The Job by Evanovich Janet & Goldberg Lee

Author:Evanovich, Janet & Goldberg, Lee [Evanovich, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Romance, Mystery & Detective, Mystery & Suspense, Thriller & Suspense, United States, General, Women Sleuths, Fiction, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 9780345543141
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2014-11-18T08:00:00+00:00

The Slam was only a few yards from the tunnel opening. The lightbulbs on the sign had burned out decades ago, and blue paint was peeling off the centuries-old building like flecks of dried skin.

Nick opened the door to the Slam, and they stepped inside. The bar was small, holding only a few dozen tables. The low ceiling trapped the smoke from the cigarettes, cigars, and joints so that it hung in the air like a dense fog. The walls and sagging shelves were crammed with countless knickknacks, gathered over decades, perhaps even centuries, from the bar’s patrons. Wood carvings. Nautical maps. Vases. Model boats. Daggers. Snow globes. Stuffed animals. Porcelain. Old radios. Carved ivory. An Ultraman doll. African fertility idols. It was like an eclectic antiques store that also served watered-down alcohol and rancid salted cod.

The clientele were scarred, tattooed, hard-looking men and women whose faces and hollow gazes reflected lives of crime, cruelty, poverty, and bitterness. But now those eyes were all filled with tears and locked on the fadista, Diogo Alves, a short man dressed in black with a pear-shaped face and a pencil mustache, who stood in front of the long tiled bar. A slender, ghostly pale woman draped in a black shawl sat on a barstool behind him and strummed a Portuguese guitarra while staring at the floor with the emptiness of someone who no longer had a reason, or the will, to live.

“Diogo is not exactly Michael Bublé,” Kate said.

“Fado is less about a good voice than it is about the emotion behind the words.”

“What’s he singing about?”

“How love is a flesh-eating disease that slowly devours your heart but you can’t stop hungering for more, even as it’s killing you.”

“I don’t think anybody will be whistling that tune at work tomorrow.”

Alves finished his song and lowered his head. He was five foot two without his lifts. All the emotion he’d dredged up for his fado had brought beads of sweat to his brow, which he dabbed away with a black silk handkerchief. The guitarrista looked like she was ready to take a guitar string and garrote herself with it.

The customers applauded and, as the applause died down, people began talking, drinking, and laughing again, like a paused recording that had been restarted to play at high volume.

“Try not to look so tough,” Nick whispered. “Remember, we’re greedy underwater archaeologists.”

“Indiana Jones is an archaeologist and he’s tough.”

“He’s an exception,” Nick said and moved toward Alves with Kate following close on his heels.

The bartender served Alves an uma bica, a small cup of strong black coffee, and Alves drank it in a single shot.

“May I have a word, Mr. Alves?” Nick asked.

Alves glanced over at Nick. “Do I know you?”

Nick tossed a gold coin onto the bar. It was one of the Spanish doubloons they’d stolen in Cartagena, and it was still caked with concretions. “I’ve found three hundred tons of those, and much, much more, at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Portugal, but I don’t have the resources to bring them up.

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