Going back there, sitting in the dock, waiting for them to convict him, it would be like a slow death. The Owl isn’t going anywhere near that trial. He’s broken out, he doesn’t want to break back in. But he feels sorry about Beauchamp, it’s like he let him down. “Is he mad at me?”
“He was philosophical. He was hoping to have a big win to end his career in a blaze of glory.”
Cat adds, “Call him. That’s what pay phones are for, Nick.”
He doesn’t want to talk to Mr. Beauchamp out of fear the silver-tongued orator will have him turning himself into the local gendarmerie for immediate transport to Canada. Yes, sir, that makes absolute sense, sir, I’m on the next flight back. He has better places to go, Brazil, Indonesia, some corrupt land.
A waiter hovers, so Faloon orders drinks, in English. Second-language ability is best not broadcast. Talk is suspended because here is a black guy in a white suit strolling around the bar to the pool, skin shoes, skin belt, Leonard tie, tooled black leather briefcase, a flashy Pepsodent smile for Gina. His Excellency Omar Lansana. Handsome, well built, young for an ambassador, maybe thirty-five.
“To keep Gina installed here, I figure it costs a yard a night, and presumably it ain’t the taxpayers of Sierra Leone who are footing the bill.”
“How does it work?” says Cat, seeing the potential, observing that Lansana’s case has weight, it’s not just full of papers.
Faloon explains Popov’s wrinkle, how the maids hand in their computerized key cards to the desk clerk each morning, and how their cards get wiped and recoded. A careful observer can actually make out the master code being punched in by the desk clerk. The gizmo that issues this code is accessible to a guest who drapes a coat, a newspaper, whatever, over what he’s doing. While two highly professional stalls give him shade, keep the clerk busy.
Cat smiles. Faloon knows he can count on her, her attitude is life is a dare, she’ll go along with anything.
They watch Ambassador Lansana kneel at the rim of the pool, share a laugh with his mermaid. He picks up her key card from beside her Veuve Clicquot, gives her a thumbs-up sign: he’ll be up there, waiting, have a nice swim.
If routine holds, Popov said, Lansana will put his dip bag in the hotel safe, until his meet on Saturday with the middler from Antwerp, Emile Van Doork.
While Cat’s out shopping for clothes, Faloon and Willy have tea outside at the Carlton, watching the girls strut by the beach, showing off their bejewelled belly buttons. Willy continues to throw cold water on Operation Lansana, he thinks he saw coppers hanging around the Belvedere, thinks there’s heat, thinks maybe Faloon has been using too many stolen credit cards.
“Come on, I spent a whole week working this up. He could have half a billion in rocks in that dip bag, look how he lives.”
“Maybe he has piss all in it. Maybe there’s nothing in it but documents. Or drugs. If it’s narcotics, I don’t want any part of it.”
“It ain’t dope, you seen how heavy Lansana’s bag is, if not raw diamonds, gold ingots.” Though it would be Faloon’s luck to find three years’ worth of Hustler, or parts for a guided missile system.
“Okay, chum, he’s carrying this fortune, where’s his bodyguards?”
“Omar’s doing an illegal, he don’t want attention drawn to him. All I’m asking is give me shade.”
Willy sips his tea, a long, crafty look, and quietly sets his cup down. “I’ll make you a deal. After we do this job you will telephone Mr. Beauchamp. You will listen to his advice about beating this wrong rap. You will give him a chance to say if you can come home with confidence. You do that, and I am behind you all the way on this caper.”
The Owl is over a barrel. He agrees.
Faloon goes to his room to shower and change, wondering about the-what was the phrase? — “encouraging situation,” careful phrasing from the great Beauchamp, but what did it mean? Something to do with Adeline Angella? He keeps revisiting that evening in her apartment, the cognac, the come-on, her movie. She was Audrey Hepburn, he was Cary Grant. You’re not supposed to ask. Pretend you’re a masked intruder. And after the kiss, hoarsely, low, Now I pretend to resist.
There wasn’t much resistance there, or much of anything to tell the truth, the task interrupted when she went to get the condom, and Angella faking it, he thinks, faking that her resistance was overcome, faking enjoyment, orgasm. It was a long time since his last release, and maybe as he was pumping and dumping a mother lode, that’s when the Trojan slipped off. As he lay aboard her panting, his peter shrinking, she said, “What’s the true story about the Kashmir Sapphire?”
She already asked him that a dozen times, he sensed he was being conned. It was like she gave him a favour, and now it was his turn. He pulled his pants on, not bothering to puzzle what happened to the skin, deciding to extricate fast from an unstable situation. Looking at his watch, patting his pockets. “Jeez, I must’ve left my heart medicine at home.”
He ended up looking like Wam Bam Sam. The eight lady jurors didn’t like him for that, and when you add in his long record of stealing earrings and necklaces, they probably said what the hell and gave the benefit of the doubt to the wrong party, decided not to believe that Angella threw a bowl of plastic flowers at him as he bounded to the elevator.
Does she then call 911 in a fit of pique? Or does a plan of revenge grow more slowly in her mind, as her perceived wound festers? Mr. Beauchamp’s brilliant speech just didn’t find enough buyers that day in Courtroom 67.
21
Arthur is surprised to find the parking lot empty at Nouveau Chez Forget and a sign saying “Closed. Ferme.” It’s Friday noon, a restaurateur’s busiest lunchtime. “So let’s grab a bite downtown,” says Brian. They’re en route to the Victoria courthouse, where Buddy’s application to try Faloon in absentia is on the docket.
Arthur bangs at the door. Through the glass, Pierre is seen emerging from the kitchen, tucking in his shirt. An impatient look as he opens up. “Anyone else, I put a bullet in their head.” In a lowered voice: “I ’ave something going on.”
“Arthur, there’s a really good Italian place on Wharf Street.”
Pierre looks disgusted, pulls each of them in by the elbows. “Something simple and quick. The sole, a bit of salad.”
They take a table. He returns to his kitchen. They hear a tinkling of female laughter.
Brian taps out a number on his cellphone, waits impatiently for an answer. “To talk to Caroline about the kids, I have to go through Lila, who doesn’t have a cellphone and only occasionally turns her machine on.”
Ultimately, he says, “Bitch!” hangs up, and lights a cigarette. “How is it someone who claims to be a marriage counsellor is never by her phone? They’ll pee in their pants when they learn I have proof of my innocence-‘you’re not supposed to smo-oke.’ When they finally hear that tape, they’ll be falling all over each other in grovelling apology.”
Brian has avoided Angella since that evening-because of domestic strife, because Faloon is no longer in the court system, but mostly in fear of her. She has continued to stalk by phone.
“You get, ‘Just phoning to say hi,’ and then she runs on about something so insubstantial I lose the thread. Finally cornered me yesterday at the Ritz. For your listening pleasure…” Out comes the computer, but his phone interrupts. Brian answers with a robotic voice. “You have reached the suicide hotline. Please leave a number…Lila? Don’t hang up, please I beg you, I just called you two minutes ago…You did pick up? Sorry, didn’t hear that. Anyway, it’s about Gabriella…I said what? I called you a bitch?” A pinking complexion, a man hearing harsh words. “No, no, I swore because I dropped a cigarette ember on my crotch. Lila, I can’t tell you how delightful it is to hear your non-recorded voice.”