“First time here?”
“First time.”
“Bet it won’t be your last.”
“I’m not a gambler,” I tell her. “But if I were, I’d never be fool enough to let you take my money on that wager.”
“How sweet. You speak well, and so quickly,” she says. “Words seem to come easily to you. Is that an essential skill in the fertilizer business?”
“Only if you want to sell it,” I tell her.
The waiter brings our drinks, mine in a tumbler, hers in a mini cocktail glass not much bigger than a thimble. We tap the glass rims and two seconds later hers is gone. I can hear the cash register ringing over at the bar.
“Might I suggest a bottle of champagne?” says the waiter. “We have some excellent vintages.” He smells a sucker on a roll.
“I’ll bet you do,” I tell him. “Why not? And two big glasses this time.”
ELEVEN
Ana Agirre stepped off the plane, cleared immigration and customs, collected her bags along with a rental car, and was on her way headed south from LAX in less than an hour. She took a reading from her laptop before leaving the rental car lot using a portable hot spot she purchased at the airport. It worked off a 4G cellular signal and gave her access to portable Wi-Fi while she was in the States.
Once she located what she was looking for, she tuned the car’s GPS to home in on an address just south of Mission Bay, a place called Ocean Beach. This was the location where the signal was coming from. They had moved a few miles since the earlier reading she had taken just before leaving Amsterdam on her connecting flight across the Atlantic. They were up to something. She didn’t know what.
Each time they turned on the small satellite antenna connected to Ana’s laptop, the one they were supposedly field-testing, it sent an encrypted signal from the antenna to the desired navigation satellite high in the sky overhead. It was like an electronic handshake between the computer’s software and the navigation system. The software not only unlocked the vehicle’s navigation and computer systems but also left data at a little-used online site operated by the French military to which Ana had access. It was former French military technicians turned high-tech mercenaries who had designed and built the system for her who had told her about this. The online data allowed her to track the location of the antenna on the ground through GPS coordinates. She could then track this with precision using Google Earth.
They had used her software in the desert east of town three weeks earlier. Ana knew this not only because she had read the news accounts, but because she had the tracking data to prove it. Now she was getting antsy. She wanted to know why the equipment hadn’t been returned to the makers. She called the number the man had given her over the phone only to be told via recording that the number was disconnected. She wanted her stuff back and she wanted it now. She had a contract to complete. Her clients were getting nervous.
Twelve hundred dollars and two bottles of champagne later she isn’t even showing signs of mild inebriation, while the end of my nose feels like it belongs to somebody else. Built like a bird weighing maybe a hundred and ten pounds, the girl who calls herself Crystal on the job and Ben on the street is showing all the signs of being able to drink me under the table. So I cut to the chase.
“You know, I was wondering if you might be up to a private party tonight?”
“And I was wondering if you were ever going to ask?” she says. “We can have them send another bottle of champagne upstairs.”
“Oh, not here,” I tell her. “I was thinking we could do it back at my hotel where we can relax.”
“You were, were you?”
I nod and smile.
“Aren’t you the fast worker? I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she says. “If we’re going to party in private, it would have to be here. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Yes, but. .”
“I’m sorry. I don’t go out. Not on a first date,” she says.
“Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t kiss on a first date.”
She laughs. “That all depends where you want it,” she says.
“I want it in my hotel room,” I tell her.
“I’m sorry. That’s just not possible.” She says it with a tone of finality. I don’t want her to get up and walk.
“You mean they won’t let you?”
“It’s not that.”
Good! At least it’s not a house rule, something she can’t violate.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s just that I don’t know you that well.”
“What’s to know?”
“For one thing, how do I know you’re not a cop?” she says.
“Have you ever known a cop to come in here, undercover, I mean?”
She shakes her head. “Not yet, at least. But then, there’s always a first time,” she says.
“Raise my right hand and hope to die,” I tell her. I put up my left.
“I don’t think you’re really that drunk.” She reads me like a book.
“Give me another bottle and I’ll show you.”
She turns toward the waiter.
“Let’s do it in my room,” I say. “I’ll make it worth your while.” The final resort.
“How much?” she says.
I take a deep breath. “Five hundred,” I tell her. “Besides, how do I know you’re not a cop?”
“If I were, I would be arresting you right now,” she tells me.
The thought has never even entered my mind until this moment. What if she were working undercover? Stranger things have happened. Judges have been defrocked and lawyers pilloried for what I have just done, conversed about sex and money in the same sentence.
“You think I’m a cop, you can search me, see if you can find a badge.”
“Sounds like fun.” I try to keep her talking.
“But not for five hundred,” she says. “For that we can go upstairs. If we are going to go to your room, I’ll need more than that.” The door is open, if only a crack. “Besides, if I leave early I have to buy my way out. The house will fine me. I have to pay them.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and fifty,” she says.
“So how much do you need?”
“To go to your hotel room?”
I nod.
“Fifteen hundred.” She says it without batting an eye, the price she already had fixed in her mind probably from the moment she sat down. She looks me up and down and figures from my pained expression that it’s a no-go. “It was nice to have met you,” she says, and starts to get up.
“No need to run away,” I tell her.
“Time is money,” she says.
I don’t want her walking away. I need to find out what she knows. “Twelve-fifty!” I blurt it out so loudly that the guy at the next table hears me, whips around, gives me a smirk, and says, “Go for it!” He looks at her with lust in his eyes and licks his chops.
I wonder if I’ve just screwed the pooch. I lower my voice an octave. “You clear a cool thousand.” My attempt at reason comes off sounding desperate, Milquetoast the bookkeeper sporting a green shade with a pencil behind his ear.
“I knew you weren’t that drunk.” She thinks about it. “Do you have a room?”
Maybe she likes vulnerable guys.
“I do. Down the street, on the beach. Place with the blue neon sign, says Hotel. Next to the tattoo shop.”
“I know the place. I can meet you there,” she says. “Give me a few minutes.”
“And what if you don’t show up?” I ask.
“Then you get to take a cold shower.” She smiles.
“OK.” I look at my watch. “See you in half an hour.” I start to get up from the chair.
“Didn’t you forget something?” She looks at me with a deadpan expression, like Bacall asking me if I know how to whistle.
“What’s that?”
“Your room number,” she says. “Unless you want me to knock on all the doors.”
“Room number seven.” The room Herman already rented in hopes we’d get lucky.
She stands. The top of her head doesn’t quite reach my shoulder even in her platform spiked heels. She comes in close and gives me a soft kiss on the cheek, like the wings of a butterfly flicking my skin. Her hand on mine. There is a reason this stuff is against the law. I can smell her perfume, more intoxicating than the champagne. I open my eyes and all I see is her back, sensual curves and shapely legs as she floats away from me through ankle-deep fog on seven-inch heels.