Chapter 1
Jacksonville, FL
WE’D SPENT A TYPICAL Friday evening dining on lasagna and garlic bread at the Pizza Italian, a small Italian restaurant in the Five Points shopping district of Jacksonville. Founded and still run by a Greek immigrant named Gus, the restaurant had been a neighborhood favorite since early 1976. Gus offered the best meatball subs in town, very good pizza, lasagna that was second to none, and his homemade blue cheese dressing was so popular that he sometimes sold it separately. Mike and I were sitting in one of the booths along the wall. We’d been joined by Carl Johnson, a rather cute redhead, and his partner Jim Williams, who was an attractive brunet. Carl was a detective with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and Jim worked for one of the national accounting fir
