Carr nods. “Nobody better, Bobby.”
9
In the maze of machines and shining bodies, it is her shoulders that he finally recognizes. They’re angular and broad for a woman, with well-defined deltoid muscles and a faded scar-a ragged-edged dime of unknown origin-over her left scapula. It appears and disappears beneath the edge of her sweat-darkened tank top as she works the fly machine. Carr forces himself not to stare, but to keep drifting around the perimeter of the vast gym.
It has taken him ten minutes of drifting to find Valerie, and no wonder. Her hair is shorter now, and expensively tinted-a champagne and honey cap with bangs swept to the side-and her skin is biscuit brown. But the hair and tan are just window dressing, sleight of hand. The real transformation runs deeper, and Carr is no closer to working out the trick now than he was in Costa Alegre.
So she is older today-thirty-five, maybe forty-and very fit. But also tired, though not from the exercise. It’s a longer-term fatigue, a kind of erosion-the product of a beating tide of disappointment, wrong choices, bad luck. Its etchings appear at the corners of her mouth and around her eyes, in her dye job, and in the concentration she puts into her workout. They tell a story of assets carefully managed but dwindling nonetheless-an inexorable spending of the principal. Carr has stopped and is staring again, and now she knows he’s here.
This is another bit of magic he can’t work out-some radar she possesses. Her look is fleeting-less than that-the barest flick of her eyes on the way to glancing at the wall clock, but Carr reads the anger there. He drifts back to the lobby, out the doors, and across Mizner Park to his Saturn.
In twenty minutes Carr is at the Embassy Suites, in a pale blue room with a view of some dumpsters and of planes departing the Boca Raton airport. Forty minutes after that Valerie is at the door, in flats and a sleeveless orange dress. She smells of honeysuckle, and her hair is still damp from the shower. She walks past Carr and sits at the end of the bed.
“What the hell were you doing there?” she says. Her voice is tight with anger, and Carr hears something else in it-the hint of a twang, a whisper of Texas or Oklahoma.
“I told them I was interested in a membership,” he says. “They let me walk around.”
“I don’t give a damn what you told them. What the hell were you doing? We were supposed to meet here. You want to fuck this up while we’re still at the gate?”
“Was Amy at the club?”
“She had a yoga class this afternoon; she left half an hour before you showed up. But that’s not the point. The point is I don’t want you there. I don’t want to be seen with anybody there. Jill’s supposed to be on her own.”
“You take the yoga class with Amy?”
Valerie’s lips purse. “Monday. I join the class Monday.”
“You talk to her yet?”
“In the locker room, to say hello,” Valerie says, and slips off her flats. Her bare feet are tanned; her toenails, like her fingernails, are pale pink.
“She knows who you are?”
“She knows I’m Jill. She’s heard me talk about being new in town.”
“That’s not much.”
“It’s enough for now. Get this for me,” she says, rising and turning her back to Carr. He slides her zipper down.
“You have a better read on her?”
“I know she takes care of herself. Yoga, spinning, weights, laps in the pool-she’s at the club every day. She spends money on her hair and nails, and serious money on her wardrobe. St. John, Carlisle, Akris-nice stuff. Low-key, but classy. And that handbag of hers is no knockoff. Twenty grand, easy. She’s a loner, though. Never says more than a word or two to the staff, or to another member. Never has guests.”
“But she says hello to you.”
Valerie nods, and lets her dress fall in an orange pool at her feet. She wears no bra, and her panties are sheer orange silk. “I’m sociable,” she says.
She throws the spread off the bed and pulls down the blanket and top sheet. Carr leans against the desk. His heart is pounding and his words catch in his throat. “You see the video Dennis and Bobby shot of her house?” he asks. Valerie nods. “What did you think?”
“It’s modern-lots of glass.”
“I meant about the security.”
“No surprise: she’s president of a bank, and it’s a pain in the ass. She’s in a gated community, so there’s the gatehouse, the authorized visitor lists, the prowl cars, and lots of rent-a-cops-who, by the way, are all strapped. Bobby said the house itself is wired pretty good too-not that it slowed him much.
“On top of that, there’s the bank’s security people. She’s got a retired sheriff’s deputy that drives her everywhere in that nice black Benz, and her office, her car, and her house all get swept weekly for electronics.”
“On a set schedule?”
She shakes her head. “That’d make life too easy. And as far as her work laptop goes, Bobby says it rides to the office with her in the Benz and comes home the same way, and when she stops at the gym, it waits in the car with her driver.”
Carr nods. “Dennis send you anything from her personal computer?”
“He spiked it, and he’s supposed to send me her e-mail and her browser history. He confirmed it doesn’t have the Isla Privada software on it, and none of the security hardware to access their network.” Valerie sits cross-legged on the bed and pulls a pillow onto her lap. “You think I’m not doing my homework?”
“Maybe you saw something I didn’t.”
Valerie shakes her head. “It’s what we thought: we want access to Isla Privada’s network, we need their hardware; we want access to that-to Amy Chun’s equipment, anyway-we need somebody who can hang out in her house. And that would be Jill.”
Carr nods slowly and sits up on the desk. “How’s your apartment working out?”
She shrugs. “Mid-nineties generic. Lot of corporate types in the building, on long-term business trips, plus some divorced dads with cars they can’t afford. I can see a slice of the Intracoastal from the balcony. It’s right for Jill.”
“We could’ve met there.”
Valerie narrows her eyes. “No we couldn’t,” she says, scowling. “I told you: Jill’s on her own.”
“Yeah, I got that. You color in any other parts of Jill’s life?”
“I’m waiting for the take from Amy’s computer,” she says. Valerie looks Carr up and down. “You’re perched on that desk like it’s a lifeboat. We sinking or something?”
“I’m trying to figure out if you’re going to keep snapping at my ass. I’m thinking maybe I can hide behind this thing.”
Valerie is still for a beat, and then she sighs. “Yeah. Sorry. It takes me a while to let her go. I can’t switch her off just like that.” She snaps her fingers, like a branch breaking. “Jill’s pretty much had it with men. She’s a little angry.”
“I get that.”
Valerie sighs again, longer and more heavily. “Not me, though. I’m not angry.” She pats the mattress beside her, and Carr crosses to the bed.
Afterward, covered in gooseflesh and the sour breath of the air conditioner, Valerie pulls him back from the edge of sleep. Her head is on his chest, and her fingers comb gently through his pubic hair. Her voice is husky.
“Let’s play geography,” she says.
Carr sighs. He can’t remember who started it, or when they started playing, but it’s become a fixture of the long stretches the crew spends together in cars, in vans, in darkened rooms-a way to relieve the monotony of sitting for hours with earpieces jammed in their heads, watching, listening, waiting. Dennis called it retirement geography, and it was simple to play: tell a story about what you’re going to do once you’ve made your nut, and where you’re going to do it-your dream of life afterward. Which, Carr thought, told you a lot about a person.
Bobby’s ideal retirement changed venues now and then-shifting from Nassau, to Vegas, to Macao, to Monte Carlo, and back to Nassau again-but regardless of the particular locale, it was always the same: a high-roller suite at a high-end gambling resort.