The Night Cafe

by Taylor Smith

  “Is being a buyer a full-time gig?”

  “It can be. Most wealthy buyers prefer to work anonymously through a broker to keep the price down.”

  “So this Koon deal is a biggie?”

  Rebecca’s right hand seesawed. “Middling big. The purchase price is just over a quarter mil, plus my commission. Normally, the agent charges ten or fifteen percent, but when he called the other day, my buyer offered twenty percent before I’d even had a chance to name a rate.”

  Hannah did the math in her head, then whistled. “Fifty grand for a few hours’ work. Nice little business you’ve got going there, Becs.”

  “I wish. Believe me, I don’t usually get to play in this big sandbox. That’s why I’m not about to say no to this. Whatever this buyer needs, I’m happy to try to get it for him, even if I’m not crazy about his choices. Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said. “Schlepping artwork…it’s not really what I do.”

  Rebecca looked embarrassed—or that’s what Hannah thought she was meant to look. Her face did seem to flush, but it didn’t exactly register emotion. “No, I didn’t think it was, really. Although,” she added, “I guess I don’t know exactly what it is you do do. I mean, I know you used to be a cop, and Nora mentioned that you’re overseas a lot now, and that sometimes you do bodyguard work for celebrities. I saw the news after you rescued that kidnapped doctor, too, of course.”

  Hannah nodded. “It’s kind of a mixed bag, what I do. Pays the bills, though.” Most of the time, she thought. At the moment, she had a whopping tax bill that she was paying off in installments, the aftermath of the big reward she got for the doctor’s rescue—a reward she didn’t keep in the end, donating it instead to the widow of her partner in that caper. She’d forgotten about the tax angle. Dumb move, but when the IRS dropped the big bill on her, she chose not to pass it on to her partner’s widow and negotiated a payment plan instead. No good deed goes unpunished.

  “Would you be free to take a run down to Mexico this week?” Rebecca asked. “It’s a quick in-and-out thing. And all your expenses would be covered, of course.”

  Hannah winced. She didn’t like the idea of taking work from family or friends—or even friends of family. It was too hard to negotiate her usual steep fee, especially with someone whose messy divorce too closely echoed her own.

  “You could do it in forty-eight hours,” Rebecca added. “My buyer authorized up to ten thousand dollars for courier fees, plus expenses. That includes first-class airfare for you and the painting. He wants it hand-carried on board.”

  Whoa. Ten grand. For two days’ work.

  “Where in Mexico?”

  “Puerto Vallarta. He’s got a home down there. Like I said, one of several. I gather he’s got places in NewYork and London, and…where else? Tel Aviv, I think. The man is not hurting for money, from the sounds of things.”

  “Tel Aviv? Who is this guy?”

  “His name is Moises Gladding.”

  Double whoa. Moises Gladding. Not the first time Hannah had heard that name.

  “Moises Gladding is a pretty shady character, Rebecca.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him. He’s an arms dealer. They say he supplies arms to some of the shadiest regimes and insurgency movements on three continents—and sometimes to both sides of the same conflict.”

  “Really?”

  Hannah frowned. “And Gladding’s been in your gallery? Recently?” Last she’d heard, some Congressional oversight committee had been trying to subpoena him to testify about a reported illegal arms shipment to a right-wing paramilitary group in Venezuela that was trying to overthrow the regime of Hugo Chavez. One of Hannah’s security buddies had told her that somebody, probably some spook out of Langley, was suspected of having given Gladding a heads-up and helped him slip out of the country ahead of the legal notice to appear—which would explain why Mr. Gladding couldn’t carry his own damn painting to Mexico.

  “I’m not sure when he was last in the gallery,” Rebecca said. “Like I say, I can’t really place him, and the request to make this purchase for him came by phone.”

  Hannah sat back on the patio chair, watching the light dance on the surface of the swimming pool, reflecting on the trees overhead, turning the yard into a magic fairyland. “You sure you want to be doing business with a guy like that, Becs?”

  “It’s just a painting. Somebody’s going to get the business, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be me. But I really need your help. I don’t know who else to ask. I’d carry it down there myself, except I can’t afford to leave the gallery for two days. Please, would you think about it?”

  Hannah sighed. Ten grand was a nice little bite out of her tax bill. She really had no business walking away from easy money, especially since her dance card wasn’t exactly full at the moment. At the same time, experience had taught her to trust her gut about certain people, and instinct told her that anything involving a character like Gladding could come back to bite her in the ass.

  Still, as Rebecca said, it was just a stupid painting.

  “I’ll need to see this painting before I agree to carry it,” Hannah said. “And to supervise the packing of it. No way am I getting on a plane carrying a sealed package I haven’t thoroughly examined with my own eyes.”

  Rebecca actually giggled. “Oh, thank you, thank you! Hannah, this is such a huge help to me, you have no idea. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  Lord, Hannah thought. Moises frigging Gladding. I sure hope not.

  It was well after nine when Hannah finally got home from her day at Nora’s. She’d taken Gabe home to his father’s first, enduring the weekly gut-wrench of saying goodbye and then watching him walk inside the house with the very pregnant woman who’d taken Hannah’s place in her son’s life.

  Her ex, a high-profile criminal defense attorney, made his living helping celebrities avoid the consequences of their bad behavior. Cal was good at his job—very good. It had rewarded him with a gate-guarded mansion off Mulholland Drive, a gorgeous second wife, and the money to convince the courts that he and Christie offered a safer, more stable home environment for their son than Hannah could. The fact that the judge had probably made the right decision didn’t make it any less painful. Or galling.

  Pulling into the short driveway that fronted the row of garages next to her building, she hit the opener switch and watched the door rise. Her condo was on a quiet, tree-lined road that ran steeply uphill from Sunset Boulevard. The low brick building, constructed in the nineteen-twenties, had originally housed offices. Sometime during the real estate boom of the eighties, it had been converted to row town houses, but pleasingly so, retaining period details like deep crown moldings, gargoyled pediments and a few interior walls stripped back to showcase the red brick. It was a rare thing in L.A., real brick. Since the tightening of earthquake codes, nobody built with it anymore. The walls of Hannah’s building had been reinforced with rebar during the conversion. Even so, she suspected it would crumble like a house of cards when The Big One hit, but like everyone else in the city, she lived in a state of perpetual denial.

  The lights were on in the open garage bay next to hers. Hannah switched off the nearly silent motor of her Prius, grabbed her purse and wandered over to see what was going on at Travis and Ruben’s. The intensely sweet smell of night-blooming jasmine wafted on the warm night air. Over the sound of traffic from nearby Sunset Boulevard, she heard the faint click of moths batting themselves stupid against the streetlight.

  Travis Spielman was inside his garage, crouched next to his ten-speed touring bike. The bike, with a baby seat on the back, was leaning against a worktable that ran down the side wall.

  “Hey, Trav. What’s up?”

  Her neighbor’s curly blond head bobbed up and he smiled. He was dressed in faded jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, washed so often that the black was now a tissue-thin gray. Jerry Garcia’s hairy mug was barely visibl
e on the faded cotton.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” he said. “Not much. Just tightening the bolts on Mellie’s seat. We went for a ride today and it was feeling wobbly.”

  Mellie was his two-year-old daughter and she loved going for rides, whether on the back of Travis’s bike or in the jogging stroller that Travis’s partner Ruben pushed ahead of himself when he went for a run. The guys said the wind in her hair made her life. Child was obviously a born speed demon, although the cerebral palsy that threatened to lock up her little body left her unable to travel under her own steam.

  There were only three units in the converted building. Travis and Ruben had the biggest space, with two large bedrooms and a massive open kitchen and entertaining space. On the other side of them lived a yuppie couple who seemed to work all the time. The couple had been in the building for over a year and neither Hannah nor the guys had seen either the husband or wife more than a couple of times. Their cars, matching black Mercedes sedans, were rarely in their driveway. Ruben said they were CIA assassins who spent all their time abroad carrying out nefarious plots. Ruben had an overactive imagination.

  “Didn’t you have Gabe today?” Travis asked.

  Hannah nodded. “We went down to my sister’s. My nephew was home for the weekend, so the boys spent the afternoon in the pool.”

  She stood in the open doorway watching Travis tighten the bolts that held the baby seat in position. He was a little guy, a couple of inches shorter than Hannah’s five-seven, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in wiry fitness. The Grateful Dead T-shirt bulged around the sleeves as he worked the wrench.

  “Great day for a pool,” Travis said. “Don’t ya just love how spring arrives with a bang in this place?”

  Travis had grown up in North Dakota, so like Chicago-bred Hannah, he had a real appreciation for Southern California’s nonexistent winters and early springs, even if they did they miss fall colors and the sparkle of snow at Christmas.

  “For sure.” Hannah pushed off the Jeep and sorted the keys on her chain, looking for her front door key. As she did, a thought occurred to her. “Hey, Trav, you ever hear of Moises Gladding?”

  “The arms dealer?”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t he under indictment for something a while back?”

  Travis paused, straightened and leaned against the workbench. Ruben owned a reconditioned 1967 Mustang convertible that was parked to one side of the space. Neither bicycles, tools, nor anything else were allowed to approach with two feet of the Mustang for fear of scratching its lustrous red acrylic finish. Travis, on the other hand, owned an ancient and much-dinged Jeep 4x4 which he generally parked in the driveway or on the street. He had no qualms at all about clutter on his side of the garage.

  Case in point: as he pondered Hannah’s question about Moises Gladding, the bike suddenly took a tumble and crashed down against a small mahogany table that stood next to the workbench awaiting refinishing. Hannah winced as the carrier basket on the front of the bike scraped its way down the carved leg of the thrift-shop table, but Travis seemed more concerned about the cry that sounded from his daughter’s open bedroom window.

  “Shoot! We just got her to sleep,” he murmured. The misfiring synapses in her brain always seemed to twitch her awake just as she was finally dozing off.

  He paused to listen. Then, they heard Ruben in Mellie’s room, crooning softly. After a moment, the toddler’s crying snuffled out.

  Travis picked up the bike, satisfied himself that the baby’s seat had taken no damage in the fall, then quietly lifted it onto its hanging pins on the wall. Grabbing an old rag off the workbench, he wiped his hands.

  “I don’t know that Gladding’s under indictment,” he said quietly, “but there was that Venezuela business. I also seem to recall that there were questions about him supplying arms to anti-Castro activists in Miami a while back.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Like that old fart isn’t going to keel over and croak any day now. Jeez Louise, when are those people going to figure out that we’re better off trading with Cuba and letting Big Macs and MTV corrupt the revolution?”

  “No kidding. So why are you interested in Moises Gladding all of a sudden?” Travis gave her a stern look. “Hannah Nicks, tell me you’re not going to work for him, because, girl, that really would be beyond the pale. He is one sleazy customer, from what I hear.”

  “No, not work for him. Not exactly, anyway.”

  “‘Not exactly’? What does that mean?”

  “Somebody wants me to make a delivery.”

  “Weapons?”

  “No way. A painting.”

  Travis snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  “Really. My sister’s old college roommate owns a gallery over in Malibu. She got a commission to buy a painting for Gladding and she asked me tonight if she could hire me to deliver it to his home in Mexico.”

  Travis looked skeptical. “I don’t know, kiddo. You sure you want to get mixed up with something like that?”

  “It’s just a painting. Trust me, I will examine it very carefully before I agree to carry it, and I’ll supervise the packing myself. Nobody’s slipping contraband into anything that I’m schlepping. Still, it’s a quick in-and-out job and the money’s good.”

  “You want me to do some checking up on Gladding, see what he’s been up to lately?” Travis was a data wonk in the Los Angeles office of the federal Homeland Security department. His job was to manage the computer systems intended to help the feds track and identify suspected terrorists.

  There had been a time, Hannah mused, when a gay man like Travis, no matter how brilliant, hardworking or honest, would have been barred from any kind of government work requiring a security clearance. In recent years, however, the feds had finally figured out that a person couldn’t be blackmailed into betraying secrets if he were out of the closet before the whole world, including his own blessed grandmother.

  “If you get a minute,” Hannah said. “Just see if anything jumps out at you. I only told Nora’s friend that I’d think about taking the job. I can still back out, but if it’s just a matter of carrying canvas down to Puerto Vallarta and coming right back, I’m not about to sneer at easy cash.”

  Travis nodded, but he looked unconvinced. “I’ll see what I can find out first thing tomorrow. Don’t leave town till you hear from me, promise?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Hannah turned and headed up the walk to her condo. Just what she needed—one more bossy older sibling.

  Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

  Moises Gladding stood on the broad, red-tiled terrace of his seaside villa. The last indigo light of day was slipping down to the horizon. Out over the ocean, a gilded moon was hanging over the sea like some splendid god casting shimmering coins across the water. The night was hot and humid, but an onshore breeze had arisen, clacking the stiff fronds of the rows of palms that traced lazy lines in the sand. Gladding’s prize blue peacock, roused from slumber, cried out to the moon, its plaintive, two-tone wail a counterpoint to the low, steady drone of Pacific waves breaking on the shore.

  Cell phone snug to his ear, Gladding welcomed the acoustic cover of the night. Indoors, it was far too easy for planted listening devices to overhear a conversation. Years of habits learned in the military, in the secret services of two nations, and then as a private entrepreneur had taught him to sweep his homes and vehicles for surveillance, but technology changed rapidly, and Gladding knew that no countermeasures were foolproof. Low-tech eavesdropping of the human kind was even more problematic. However well he paid his household staff, any one of them might be tempted by an enemy’s bribes—and Moises Gladding had enemies in abundance.

  To minimize the risk of bugging, Gladding used a succession of cheap, throwaway cell phones that he ran through a private encryption network. When the stakes were high, the wise international businessman avoided unnecessary risks.

  Tonight, the international businessman was not happy. “This is not acceptable. You were meant to deliver on Tuesday. Now yo
u tell me you can’t do it?”

  “No, no, not at all,” the voice on the other end said soothingly. “We will deliver as promised. It will just take a little longer. Three days, no more.”

  The pitch of Gladding’s voice dropped low. “I don’t like delays.”

  It was a simple enough statement, but the uncomfortable silence on the other end told him that, as usual, the soft-spoken threat had had the desired intent. Gladding had not worked with this particular supplier before, but he had vetted him thoroughly. He could only presume that the supplier had vetted him, as well. If so, he would know that Gladding was not a man to cross.

  “The device will be delivered on Friday, complete, compact and ready to go, as promised.”

  “I expect nothing less,” Gladding said.