I studied the auras of the hotel staff tucked in the corners of lobby. “See anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. Just the usual herd of blunt tooths.” Carmen’s gaze arced again over the crowd. “What’s with all the cleavage? There are more oversized mammary glands here than at a dairy.”
I motioned with my eyes to one of the overhead banners and the logo of Rizè-Blu Pharmaceutique, a DNA helix superimposed over a sunburst. I acted as if I held a pair of melons against my chest. “All it takes is a prescription and some money.”
“Then they made a fortune from this gang.”
Many of the women and men, all over-coiffed, kept wiping their lips.
Carmen said, “Explain the drooling.”
“Side effect of NuGrumatex,” I replied.
“They ought to wear spit buckets.” Carmen glanced at me and did a double take. “Are you okay?”
“I feel fine. Why?”
“It’s your aura. Seems a little…off.”
I examined my hands and arms and the psychic glow outlining them. “Looks okay to me.”
“Still, if I were you, I’d fang someone soon. Get a blood pick-me-up.” Carmen replaced her contacts with a pair that made her irises sizzle electric blue against her orange aura. She relaxed her expression and stood straight. Her slicked-back hair was gathered into a ponytail secured with a gold lamé band that matched her purse and shoes. That little black cocktail dress was as tight as skin on a snake. “How do I look?”
“Just as you predicted, positively deadly.” I put in my contacts.
She flicked a fingertip against the corners of her mouth to tidy her lip gloss. “Good. It’ll keep the posers at a distance. I only want to get hit on by a man who thinks he can handle me.”
Carmen adjusted the collar of my burgundy silk shirt and smoothed the lapel of my black jacket. “Felix, I give you a B.” She glanced to my feet. “Make that a B+. I like your shoes.”
We stepped from between the plants and headed into the crowd. Carmen hummed the reggae tune “Now That We Found Love.”
She looped the chain strap of her purse over one shoulder and joined a clutch of elegantly dressed women, almost as regal in bearing and attractive as Carmen herself. She gave a toothy, radiant smile and must have said something witty as an introduction. Even with my vampire hearing, I couldn’t pick out what she had said, because of the din. The other women laughed, and I knew Carmen was accepted as one of the girls.
A server paused with a tray of drinks and Carmen chose a flute of champagne. She sipped and said something else. The women laughed again and inched forward to soak in Carmen’s charisma. If she was in a girlish mood, I’m sure Carmen would have the entire group in a sweaty, tangled pile by midnight.
I wove through the clusters of people and waited in line at the open bar. Another server circled around us with a tray of appetizers, grilled shrimp and pineapple chunks on short bamboo skewers. The shrimp looked delicious until the stench of garlic hit my nostrils. I waved her away before I barfed.
I shouted my order to the bartender. A manhattan on the rocks. Two cherries.
The bartender shook my drink in a chrome cocktail shaker for so long that I thought he was going to give himself frostbite. I raised the glass to taste the manhattan.
Someone bumped into me and I almost dropped my drink.
A man put his hand on my shoulder. His gray eyes had a self-effacing glitter. “My apologies.” His left hand held the arm of a blonde in a tangerine evening gown. The top of her dress looked like a cup filled with two big helpings of firm pudding. She held a cocktail glass in one hand and a highball in the other.
He dropped the hand from my shoulder and offered a shake. “Name’s William Krandall.”
“Felix Gomez.”
He motioned his companion forward by tugging at her arm. We huddled close.
He introduced her as Amanda Peltier, a Fulbright scholar who had worked at the FDA to fast-track the approval of Luvitmor. Judging by the way her dress barely contained her bosom, Peltier must have been an eager test subject for the drug. She gave Krandall the highball glass and shook my hand while carefully keeping her cocktail from spilling. A lemon twist floated inside.
Her eyes sparkled like stolen emeralds. “You’ve been to one of these before, Mr. Gomez?”
“Felix, please. This is my first time here.”
“And you’re with whom?” Peltier let her gaze wander to the other people.
“The G8 media committee invited us.”
Her eyes locked back on me. “Us?”
I lifted my drink in Carmen’s direction.
Peltier raised herself on tiptoes to better see. “The brunette with the ponytail?”
“I’ll make an introduction if you’d like.”
Krandall slipped an arm around Peltier’s waist. She whispered into his ear. His cheeks flushed. They traded small nods. Krandall dug into a pocket of his coat and brought out a business card. “My cell number’s on there. Tell your friend not to be shy.”
Carmen, shy? I put the card in my coat pocket. If their plans involved a tryst with Carmen, then they better get ready for Olympic-level sexual gymnastics.
“What are you doing for the media committee?” Peltier sipped from her glass.
“We’re consultants. The committee wants us to suggest new ideas for creative and collateral. Improve the messaging.” My bullshit could only go so far. Better that I change the subject. “Why all the security here? Are you guys that worried about terrorists?”
Krandall waved me closer and we almost touched noses. His breath carried the odor of garlic from the grilled shrimp. I stifled a gag and tried to step back but he grasped my shoulder. “Terrorists? Of course not. It’s to keep the protesters out. They’re very creative about sneaking in. The pesky, tree-hugging hippie bastards. Those Luddites see a conspiracy under every rock.”
“And why hold the conference here?” I thought about the antennas, the military helicopter, and the protective perimeter behind the hotel.
“You mean, why the Grand Atlantic? Take a look.” Krandall swept his hand over the room. “This place is the Taj Mahal of resorts. Are you paying for any of this? If not, then don’t complain.”
“And what is it that you do?”
“I work for Rizè-Blu.”
Peltier leaned toward us. “The hooters division.” She chuckled and her breasts jiggled invitingly.
Krandall gave a playful elbow to her ribs. “I’m a development director in their Eden Water-Green Planet Initiative; it’s a partnership between Rizè-Blu and Cress Tech.”
Interesting. “What’s the connection between a pharmaceutical giant and the biggest engineering company in the world?”
“Here’s the corporate answer.” Krandall closed his eyes and said, as if reciting from a script tattooed across the inside of his eyelids: “The Eden Water-Green Planet Initiative blends the synergy of two major global stakeholders: the engineering resources of Cress Tech International and the consumer branding and marketing expertise of Rizè-Blu.” Krandall opened his eyes. “The short answer? Moola.”
He pointed toward the atrium. “Let me show you.”
Chapter
30
We zigzagged through the drooling crowd and made our way to the atrium. Booths lined the edges of the central pathway. The riot of conversation seemed twice as loud as it bounced against the ceiling and the overhanging ledges of the mezzanine. Kiosks towered between the booths and displayed large posters emblazoned with earnest, feel-good messages. END WORLD HUNGER, sponsored by Cargill. STOP WAR, by General Dynamics (ha!). CURE DISEASE, from our friends at Rizè-Blu Pharmaceutique (that is when they were not populating the world with larger breasts).
We stopped by the Rizè-Blu booth. A monitor announced a new breakthrough in the treatment of erectile dysfunction, Rizè-Blu’s new wonder boner pill: Tigernene.
Young women costumed like vintage cigarette girls in satin vests and tap pants offered samples
from trays. The packets included: NuGrumatex, a translucent amber pill; Olympicin, a tablet with a golden metallic sheen; Luvitmor, a pink tablet with a tiny button that looked like a nipple; and Tigernene, a round pill in macho yellow with black stripes.
Krandall snatched a packet of Tigernene. “This will put titanium in your pencil.”
“You’ve used it?”
“Am using it.”
“And the effects?”
Peltier perched her chin on Krandall’s shoulder. “Like a stallion. Bigger and better.”
Krandall mimicked a whinny and used a leg to act out a horse hoofing the ground.
I clasped their heads and mussed their hair. “Maybe you two need to get a private stable. And soon.”
Peltier withdrew her head and frowned. She patted her hair back into place.
Krandall gave a small, embarrassed cough. “Sorry, TMI.” Too much information. “Let’s go meet my boss.”
Krandall took Peltier’s hand and used his other arm to part through a wall of people. He pointed to a portly man standing in front of the Eden Water booth. “I work for him.”
The man was Daniel Gruber, the former senior advisor to the last president. Gruber held court to a small group that gathered before him, and he spoke using a brisk, rehearsed cadence.
This was the first time I’d seen Gruber in person. His head was shaped like an eggplant that had stayed in the refrigerator for too long, sagging and bottom-heavy while the top sprouted thin white wisps. Small, intense eyes shone from under his thick brow, and his gaze bore through his spectacles as if he was looking into the future for his next moves.
Gruber clicked a tiny remote in his hand. The flat monitor screen resting on the table behind him showed a graph superimposed over a couple of African children. “Once Eden Water is established in central Africa, we can expect these levels of return from your investments.”
Another click and the screen showed the line of a graph climbing to the upper right corner of the screen.
“Phase two of the Eden Water project migrates the initiative to Latin America. Here our projected returns are double those from Africa.”
Another click and the screen showed the graph superimposed over a man in a primitive skiff pulling a net from the water.
Gruber’s eyes focused on his audience and his attention was now firmly in the present. “Phase three implements Eden Water here at home. The challenge…” Gruber paused to let his gaze seize the attention of the people circled before him, “…will be to educate legislators that municipal control of fresh water makes as little sense as the government managing any other commodity.”
An older woman asked, “What about access to safe drinking water as a right?”
Gruber’s answer continued the practiced rhythm. “We live in a global economy. Rather than let arbitrary notions of rights dictate what is available to the consumer, we need to allow the mechanisms of a free market to meet the demand.”
I stood beside Krandall and couldn’t help but ask: “What about the right to justice? Is that also for sale?”
When he worked in the White House, Gruber had been twice indicted for perjury, and wealthy friends of the president had helped him beat both raps.
The others listening to Gruber turned their heads and glared over their shoulders. Krandall jerked on my sleeve. Did I know who I was talking to?
Gruber dismissed me with a fleeting, annoyed look. He clicked his remote again. The graph was superimposed over a girl and a boy prancing through a lawn sprinkler.
“We’ll increment the adoption of the Eden Water initiative. You can see here that at milestone one, the first year return with 10 percent marginalization of the existing market-”
The woman who had spoken before asked, “Marginalization?”
Gruber smirked. “Control.” The smirk gave way to a serious expression. “That 10 percent will deliver a return of 1.1 billion dollars-”
A man in the group interrupted: “You talk about investors. What’s Rizè-Blu’s stake?”
Gruber jabbed a finger into the air. “Excellent question.” He tapped the remote. The screen showed the logo of Rizè-Blu Pharmaceutique and a pie chart. The largest slice, 87 percent of startup costs for Eden Water, belonged to Rizè-Blu. “Our recent successes with Rizè-Blu’s new line of prescription actualizers-ladies, I notice that you all have at least tried Luvitmor”-(they giggled)-“has given us the resources to leverage the Green Planet project from a dream into reality.”
Gruber was shilling for Rizè-Blu’s idea of putting all of the world’s fresh water into Eden Water’s scheming corporate hands.
I raised my voice to get his attention. “What’s next? Selling air?”
Gruber turned to me. His pupils dilated and shrank, as if his mind darted to another place and then back to the present. That smirk returned. “We’re working on it.”
Gruber shifted his attention to someone else. Krandall pulled me away. Peltier shook her head.
Krandall walked me from Gruber’s booth. “What did you do that for?”
Obviously, I wanted to needle the windbag. I grasped Krandall’s fingers and unwrapped them from my sleeve. “What are you getting at?”
“Don’t be surprised if you never get another invitation.” Krandall closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “For guys like you and me, being at this place is all about kissing ass. Our job is to tell these guys what they want to hear. You want the attention of the most powerful men on this planet, this is where you’ll find them. You won’t make points by pissing them off.”
“I appreciate the advice.”
Krandall patted my shoulder. “Rookie mistake. By the way, where’s your friend the brunette?”
“Close by, I’m sure.”
A server weaved through the crowd.
Peltier set her empty cocktail glass on the tray. “What’s she like?”
“Enthusiastic.”
“Really?” Peltier wiped her fingers with a napkin and dropped it on the tray. “What are her plans?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
Peltier gave my wrist a squeeze. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
Krandall gave me the thumbs-up. He put his arm around her waist and turned Peltier toward the Eden Water booth. Her dress swayed from her round, tight bottom.
I wondered what would happen if we did meet again.
Before then, I had to find someone else. I walked past the booths and started my search for Goodman.
Chapter
31
At the far end of the central pathway, a velvet rope blocked further passage. A placard on a lobby card-stand read: NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT.
I authorized myself, unhooked one end of the rope from a floor post, and stepped through. Immediately, one of the resort guards appeared from around the corner.
“May I help you?”
“I’m looking for a restroom.”
The guard pointed to the large sign behind me. Restrooms were in the main lobby.
Once in the lobby, I tried going around the concierge’s desk. Again, another guard appeared as if by magic and shooed me back into the crowd.
The black plastic orbs hanging from the ceiling or jutting from the wall corners stared like unblinking eyes.
I’d better back off trying this. I was sure I had the attention of the guys watching the security monitors.
Maybe I could find something in Goodman’s office. I went to the lobby entrance, passed through security, and instead of going to the garage, I went toward the golf pro shop. The golf course was closed but I could catch a hotel guest out for exercise returning through the side door.
I kept note of the security arrangements. At the corner, a black orb watched the front of the hotel. A plain video camera hung from the wall above me and pointed to the side door. I looked up the wall. There were no other cameras. I could climb between the camera and the corner of the hotel to the roof and remain unseen.
&nb
sp; Tennis players grunted and swatted under the lights of the tennis courts. An older man, lost in thought, approached. He twirled a tennis racket and groped into the pocket of his windbreaker. I removed my contacts and slipped behind him. He fished out his hotel room card and reached to swipe it through the reader by the door.
I checked to see that we were alone. “Excuse me.”
He turned around, his middle-aged face red and sweaty. His irises popped open and his aura brightened.
I took the card and opened the door. I put the card back in his hand and left him standing outside. He would think he’d just had a senior moment. I moved fast and smoothly. The security guards had dozens of monitors to watch. Unless they had been paying attention only to me, they wouldn’t have noticed anything suspicious.
I walked down the hall, past the locker rooms, and toward the golf course administration. I had a hunch I’d find Goodman in his office. We’d have a long, informative talk.
I turned the corner. The glass double doors to the office were closed. The secretary’s vestibule was dark. I tried the doorknobs. Locked. I didn’t see any light coming from around the office doors inside. I put my ear close to the glass doors and heard only silence.
So much for hunches.
Where was Goodman?
I traced my steps back outside. Before I put my contacts back in, I scoped the grounds and looked for any suspicious auras. Nothing.
I returned to the reception and found Carmen at the bar. She leaned against the bar counter and held a fizzy drink against her temple. Sweat from the glass wet her fingertips. “I have never in my life been in such a group of pious, self-important assholes. God, they act like they’re doing the world a favor dispensing this academic horse shit. Too bad they can’t use it for fertilizer.”
“The important question is, anything on Goodman?”
“No. You?”
I shook my head. “If he’s here, the man’s a ghost.” I asked the bartender for a manhattan. “What about your dance card?”
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