It’s the summer of 1958, and Meyer Lansky, the mob’s accountant, is barely a warm breeze away from seeing the crown jewel of his gambling empire sparkling on the ocean: Havana, the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean. Then, Castro came down from the mountains, armed and on a mission.
Batista’s days were numbered and so was his patronage of Lansky and his cronies. It is said that Lansky moved hundreds of millions of dollars out of Cuba. But, when he died in 1983, his estate was reported to be worth only 60,000 dollars in cash. What happened to the money?
With the ratification of the treaty between the US and Cuba, President Jordan Fletcher is encouraging American entrepreneurship on the island. Enter the mob…with a revived dream of government-sanctioned criminal enterprise. Two competing factions are vying to become the new Havana mob and each knows the key to success is finding Lansky’s missing millions.
One faction, led by the mysterious Le Lisiado, is on the offensive: Paula Cortez, President Fletcher’s liaison to the new Cuban government, is kidnapped. When Mike Lang learns of the kidnapping, he rushes to Havana to save the woman he loves.
Threatening Paula’s death, Le Lisiado blackmails Mike into finding the lost Lansky millions. Desperate for help, Mike calls upon his best friend, Jake Sullivan. Aided by a former Lansky employee, Silvio Caroselli, and Manuel Ortega, the new chief of Havana Police, Mike and Jake track clues through a maze of leads, racing to find the treasure and save Paula’s life.
Chip Bell’s third novel takes the listener on a twisted treasure hunt that begins in 1950s Havana and leads to an ending that no one, especially Jake and Mike, could have thought possible.
