“It’s the nature of my business,” Ava said.
Thomas looked at Robbins, pursed his lips, and reached down to open a desk drawer. Ava watched him slip the passport into the drawer and close it. “You have a friend who arrived here earlier this evening, a Derek Liang,” he said.
“Yes,” Ava said, struggling to maintain her composure. “Captain Robbins told me he had made arrangements with you for Derek to land. I had expected to see him here.”
“There were some problems with his paperwork,” said Thomas slowly. His eyes avoided hers and Robbins’s.
“What kind of problems?” she asked.
Thomas rolled his head from side to side. “His papers weren’t in order. We couldn’t let him stay. We picked him up at the apartment he had rented and put him on a plane headed back to Puerto Rico.” He looked at his watch. “He left about fifteen minutes ago. And just so we’re clear, we notified the Puerto Rican authorities that he shouldn’t be allowed to stay there either. I believe they intend to put him on the first flight back to Canada, which should leave around midnight tonight. To Montreal, I think.”
Ava glanced at Robbins. His eyes were half closed, a slight grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “This wasn’t what was agreed upon,” she said.
Thomas raised his right hand and motioned to Robbins, his part in the proceedings done.
The big man checked his watch, a Patek Philippe that was lost in the folds of flesh around his wrist. Ava wondered if it was real. Then she saw the back of his hands for the first time: red splotches of skin interspersed with black and green scabs. She turned her head away quickly.
“There’s been a change in plans, Ms. Lee. My brother is scheduled to call here any minute now, so if you will be patient I’d appreciate it.”
“Do I have another option?” she asked.
“No.”
“Jack, you don’t need me anymore, do you? Because if you don’t mind I’ll take myself home,” Thomas said.
“Say hello to Betty for me.”
“I will,” Thomas said, rising from his chair.
“Leave one of the men, will you?”
“I’ll leave both.”
“Only need the one.”
“Okay. Just close the door when you go. It locks itself.”
When Thomas left, the room seemed suddenly empty. Ava shifted in her chair, and then to her shock Robbins’s gloved right hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm. He squeezed, his fingers digging through her flesh until they reached bone. She flinched, more from surprise than pain. “My brother warned me about you,” he said. “I’m just telling you it would be stupid to try anything with me.”
“I had no intention-” she began, only to be cut off by the sound of a cellphone ringing to the tune of the William Tell overture.
“It’s me,” Robbins said. He listened for a few seconds. “No, it went well. She’s sitting next to me.” He paused and then passed the phone to Ava.
Ava wiped the mouthpiece against her shirt. “This is Ava Lee.”
“Before anything else is said, let me immediately apologize for this untimely departure from our plans.”
She heard the clink of ice against glass. He was at home. Drinking. “Captain, what exactly is going on?”
He laughed, or coughed; she wasn’t sure which. “I felt it necessary to make some changes to our arrangement.”
“So your brother told me, though he was somewhat lacking in detail.”
“The thing is, Ms. Lee, you didn’t play fair with me.”
She sensed at once where this was headed, but she wasn’t going to go there first. “As I remember, Captain, I paid you $100,000 for services rendered, and then another $200,000 for services that so far have been unfulfilled. So in terms of being fair, I think I’m the one who should have be complaining.”
“You aren’t the least bit curious as to why I feel aggrieved?”
“We have an agreement, one that I’ve completely honoured. I don’t need to know any more than that.”
“The thing is,” he said again, slurring the s, “I’ve found out that you’ve been less than forthcoming with me.”
Ava closed her eyes. Had this been his plan all along? Had he arranged to get her and Seto to the British Virgin Islands just so he could squeeze her? Had the note with his daughters’ names and phone numbers just been theatre? “Captain, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ice clinked. “I stopped by Seto’s house on the way back from the airport tonight and had a chat with his woman,” he said slowly. “Don’t know why I did it, actually; it just came to me that it was the thing to do. Anyway, she was quite open with me after a little persuasion. It seems that our friend Seto had made quite a score for himself. According to her, he’s managed to turn a recent profit in the amount of about five million United States dollars.”
She didn’t know if she believed a word of it, but her position wasn’t going to change. “There was no profit. There was just theft,” she said.
“So you concede the amount?”
“Captain, I never misled you about how much money I was chasing. I don’t remember ever mentioning an amount.”
“And you know, I don’t think you did either, so that’s true enough. The fault is mine, of course. I couldn’t imagine Seto being that successful. But now, belatedly I admit, I find out that he is evidently more clever than I thought. And so here we are, Ms. Lee… Let me ask you, given this new information, do you really think it’s fair that I should have to settle for just $300,000?”
“Yes, I do,” Ava said.
“You disappoint me, Ms. Lee. I mean, really, without our very active and unique support, where would you be? I’ll tell you: you’d be sitting at the Phoenix Hotel with no hope of getting at Seto or his money. Yes, I think that’s exactly where you would be.”
“Possibly,” she said.
“And even if you had contrived to get your hands on him, where were you going to go with him? Nowhere, I tell you, although you might have ended up in Camp Street Prison for kidnapping, or worse.”
Robbins’s voice had risen an octave, his words coming faster. Ava waited for a few seconds, not jumping to respond. When she did, she said as softly and deliberately as she could, “I assume you want to make a proposition.”
“Of course I do. I think that we have to revisit our agreement, that we need to make it less one-sided.”
“You’re looking for more money?”
“It’s only fair.”
“It isn’t my money to give. It belongs to my client,” she said.
“That’s a quibble. All I know for certain is that the money is in a bank account belonging to Seto. How it got there is your word against his. In fact, the case could be made that you tried to bribe a Guyanese government official to help you fraudulently deprive a Guyanese resident of his hard-earned assets.”
Ava bit back the anger that was swelling up from her stomach. Seto had been an idiot to tell the woman. She had probably confessed everything the moment the Captain asked his first question. As for him, well, he was turning out to be exactly what she had feared he was. She just wished he could have been contained for another day or two. But there was nothing positive to be gained in getting angry about any of it. She tried to shift the conversation. “You know, Captain, all this talk about money is still completely hypothetical. There is no guarantee that the bank will release any funds at all to me.”
He laughed, phlegm catching in his throat and causing him to cough. “I have absolute confidence in the approach you described to me,” he said, catching his breath. “I found it entirely sensible, and when I factor in your persuasiveness and your appeal, well, I think the approach goes well past sensible all the way to irresistible. So humour me, please, and let’s talk about money, hypothetical or otherwise.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Half,” he said bluntly.