Royal Digs Read Free Page B

list.”
    “And the Chinese government?”
    “Also in Adelyang’s pocket, and you can bet
your ass he’ll be a huge influencer of the United States’ policy
and attitude towards China. That’s where half of his profits come
from on account of his four casinos there,” Bunny said,
decapitating the leafy head of her celery stalk.
    “But where does that leave our family?”
    “I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is
that The Berninis have worked with all the families involved for
years regarding the goods they distribute through our Naple’s ports
and the derivative trades they shuffle between their international
bank accounts. R’s father, Giotto, also had a big problem with
Ricardo Kardeneira, one of the heirs to the largest coffee dynasty.
And that problem doesn’t seem to ever go away.”
    “Do you think the missing key could have
something to do with all of this?”
    “There’s only one way to find out.”
    She finished off her Bloody Mary then slid
this morning’s local papers across the table.
    I didn’t have to read them. I already knew
what they said.
    Today, Governor Crumley was making a campaign
stop in Key West, which was to be followed by a few private
meetings with influential local donors.
    “I take it we’re somehow going to be a part
of these events?” I asked, although I didn’t really have to.
    By now, I knew how the Bellesconis operated.
They always went straight to the source of their troubles.
    “Let’s just say I hope you have something
patriotic looking in your wardrobe,” Bunny said, taking an American
flag out of the vase of flowers in the center of our table and
waving it high in the air.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
     
     
    D uval Street was
lined three to four people deep on both sides with rowdy,
donkey-loving supporters. Here in Key West, a city known for
welcoming alternative lifestyles and the people living them, one
rarely found elephants, as in card-carrying members of the GOP.
What on earth a GOP candidate thought he or she could gain by
making this city a campaign stop was beyond me.
    But then again, Governor Crumley wasn’t the
smartest guy who’s ever tried to become our next president. He may
have made his mark in the business world, but it was at the expense
of the American workers who make up this country.
    Very few people gathered wealth like that of
Rett Crumley, wealth he wasn’t willing to divulge in tax trails
because the evils of the world played major roles in his
portfolios.
    As I’d come to expect, now that I was part of
the Bellesconi Family, we had a reserved place on the grandstand
stage to hear the Governor’s speech. And that alone proved Crumley
had to have crossed paths with the underworld my husband came from.
No one gets that close to a candidate unless they’re related, which
we weren’t, or the candidate owes them something. Now that was a
highly plausible explanation for our prominent placement.
    I took in a deep breath, trying to steady my
jumpy nerves. When that didn’t work, I resorted to scanning the
crowd and reading all the funny signs, making the local’s disdain
for Governor Crumley beyond obvious.
    My personal favorite I’d seen so far was the
bumper sticker people were holding up that read: “GM is alive and
well. Osama bin Laden isn’t.”
    No matter how much I understood why Roman and
his family were trying to make good on their past, I’d never get
used to the shadowy figures we’d have to continue to fight till our
freedom, and the freedom of the world’s everyday people, had been
won.
    Playing politics was bound to come along in
this journey at some point, I knew, because, let’s face it, there
are very few clean politicians. Money and power go hand-in-hand in
a vicious circle of influence and dread.
    Done reading the rabble rousers’ signs, and
shaken by an anxiety that kept getting deeper with each new source
of evil we hunted down, I fiddled with the large pearls around my
neck.
    Never one for understating