The Job: A Novel by Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg

Author:Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg [Evanovich, Janet & Goldberg, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Women Sleuths, Romance, kickass.to, ScreamQueen
ISBN: 9780345543127
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-11-18T06:00:00+00:00

Modern downtown Lisbon, the Baixa, lies in a valley that runs south to the Tejo riverfront, where it ends at the Praça do Comércio, once a scenic spot for public executions. The royal palace also stood there before the earthquake, tsunami, and fire of 1755 wiped it away in what many at the time believed was a heavy-handed message from God.

The hill on the east edge of the city is topped by the restored ruins of the Castelo de São Jorge. Sloping away from the castle, the Alfama district is a tightly packed medieval maze of crooked buildings. The buildings lean against one another like staggering drunks trying to keep their balance on the steep cobbled streets. Laundry lines hang across the streets, and the air is thick with the smell of cooking fat.

On the hill to the west is the Bairro Alto, the “upper district,” which is no less densely packed, but is substantially wealthier. Its narrow streets are laid out in an orderly grid of expensive houses, restaurants, art galleries, and shops for the rich. The Bairro Alto is the bohemian and artistic heart of Lisbon, where crowds pack the tiny streets and steps at night drinking, carousing, and relieving themselves outside the countless tiny taverns and fado houses. Performers, waiters, and the hungry homeless sing loudly and mournfully in the fado houses, expressing their bluesy unending longing for what was and what can never be.

The songs merged together into a sorrowful, chilly breeze of cigarette smoke and salty fish aroma that drifted up to the top of Bairro Alto. Kate took it all in while she waited for Nick outside the ornate yellow Vincenzo Palace hotel, once the opulent home of Count Vincenzo, the sardine king of Lisbon.

“Hard to believe, but you almost look happy to see me,” Nick said, greeting Kate with a friendly kiss on the cheek.

“I read about fado in my guidebook, but now that I’m hearing it I don’t get it.”

“It’s like mariachi, only the singers who come to your table are wearing black and they’re joyless.”

Nick led her around the corner and down the slender Rua das Flores, which ran alongside the steep Rua do Alecrim, the Bairro Alto’s major north-south boulevard, all the way to the waterfront.

“The man we’re seeing to help get the word out in the underworld about our treasure is a fado singer,” Nick said.

“His name?”

“Diogo Alves.”

“You say that like his name is supposed to mean something to me.”

Nick sighed. “Don’t they teach you anything at Quantico? Northwest of here, there is the Aqueduto das Águas Livres, a 213-foot-tall eighteenth-century aqueduct that spans the Alcântara valley. It used to bring fresh water to the city and served as a bridge for traveling vegetable merchants. In the late 1830s, over the course of several years, over seventy people plunged to their deaths from the aqueduct in a wave of baffling suicides.”

“There must have been a fado singer on the aqueduct. What does that ancient history have to do with

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