CHAPTER 10Blessed are the VictoriousLombardos was not a small place, but it was carefully designed so that every table felt intimate. It was close, warm but not hot, with tasteful, but not distracting, art about the room. Taken as a whole, each room in itself could be considered a work of art, so elegantly did every table, chair, color, and painting swirl together.Jon did not notice any of this. All he had eyes for was the young lady across the table slurping down lobster ravioli. He picked at his salad, filled with odd vegetables he’d never heard of and sipped a diet Coke, served to him in a wine glass to help make him seem grown up. As he did so, Jon mused on what it had taken to bring them both to this spot.After Jon had told him of the success the previous day, Michael had stormed off up to his room, predictably reciting one of his foul limericks.“There died a young girl named Maria,Well known for slutty behavior,When the priest thought her shriven,And fitted her fo

CHAPTER 12Deal With the DevilIt had been days. Most of it was spent in darkness, as his captors kept his head covered by a stinking burlap sack. After he first was kidnapped, the villains had surrounded him, licking their lips, each wielding a knife, a gun, a chain, or a broken beer bottle. They all had cheap clothes adorned by some bizarre accessory above their social rank. A ruby ring, a diamond stud, a glittering belt buckle bragging about the size of Texas. His shoes were taken, along with his leather belt. The crooks seem very interested in his teeth, and whenever a new member of the gang came in, they delighted in showing them off.Only one spoke actual English—sort of spoke it.“You money, eh?” the man asked, scraping a bowie knife across Jon’s throat.“I don’t have any money.”“You money!” the man thundered, then reconsidered. “Papa? Daddy? Daddy?”Jon nodded vigorously. “Oh, yeah, he’s loaded. Money all over.”“Good. Good,” the man smiled, showing an upper row of rot

CHAPTER 14The Devil’s BellowsWas there ever a city fouler than Paris? The whole place was putrid. The food stank, the air stank, the water stank, and the people stank worst of all. No wonder it was the French who invented perfume. It was needed to knock out the fetid odors leaking out the hairy crevices of every Parisian. The metropolis was built on a foundation of human waste. Take two steps across any yard and your feet would scuff up some vile fart entombed two millennia ago by Roman soldiers.Adding to their stinkiness was their foul attitude. People say New Yorkers are rude, but they are nothing compared to the average Parisian. They all speak English but pretend not to. They will shove you aside. They don’t break for traffic lights. One whiff of an accent will bring on a barrage of insults spouted right to the person’s face—in French, of course. They assume the average tourist doesn’t speak their lingua. Even if you make an attempt to speak their language, it makes no differ