Climbing onto a chrome stool, Atal yanked the clock off the wall. It was battery-operated with hollow wood-effect surround that surprised no one. Twisting a plastic knob on the back, Atal ran the minute hand forward exactly three-quarters of an hour and wiped down the knob and casing to remove his fingerprints.
"Okay," Atal said. "How do you want to do this?"
"The way we agreed." Sally lifted her baseball bat over her head and paused while Atal found the angle. There was always an angle, apparently.
"Take it from the start," said Atal, signalling to Sally that she should put down her bat. "Okay," he said, "now move in from the door and take out the countertop . . ."
She did as he instructed. Going out of the door and coming back so Atal could start running the camera at the point when the door began to shut behind her. Three steps took her to the counter, up went her chrome baseball bat and down it came, fracturing twenty feet of hardened glass.
"Now smash the front . . ."
That took two swings, because the angle of attack was awkward. Of course, the whole sequence would have been better with sound, but Atal was scared he'd pick up some interference from outside, like a passing black-and-white and the police would be able to get them from that.
"Tables . . ."
These were chrome-topped, but cheap chrome glued over fibreboard circles and edged with silvery plastic that splintered at the first blow. Ten blows, ten tables, that bit was simplicity itself.
"Now the clock . . ."
Swirling round, Atal's camera panning as Sally spun from the last of the tables to where the clock had been returned to its place high on a wall, Sally did something fiddly with her baseball bat which involved skimming it in a figure eight, then rolled it three times in a row backwards over her hand. A trick that looked more impressive than it was and the only thing of value she'd picked up from Drew, a nanchuku freak briefly her boyfriend. Since this turned out to be the only skill Drew had, Sally was loath to let it go to waste.
"Do it," Atal said.
So Sally did.
Snapping the handle into the palm of her hand, she reached up and smashed the clock into fragments and destroyed every framed poster in the place. She didn't want New York's Finest thinking the clock had been given undue attention.
"Okay," said Sally, flipping her bat in another circle. "Out of here. We're done."
Koffe King wasn't the first place they trashed. At Sally's insistence they'd already hit an antique emporium on the corner of 19th and Broadway. The kind of store where narrow people bought expensive things during the week and wide people went window-shopping on Saturdays.
Only there were no tourists to gawp as Sally took her bat to the biggest window of the emporium and showered a wooden Buddha with diamonds. Everybody had decided to stay home–except the fashion crowd who were watching from roofs right across Tribeca.
Atal liked the Buddha, needless to say, and so did Sally (if she was honest). What she hated was the fact that it cost more than the person who crafted or found it made in one year, quite possibly more than that person made in one lifetime.
So she did the window and liberated the statue, leaving it on the roof of an empty black-and-white as a present for the cops when they came back.
After ditching their ski masks and cycling gloves in a bin, Sally, Bozo and Atal swapped jackets, put on shades and hailed a cab on Madison. Apparently the NYPD were waving licensed cabs through a roadblock near Grand Central. Something that made no more sense to Sally than it did to Singh, the driver with limited English and advanced negotiating skills who finally took a risk and stopped for them.
Two blocks south of 42nd Street, Sally had Singh hang a right just before the Hill Building and shoot over onto Park.
"Outside the church," she said.
They all caught the point at which Singh flicked his gaze from Bozo's red tarboosh to the stone Messiah above the door of Our Saviour.
"Showing him the sights," said Sally as she flicked the catch on a Balenciaga bag and overtipped horrendously. The bag came courtesy of a poorly guarded boutique next to the Thai café on Thompson, between Bleecker and West 3rd. The cash was liberated from almost everywhere.
CHAPTER 10
Wednesday 9th February
"What doesn't?" Eugenie de la Croix said, stopping opposite Raf. There were plently of chairs vacant but she stood, slightly impatiently, until a waiter slid from the gloom of Le Trianon's interior to pull one back for her, apologizing profusely.
"What doesn't what?" Raf demanded.
"Make any sense . . . ?"
He looked at the elderly woman in front of him.
"You said, It's impossible to work out."
"I did?"
Eugenie nodded. "Then you said, No it's not. It just doesn't make sense. . . So my question is, What doesn't make sense?"
"To eat so many almond croissants."
Eugenie raised her eyebrows.
"Eighty-seven," said Raf blandly, "since I arrived in El Iskandryia."
"I'm surprised you can afford them," said Eugenie, "given how little you currently earn. Have you paid off your overdraft yet?"
They both knew the answer to that.
"So how do you afford to do this every day?" Eugenie indicated the table and its litter of dirty plates, a half-drunk cup of cappuccino and discarded papers, one or two of which were still running comment pieces about the ex-Governor's heroic rescue of Umar.
"It's on my tab."
"Tab?"
"Credit," said Raf. "They keep note of what I owe."
"Which is how much?"
Raf shrugged. "They're the ones keeping track," he said lightly and ignored the fox who grinned inside his head, anxious to give him the exact figure.
"You're broke . . ." Eugenie said.
"And you're repeating yourself."
Eugenie sighed. "I can pay you." She opened her bag and extracted a manilla envelope. "Very well indeed."
When Raf raised his eyebrows it was in imitation of her earlier expression, although his shades ruined most of the effect. "You said nothing about paying me."
"Nothing . . . ?" For a split second Eugenie looked triumphant, but her face fell as she caught Raf's twisted smile and realized he was mocking her.
But she threw out the hook all the same.
"Your father's rich."
"If he is my father . . ."
Eugenie sighed. "Believe me," she said heavily and pushed the envelope across the table. "He is and you are an al-Mansur."
"Just suppose," said Raf, pushing it back, "that really were true. Why would I be interested?"
"What if I told you he wants to disinherit His Excellency Kashif Pasha?" Eugenie said, her words curdling around the honorific. "And that his favourite son is too young to command support of the army. And that without the support of the army Murad can't be appointed the Emir's new heir?"
Raf looked blank.
"That leaves you," she said. "Doesn't that make you feel like coming to his aid?"
At the shake of Raf's head, Eugenie shrugged. "I told him this wouldn't work," she said, but she was talking to herself.
"I've got a question for you," said Raf. "Ignore whether or not they were actually married. Did my mother really sleep with the Emir?"