None of this is lost on the Solemn Order of Head Ties, who suddenly temper their volume. A guy with his pants down quickly pulls them up, his gaze still fixed on the dark door of doom.
“And you, sir?” The waiter looks at me.
“What?”
“Would you like another drink?”
“Oh, ah, I’ll just have another club soda—make that with a twist of lime this time,” I tell him. “Oh, and a little something for you,” I say. I palm him a scrunched-up hundred-dollar bill.
“Oh, thank you, sir! Much appreciated.”
The move is not wasted on the girl, who takes in every detail and seems to smell the money from the scent still on my hand. “What is it that you do for a living?” she asks.
“I’m in business. I live in Omaha and I own a company that manufactures fertilizer.” And at the moment I’m just full of bullshit. “My name is Warren. . . .”
“I thought you said your name was Paul?”
“Oh, ah, Paul Warren,” I tell her. One thing is clear. She’s going to need a lot more to drink if this is going to work. And I will have to insist on full rations, nothing watered down.
Ben, Crystal, whatever her name is, is absolutely knock-’em-dead gorgeous. Even if I stay sober, she is going to be a challenge. Alex was right. She is ether in the flesh, the stuff of which young men’s dreams are made. She flashes a smile that is deadly, so stunningly beautiful that I want to stare, but I don’t allow myself. I exercise restraint. I am here on business. I avert my eyes, look at something else, the candle on the table, the naked woman on the stage. I pretend to be cool. Suddenly I find myself sneaking a glance. She turns and catches me and I blush. What is worse, she knows it and it doesn’t faze her. This should not surprise me. She has no doubt lived her entire life with this affliction. The usual dazed reaction from every paralyzed male she meets. She sizes me up from across the table.
“What brings you here tonight?” she asks.
“You do.” My first truthful statement.
“Now I know you’re lying.” She issues a smile, generating enough heat to melt the male ego. “How did you find out about this place?”
“A friend told me.”
“First time here?”
“First time.”
“Bet it won’t be your last.”
“I’m not a gambler,” I tell her. “But if I were, I’d never be fool enough to let you take my money on that wager.”
“How sweet. You speak well, and so quickly,” she says. “Words seem to come easily to you. Is that an essential skill in the fertilizer business?”
“Only if you want to sell it,” I tell her.
The waiter brings our drinks, mine in a tumbler, hers in a mini cocktail glass not much bigger than a thimble. We tap the glass rims and two seconds later hers is gone. I can hear the cash register ringing over at the bar.
“Might I suggest a bottle of champagne?” says the waiter. “We have some excellent vintages.” He smells a sucker on a roll.
“I’ll bet you do,” I tell him. “Why not? And two big glasses this time.”
ELEVEN
Ana Agirre stepped off the plane, cleared immigration and customs, collected her bags along with a rental car, and was on her way headed south from LAX in less than an hour. She took a reading from her laptop before leaving the rental car lot using a portable hot spot she purchased at the airport. It worked off a 4G cellular signal and gave her access to portable Wi-Fi while she was in the States.
Once she located what she was looking for, she tuned the car’s GPS to home in on an address just south of Mission Bay, a place called Ocean Beach. This was the location where the signal was coming from. They had moved a few miles since the earlier reading she had taken just before leaving Amsterdam on her connecting flight across the Atlantic. They were up to something. She didn’t know what.
Each time they turned on the small satellite antenna connected to Ana’s laptop, the one they were supposedly field-testing, it sent an encrypted signal from the antenna to the desired navigation satellite high in the sky overhead. It was like an electronic handshake between the computer’s software and the navigation system. The software not only unlocked the vehicle’s navigation and computer systems but also left data at a little-used online site operated by the French military to which Ana had access. It was former French military technicians turned high-tech mercenaries who had designed and built the system for her who had told her about this. The online data allowed her to track the location of the antenna on the ground through GPS coordinates. She could then track this with precision using Google Earth.
They had used her software in the desert east of town three weeks earlier. Ana knew this not only because she had read the news accounts, but because she had the tracking data to prove it. Now she was getting antsy. She wanted to know why the equipment hadn’t been returned to the makers. She called the number the man had given her over the phone only to be told via recording that the number was disconnected. She wanted her stuff back and she wanted it now. She had a contract to complete. Her clients were getting nervous.
Twelve hundred dollars and two bottles of champagne later she isn’t even showing signs of mild inebriation, while the end of my nose feels like it belongs to somebody else. Built like a bird weighing maybe a hundred and ten pounds, the girl who calls herself Crystal on the job and Ben on the street is showing all the signs of being able to drink me under the table. So I cut to the chase.
“You know, I was wondering if you might be up to a private party tonight?”
“And I was wondering if you were ever going to ask?” she says. “We can have them send another bottle of champagne upstairs.”
“Oh, not here,” I tell her. “I was thinking we could do it back at my hotel where we can relax.”
“You were, were you?”
I nod and smile.
“Aren’t you the fast worker? I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she says. “If we’re going to party in private, it would have to be here. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“I’m sorry. I don’t go out. Not on a first date,” she says.
“Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t kiss on a first date.”
She laughs. “That all depends where you want it,” she says.
“I want it in my hotel room,” I tell her.
“I’m sorry. That’s just not possible.” She says it with a tone of finality. I don’t want her to get up and walk.
“You mean they won’t let you?”
“It’s not that.”
Good! At least it’s not a house rule, something she can’t violate.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s just that I don’t know you that well.”
“What’s to know?”
“For one thing, how do I know you’re not a cop?” she says.
“Have you ever known a cop to come in here, undercover, I mean?”
She shakes her head. “Not yet, at least. But then, there’s always a first time,” she says.
“Raise my right hand and hope to die,” I tell her. I put up my left.
“I don’t think you’re really that drunk.” She reads me like a book.
“Give me another bottle and I’ll show you.”
She turns toward the waiter.
“Let’s do it in my room,” I say. “I’ll make it worth your while.” The final resort.
“How much?” she says.
I take a deep breath. “Five hundred,” I tell her. “Besides, how do I know you’re not a cop?”
“If I were, I would be arresting you right now,” she tells me.
The thought has never even entered my mind until this moment. What if she were working undercover? Stranger things have happened. Judges have been defrocked and lawyers pilloried for what I have just done, conversed about sex and money in the same sentence.
“You think I’m a cop, you can search me, see if you can find a badge.”
“Sounds like fun.” I try to keep her talking.
“But not for five hundred,” she says. “For that we can go upstairs. If we are going to go to your room, I’ll need more than that.” The door is open, if only a crack. “Besides, if I leave early I have to buy my way out. The house will fine me. I have to pay them.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and fifty,” she says.
“So how much do you need?”
“To go to your hotel room?”
I nod.
“Fifteen hundred.” She says it without batting an eye, the price she already had fixed in her mind probably from the moment she sat down. She looks me up and down and figures from my pained expression that it’s a no-go. “It was nice to have met you,” she says, and starts to get up.
“No need to run away,” I tell her.
“Time is money,” she says.
I don’t want her walking away. I need to find out what she knows. “Twelve-fifty!” I blurt it out so loudly that the guy at the next table hears me, whips around, gives me a smirk, and says, “Go for it!” He looks at her with lust in his eyes and licks his chops.
I wonder if I’ve just screwed the pooch. I lower my voice an octave. “You clear a cool thousand.” My attempt at reason comes off sounding desperate, Milquetoast the bookkeeper sporting a green shade with a pencil behind his ear.
“I knew you weren’t that drunk.” She thinks about it. “Do you have a room?”
Maybe she likes vulnerable guys.
“I do. Down the street, on the beach. Place with the blue neon sign, says Hotel. Next to the tattoo shop.”
“I know the place. I can meet you there,” she says. “Give me a few minutes.”
“And what if you don’t show up?” I ask.
“Then you get to take a cold shower.” She smiles.
“OK.” I look at my watch. “See you in half an hour.” I start to get up from the chair.
“Didn’t you forget something?” She looks at me with a deadpan expression, like Bacall asking me if I know how to whistle.
“What’s that?”
“Your room number,” she says. “Unless you want me to knock on all the doors.”
“Room number seven.” The room Herman already rented in hopes we’d get lucky.
She stands. The top of her head doesn’t quite reach my shoulder even in her platform spiked heels. She comes in close and gives me a soft kiss on the cheek, like the wings of a butterfly flicking my skin. Her hand on mine. There is a reason this stuff is against the law. I can smell her perfume, more intoxicating than the champagne. I open my eyes and all I see is her back, sensual curves and shapely legs as she floats away from me through ankle-deep fog on seven-inch heels.
This time he rang her at home, the brownstone in Georgetown. She picked it up and recognized his voice instantly, the chill up her spine, the hound from hell.
“I thought we weren’t doing this anymore, conversing on the phone.” It was after nine in the evening. Maya Grimes was in no mood to be jerked around. She’d had a tough day on the Hill. Her smile muscles ached from greeting people she disliked.
“As I recall, that was one of your rules, not mine,” said the Eagle.
“What is it this time?”
“Got another job for you.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Fine.”
“I want you to call the White House,” he said. “Talk to some people. The appointments section, judicial nominations. You know lots of people there.”
“Go on,” she said.
“There’s two slots open, an open seat on the Federal District Court, Southern District, your state, as well as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. I want you to put a bug in somebody’s ear. Do it first thing tomorrow morning. Tell ’em you’re pushing two candidates, one for each position. And as far as you’re concerned, they’re the only people for the jobs.”
“Who are they?”
“I’ll give you the names later.”
“I can’t tell them I’m supporting people and then refuse to give them the names.”
“Sure you can. You’re a US Senator. You can do anything you want. Tell them if they try to nominate anyone to fill either spot you’ll use your office to stand in the way. You’ll give them the names as soon as your staff is finished checking the candidates out. Tell ’em it could take a while.”
“Senatorial privilege,” said Grimes.
“You got it.”
“You can’t just leave these positions open. The one on the Ninth Circuit already has a short list of qualified candidates approved by the ABA, the American Bar Association.”
“They have their criteria, I have mine,” said the Eagle.
“I’ve already committed,” said Grimes.
“Tell them you’ve changed your mind. Woman’s prerogative.”
“The White House will think I’m crazy.”
“Tell them you’re going through a change of life. I don’t care what you tell them, just do it.” He slammed the phone down in her ear.
What the Eagle wanted was to keep the positions vacant so he could use them when the time came. Under the ritual of senatorial privilege, the senior home state senator could effectively blackball a nomination to the federal courts in his or her own state. Or, as in the case of the Ninth Circuit, block any candidate coming from that state and then wheel and deal with other members of the Senate to get what he or she wanted. It was an unholy practice. But even members who didn’t like it had to go along, part of being in the club.
Because the judicial nominations required Senate confirmation before they became final lifetime appointments, a hearing would never be set unless the candidate had the blessing of the state’s senior senator. It was a corrupt custom dating back eons and had been used more than once to shake candidates or their supporters down for money, or to exact favors from other politicians and the White House.
The Eagle knew that if Grimes used her muscle, she could keep both positions vacant indefinitely. It was nice owning your own US senator. The Eagle possessed a stable of them, like racehorses, and with a single phone call he could work any one of them into an instant lather.
TWELVE
The Tarnished Eagle wished he was in the bar, the private club with the lawyer and the girl. At least he could have had a drink. He could have used one, but there was no time for that now.
“Do we know what they talked about?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he was trying for a date. We lost at least half, maybe sixty percent to background noise.” The transcript was going to have major holes, train loads of blank white space labeled “Unintelligible.” The gain on the mic from the lawyer’s cell phone simply couldn’t handle the constant blast of the bass from the music.
“Why couldn’t they have met in a library?” said the Eagle.
“He’s out of the building.” The voice at the other end suddenly came alive.
“Where is he headed?”
“Hold on. Looks like the other man has joined him out in front of the building. They are both headed back toward the car. They’ve crossed the street. Yes, they’re back in the car.”
“Do we have sufficient assets to track them?”
“Got it covered.”
“Are they moving?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep an eye on them. Where is the girl?”
“One second. Looks like they’re on the move, backing up.”
“Where’s the girl?”
The Eagle could hear voices conferring at the other end of the line.
“We think she’s still inside.”
“What do you mean, YOU THINK?”
More panicked voices at the other end. “No. No. She’s inside.” This seemed to be the consensus.
“Are you sure?”
“That is confirmed. Feet on the ground inside. She is still there.”
The Eagle settled down. May
be she had already told them what it was they wanted to know. At least she hadn’t left the building with them. He thought for a moment and considered the options. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. “What do we have on the man’s vehicle?”
“Plate number, aerial profile. Not to worry, we have it covered.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said the Eagle. How old is it?” He was thinking about the target possibilities.
There was a delay at the other end. They were gathering the information. “That’s a negative,” said the other man. “Cannot be used.”
The lawyer’s car was too old. Their man on the ground had checked it out while the two occupants were in the club. Just his luck. More than a million lawyers in the country and they had to find the one riding around in a dinosaur.
“We could try to hijack a cue ball,” said the voice from the other end. “That is, if they try to use his ride. But that is problematic.”
“You think?” Sarcasm dripped from the Eagle’s voice.
What the man at the other end was talking about was to electronically hijack another car or preferably a large late-model truck and use it like a missile to destroy the target vehicle.
“As I recall, that didn’t work very well last time.”
“We got the target.”
“You got half a target. The reason we’re doing the drill over again,” said the Eagle.
“Not our fault.”
“OK! All right!” said the Eagle. “Let’s not be splitting hairs on an open line.”
“We’ve got movement. The vehicle,” said the man on the phone. “Moving slowly, westerly direction. Away from the building. They do not appear to be in a hurry.”
“Any sign of the girl?” asked the Eagle.
“No. One moment.” Seconds went by, almost half a minute.
“Talk to me,” said the Eagle.
“They’ve stopped again. Half a block down heading west, stopped at the intersection. Looks as if they’re not exactly sure . . . hold on. They turned left and picked up speed. Wait a second.”
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