Bozo grinned. He knew exactly how he got there, by Boeing 747 from KL to Idlewild, paid for by the weird Chinese guy and with $1,000 spending money in his pocket. "We going to do this, or what?" he said, putting on a fresh pair of gloves.
Almost opposite the Church of Our Saviour stood the Hotel Kitano. A lovingly restored fifteen-storey redbrick hotel that majored in rollout futons and sunken hot tubs for its mainly Japanese clientele, or so Atal said, then got embarrassed when Bozo asked how he knew. And that was where Sally, Atal and Bozo went–across the four-lane, cop-car howl of Park Avenue. Although they detoured round the block to let them approach the hotel from a different direction.
Getting in meant staying confident, what with the riots and everything.
"I need to use your bathroom," said Sally before the uniformed doorman even had time to speak. Whatever the man had been about to say got lost inside her smile.
"It's on the right, down some stairs." He'd been about to call her lady but the kid's accent was just too upscale for that.
"Wait in the bar," she told her companions. Shuffling the Balenciaga bag so it sat higher on her shoulder, Sally headed for a dark wood door without looking back.
The woman who exited the chrome, glass and slate bathroom wore Dior lipstick the colour of dry blood, a small pillbox hat, and a dress of tissue-thin black silk that rustled over her small breasts and made obvious her lack of a bra. The bag was gone, tossed into a chrome trash can, and with the bag her shades and Atal's jacket, all three spoof-bombed against DNA tests with crud vacuumed up from the backseat of a bus.
It looked on first glance as if she wore no knickers at all. It looked that way on second glance too.
"Champagne," she told the barman, "chilled not frozen." He didn't get the reference. That was the problem with using English tag lines, few Americans ever did. "And some olives," Sally added. "Preferably in brine."
Over at his table, Atal smirked.
"You both know what to do?" Sally asked, grabbing a chair and leaning forward, so that her dress gaped at the neck. On cue, the eyes of her two companions flicked from their beers to the swell at the top of her breasts.
That worked then.
"Well?"
"We know," insisted Atal, his eyes still fixed on her front.
"Glad to hear it." Sally sat back, picked up her drink and smiled. In ten minutes' time she'd be meeting a fiftyish WASP, probably done up in dress-down Fridays twenty years too young for him so he didn't get coshed by protestors. And the man wasn't going to listen to a word she said, which suited Sally fine since she was planning to busk that bit of the routine.
"Finish up," she said. "We're on."
The Bayer-Rochelle office was two blocks from Hotel Kitano. Stuck between the Sterling Building and Doctors Mutual International. There were uniformed guards on the door, four of them, and they'd taken the mayor at his word and armed themselves with something more deadly than nightsticks.
Although their Glocks were still holstered, not drawn or combat held like guards outside one of the banks they'd driven past earlier.
"Annie Savoy," announced Sally, flicking on her smile and one of the uniforms unbent enough to check his clipboard.
"Not on the list," he said and turned away, conversation over.
"Could you check with Charlie?" Sally's voice was saccharine sweet.
Despite himself, the guard turned back, question already forming on his lips.
Got you, thought Sally. "Charlie Savoy, my godfather . . ."
The man looked at Sally, whose sun-bleached hair was now swept back in an Alice band, black to match her dress. Comparing and contrasting the rugged, well-known looks of billionaire Dr. Charles Savoy (son of H. R. Savoia, a cheesemaker from Basilica) with the very English girl standing on the sidewalk, waiting to be invited inside.
He'd had jobs in Lower Midtown long enough to recognize expensive clothes and he knew, as you were meant to know, that only the very rich got away with wearing so little with so much elegance.
"Your name's not on today's approved list," he said apologetically. "But I'll call his PA." The nod he gave the other three was perfunctory, more a reminder to stay alert than any apology for leaving them.
"Your boss?" Sally asked.
One of them nodded.
"Doesn't like doing door duty, right?"
Another nod, more emphatic this time.
"All hands to the pump I guess. What with anarchists trashing everything of value . . ."
Behind Sally, Bozo turned a snort of laughter into a hasty cough and swallowed his smile inside a hastily grabbed silk handkerchief. The handkerchief was blue. It matched his stolen suit.
"There's a problem . . ." The returning guard sounded more apologetic than ever. "Your grandfather's not here at the moment."
"Godfather," Sally corrected. "My godfather. What about Mike Pierpoint?" That was the fiftyish WASP she actually needed to meet, the one with receding hair and a weight problem. She knew this because she'd seen a shot of him in the back of Harpers, a moon-faced academic in rimmed glasses out of his depth at some black tie do for ethical genome research . . .
"He's on the phone," the guard recited from memory. "He sends his apologies and asks you to wait."
"No problem," said Sally. Sliding past the guard, she strolled towards a bank of lifts and punched the correct button without needing to look at the list displayed in a brass frame on the wall. A puff piece in the local business press had already revealed the right floor.
Gazing down from his twenty-second-floor office, billionaire Charlie Savoy can almost see the tiny corner shop where his father . . .
"He meant wait down here." The guard's voice faltered as Sally turned, her face suddenly worried.
"If we must," she said, sounding less than happy. "Although I'd feel safer waiting in his office."
They rode an Otis to the twenty-second floor, thanked the lift politely when it wished them a profitable day and had to wait for Atal to get over his attack of giggles. As the doors shut Atal was still grinning. The man who came out to greet them wore Gap chinos, canvas deck shoes and a striped sweatshirt with an anchor on the pocket.
"Annie . . ."
Sally shook his hand warmly, holding her grip for a second longer than strictly necessary and the man smiled politely, but only after noticing her nipples.
"Beautiful dress." Mike Pierpoint blushed as he said this.
"Dior," Sally agreed. "A present from my father." And the bald man nodded as if he knew who she meant.
"I don't think we've met?" he said, his question just the wrong side of anxious.
"We did," said Sally. "But you won't remember. I was much younger. More of a kid really."
Mike Pierpoint wanted to say she was still a kid, Sally could see it in his eyes. But he resisted the urge, helped probably by the half glances he kept throwing at her tits.