, Cruz had been forced to sell an increasing amount of the milk his cows produced on the dollar-based black market—close to 40 percent now to make ends meet. To make the numbers work, he had to forge his production files to match the decreasing sales to the state. He was reporting output far below actual and reporting fewer cattle on the ranch than there actually were. It was a dangerous way to operate—he could be thrown into prison for a long time if one of the Agricultural Ministry inspectors showed up to check his figures and found out what he was doing—but there was no choice. Cruz had five children and eleven grandchildren, so there were many mouths to feed. And he paid his monthly bribe to the local counterintelligence officer, who in return made certain the inspector from the Ag Ministry never came around.

Cruz stroked the cow’s bony, black-and-white head for a few moments as the old girl stood in her stall lowing to her stablemates and chewing her cud. He liked it here in the barn. The pungent odor of manure mixing with damp dirt was a smell most men disdained, but he loved. It took him back to days with his father—delivering a calf, mucking out stalls, milking the herd. And there was a good feeling about being involved with something so basic as milk production—something everyone on this beautiful island needed. He mumbled a few words in Spanish to the old cow before reluctantly leading her from the stall and out of the barn. She was a friend, an old friend. She’d been on the ranch for a long time, but she wasn’t producing milk anymore. The family needed food, and unfortunately there wasn’t enough money to keep pets around. Life was harsh on the ranch. Life was harsh everywhere on the island.

Cruz unlocked the rusty chain of the paddock gate, pushed it back, then headed for the long, potholed driveway that ended at a narrow country lane. At this time of night, the traffic on the lane should be mostly trucks—one of which would hit the cow on the dark, twisting road if he placed her in just the right spot. It would have been much easier—and humane—to put a bullet through her head, but that would have been a high crime in Cuba—tantamount to treason. If someone in the Party discovered the unusually large amount of beef stuffed into his freezer, he might be hauled off to jail for months, maybe years.

But if she was killed in an accident, even the police would have to admit that it would be stupid to waste the meat. He’d grease their palms with the $10 bill that was in his pocket—comparable to several hundred dollars in the United States—so they wouldn’t take her. Then he and his boys would hoist her carcass onto the old horse-drawn wagon as soon as the cops left and carve her up in the morning. He hated doing it this way because the old girl might suffer with broken legs for an hour or so until the police arrived and gave him permission to shoot her. But he had no choice.

He clucked to her, urging her ahead as they both limped along. He’d pulled ligaments in his knee last week falling from a horse spooked by a snake in a back pasture. She was just lame from age. She lowed in protest and shook her head against the frayed hemp rope, but slowly they made their way toward the lane.

When they reached it, Cruz turned left. The cow’s hooves made loud, clicking sounds on the pavement and mixed with the din of the frog and insect calls from above. He gazed up into the low-hanging branches as they moved toward the sharp S-turn a hundred yards away. It was eerie under the leafy canopy, and his vivid imagination made him see odd and frightening figures lurking above him. He took a deep breath. The sweet scents of wildflowers calmed him. It was just that he hated killing anything. That was the problem.

At the top of the curve, Cruz led the cow into the center of the road, untied the rope from around her neck, and nuzzled her soft face. Odd thing about these cows: If they were in an unfamiliar place, they wouldn’t move. She’d stand right here for hours waiting for him to come back.

He winced and kissed her nose once more when he heard the whine of a far-off motor, then stole into the bushes. He couldn’t bear to watch.

STEVEN SANCHEZ
had worked for many people during his career. He’d played both sides of the mercenary fence and played them well. Proof being, he was still alive. Still had a wife and two children in Paris. He didn’t see them much, and when he did, he was careful about it. But they’d never been harmed, never even been threatened. The key to this business: Check your ego at the door and stay focused on the overall objective—taking down the target. Many of his counterparts had bragged about how good they were, about the amazing jobs they’d pulled off over the years. Many of them were dead.

“Under the radar.” That was the mantra, he thought, gazing down at the bright lights of the city from seat 21F of the Boeing 737 as it straightened out of a sweeping left turn on final approach. His mentor had taught him that many years ago during his first job in Iran. Appear nonthreatening, even weak at times. But not too weak, because that could also create attention. Try to be someone who slipped by unnoticed, or barely noticed. Then you’d be successful. Successful being defined in this business as staying alive, because making money would never be an issue. If you were willing to do the work, people would pay you and they’d pay you well. The issue was mortality.

Sanchez cinched his seat belt tighter when the landing gear dropped, rocking the plane. He took a deep breath. He hated flying, and the older he got, the more it bothered him. He hated it even more at night, which he couldn’t figure out.

“Hey, you never told me your name.”

Sanchez glanced over at the young man in the middle seat, who’d nudged his elbow. A loud, twentysomething white kid from Manhattan who’d made it clear before they’d even pushed back from the gate at La Guardia that the only reason he wasn’t in first class was that he’d wrongly been bumped and that somebody was going to be fired for it. Sanchez had seen the confrontation at check-in—everybody waiting to get on the plane had. The kid had whined and yelled and demanded to know the names of the employees behind the counter. Then bragged all the way down from New York about how rich his family was.

“Emilio,” Sanchez answered with a forced smile, giving his favorite alias. It would be fun to kill the kid. That would violate the “under the radar” mantra, but you couldn’t be a robot. Plus, it would be good practice. He hadn’t killed anyone in a year. As in any occupation, practice was a necessity in this business, even for a veteran. “My name is Emilio.”

“Uh-huh. Well, look,
A
milio, I know you people think you have it hard, but it’s like I said. This is the greatest country in the world. You’re older so it might be tough for you to make anything of yourself at this point. But you said you had a son, right? He can do something with his life. He can make some money.” The kid wagged his finger, as though he were teaching a class. “Now you gotta start with school and you gotta be willing to work hard. A lot of people who come here are lazy and think everything ought to be given to them, but that won’t work. You gotta fight for what you get.”

Sanchez glanced at the kid’s gaudy Rolex, then his smug smile. One slash to the neck with a sharp blade. How fun would that be?

“You tell your boy that,” the kid went on. “You tell him what I said. Best piece of advice he’ll ever get.”

The kid’s voice faded as the plane’s tires skidded on the runway and the pilot reversed the thrust of the jet engines. When Sanchez put his hand against the seatback to brace himself, he spotted a photo on the page of the open
Forbes
magazine lying on the kid’s lap. Sanchez had a photograph of that same person tucked into his bag that was stowed in the overhead compartment. A photograph of the target: Christian Gillette.

MELISSA SAT DRINKING
champagne in a circular booth at Elaine’s—a new Hollywood hot spot modeled after the actor hangout on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Around her were four girlfriends, all early twenties, all pretty like her. Two of them were established, already regular characters on nighttime TV dramas. The other two were still trying to break into the business. But they were all enjoying themselves tonight, all envying the Oscar sitting in the middle of the table.

One of the girls raised her glass giddily. “Here’s to Melissa. Here’s to—”

“Oh, stop it,” the girl next to her interrupted. “Don’t be so obvious.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is the third toast you’ve made to Melissa in the last ten minutes. Give it a rest.”

Melissa laughed. “It’s the coke.” The girl who’d made the toast had already done way more than her share of white powder. “Waiter!” Melissa shouted over the noise of the club, spotting a young man in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie passing by. “We need two more.” She pointed at one of the empty champagne bottles sitting on the table.

The man glanced at the Oscar, then changed directions and hurried toward the bar, preempting the dinner order he’d been about to place.

Melissa smiled triumphantly, just as she had at her father from the stage of the Kodak Theatre. Aware that the waiter had put others on the back burner to satisfy her first.

“That took a lot of guts,” the girl sitting to Melissa’s left said, finishing what was left in her glass. “Standing up to your father like that on national television? Saying those things you said?”

Melissa waved dismissively. “He deserved it.”

“Oh, yeah, sure he did. But he’s a pretty important man out here, you know. Aren’t you worried about what he’ll do to you?”

“Like what?” she asked, nodding at the Oscar. “I mean, I’m pretty bulletproof at this point.”

The girl followed Melissa’s nod and gazed at it longingly. “I guess you’re right. I mean, now that I think about it, what could he—” She stopped suddenly, eyes widening. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

Melissa glanced to the left and almost dropped her glass of champagne. Her father was standing in front of the table.

“Hello, Mel,” Richard Hart said calmly, using the nickname he’d given her when she was a baby. “Having fun?”

Melissa stared up at him, aware that the loud hum of conversation in the club had suddenly evaporated. Aware that everyone had stopped to stare, including the waiters. It was exactly like what had happened at the Kodak Theatre. “As a matter of fact, I am,” she answered with a smooth smile, regaining her composure. “Time of my life.”

Hart glanced at each of the young women in turn, making certain they knew that he knew who they were. “Isn’t there something you want to say, Mel?” he asked as his gaze finally made it back to her.

“I already said what I had to say in front of the cameras.”

“I’ll give you one more chance, sweetheart,” he said, his voice growing stronger. “And that’ll be it.”

“Chance to
what
?” she snapped.

“Apologize.”

Melissa gazed at him for a few moments, then slowly rose to her feet. “I’ll
never
apologize to you,” she hissed, pointing at the door. “Now, get out of here.
I mean it!
” she yelled when he didn’t move right away.
“Get out!”

For a few moments he hesitated, giving each of the young women one more look. Then he nodded politely and headed toward the door.

When he was gone, Melissa eased slowly back onto the booth seat, trembling with rage. Then she grabbed the first full champagne glass she could reach and downed it. “See,” she said when the glass was empty. “He’s not as tough as he thinks he is.”

“Neither are you,” one of the other girls murmured.