“That won’t be a problem.”
“Landing here wasn’t supposed to be a problem.”
“Ms. Lee, don’t be churlish,” he said.
“Assuming we get to the point of sending a wire from Hong Kong — and I’m not guaranteeing we will — I’ll ask my people to email you a scanned copy of the wire as I did before. And to be doubly safe, I would like to send you a fax copy. Do you have a fax number that’s secure?”
“My brother has that number.”
“I don’t want to ask him for even that much,” said Ava.
“Ah. He does lack charm, I admit. All right, I’ll email it to you.”
Ava saw Jack Robbins stiffen and realized that he could hear what his brother was saying. That gave her pause. She had been about to nudge the Captain about returning her Canadian passport and calling off Morris Thomas after he received the wire transfer notification. Suddenly and completely, that felt like one of the worst ideas she’d had since leaving Toronto. God, don’t appear the least bit anxious, she thought. And don’t give him time to think about doing it. Try to catch him when he’s just been told he’s about to pocket two million dollars. “Thank you,” she said. “You understand this means I have to get into my computer?”
“As long as it’s related to our business and Jack is watching you, I have no objections.”
“Aren’t you generous.”
“Ms. Lee, you honour your commitments and I’ll honour mine.”
She handed the phone back to Jack Robbins. “I’m going to buy some food. Here, you talk to your brother.”
Robbins caught up with her as she was putting two bottles of sparkling water into her basket. “Stop running out on me,” he said.
“Just trying to save time.”
“My brother wasn’t finished with you.”
“Tough,” Ava said, and held out the basket. “If you’re going to follow me around you might as well carry this.”
Robbins stared, his eyes for the first time really looking into hers. They weren’t entirely lifeless, she saw, more like disinterested, as if she was completely insignificant to him. She knew that goading him wasn’t the best approach, but she couldn’t bring herself to make nice. “Let’s go,” he said, ignoring the basket.
Ava walked down two more aisles, adding rice crackers, cheese, a jar of olives, and a small plastic container of hummus. Robbins stayed close behind her, his gloved hands jammed into his jeans pockets, saying nothing.
Outside the store she could see that the apartment building was no more than a couple of minutes away; she asked Robbins if they could walk. He opened the car door and said, “Get in.”
Davey dropped them in front of the building. “Do you need me later?” he asked.
“If I do, I’ll call,” said Robbins.
Doreen, the young woman they had met in the lobby the night before, was behind the reception desk. She stared, rather rudely, Ava thought, as she and Robbins entered and walked to the elevator. What lurid thoughts were running through her mind?
The apartment was as they had left it. Ava went to look in on Seto. He had rolled over onto his side, kicking the bedcovers clear. His hair was dishevelled and starting to look greasy. Drool had dried on one side of his mouth. She covered him, hoping it wasn’t going to be necessary to clean him up.
Ava heard a clatter from the living room and looked out to see Robbins clearing the Stella empties. She walked towards him as he deposited the bottles in the kitchen trash bin. “I need this space,” she said. “I have a lot of papers to sign and I need to concentrate, so I’d appreciate it if you could leave me alone. I don’t want the television on. In fact, I don’t want any distractions at all, so it would be ideal if you could hang out in your room until I’m done.”
She saw his body tense; this time he wanted to argue. Before he could react she brushed past him and sat at the kitchen table. He stood near the sink, staring down at her. She tried to ignore him, extracting from her purse the documents Bates had given her, setting out the extra copies she’d made, and laying out Seto’s passport, Hong Kong ID card, and driver’s licence in a row. “I need to work,” she said, not looking up.
“Cunt,” he muttered.
Ava heard it clearly enough but pretended she hadn’t. She searched in her purse for one more document, a copy of Seto’s last withdrawal request from the bank, and then put it next to his other identification. She opened her notebook. “I need to work,” she said.
He took two steps towards the living room, stopped to look back at her, and then shuffled across the floor to his room.
Ava sat quietly at the kitchen table for a few minutes, collecting herself. Robbins was becoming a distraction, and she blamed herself for letting him annoy her. She opened her notebook and looked at the signatures she’d penned the night before. Not bad, she thought, not bad at all.
There were a lot of things for her to like about Seto’s signature. It was short, for one thing, simply JSeto. It also wasn’t identical from document to document. Similar, of course, and recognizable obviously, but with minor variations. It gave her a little wiggle room. Despite those positives, she sat quietly at the table for a few minutes, gathering her nerve. She had done this often enough in the past and never failed, but her perfectionist streak could always find flaws. The truth was, any reasonable facsimile normally worked. She was just afraid of running into someone as anal as she was.
She started with a blank page in her notebook and began to practise. The signature was basically a big looping J, the bottom loop curling into the upper, and a relatively straightforward S, followed by a straight line that tailed off to a dot. The J was dominant. If she got that right, imperfections in the rest would pass. The proportions were tricky, though, between the top and bottom loops, and when they were out of sync the signature looked contrived.
Ava began to write J’s — just J’s. She had filled almost the entire page before she managed to get three in a row that looked similar to the ones in front of her. She closed her eyes, envisioning it. I have it, she thought.
She started with the copies of his ID. With one eye fixed on the bank document he’d signed and the other on the paper in front of her, she wrote JSeto nine times in rapid succession. When she had finished, she discarded only the last two — the J was out of whack. Take a break, step away, she thought. She got up and turned on the kettle. While the water boiled she looked out onto the harbour, amazed by the level of activity.
Ava drank half her coffee on the balcony, clearing her head, and then went back to the table. She had written two more lines of J’s in her notebook before she recaptured the balance she wanted. Then quickly she redid the two signatures that looked suspect and moved on to the wire transfer requests. Those went smoothly, the signatures indistinguishable, even to her paranoid eye, from what the bank had on record. There, the easy part is done, she thought, as she organized the paperwork into matching sets.
It was too soon to call Bates. There was no value in letting him think Seto had been well enough to affix the signatures so promptly. She’d wait. It was almost eleven thirty. One o’clock — no, one thirty worked better. Give him time to have some lunch.
She gathered the documents and slid them into their folder. Out of nowhere came a yawn, and Ava realized she was tired. She’d been awake since God knows when, and the morning had been draining. She had time to kill, and a rest couldn’t hurt.
Ava didn’t say anything or look into Robbins’s room as she walked past to hers. If he couldn’t figure out that she had finished working, that was his problem. She closed the door behind her and lay on the bed fully clothed. Her mind was more of a jumble than she would have liked. Bates was more than enough to occupy her, but Robbins — both Robbinses — kept intruding. She tried to shut everyone out, thinking bak mei, crane position: her foot poised to strike, her hands moving faster than light.