Max was always hauling Owen off to the theatre-he’d seen more productions of Hamlet than he cared to think about-but he had never been to an opera. Even so, he knew who Evelyn del Rio was. He was disappointed that she was not fat. She was a trim blonde woman in a plain black skirt with a sparkly top that drew attention to her chest. When the applause died down, she nodded at the piano bear and he began to play a set of dark, dour chords. Over these the famous voice came hovering, floating at first, and then sweeping upward into the ceiling, sending a thrill up Owen’s spine. It was something, a voice of pure silver at such proximity; he’d never heard anything like it. One of the great things about robbing the rich was you got to see some first-class entertainment.
It was a sad aria, not too long, and when it was over, the audience couldn’t stop grinning and applauding. Melinda Peabody had made her way back downstairs and was off in a corner, stabbing repeatedly at her cellphone and frowning. Owen looked around. Max’s caterers, as he called them, were in place at the two exits. They wore livery much like the houseboy’s and stood with folded arms, looking serious and professional.
Before the applause had ended, Max stepped into a spot right below Owen and raised his hands. Owen’s adrenalin shot up several levels, his heart hammering.
“Well, that was stupendous, wasn’t it?” Max said to the crowd. “Beautiful music, beautifully rendered. But, before we go any further, I also have an announcement to make, and I want you to promise not to get upset. It’s the kind of thing people can get hysterical about, so let me tell you up front that such a reaction is totally unnecessary. You are here to part with money, after all. And so this gathering is being robbed. That’s right, you heard me-robbed.”
The great hall seemed to darken, although the lights stayed on. There were murmurs and catches of breath and questioning, worried looks.
“Rest assured that I myself, not to mention the able assistants you see at various points around the room, are fully-by which I mean lethally-armed. Still-”
A couple of men started to speak up, but Max silenced them by pulling out a.38 Special, which he did not point at anybody. He didn’t have to.
“Still,” he continued, “there is no reason in the world why this has to be a totally negative experience. I urge you-strongly urge you-to simply drop your valuables into the sack we’ll be bringing around. Watches, brooches, necklaces, jewellery of any kind. We’re not brutes-wedding rings are not required unless extraordinarily valuable-worth, say, over five thousand.”
“Bullshit,” someone said. Owen didn’t see who it was; he was more worried about a small, lean man moving slowly, almost imperceptibly toward Max from behind. Owen unhooked the elegant velvet rope that reached upward to the skylights all the way from the lower floor. He took a pair of leather gloves from his pocket, put them on, and slowly slid down the rope to the floor below, planting himself firmly between Max and the approaching man. Pure Errol Flynn.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, and the man went still.
Max handed Owen a sack emblazoned with a red Republican elephant. Owen began going to each of the women in turn, holding it open.
“No tricks, mister,” Max said to the man, still in his East Coast accent. “The usual rules will be strictly enforced. Nobody moves, nobody leaves. This’ll only take a few minutes.”
The lean man was now edging toward a door.
“Don’t spoil it for everybody,” Max said to him, gesturing with the gun. “This is very much a money-or-your-life situation.”
“Try and stop me.”
Roscoe, one of Max’s caterers, reared up to his full height, which was considerable, and the man veered toward a different exit. Pookie, Roscoe’s colleague, stepped forward. The man kept coming. Pookie reached for his weapon, but Max fired first, a single shot into the ceiling that made an enormous noise. The smokeless blanks they always used were even louder than the real thing, and made Owen jump every time.
The man stopped and turned back to face them, very pale.
“The next one won’t be a warning.”
“Look,” Evelyn del Rio said, “I think everybody needs to calm down. Especially you, sir.”
“Your humble servant, madam,” Max said with a bow. “Consider me becalmed.”
“If we’re going to be robbed anyway,” she added, “we should at least have some music. Giorgio?”
“You expect me to play?” said the bear. He seemed more shook up than his diva.
“What else are we going to do?” she said. “I’m damned if I’m going to crumple up and cry.”
“Marvellous,” Max said. “And I know that a woman who sings like you has just got to be a magnificent dancer. I beseech you, Giorgio-a waltz.”
The bear shook his head, but turned back to the keyboard and started to play. Owen recognized the tune, though he couldn’t have named it.
Max put his gun away and took Evelyn del Rio’s hand. As Owen stepped from guest to guest accepting “donations,” Max twirled around the floor with the soprano, who looked as cool as ivory.
“The ring, too,” Owen said to the girl in front of him. She was about twelve-a red-haired vision in Calvin Klein who started to cry and handed it over.
“It’s just a ring,” Owen said. “A material object. There’s no reason to get so worked up.”
“My daddy gave me that ring,” she said, a Southern girl, maybe Arkansas, “’fore he died. It was my momma’s engagement ring.”
“Well, why isn’t your mother wearing it, then?”
“Because she’s dead too, you snake.”
Owen took her hot little fist and opened it, placed the sparkling ring into her palm, and folded her fingers over it. “You don’t know me well enough to call me that,” he said.
Max was still spinning around the floor with Evelyn del Rio. There was an abstracted air on his face that worried Owen. Lately the old man had been having spells of vagueness-usually not more than a few minutes-during which he forgot where he was and what he was doing. Max should have been collecting loot in a second bag, thus doubling their speed, but instead he was dancing with an opera star. Not good.
A couple of the men glared as if they would take him apart, but the rest were exceedingly co-operative. One of the things that had surprised Owen when he had first become involved in the lively pursuit of robbery was that men were generally as terrified as women. They didn’t cry and carry on, but they trembled a lot. He wished they wouldn’t; he wished they understood how truly safe they were, provided they didn’t try anything.
“I suppose you want credit cards too,” said one fellow-he had a lot of freckles. He looked like the type of guy you’d enjoy tossing a Frisbee with.
“Just cash and jewellery,” Owen told him. “But thank you for asking.”
“Fuck you.”
“Settle down, man. It’ll all be over soon, and you’ll have a great story to tell your grandchildren.”
Another two minutes and it was done. Owen signalled to Max, but Max was still lost in his dancing, a blissful smile on his face. Pookie had to bull his way through the crowd and take Max by the elbow to get him back down to earth. Max bowed deeply and kissed Evelyn del Rio’s hand.
They took the Lexus at a stately pace along Shore Road, until Pookie said, “Turn here, turn here.” They drove around a mock Tudor house, which was empty and up for sale, and abandoned the Lexus behind it. They jogged down to the private jetty, where Pookie and Roscoe had moored the motorboat which, like the Lexus, they had stolen earlier in the evening. They heard sirens and saw police lights flashing on Shore Road, but by then they were plowing across the bay toward the lights of San Francisco.
It was cold on the water. Owen pulled the lapels of his dinner jacket together against the wind. The boat was a mid-size outboard, a seventy-five horse on the back. Pookie and Roscoe were up front, since they knew where they were going. Max was in the rear, shouting over the racket of the motor.