by Jeff Abbott
I stopped in front of the bookshelf; it reached from floor to ceiling. The books were mostly history, from all parts of the world. On the top two shelves there were many books about Africa. Nonfiction, short-story collections, poetry. He must have loved his time there. The library made me feel I’d underestimated him again.
His bedroom had been packed up as well, the bed stripped. Clothes were sorted and piled, one under a sticky note marked DONATE, one under KEEP. Inside I saw shirts I’d seen Steve wear and my skin felt cold. Another box kept financial papers, credit card accounts, bank statements. I took a picture of the credit card account numbers and of the bank account numbers on my smartphone. It might give me a trail to follow.
Client files. I paged through them. He’d worked security for high-dollar fund-raisers, law firms, visiting celebrities. The files were alphabetized and Cordelia Varela wasn’t listed.
But fund-raisers? I paged back through the tabs listing the client names. HELP WITH LOVE. Cordelia’s charity. He’d worked security at a black-tie event there several months ago. I took the file.
But what I wanted to find was a hiding place. Bathrooms are always good choices and nothing had been packed in there yet. I carefully searched the space below the sink. Nothing. The cabinet above the toilet. Nothing. I opened the medicine cabinet. He had a few prescriptions. No surprises.
Except for the hair gel. I’d never seen Steve wearing hair gel. I picked up the squat container and shook. A clatter. I opened it, and inside the empty container was a blood-red rectangular plastic chip. I held it up to the light. The label read Gran Fortuna Casino, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Those rectangular plaques were often used for very high denominations—think ten thousand dollars and higher. I looked for the number but instead there was a letter on it—X. No money denomination. And a short serial number, in the corner, very small. Weird. I’d never seen a casino chip like this.
I pocketed it. Put the hair-gel container back in the cabinet.
I made another fast pass through the house. Nothing.
Then I heard the front door opening. The cousins. I stepped out past the closed curtains, onto the back porch. Waited for them to speak.
But they weren’t saying anything. Silence.
Not the cousins, then. Someone else. I had no desire to get into a fight or try to subdue and question someone inside Steve’s house. I wasn’t armed. There was a better way.
I moved, silently, to the stone wall and went over. Snuck through the neighbor’s yard and back out onto the street.
I went back to my rented Honda. The cousins’ car wasn’t parked out front, so it wasn’t them. I waited. Ten, fifteen minutes. I saw a man come out of Steve’s backyard. He was thin, with dark hair and wearing a really unfortunate beige jacket that looked like it had last been popular in the ’70s. Had those come back into style? I guess so. I wear good suits at the nicer bars I own but normally don’t pay attention to such trends. It wasn’t really jacket weather, so I figured he had a reason to wear it other than warmth. He hurried down the street and got into an older but nicely maintained Mercedes.
He drove. I followed, at a discreet distance. He went to Little Havana, not far from the cemetery where we’d laid Steve to rest, and he parked and went into a small Cuban restaurant. It was a two-story place, brightly painted in yellows and greens, with a red staircase going up the side. I circled the block and parked on a side street where I could see the front door and the staircase door.
And I waited. And I waited. And I waited and called Mila to spell me but she didn’t answer her phone and I thought she might well have left Miami already. I cussed the guy out under my breath but I didn’t want to leave for fear I’d lose him. I didn’t want a restaurant, I wanted a house, an address where I could find out more easily who he was.
At eleven that night, on the dot, my target came back out of the Cuban restaurant and he got into his car and drove away. I followed him, keeping back a couple of cars—not hard with night traffic in Miami.
He drove over to Miami Beach, where, if I had any sense, I’d own a bar and rake in the cash from the beautiful people.
He pulled in at the Corinthian. It was one of the oldest, most iconic Miami Beach hotels and a few years ago it had undergone a massive renovation costing hundreds of millions. We both had to wait in a long line of cars, driving up one of the few inclined driveways in Miami—it was an artificial hill—while a squadron of scrambling valets dealt with the crowd. A lot of people arriving, not all of them hotel guests—the Corinthian being a dining and nightclub destination in itself. I pulled up into the massive porte cochere, which the valets organized with the intensity of air traffic controllers, yelling, pointing, making sure the Range Rovers, Maseratis, and Teslas didn’t nudge one another. My Honda was the most modest car, by far. You always have to wonder how much money is in Miami and where it all comes from.
I saw my target undertip his valet, and then head into the hotel.
10
I FOLLOWED HIM down a long marble hallway, several people between us, staying back, until he reached a huge lobby area with a vast open bar on the right, the floors aglow with soft green light. On the opposite side of the lobby was the entrance to a nightclub, more exclusive, with a roped line of optimistic partygoers already formed. He walked right up to the bouncers, dressed in his nerdy jacket and his pants that were a tad too short, and the bouncers and the stylish hostess nodded at him and let him pass.
I did not expect that. They knew who he was. I heard a woman in the line say, “You must be kidding me.”
I hurried into the line for the nightclub, a place named, according to the massive gold sign on the wall: (Or). Or what, I thought. It was an unanswerable question. How did one pronounce the parentheses? I was still in my funeral suit—dark Armani, sans tie—so I was dressed appropriately. I wear very good suits when I’m at my fancy bars but didn’t break out this particular suit ever at Stormy’s, only for Steve’s funeral. But I was a guy without a girl, and you know how that works at a hot club. I’d get denied. Not to mention I knew a high-end club like (Or) would have reserved tables. I surveyed the line. Tourists, who might not have known their hotel concierges could have gotten them tickets or onto a guest list. Lots of young women, in very short skirts and very high heels. The Miami look. You’d think the medical money in this town would be in plastic surgery, but I think it must be in twisted or broken ankles. But no way I was getting in on my own with no reservation. I needed a strategy. I needed that jewel, a confused tourist.
There were two beautiful women in front of me, maybe a couple of years younger than me. They spoke French to each other, glancing around with the excitement that comes only from being a tourist. They were stylish: pretty but dark dresses instead of the neon Miami color palette, skirts slightly more modest. One with black hair, one a brunette. They consulted each other, glancing at their papers.
A reservation slip, or a ticket.
An advantage of having grown up all over the world was that I had to learn new languages fairly quickly. Lots of developing countries are Francophone. I tapped the brunette on the shoulder and smiled when she turned to me and said in French, “Pardon me, I don’t wish to bother you, but I couldn’t help but overhear you speak French. Welcome to Miami. Is this your first time at this club?” My accent was clean enough to let them hear I wouldn’t massacre their native tongue.
“Thank you, yes! You are American? Or maybe Québécois?”
“American.”
“Where did you learn to speak?” They could have said, “Congrats on speaking French,” and turned their backs on me. But they didn’t.
“All over,” I said. “I lived in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire and Haiti as a child.” We chatted, in rapid French, while we waited and I told them about other clubs, restaurants, places to avoid. Their names were Rébeque and Justine. Rébeque had lovely black hair and eyes, Justine was the brunette. I’d spent so much time with the regulars at Stormy’s—none of whom were my age—I realiz
ed I hadn’t really talked to a woman my own age, face-to-face, in two weeks beyond asking her what she wanted to drink or if she wanted to start a tab or why my friend was dead. Cordelia was my age, Mila was a few years older. I pushed the thought of both of them away.
“Do you know how long the line takes?” Rébeque peered down the line, which hadn’t moved in the past ten minutes.
“Oh, no, I think you are in the wrong line,” I said, pointing at her ticket. “You have bought a table, yes?”
“Yes. The concierge at our hotel made us a reservation.”
“There is another line, usually, if you have the ticket,” I said.
The two women glanced at each other. “Where do we go?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll help you find it.”
“But then you’ll lose your place in line,” Justine said. The queue behind us had grown substantially—guys in overdecorated shirts, wearing sunglasses as midnight approached, groups of women clustering together, inspecting one another’s makeup, doing their best to not look impatient. To not look like it mattered or not if you passed the steely eye of the hostess and the bouncers.
I shrugged. “I’m probably not going to get in anyway.”
For a moment their delighted smiles dimmed. “But why?” Justine asked.
“I’m a guy, alone. No way will the bouncer let me in—I thought the crowd would be so much smaller this early.” Time to play a card. “Could I pretend to be with you two? They’ll believe it with us all speaking French together. And the drinks are on me.” Considering a beer or a vodka and cranberry juice can run twenty bucks at a place like this, it wasn’t an idle promise. Even if their reservation covered drinks, I’d figure a way to treat them.
Rébeque and Justine were delighted to take part in a minor deception. They linked arms with me as we found the VIP line and we drew close to the gatekeeper’s inspection and I murmured in French to them (“I hope this works”) and Justine whispered back, “I’m sure it will. We’ll make it work,” and then she kissed me on the cheek for show while Rébeque batted eyelashes at the bouncer as she handed him the reservation slip for two and he checked it against his list.
He waved us in, even though we were three. (Or) was very new and shiny and dazzling. A vast dome, flooded with programmable colored lights above us, forming and breaking gorgeous patterns, like a church ceiling by Michelangelo on acid. A large middle section, two VIP sections above the main floor. Electronic dance mixes swirled over the space—as we entered boomed Deadmau5 and Kaskade’s nine-minute remix of “I Remember,” with soaring angelic vocals. (You own enough nightclubs, you hear a lot of electronic dance music, and you can name that tune in five beats.) Halos of fog, DJs with an array of laptops, sunglasses on as if their screens blinded them. Crowded, but not yet to the point where you couldn’t see across the entire room. We were taken to an upstairs table near a bar. I gave the waiter Justine’s credit card and mine and told him to transfer the charges from hers to mine. With the ladies’ approval, I ordered French Champagne. At the end of the VIP section bar I could see the guy in the jacket, sitting alone. But he wasn’t facing the bar, nursing a drink. He had turned the barstool around and was sitting, and watching, and I let my gaze track his.
Not far from the bar was another table, with a man and a woman, the two of them in their own world. The man was about thirty-five or so, broad-shouldered, arms heavy with muscle, hair black. He wore a fitted suit to show off the physique. He was listening to the woman but tuning her out at the same time: he had a bored, indulgent look. Like he’d had a lot of practice.
The woman was a stunner. Brown hair, cut in a pixie style, in a short, glittery dress. She had her hand on the man’s knee and was whispering furiously in his ear.
I glanced back at the man in the jacket who’d kept me waiting on a Little Havana street for hours. I cordially hated him. He sat, watching them. Waiting for them to finish? Or waiting to be summoned, like an errand boy, I suddenly thought. They didn’t want him at the table, not just yet.
I figured he’d either be bringing them whatever he’d found—had I missed something valuable?—or he’d be bringing a report. Who sends someone to burgle the house of a murdered man and then makes him wait on a barstool?
Did you kill my friend? I wondered, watching the pair. Did you order the Colombians to kill Steve? What’s your connection to Cordelia Varela?
Champagne, perfectly chilled, arrived. I toasted Justine and Rébeque. They were laughing, glancing around the club, slightly amazed at how cool and hip it was. But Justine frowned.
“You can tell they’re not letting in guys yet,” Justine said. “Way too many women here.”
“I don’t want to interfere with your evening.” I wasn’t the right kind of guy for them to meet anyway. They’d done me a favor and I needed to deal with my targets. “Thank you for helping me get inside.”
Justine gave me a smile. A warm smile. My throat went a little dry. She was so pretty and nice. Like most modern men I try to be a bit more analytical than that…but she was. “Please don’t go. You saved us from the purgatory of the line and you’re a gentleman. Sam, we’re very glad we met you.”
I tried not to notice the promise in her voice.
“So where are the people you are looking for?” Rébeque asked. I glanced at her in surprise.
“Did I say I was looking for someone?” I said with an awkward smile.
“We’re not idiots, Sam,” Justine smiled. “I start grad school in architecture next semester, and Rébeque is a lawyer. It was clear you didn’t just want to get in here to scope the scene, or just to flirt with us. You had the determined air.”
“Yes. I’m looking for someone.”
“A girlfriend?” Justine raised an eyebrow.
“No. Just some people I am curious about.”
“What are you, a detective?” Rébeque asked, smiling over her Champagne flute.
“No, but I used to be a spy.”
They laughed at my oh-so-funny joke.
I didn’t know what else to say. Rébeque and Justine drank Champagne and the music swelled, although not many were dancing. The club’s lights were dim and broken flashes of light swam across the darkness. The pixie haircut drew back from the big guy and he reached out and grabbed her wrist hard. I didn’t like that. But she wrenched it free and said something to him, and he then he put his large hand, very gently, on the side of her cheek. He spoke and she listened.
Then he gestured over the guy in the jacket.
11
I SAW THE jacket leave his spot on the bar and approach them. He sat down next to the big guy, across from the pixie haircut, and leaned forward so they could both hear him over Radiohead’s classic song “Kid A” remixed into a dance number. I watched.
“Is that them?” Justine asked. Her knee brushed up against mine.
“I think,” I said.
“Ah, is the cute woman your friend? Clearly she’s not interested in you.” Her knee stayed put. I didn’t move mine either.
“Who’s the big guy?” Rébeque asked. “He’s handsome, if I’m being clinical about it.”
“I don’t know either of them,” I said.
“Ah. So the short man in the unfortunate jacket.” Justine sipped at her Champagne. “He has caught your eye.”
“I had a friend who died recently,” I said. And at this they both set their glasses down and looked at me seriously. “And that man might know something about his death.” I felt I could be honest with them. They were smart and nice. I needed allies. Even if only for ten minutes.
Justine and Rébeque looked at each other and then at me. “Are you making this up?” Rébeque asked.
“No.” I watched the short man speak with the couple. The woman with the pixie haircut felt the weight of my stare and then she looked toward me. I broke the gaze and refilled my new friends’ flutes with the excellent bubbly. I looked up and she was watching us, and then she put her attention back on the jacket.
&
nbsp; The big man was nodding, happy with what he was hearing from the jacket. Not the pixie. I could see her tenting her cheek with her tongue, angry, then leaning back.
So the big guy likes what he’s hearing about Steve’s condo, the pixie doesn’t, I guessed. She leaned close to the jacket and spoke a few words. He shrugged and got up and went back to his spot at the bar, reclaimed the barstool.
“I could go,” Rébeque said, “and ask him to buy me a drink.”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “He could be dangerous.”
“In a crowded bar? With dozens of witnesses around?” She definitely sounded like a lawyer, ready to argue her point.
I didn’t look at the other table and I said, “What are they doing?”
“Not sure,” Justine answered. She had turned her back to them, but Rébeque could watch.
“They’re talking. That woman seems distinctly unhappy.”
I glanced up at the pixie just as she drew a finger across her neck.
“Actually,” Rébeque added, “she seems a little murderous.”
12
THE BIG GUY shook his head in answer to the woman’s cutthroat gesture.
Maybe they’re just joking and not contemplating a second murder, I thought. People make gestures all the time that don’t mean anything. But. The jacket had broken into Steve’s house. And I felt sure that either the jacket or the big guy was the man Cordelia spoke to on her phone, when I wiretapped her at the bookstore café. A brother. They’d both referred to “Papa.”
This was the thread. This was the way into the maze. I could feel it. If these were the bad guys, then they were in conflict. Disagreement was a door-opener, an opportunity.
Justine figured it out too. “Hey, Sam. We need to give Rébeque a reason to talk to the short man. She needs to feel—what is the phrase?—extra. A third wheel.”