“Has something happened between Lovell and Rashid?” Mary asked eventually.
“Happened? In what way?” replied Carlos.
Mary smiled and gave the man a knowing look like a mother silently admonishing a child she knew was being less than honest. Her eyes were dry but there was a redness about them. “You know exactly what I mean,” she said.
Carlos chuckled softly. “The American was making unwanted advances, and Dina took care of it.”
“Took care of it? What did she do? He’s like a scalded cat whenever she’s around.”
“She had sex with him.”
Mary looked at him, astonished. “She had sex with him, and now he’s scared witless?”
Carlos kept his face straight. “The way she tells it, her encounter wasn’t exactly what you’d call safe sex, not for him anyway.” Carlos could contain himself no longer and he laughed loud and hard, throwing his head back and showing uneven, yellowing teeth. His laughter echoed across the bay until it was lost among the screaming of the seagulls.
Patrick Farrell Senior arrived in his blue Lincoln Continental shortly before eight o’clock, scratching his pendulous beer gut as he scanned the skies around the airfield. Not long afterwards his mechanics began arriving and Joker heard the rumble of the hangar doors being rolled back. Small insects buzzed around Joker’s head, and he waved them away halfheartedly. They made a sound like miniature chainsaws as they zipped by his ear and for each one he swatted away, there were two more waiting to torment him.
He put the binoculars to his eyes and surveyed the Farrell Aviation building. In one of the ground-floor offices he could see Farrell talking on the telephone as he stood at his desk. A buzzing sound, louder than the annoying insects, filled the air above his head. He looked up and through the tree canopy overhead he saw a single-engine plane coming into land. It flashed overhead and then turned to the left, aligning itself up with the grass strip, and then passed from Joker’s field of vision. He heard the engine note change as the pilot throttled back prior to landing. Joker put the binoculars back to his eyes. Through them he saw Farrell, still on the phone, peer through his window at the arriving plane.
The plane came into view as it reached the end of the grass strip and taxied back towards the hangars. Joker saw that it was in Farrell Aviation’s colours and bore its green propeller and hawk logo. The pilot and co-pilot were wearing headsets and sunglasses and it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. The plane came to a halt and the occupants took off their headsets and climbed out. They were men, one tall and thin with dark hair, the other short with a mop of unruly red hair. As they walked towards the Farrell Aviation offices, Joker trained his glasses on the shorter of the two men. He caught his breath as he recognised the face of Matthew Bailey, grinning and twirling his headset as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
As Mary Hennessy and Carlos stepped into the kitchen, the telephone began to ring. Mary picked it up while Carlos opened the refrigerator in search of breakfast. Carlos took out a slice of cold pizza and chewed on a huge chunk as he watched Mary’s frown deepen. She agreed to whatever it was the caller was saying, and motioned with her hand for Carlos to pass her a pen. He picked a blue ballpoint and handed it to her. She scribbled an address on the margin of the front page of the Baltimore Sun and replaced the receiver.
“Trouble?” asked Carlos, his mouth full of dough and tomato sauce.
“I’m not sure,” she replied, tearing off the corner of the paper. “Someone wants to meet me. Now.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Carlos.
“No,” said Mary. “I have to go alone.”
Ronald Hartman’s secretary buzzed through on his intercom and told him that there was a Secret Service agent in the outer office asking to see him. The secretary was new to the job and was clearly in awe of the visitor, but Hartman was well used to dealing with the men responsible for the President’s safety. He had worked in hotels in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Boston before moving to Baltimore and the routine was always the same. He’d read in the Baltimore Sun about the President’s forthcoming visit to the city, and he knew that beforehand the Secret Service would be around for the list of guests and employees. He told his secretary to send the visitor in.
The man was in his early twenties with the regulation athletic build, close-cropped hair and dark suit. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth and pink gums, and flashed his Secret Service credentials. His name was Todd Otterman and when he sat down he carefully aligned the creases on his trouser legs. He began to explain about the President’s trip to Baltimore but Hartman held up his hand to silence him.
“I’ve been through the routine before, Agent Otterman,” he said. “You want the guest list to compare with your watch list, correct?”
Otterman nodded, grateful that the hotel manager knew the ropes.
“Three days before the visit, one day after?” asked Hartman.
“Perfect,” said Otterman. As Hartman leant forward and spoke to his secretary through the intercom, Otterman took an envelope from the inside jacket of his pocket.
Hartman finished briefing his secretary. “You can pick up the records at the reception desk, there’ll be a printout and a floppy disc waiting for you.”
“I wish every hotel was as efficient as yours, Mr Hartman,” said the agent. He slid six colour photographs out of the envelope and handed them to the manager. “One more thing, could you tell me if you recognise any of these people?”
Hartman flipped through the photographs. He had a good memory for names and faces, an essential attribute for anyone wanting to do well in the hotel industry. The top picture was of a pretty blonde woman and another of the same woman but with dark hair, followed by three younger men, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a moustache, and a sharp-faced young woman with long, dark curly hair. Hartman needed only a few seconds for each photograph to be sure. He’d never seen any of them before. He shook his head and gave them back to the agent. “I’m sorry, no,” he said.
“You’re sure?” said Otterman.
“Quite sure,” said Hartman, frostily. Much as he wanted to help, he didn’t take kindly to his professional abilities being questioned.
Otterman stood up and shook hands with the manager, thanked him for his help, then went back out to reception where a teenage girl with gleaming braces on her teeth and a black name badge with ‘Sheena’ on it smiled and gave him a manila envelope. Otterman looked inside and saw a computer disc and a roll of computer printout. He thanked her and showed her the photographs. “So, Sheena, have you seen any of these people?” he said.
“Guests, you mean?” Her braces glinted under the fluorescent strip lights overhead.
“Guests, in the restaurants, walking outside, anything,” he said.
She screwed up her eyes as she went through the pictures and Otterman wondered if the girl needed glasses. She held up the picture of the woman, Mary Hennessy. The picture of her as a blonde. “I sort of remember her,” she said, her voice uncertain. “Let me ask Art.”
She went to a tubby young man in a black suit and they both stood looking at the two photographs of the woman. The man came over and introduced himself as Art Linder, an assistant manager. “I think this is Mrs Simmons. From London. She stayed with us last week for a couple of days.” He held up the photograph in which she was a blonde. “She was a blonde, but you could see the roots growing through. She was a looker. . for her age.”
Otterman couldn’t believe his luck. “Can you give me her details,” he asked. “Registration card, credit card details, list of phone calls she made, the works?”
“No problem,” said Linder. “What has she done?”