Finishing his conversation, Roger Varick pocketed his phone. He was in his early thirties, with wire-rimmed glasses and the look of a guy who needed a briefcase in his hand to feel complete. He worked for the Treasury, except on weekends, chasing money.
“Tell me about Ernesto Gutierrez,” he said.
“He’s at the conference,” I said. “He talks to a lot of people. I haven’t been able to get close to him.”
“Why not?”
I thought about telling the truth: that Ernesto Gutierrez didn’t wear sea-green contact lenses so I hadn’t tried. Instead, I said, “He’s got handlers. Your guys have seen them.” I wanted him to know I’d spotted his two missionaries hanging around the periphery. Even with shined shoes, they didn’t look like they had the money the conference crowd had.
“Do you recognize anyone he’s talking to?” Varick asked.
He and I didn’t like each other. Varick thought he owned me. One of my clients had run a hedge fund that had misplaced a lot of its investors’ money. I’d been a mere bystander — so said my lawyer — but the best deal we could get was I wouldn’t be barred from the business if I helped Varick when he asked me to. So I was helping. But not much. I didn’t mention that I’d noticed Gutierrez coming back from the men’s room a dozen feet behind Darwin Sneed.
“What’s Gutierrez up to?” I asked.
The missionaries looked at each other, smiling smugly, as if they’d ever tell me. Varick said, “He imports heroin. He doesn’t pay taxes. We’re trying to find out why he’s come east. And where he hides his money.”
“Haven’t a clue,” I said.
Not many people actually sneer, even good guys who work for the Treasury. But Varick tried. “I didn’t really expect you to learn anything, McCarthy. I just wanted you to jump through the hoops for me. We’ll nail Gutierrez without your help. You can run along home.”
I ran along as far as the first floor. There were several parties in full swing. A dozen refugees from Austria ’38 were eating strawberries and cream while strolling violins played “J’attendrai.” Office workers were tearing up a private room. A corner full of surgeons were swapping liver jokes. And off to the side, a lifeboat’s worth of doomsayers were arguing the issue of the day: Would inflation wreck the world, or would deflation? Several of the arguers had red faces. The hangers-on, mostly older birds with white-knuckle grips on their drinks, looked upset either way.
Working on Wall Street, I’d made pretty good money, but I had a bad habit of spending it. The guys squeezing their drinks would strangle a dollar that fell into their hands. Their money wasn’t meant to be squandered on good times, it was meant to be hoarded, nurtured a little, pumped full of steroids when the opportunity arose. The last thing they wanted was to get buried in a financial collapse. The next to last thing was to pay taxes. If I introduced Roger Varick to this group, a couple of guys looked feisty enough to string him up from a lamp fixture.
Imre de Wohl sat there, toward the back, alone at a table. He had a more cheerful attitude toward money — at least I thought he did; he hadn’t been a client that long. I pretended not to see Imre. Neither Sneed nor Gutierrez was in sight. Fine. I walked around the floor a couple more times, then called Ms. Blue.
“Are you attending Sneed?” I asked.
Her voice was barely a whisper. “No. Meet me at the conference room.”
“The conference room?”
“I left my purse.”
I took an elevator to the third floor. The area was deserted, except for a couple of housekeepers sweeping up. I looked into the ballroom. The tables were stacked on dollies, the chairs folded, the chicken littles fled. When I backed into the hall, Ms. Blue darted from a cloakroom.
“I’ve got a little problem,” she said. “How gallant are you, Mr. McCarthy?”
“Not very. But I make up for it in charm.”
She sighed. She needed a knight and got a wiseass. “That will have to do,” she said.
“You need help finding your purse?”
“I need help ditching an old boyfriend. He’s followed me here.”
I tried a hunch. “From Las Vegas?”
She nodded.
“What’s his name?”
“Ernesto. He’s rich and he’s mean, and he’s obsessed with me.”
Who wouldn’t be obsessed? I’d only known her a few hours and couldn’t count the lies she’d told.
“Does Ernesto have a last name?” I said.
“Gutierrez. He’s Spanish, a nobleman or something. Please, I want to get up to my suite, collect a few things, and blow this dump. This town too. Maybe the whole East Coast. Will you come with me?”
“As far as the suite, you mean?”
“Or the airport. I doubt you’re ready to chuck everything and run off with me.”
“Maybe for a weekend. If Ernesto spots us, what am I supposed to do to protect you?”
“He won’t do anything if I’m with someone. At least I hope not.”
We took an elevator up to the fourteenth floor, and she carded us into a suite that was bigger than the one the Treasury boys had: three large rooms visible from the doorway, Roman columns pretending to hold up parts of the ceiling, brocaded easy chairs. Two large-screen monitors sat on tables, surfaces dancing with red, green, and blue price charts and matrices. Somewhere on the planet there’s always a stock market open, lifting spirits or dashing hopes. Ms. Blue ignored the markets.
“How well does Ernesto know Mr. Sneed?” I asked, following as she dashed for the room on the left. She ignored the wardrobe and went for the safe. I couldn’t see what came out, which she stuffed into a blue flight bag.
“Know Mr. Sneed?” she said, trying to sound puzzled after waiting too long.
“I saw them coming out of the men’s room together.”
“What does that prove?” She stopped, squinted. “How do you know what Ernesto looks like?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Huh.” She dipped into the flight bag and came out with a small gun, black and expensive looking, with a little round hole pointed at my belt. “If you work for Ernesto—”
I raised my hands. “I don’t. I never met the guy. But he’s pretty well known in some quarters as a drug dealer.”
Her nice face pinched up. “He’s no drug dealer! Where did you get that? He owns a couple of hotels in Vegas. Little ones, well off the Strip — where you find toenail clippings in the shag carpet. That kind.”
“The kind of place you danced?”
“I never said it was upscale.”
“So he’s really your boyfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
“Or a Spanish nobleman?”
She wasn’t paying as much attention to the gun, or my belt. “Look, I need to get out of here. Ernesto’s hotels have casinos, you understand? Dumpy, but they’re cash businesses. When Darwin spoke at a conference in Vegas, Ernesto approached him about buying gold.” She raised her eyebrows. “Ernesto had skimmed money and needed somewhere to hide it.”
“Like a vault in Singapore.”
“Well, actually... Darwin told him the vault was in the Caymans. We’ve got one there too.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Ernesto went down to the Caymans Tuesday to visit his gold.”
Today was Thursday.
“And he didn’t find any?”
“The gold bars are there. Ernesto wanted one of them assayed — tested for gold purity, you know? That was the problem. They’re not exactly pure.”
That word again, “exactly.”
“How pure if not exactly?”
“Well, as I understand it — this is just what Darwin told me this afternoon — the gold bars are mostly tungsten. Tungsten weighs almost exactly the same amount as gold — there’s only about a quarter of one percent difference. So you electroplate a tungsten bar with gold, and it costs you maybe five hundred dollars but if it was solid gold it would be worth a hundred times that. Just looking at it, or weighing it, you’d think it’s real.”