The girl obviously did have some sort of plan, and, he hoped to hell, her 9mm in the fanny pack clipped around her waist, and Dax was going to let her work her mojo up to a point. Maybe she’d get what she’d come for, which, despite the gloating expression on Asher’s face, wasn’t a good time. Dax was betting his peace of mind on it.
So he followed along, trailing in their wake, stopping when they stopped. Suzi got on a roll at the craps table, and just about started a riot shaking the dice. Asher was eating it up, being so close to the center of so much attention. He didn’t really look like a guy who was going to lose a lot of sleep over the Memphis Sphinx tonight, which made Dax think the old man had a reason not to be too worried.
Suzi’s winning streak came to an end, and the party moved on. Besides Suzi and Asher, Asher’s two bodyguards were moving along with them, and after the win at the craps table, they’d picked up another couple of girls, with drinks and champagne all around.
Yes, this was going to get interesting. Dax could tell.
Hell.
The group moved into El Caribe’s ritzy dining room, a conservatory with a domed glass roof and a jungle’s worth of plants and trees. The staff had a table set up in a grove of trees that offered some seclusion, and Dax noticed Asher dismissing the others with a wave of his hand as he and Suzi were seated.
Wouldn’t have been Dax’s first choice, but he appreciated the strategy on both their parts. Asher wanted privacy for something he didn’t have a chance in hell of getting, Dax hoped, and for Suzi, it could be damn hard to pump somebody for information with a passel of party girls in close proximity. He knew it from personal experience. Party girls had a way of distracting a guy-all kinds of ways.
The dining room was a beehive of activity, packed, and fifty dollars was the only reason Dax didn’t have any trouble finding a place to sit where he could keep an eye on their table.
And so he sat through the first course, biding his time, watching her flirt her way into more trouble than he thought she could handle, especially with Asher’s hand permanently affixed to her knee.
Sure, the girl knew what she was doing. That’s what he kept telling himself.
When his phone vibrated in his pocket and he checked the incoming number, he reminded himself that he knew what he was doing, too. He flipped the phone open and put it to his ear.
Now all he had to do was convince Erich Warner and do his best to keep that private army idea on the back burner.
“Buscando una mujer, la gringa,” Con said, leaning on the night clerks counter at the Posada Plaza. I’m looking for a woman, the American. He had a 100,000-guarani banknote in his hand, about twenty bucks’ worth of Paraguayan cash.
The “concierge,” a greasy-haired guy with bad teeth wearing a stained T-shirt, looked up, took the money, and picked up the house phone. The conversation with whoever answered the call quickly veered into uncharted, domestic territory. Con could hear the yelling coming from the other end of the phone even on his side of the counter.
He didn’t have any sympathy. Pimps running transvestites shouldn’t have it any easier than the guys running women, and the Posada was known for their elevator crew.
After a minute of listening to the argument escalate, he leaned farther over the counter. He had plenty of patience, a lifetime’s supply, but the situation called for impatience, so he delivered it.
“Oye, pendejo!” he said, slamming his fist down. “Apúrate!” Come on, asshole. Hurry up.
The man glanced up from the phone and gave him a dark look, then said, “El Caribe.”
“Bueno.” Good, that’s what he’d needed.
“Espera,” the pimp said, and Con turned back. “Quieres un nombre?”
A name? Absolutely. Con peeled another 100,000 note off his roll and slid it over the counter.
The man smiled a rotten-toothed smile, well pleased with himself.
“Leevee Asha,” he said.
Levi Asher. Perfecto.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Levi Asher’s palm was sweaty.
His face was sweaty.
His neck was sweaty.
Even his eyeballs looked sweaty.
And the more he drank, the sweatier he got.
Suzi reminded herself that she’d asked for this opportunity. She’d called him, knowing what she was getting herself into, but the possibility of being groped paled in comparison to the actuality of having Levi Asher trying to get his sweaty hand up her skirt.
Well, Marcella’s skirt.
“Suzi, Suzi Toussi,” the old man murmured for about the thousandth time since she’d shown up looking like Barbie Gone Wild, and the more he drank, the more he liked saying her name. “You are here. Thank God, we’re finally alone. This is wonderful. Champagne, yes?” He signaled to the waiter, then returned his full attention to her. “We must talk, Suzi. The day has been so…well, when my man, Gervais, told me you had come to Beranger’s this afternoon, I was astounded. Not in a hundred years would I have dreamed to see Suzanna Royale Toussi in Ciudad del Este…or, my dear”-he lowered his voice intimately, let out a soft burp, and continued-”that you would ever come to me so…so delightfully en déshabillé. You look lovely.”
Or like a cheap hooker, she thought, as the case may be, but actually, not so cheap. Besides the Get Out of Jail card she’d had to pony up for, Marceline had bargained hard for every piece of fashion she’d dragged out of her and Marcella’s closet. Suzi had never been afraid of a short skirt or a tight top in her life, but she didn’t have any illusions about how she looked.
Or any illusions about Levi Asher. He was rich for a reason, disgusting by nature, older than he appeared to realize, and getting drunker by the minute.
Just as well. She was hoping to catch him off his guard, get him to babble a bit, instead of just drool. If the old slimeball knew something, she wanted to know what.
She smiled. “Levi, we’re both a long way from London or New York right now.”
The waiter stepped forward to pour more champagne, while another refreshed the first course, bringing a second round of tapas.
Levi reached for a couple of bacon-wrapped dates and popped them in his mouth.
“Yes, a long way,” he said, chewing and leaning closer, his pale blue suit clinging to him in a dozen bad, sweaty ways. His hair was gray and very sparse across the top, his full face flushed with the heat, but his watery eyes were alight with excitement. “It’s the Sphinx, Suzi, she brought us here. She exists. She wasn’t just a figment of Howard Carter’s imagination. She is here. Now.”
“Where?” she asked bluntly. That was the damn question of the day, and by her count, that was the third time she had successfully brought the conversation around to it, so far without much luck in getting an answer. “I was with Remy when the police came to the gallery. He told me you were in the viewing room with Esteban Ponce. We were headed that way, but when the police started destroying everything and the shooting started, I ran out the back.”
“You were very wise to do so, my dear, very wise.” For once, he patted her hand instead of her ass or her knee, then he picked up his glass of champagne, drained it in one go, signaled to the waiter again, and popped another bacon-wrapped date in his mouth.
The man was a consumption machine.
“What happened in there, Levi? Did you see it? Was it there? The Sphinx?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, and another burp escaped him. “Beranger showed us a fake in the viewing room.” His gaze moved impatiently over the fresh plates of tapas, going from one to the other. “I knew what it was, of course, but Ponce thought it was authentic. Beranger took the fake with him, when he went to greet you, I’m guessing. Then the shooting started. Good God, the service in Third World countries is usually better.” Spotting a waiter across the way, he snapped his fingers in the air. “Why don’t we have any tapenade?” he muttered. “There’s always tapenade on a tapas tray.”