I nudged up to the table and she greeted me. “Hello, Marcus, are you interested in anything in particular?”
As was my custom when meeting new people, and especially women, I looked directly into her eyes. She returned my gaze and held it. Her badge said she was Brooke Tierstadt, and she was listed as an exhibitor for Kuboka Solar Industries. She was wearing a cap-sleeved white silk blouse with a mandarin collar over a snug-fitting black skirt. Both fit commendably and said I am professional and want to look it.
Brooke had brown eyes an interesting shade between hazel and honey, a sprinkle of freckles, and the beginning of a dimple at the bottom of her chin. The tanned skin and sunburned nose said I use sunscreen and sweat while wearing it; that and her upper-arm muscle tone and shoulders said outdoor sports. Her voice said upper Midwest, and her youth and geographical transplant status said college student. The narrow table between us was covered with a white tablecloth that reached nearly to the carpet, so I couldn’t see if she was wearing heels or flats. Either way, she was a very tall girl.
Was I interested in anything in particular? she’d asked me. A place where I could hang out and keep an eye on the GORP and TPS areas, mainly. A friendly haven that I could return to between my exhibit-hall recon patrols and loiter in without attracting attention. A glass-fronted display case behind her reflected the GORP area very nicely. But I didn’t mention any of those reasons. Instead I said, “I’m interested in solar panels, for an off-grid location in the Northwest.” I could talk about watts and amps with the best of them and still stay in my cover as a professor from Oregon. I’d been using solar panels on my schooner for years. In fact, I’d bought and installed them.
Brooke had straight shoulder-length blond hair. She hooked one side behind an ear. “Well, then, you’ve come to the right place. KSI has been a world leader in solar energy for thirty years.” She tilted her head when she smiled, and a sheaf of hair escaped and slid across her face. Then she grinned mischievously and said, “That sounds like a real crock, doesn’t it? I’m sorry. They gave us a script to follow. What do you want to know? And if I don’t have the answer, at least I know who to ask.”
“Am I one of your first customers of the day?”
“Almost the first American anyway. But I don’t really work for KSI; it’s just a convention thing. I’m a rising junior at the University of Miami.”
We were still holding frequent eye contact, except when I flicked occasional downward glances at the rest of her. She made a similar sly appraisal of me. I kept a loose watch on the GORP area behind me by studying the display case behind her, but I always went back to her luminescent honey-brown eyes. Then her eyes and lips suddenly narrowed. With her hand close to the table she pointed a finger across the aisle.
“Jerk,” she sneered.
“Who?”
“That guy.”
I turned around in time to see Richard Prechter walking toward GORP’s meeting room accompanied by a gray-haired fellow. Before Prechter disappeared from view he glanced in our direction. One corner of his mouth rose in a slight smile, and he bent slightly toward his companion and said a few words to him. The gray-haired man looked our way, too. Then the door closed behind them.
I knew that Prechter was no more than sixty feet away from me at that moment, and he was contained within a box just a few yards on a side. It was maddening to keep my back to him, but I had to continue my conversation with Brooke Tierstadt because she gave me a plausible reason for remaining at the KSI exhibit, directly across the aisle from GORP. You could lurk in one area and study brochures by yourself for only so long before you attracted unwanted attention, but anybody would understand a man lingering in the company of an attractive blond. Especially if they appeared to be on friendly terms.
“Which one’s the jerk?” I asked her. “The Silver Fox or the black-haired one?”
“Both, but mostly the black-haired one. His name is Richard Prechter, and he’s the CEO of Tidal Power Solutions. I read it on his badge.” She inclined her head toward the TPS sub-display at the end of the GORP block of floor space.
I was elated that Brooke had brought up my nemesis and even mentioned his name without being prompted in any way. She would always remember our initial encounter as a completely innocent and accidental meeting, a critical factor if she was ever professionally debriefed. If things turned ugly in the Fontainebleau she might be called as a witness at some point, but she would never be able to say that I was the one who had brought up the subject of Richard Prechter. If his corpse turned up in some Fontainebleau utility room, Brooke would have no reason to connect his demise to Marcus Garnet. I asked, “Who’s the other guy? He looks sort of familiar.”
“He should be familiar. That’s Pete Sanchez. Senator Pete Sanchez.” Brooke had a pleasantly husky voice. Sexy and resonant.
“Oh yeah, sure,” I replied, still trying to sound blasé. “Pete Sanchez, from Texas.” Damn. Richard Prechter was now palling around with a U.S. senator. This complication jacked my villain safari up another degree of difficulty. On the other hand, I thought, it might also present me with some new opportunity to exploit. I assumed that the senator would be traveling with an executive protection detail, but I also guessed that he could set their coverage parameters. I wanted to learn if Brooke had noticed anything that might be useful, so I casually asked her, “Pete Sanchez travels without bodyguards?”
“None that I saw,” she shrugged. “I guess he figures he’s in a safe place inside the convention center. Maybe he’s giving his bodyguards the day off to hit the beach or do some shopping.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. United States senators would rarely be out of serious executive-protection range. That meant bodyguards with guns, radios, body armor and all the rest. Executive-protection details were practically special ops teams when they were good. Most of them were in fact former military spec ops. And part of their training was blending into a crowd, so looking for the obvious knuckle-draggers wouldn’t work.
But how many would accompany a U.S. senator? I guessed there would be about a half dozen on his traveling squad, including gofers and coat-holders. So maybe two or three shooters at most. I’d look for the admin assistants hovering around Sanchez, and they’d interact with the shooters and give them away even if the senator didn’t acknowledge them directly. Except there were no admin assistants or bodyguards to be seen around the GORP area.
Brooke said, “Well, if they ditched his bodyguards, I can tell you why.”
“Really? I’ll bite. Why?”
“So they can hit on every girl they see. They’re disgusting pigs, both of them. I’ve lived in Miami for three years and I know the type, believe me.”
“How’s that?”
“So much money they think they own the universe and everything in it. They talk to each other so women can overhear them and be impressed. Prechter was bragging to the senator about his yacht. ‘Don’t worry, Pete; you can fly back on my seaplane. We’ll have a great time; there’ll be no paparazzis, no reporters, and no wives.’ They were right where you’re standing now, asking me some questions about solar panels. Then they were asking about me—where I’m from, where I’m going to school—and out of the blue Prechter said, ‘You know, I went to UM too. For my PhD.’ That creep had already checked me out. Obviously they Googled me.”
I pointed to her name tag. “All they needed was your name.”
“And then they invited me over to the Bahamas! Just like that! As if I’d go anywhere with a couple of scary old creeps like them.”
I made light of the situation to keep her talking. “You turned down a free trip to the islands? What’s the matter, don’t you like boats? Do you get seasick or something?”
“No, I’m fine with boats, but I’ve been invited on trips like that before. No matter how it starts out, I always wind up alone with some horny jerk, and then I’m getting chased from one end of the boat to the other. They think owning a yacht gives them spec
ial rights. Maybe it’s some small-penis-compensation deal, or maybe it’s just because they’re rich and they’re used to doing whatever they like. I think they assume that any girl they invite out on a yacht will swoon or something. And maybe most girls do, for all I know.”
I kept up my joking patter. “So, did he catch you?”
“Who?”
“That horny jerk who was chasing you around the boat.” It was hard not to smile so I didn’t try, and happily, neither did Brooke. We were moving into that awareness-of-awareness pheromone buzz, when holding eye contact becomes a delicious game. It might be the very best part of a relationship, the pre-takeoff phase when you are both looking at that burning fuse between you and wondering if one of you will snuff it out, or if the moving spark will lead to even better things. I had to remind myself of why I was in Miami in the first place.
“That time, no. He didn’t catch me. Eventually he got the message. Loud and clear.”
“How did you deliver the message, if I might ask?” This Brooke Tierstadt was turning out to be a live wire. Her nose was a millimeter or two off kilter, perhaps evidence of some past athletic encounter, but to compensate she had nice high cheekbones, and the great chin and eyes.
“Well, I had to hurt him. Do you know what a winch handle is on a sailboat?”
I nodded yes. “I think I’ve seen a few.” A few hundred.
“Well, they’re stainless steel and they weigh a couple of pounds.” She measured about a twenty-inch distance between her hands. “He was chasing me through the cabin and up the main hatch into the cockpit, bare-ass naked. Him, I mean, not me! Most guys I can handle, but that particular jerk used to play for the Dolphins. I got to the cockpit ahead of him, saw the winch handle and grabbed it. He put a hand on each side of the companionway to pull himself through, and I swung that winch handle down across his knuckles like I was trying to kill a rattlesnake. Broke two of his fingers. Once he stopped screaming and swearing, he didn’t say a word to me all the way back to the dock. That was fine with me.”
“He didn’t come after you, after that?”
“I still had the winch handle. And he was in a lot of pain.”
“I guess it killed the mood for him.”
“You better believe it. He just didn’t want me to tell anybody what happened. He was actually apologetic, sort of. He told everybody a hatch fell on his hand.”
We both laughed together. She was tough—my kind of girl. “So, Brooke, where are you from? You don’t sound Japanese.”
“How could you tell? No, I’m from Wisconsin. Most of my family still lives there.”
“I thought I heard the upper Midwest.”
“It’s noticeable, eh?”
“Just a little. But it’s nice.”
She pulled a Bluetooth-type wireless device from her left ear. It had been hidden from my view by her cascade of straight blond hair. “Wait a second. Now I can hear you better. I hate this thing, but for this gig I have to be reachable.”
“I hate being reachable,” I said.
“Why?”
“Reachable means trackable. I just don’t like being trackable.” I almost added, because then somebody can reach out and grab you by your throat.
She tightened her eyes into a glare. “So, who are you hiding from, Marcus Garnet? An angry ex-wife?”
“Nobody in particular, and I’ve never been married. I’m just sick of leaving a trail through cyberspace. Anybody can find out where you are practically minute by minute. And they can watch you on webcams half the time.”
“Hey, that’s modern life.”
“Then modern life sucks.”
“Do you know the Aesop’s Fable about the wolf and the dog?”
“I think so.” I knew the story, but I wanted to hear her tell it.
“This skinny wolf is going down a forest trail and he meets a beautiful collie. It’s the dead of winter and the wolf is starving. The collie tells the wolf he can come home with him. He’ll get plenty of good food and a warm place to sleep. Then the wolf notices the collar around the collie’s neck and asks him, ‘What’s that?’ The collie says that’s so his master can tie him up at night.”
“And the starving wolf says forget it and takes off into the woods. Yeah, I know the story.” All too well, I thought.
She tilted her head playfully, allowing strands of blond hair to slip free of her ear. “So, you’re the big bad wolf? You don’t look like you’re starving. Just hungry.”
****
It took a moment for me to realize that my phone was chirping. Very poor timing for someone complaining about wireless over-connectedness. “Sorry…I have to take this. It’ll be short, I promise.” She nodded her assent to wait. The K was highlighted on the tiny screen when I flipped it open. Behind me, Brooke reached for her own phone and turned her back to me.
“Hi,” said Kelly. “I’m looking at Top Hat. It’s right where it belongs, on the eastern end of Hippie Island.” I was chagrined that I had not discussed code words for Topaz or the islands with my team, and I was pleased that Kelly was making them up on the fly.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the balcony of an empty condo on Bay Avenue. I’m using your little binoculars, and I’m looking right across the water at Top Hat. Fabulous view of Miami from up here. I’ll bet the sunsets are to die for.”
“Where’s Nick?”
“He’s playing junior tycoon with the real estate agent in the kitchen. I have maybe a minute to talk. The realtor is desperate to unload the unit, but I don’t think he buys that we’re serious players in the market. Twenty-second floor. It’s pretty awesome—they’re asking eleven million.”
“So, what’s going on with the boat?”
“Nothing that I can see. It’s just sitting there, from what I can see of it.”
“Which way is she tied up?”
“What?”
“Which way is her bow pointing?
“Um…south, maybe southeast. And there’s a sign I can read in the water sticking up on two poles. It’s between the islands, set off a little. It says ‘No’ in big letters, and then there’s a whole list of things you can’t do. Looks like no boating, no swimming, no fishing, no landing and no anchoring within a hundred yards of the islands. It doesn’t look exactly friendly, but I don’t see any guard boats or anything. Just that sign in the water between the islands.”
I recreated the map image in my mind. It was only a half mile from the eastern end of Hibiscus Isle to the high MacArthur Causeway Bridge on the Miami Beach side, and then only another mile through Government Cut and out to the open Atlantic. Topaz could get under way and be lost on the ocean in minutes. “Any action on the boat?”
“There’s nobody on deck or around the docks next to it. Oh wait, hang on. Trees block a lot of what I can see, but it looks like a truck is backing up between his house and his neighbor to the south. I have kind of a decent angle because his place is on the end of Hippie Island sort of facing me. The truck says Miami Marine Services. It’s a tanker, silver. Okay, now a guy is dragging a black hose off the truck. Now somebody else is walking from Top Hat across the lawn toward the truck. Whoops—gotta go now. The sliding door just opened. Later, gator.”
The call terminated. The unexpectedly positive results from my teammates heartened me. Kelly had been able to observe Topaz, and she had learned some valuable information. The megayacht was being refueled at home. Prechter was wasting no time getting Topaz back to her maximum range potential. A hundred-twenty-foot yacht that could cruise at thirty knots would burn fuel like a moon rocket blasting off.
That’s the way to do it, I thought. Just make a phone call and Miami Marine Services will bring the diesel right to you, thousands of gallons at a pop. Even the minor inconvenience of a trip to a public fuel dock need not be endured. Rationing? For the peasants. Ten gallons a week? More like ten gallons a minute.
And all it takes is money. A lot of money. Where do they find so much money in the mi
ddle of a depression? In Richard Prechter’s case the answer was easy: the government. I snapped my phone shut and dropped it into my pocket.
“Who’s got the boat?” Brooke asked me.
“Some colleagues are organizing a fishing trip.”
Brooke said, “A fishing trip. You’re a professor, right?” She looked doubtful. “Your badge says University of Oregon. Which department?”
“Engineering.”
“They need to update their website. You’re not on it.” She held up her smart phone. I hated those things.
“I’m only an adjunct. It sucks, but you gotta pay the bills. A bachelor can live on it.” I parried with another academic question. “UM is a private school. It costs a fortune, doesn’t it?”
“I’m on a half-ride for volleyball, and I work my tail off for the other half.”
“Working like today?”
“It’s easy money. Conventions pay well, and these days a job is a job, right? At least for this one I don’t have to dress like a Hooters girl. They even paid me for two days of training so I could become an instant expert on KSI. That’s five days’ pay, but I can’t do conventions during the volleyball season. My regular summer job is at a restaurant on South Beach. Vendettas. It’s got a Mob theme, if you can believe it.”
“An Italian place? You don’t exactly look Italian. Italian or Japanese.”
“I’m sort of a sideshow attraction there. I’m a greeter. Today I’m in flats so I’m merely statuesque. Put me in heels and I’m a giantess. They love it. No matter where I am on the floor, they can see me.”
“I guess it doesn’t hurt in volleyball either. Being tall.”
“It has its advantages, but it has its drawbacks too. You’re lucky. Tall guys in general, I mean. You can basically choose any girl you want to date.”
“Oh, I wish!”
“You know what I mean. Most guys are way too intimidated to ask a girl who’s five-foot-thirteen out on a date. Men have a lot of complexes, and short men…well, I could tell you stories. Let’s just say that Napoleon wasn’t the only little sawed-off freak with a thing for tall women.”
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