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Spanish.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You’ll have to sit at my side next time I negotiate with Circulo Cubano and the cigar workers’ unions.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Very good, son. Very good.” The mayor chuckled, clapped Tomas’s shoulder, and straightened. “And you know Vanessa, of course.”
    “Mrs. Mayor,” Joe said.
    “Mr. Coughlin.”
    Even in the elite circles of Tampa where snobbery and an ice-cold demeanor were considered de rigueur, the chill Vanessa Belgrave reserved for people she deemed not up to snuff was legendary.
    And she didn’t like Joe at all. He’d turned down a request from her once because she’d presented herself as someone due a favor, not someone asking for one. Her husband had just been elected mayor and wasn’t nearly as powerful as he was now, but Joe had smoothed it over with him anyway, as a matter of good form, granting him the loan of a crane to place a statue of Major Francis Dade in front of the new waterworks building. These days, the mayor and Joe met for a drink and a steak at Bern’s every now and again, but Vanessa Belgrave made it clear her feelings would not be smoothed over, her opinion would not change. She’d been overheard referring to Joe as “the Yankee gangster with the Yankee lack of manners and the Yankee lack of tact.”
    The mayor beamed an expectant smile at his wife. “Ask him.”
    Joe cocked his head slightly and squared himself to the young woman. Her reputation was so intimidating he often forgot how pretty she was, her lips the same color as her hair—a red as dark as dried blood.
    “Ask me?”
    She could tell he was enjoying this and it brought a slight curl to the left side of her mouth before she fixed her electric blue eyes on him. “You’re aware of my foundation?”
    “Of course,” Joe said.
    “Like most charitable foundations during a war, it’s fallen on hard times, I don’t mind telling you.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Yours seem to flourish, however.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Come, Mr. Coughlin, your charities here in Tampa. I see you just built a new Corrales Shelter for Women in Lutz.”
    “That’s a direct result of the war,” Joe said. “Even more women are finding themselves without husbands or means to support their children. Even more children are losing their fathers.”
    “Well, sure,” Jonathan Belgrave said, “there’s a lot of truth to that theory, Joe. But even so, any charity not benefiting the war effort has taken a massive hit to its coffers. Yet yours seem to keep chugging along. Why, that party you threw just before Christmas, I bet that raised a pretty penny.”
    Joe chuckled as he lit a cigarette. “So what do you want—my donor lists?”
    “Actually,” Vanessa said, “that’s exactly what I’d like.”
    Joe coughed as he exhaled. “You’re serious?”
    “Well, it’s hardly as gauche as asking you to hand me the list right here. I’d like to offer you a position on the board of the Sloane Benevolence Foundation.”
    Vanessa Belgrave was born Vanessa Sloane, and grew up the only child of Arthur and Eleanor Sloane of Atlanta. The Sloane family—of lumber, of banking, of textiles, of summers on Jekyll Island, of two semiannual galas that set the high-water mark for all other gatherings in southern society each season—could claim generals in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The Sloanes were as close to royalty as Georgia got.
    “There’s an open spot?”
    The mayor nodded. “Jeb Toschen passed away.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “He was ninety-two,” the mayor said.
    Joe looked into Vanessa’s bright eyes. This was clearly killing her. But it was true that all the other local charities were drowning, while Joe’s organizations were, if not thriving, certainly solid. This was partially due to Joe’s gifts as a fund-raiser, but mostly to how much lower a fella could keep his overhead if he’d fleeced half his supplies and building materials.
    “Have someone