“In exchange for membership,” Danny said, smiling. “An offer they couldn’t refuse.”
Galvin grinned. The elevator opened on a low-ceilinged corridor that smelled faintly of eucalyptus. “Turned out I had all the right qualifications.” He lowered his voice, even though there didn’t seem to be anyone within earshot. “These a-holes think they’re better than anyone else because they didn’t have to work for their money. Great-grandfather earned it, which makes them aristocrats or something. Whereas guys like me from Southie, went to BC, whatever whatever, who have the chops to earn our own money, we’re gonna get blackballed. . . .” His voice trailed off as a silver-haired older man passed by in a madras jacket with plaid pants. The man nodded and said, “Tom.”
Galvin nodded back.
“I saw that e-mail about the Galvin Fitness Center at Lyman,” Danny said. A notice had gone out from Lally Thornton’s office announcing plans for the new pool, track, and athletic facility, thanks to a generous gift from Thomas and Celina Galvin.
Galvin pushed open the heavy door to the men’s locker room. He sighed, grabbed a couple of towels, and tossed one to Danny. “Sometimes you gotta grease the wheels. No other school was willing to take her in for junior and senior years.”
He stopped at an attendant’s desk.
“¿Hola, José,” he said, “que tal?”
“Pues muy bien, Sr. Galvin,” the moon-faced, chubby attendant replied, handing Galvin a locker key on an elastic loop. “¿Y usted?”
“¡Bien, bien . . . ya sabes como va la vida!”
Danny wasn’t surprised that Galvin spoke Spanish, being married to a Mexican woman. But he seemed to speak with the fluency of a native. That surprised him.
“Sweet Home Alabama” came on again. Galvin pulled his BlackBerry out of his suit, gave José an apologetic smile, and headed toward a long bank of lockers.
“An hour, an hour and a half at the most,” he said into the phone. “We good? Okay.”
He hit END and put it back into his suit jacket pocket. “That’s how the world works,” he said, as if the conversation had never been interrupted. “Sorta like your robber barons. Vanderbilt and Carnegie and Rockefeller and Morgan—it took a couple of generations to wash the stink out of that money, right?”
“True.”
“Why are those guys ‘robber barons,’ anyway? Why aren’t they entrepreneurs?”
“Excellent question.”
“I mean, were they any different from Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or the guys who founded Google? And didn’t Rockefeller give away billions of dollars? I bet they all did, right?”
“One man’s robber baron is another man’s entrepreneur. Or philanthropist. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Robber baron or entrepreneur?”
Galvin waggled his head to one side, then the other. Like he was about to deliver a clever reply. But then thought better of it. “I’m an investor.”
“What kind of investor?”
“Private equity. It’s boring.”
“Not to me. Or probably to you.”
He heaved a sigh. As if he’d given this answer a hundred thousand times before. “I manage money for a very wealthy family.”
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
Galvin shrugged. “Do you know the names of the ten richest families in Mexico?”
“No,” Danny admitted.
“Then I don’t think the name would mean much to you.”
• • •
The locker room smelled of burnt towel lint from a dryer nearby, mixed with the smell of some kind of old-fashioned hair tonic, like Vitalis, and underlying it all the odor of musty gym clothes. There was a TV mounted high on the wall in a small lounge area. A stainless-steel refrigerator with glass doors containing an arsenal of dewy water bottles. A long sink counter equipped with combs in tall glass Barbicide jars bathing in blue disinfectant. Disposable razors, cans of Barbasol shaving cream. Rows of old-looking lockers made of dark wood, some with keys in their locks, metal tags dangling from their elastic lanyards.
The locker room was not quite deserted, but close to it. A few voices came from a distant locker bay. As far as Danny could tell, the only employee working the locker room was José the attendant. Not a lot of staff seemed to be employed at the Plympton Club, which fit the profile of a club under some financial duress.
A bull-necked guy in his seventies, powerfully built and covered in gray fur, strutted by totally naked, everything hanging out, towel around his neck.
Danny took note of Galvin’s locker, number 809, and found an available one nearby. Galvin’s gym clothes, he saw, were already in his locker, neatly folded. The club apparently did members’ laundry. A canister of Wilson yellow-dot squash balls on a shelf, a racquet on a hook. Galvin removed his suit jacket and draped it on a wooden coat hanger.
His BlackBerry was still in the breast pocket.
Danny changed into a white undershirt and an old pair of Columbia gym shorts. Galvin’s clothes looked brand-new: white shorts and a red-and-black shirt, both bearing the Black Knight logo. A blindingly white pair of Prince squash shoes.
The two middle-aged businessmen who’d come in before them were now leaving the locker room, squash racquets in hand, still talking golf. They wore old rumpled T-shirts (Harvard Crew and Phillips Exeter) and gym shorts with sagging elastic waistbands. Like they got their clothes from a heap in the homeless shelter where Lucy worked.
“Nice togs, Thomas,” Harvard Crew said.
“Thank you, Landon,” said Galvin.
“Very sharp. Are you playing in the US Open?”
Galvin smiled mirthlessly. He gave Danny a knowing look. Danny was familiar with that kind of faux-friendly rich-guy backstab. He heard it at Lyman, too. Two minutes later the guys would be privately mocking Galvin for his nouveau riche attire. For trying too hard.
Galvin slammed his locker door and turned the key to lock it.
The BlackBerry inside.
29
Galvin placed his stuff—his zippered racquet case, his locker key, a new can of balls, a towel—on the ledge outside the glass wall at the back of a court. Danny dropped his racquet case and towel right next to them and kept his locker key in his pocket.
Their warm-up was bumpy. Danny couldn’t settle on a grip. He kept mis-hitting the ball, either wildly high or too low. From the next court over, indecent grunts and moans echoed, like in some porn flick.
Danny was convinced you could tell a lot about someone by how he or she played sports. Was she a ball hog or a team player? Was he a mild-mannered guy who turned into a psycho on the court or the field? Spontaneous, or analytical?
Tom Galvin was deadly serious about his game. That easy wit, that contrarian sense of humor—it was all gone. He was a ferocious player. Not just that he was skilled, which he was—he had a pro’s sense of strategy—but he just didn’t give up a point. In his goggles, Galvin even looked like some kind of evil insect, a praying mantis.
Granted, Danny didn’t put up much in the way of competition, at least not at first. Once he’d been a decent player, at Columbia, but that was too many years ago. He was hardly in peak condition anymore. He was slow. He didn’t maintain control of the T. His serves were too easy.
Whereas Galvin’s serve was killer. He lobbed it in a perfect high arc: a lethal parabola that plopped down in the back corner far behind Danny, hit the nick, and died a nasty little death. Danny lost the first two games in short order before he began to figure out how to answer such a powerhouse serve.
In the third game, Danny finally pulled even with Galvin. Eight all. Then one of Galvin’s shots bounced twice, no doubt about it at all, which gave the serve to Danny and maybe even the winning point. To Danny’s surprise, Galvin picked up the ball and marched to the service box with no discussion.
“Uh, I’m pretty sure that was a double bounce,” Danny said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Galvin said flatly.
“Actually—”
“Ready?” Galvin moved into position to deliver another one of his killer serves. Danny almost persisted, almost said, “I saw it,” but decided it wasn’t worth it. Galvin knew damned well the ball had bounced twice. No point in arguing. His club, his ball, his rules.
It occurred to him that, with two guys as competitive as they were, playing squash wasn’t exactly a formula for camaraderie.
On the next point, Danny somehow managed to hit a soft drop shot from the forehand side, in the front right corner. Galvin, a half second late, came crashing into Danny’s left shoulder a split second after the ball hit the nick. He was obviously too late to have retrieved the ball anyway.
“Let,” he said.
Danny laughed. “No way you would have got that.”
“Dude. I called a let. You were in the way.”
His club, his ball, his rules. Danny let it slide.
After Galvin won the third game in a row, he said, “Best of seven?”
“Sure,” Danny said. “But how about a water break first?” He was dripping with sweat. The grip on his racquet was slippery.
“You’re trying to break my rhythm, aren’t you?” Galvin said. Twin rivulets of sweat coursed down either side of his face. “I think you’re trying to mess with my momentum.”
“Hey, whatever it takes.”
Galvin smiled and pushed open the glass door. The air outside the court was chilly, and it felt good against Danny’s face. Galvin grabbed his towel, jingling the locker key, and blotted his face with the towel. He gestured with a floppy wave toward the drinking fountain and headed over there himself.
“Actually,” Danny said, setting his racquet on the floor, “I’ll grab us a couple of cold water bottles, if you don’t mind.”
Galvin waggled a hand without looking back.
Danny stooped down, picked up Galvin’s locker key in what he hoped was one fluid gesture—an innocent mistake, he could claim—and went into the locker room.
He didn’t hear or see anyone else there.
He tried locker number 809 and found it locked.
Maybe that’s why they’re called lockers.
The locker room was still. In the silence he became aware of ambient noise from distant machinery: the wheezing and clattering of an industrial washer and dryer, maybe in a utility room nearby. The rush of water through the ancient sclerotic pipes. The muted whoosh of the ventilation system. A showerhead dripping, plinking, into a puddle on the tiled shower floor.
And over it all, his heart thudding. Faster than normal, but steady. He’d rehearsed this whole thing, had gone through it mentally over and over again, considering every angle he could think of, every possible hitch.
He turned the key and pulled it open, a sense of queasy dread coming over him. Galvin’s locker was orderly. His splendid chalk-stripe charcoal suit hung neatly on a hanger, which had been placed on a hook. On the top shelf was the spare can of Wilson yellow-dots and two neatly folded T-shirts, both new-looking. A very nice pair of cordovan cap-toe brogues, buffed to a mirror shine, had been carefully placed on the locker floor, both toe-in. Inscribed on the tan insole was a signature, John Lobb, probably the shoemaker.
The BlackBerry was in the left inside breast pocket of the suit.
Still no one around.
He couldn’t resist peeking at the label sewn on the inside pocket:
MADE IN ENGLAND BY
ANDERSON & SHEPPARD LTD
SAVILE ROW TAILORS
32, OLD BURLINGTON STREET, LONDON
Then there were some kind of numbers that looked typewritten, and a date: 22/08/11. Danny didn’t know much about the sort of clothes rich people wore, but he knew enough to recognize that a Savile Row tailor was a big deal, and those numbers and that date meant the suit was custom tailored.
Danny slid the BlackBerry out of Galvin’s suit jacket. It was on, but the display said DEVICE IS LOCKED. Meaning it was password-protected.
But he’d expected that.
Yeager had assured him that the MobilXtract was able to circumvent passcodes. He glanced at the time. Only two minutes had gone by, which wasn’t bad. Grabbing a couple of water bottles from the cooler in the locker room lounge would be a matter of a minute, a minute and a half. But add in a quick potty break, and four minutes wouldn’t provoke Galvin’s suspicions. Much longer than that, and Galvin would wonder what had happened and might amble back to the locker room to look for him.
So far, so good.
Then he was startled by a sudden blast of music.
The “Sweet Home Alabama” ringtone seemed louder than before. No doubt because it had pierced the stillness. He didn’t remember how to silence the ringer. He didn’t want to answer the call, just wanted it to stop playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. It keep blaring while he grabbed the phone wildly, hitting every button he could find on the sides and on top. Finally the music stopped.
When he heard the voice, he jumped.
José the attendant stood no more than ten feet away. He was a quiet one.
“Can I help you, sir?” he said.
30
Galvin’s BlackBerry felt warm in his grip.
He slipped it into the front pocket of his gym shorts and said, turning back to the locker, “There they are.”
Ignoring José, he took the canister of squash balls from the shelf, popped off the plastic lid, upended the tube, and dropped one into his palm. He affected an indifference to the attendant. As if the kid was a distraction, an annoyance. Nothing more.
He pocketed the ball, then looked around at José, as if he’d just noticed him. Now his disinterested expression turned supercilious. Danny had learned from his time as a Lyman parent. “Mr. Galvin would like a bottle of water. Uh, you know, agua? Could you please get me a couple? Thanks very much.”
As if the locker room attendant were his personal retainer. Which was probably how most of the club’s members regarded him.
In the arsenal of human expressions, arrogance was an effective weapon of offense. Whether or not José suspected Danny was rummaging around in Tom Galvin’s locker, he had a job to do. That was his first priority.
José shifted uncomfortably. He looked wary. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Of course.”
He could see Danny had opened Galvin’s locker. But was he there at Galvin’s behest? José would have to assume it. Whatever he thought, he would never dare accuse a guest of such petty criminality. Job security trumped loyalty every time.
The moment José was gone, Danny closed Galvin’s locker and raced to his own. Before Galvin’s phone could ring again, Danny unlocked his locker and set Galvin’s phone on top of his Under Armour gym bag.
Now José had returned, a water bottle in each hand.
“Thank you,” Danny said, taking them, setting them down on the bench. He smiled.
José nodded but didn’t smile back.
After José had circled back to his desk, Danny again opened his locker. He unzipped the end compartment of his gym bag and took out a wadded-up shirt, inside of which was the little oblong device.
Standing in front of his locker now, he worked quickly. He connected the MobilXtract gadget to the micro USB port on the side of Galvin’s BlackBerry. He’d already set up the MobilXtract as much as he could in advance, entering the model number of Galvin’s phone, selecting the option for working around the password, selecting EXTRACT ALL. Now all he had to do was press the START button on the thing and let it go to work.
The MobilXtract’s display came to life. It said DETECTING . . . CONNECTING . . . and then EXTRACTING CONTENTS.
A green progress bar came up. Yeager had told him it would take anywhere from forty-five seconds to three or four min
utes, depending on how many photos Galvin kept on his phones. Photos, videos, and ringtones were the main memory hogs, Yeager had said.
But the progress bar seemed stuck. It was just a little sliver of green. It wasn’t moving. He waited. No voices in the locker room. Nobody else in sight.
He checked his watch. Four minutes had gone by. That was a lot of time, but he could finesse it. He’d got the water and used the john. Why not?
He looked again at the green progress bar, watched it inch along. Actually, inching wasn’t the right word. Millimetering, maybe. Slowly, slowly, almost unbearably so.
But at least it was moving, if incrementally. It was working. But this wouldn’t be finished in a minute or two. It looked like the job was going to take a while. Maybe five minutes. Maybe more.
He couldn’t stay here while the transfer happened.
He had to leave Galvin’s BlackBerry connected and go back to the squash courts.
It was a risk. A fairly big one, actually.
If Galvin abruptly decided to return to the locker room . . . ?
But he had no choice.
• • •
Danny handed Galvin the bottle of water. His stomach was tight, but he managed to keep his facial expression relaxed.
“I’m all set,” Galvin said. He set it down on the floor, not far from where he’d earlier deposited his squash case and his key. The key that was no longer there.
Galvin’s key was in Danny’s pocket.
Looking at his watch, Galvin said, “Ready to rock ’n’ roll?”
Danny nodded. Somehow he had to get back to his locker, disconnect Galvin’s BlackBerry, and put it back.
Before Galvin noticed his locker key was missing.
Or decided he needed to use his BlackBerry, damn the club’s rules.
Suspicion Page 12