“That part’s easy, you get it out of a magazine. But it’s only a cover, Jack, while I change into something else.”
“You don’t mean clothes.”
“No, it’s more like changing your skin, your identity.”
“Are we talking about another mystical experience?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think you’re going to turn into?”
“I don’t know that either.”
She kept looking at him, looking at him in a strange way. Or else it was the mood, the quiet, the rain, faint daylight showing in the windows of the room. But he could feel something.
“You’re different every time I see you.”
She said, “So are you.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I was burnt out.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was touching without feeling.”
“You were taking care of people that need you.”
“There are always people who need you. They’re everywhere you look.”
“I thought you left because of Amelita.”
“That was a reason to leave when I did. But the time was coming… I finished one life when I became a Sister of Saint Francis and I finished that one when I left Nicaragua.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I need to be used.”
He never knew what she was going to say.
“I need to lose myself in something.”
“You don’t think this deal we’re into, walk off with five million, is gonna require any concentration?”
“Yes, but what’s my part? I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re the brains.”
Her reaction came slowly, a look of mild surprise. “You see this as a game.”
“It isn’t like going to the office.”
“You sort of shrug at the idea. But you’re willing to do it. Why?”
“Money.”
“No, you were willing right away, before you knew we were going to keep it. Remember? You said we’d be doing something for mankind. Were you serious?”
“I don’t know…”
“Are you ever serious?”
“Sure, I am. It’s just, I don’t see that many things to be serious about.”
She began to grin, across the coffee table from him in the dim afternoon light, and it surprised him. She said, “Jack, I love you. You know why?”
He felt that tingle again on the back of his neck.
“You remind me of someone.”
The tingling stopped.
“What we do is serious, our motive. But how we go about it is something else, isn’t it? How we look at it, our attitude.”
“How we look back on it a year from now,” Jack said, “and think it was pretty funny. If it works, and if we’re not looking back on it from the joint. You have to be optimistic, assume you’re gonna make it. And you think of it as a game, because then it’s not as scary.”
He could make out lights in her eyes, her lips parted, Lucy beginning to smile at him again. He wanted to ask her who he reminded her of, but Cullen came back in, followed by the housekeeper.
Dolores said, “Phone for Mr. Delaney.”
Roy’s voice said, “Crispin Antonio Reyna was convicted in Florida, 1982, of uttering fraudulent checks and did nine months in South Dade FCI.”
“What’s uttering mean?”
“Like hanging paper, only a higher-class way of doing it. He was brought up another time, falsified his 4473 making a multiple gun purchase, also Dade County. Trying to buy five dozen model 92s Berettas he said were for a gun club. The indictment fell through. The feds tried to get him for running dope from Florida to Baton Rouge, said he was selling it to the students up at LSU. They couldn’t make that one stick either. Crispin Antonio’s originally a Cuban. His family moved to Nicaragua in ’59, he was an officer in the National Guard and came here in ’79, to Miami. Franklin de Dios, it says his nationality is Miskito Indian, born in Musawas, Nicaragua. Came to Miami a year ago and was a major suspect in a triple homicide, but was never brought to trial.”
“They don’t sound like they’re with Immigration,” Jack said.
“Except Second District radio cars were told to leave ’em be. They were assumed to be working as federal agents.”
“Assumed to be-what kind?”
“Call Wally Scales and ask him. His number’s 226-5989.”
“Roy, what is he?”
“He’s the fucking CIA, Jack. I want to know what side we’re supposed to be on, the good guys or the bad guys.”
THERE WAS NO WAY to miss Little One, even at night, the size of him coming along Bienville from the hotel, toward Royal, where Jack was waiting near the corner. Little One put out his hand and palmed Jack the room key. He said, “That fucking Roy. Okay, now we even. Tell him that.”
“We appreciate it.”
“You better ‘preciate it. Leave the key under the chifforobe, where the maid can find it. See, like the man dropped it. The man’s mostly drunk, having a good time. He won’t know.”
“I may have to go back in.”
“Come on, Jack.” Little One twisting his head, in pain. “You see how far out my neck is right now?”
“I’m not gonna take anything. The guy won’t even know I was there. In and out, take me ten minutes.”
“Yeah, you slick, like all those boys at ‘Gola use to think of themselves, cool dudes. I remember correctly, Jack, was up there you and I met, wasn’t it?”
“I did something pretty dumb one time,” Jack said. “I should’ve known better. This is different. One more time, that’s it.”
“Yeah, like the Count say, ‘One more once,’ huh? Only that was ‘April in Paris’ and this is April in N’Awlins, man, gets hot and sticky.”
“I’m not back in business, anything like that.”
“Just want to check the man out.”
“That’s all. Take a look around.”
“Man with the Cuban skin and five-hundred-dollar suits. Sweep his room, see if he’s got a badge or any bugs ‘fore you start to deal.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Jack, when you get back up to the farm, give my best to Smoke and Too Good, and that cute little rascal Minne Mo, if he still there. Lemme think who else…”
Jack walked through the empty lobby and across one end of the garden courtyard to the cocktail lounge, cream-colored in soft lights, elegant, and not a soul here. The Oriental barman came to life and poured Jack a vodka.
If he were back working his trade he would have looked in, turned around, and walked out to find a big downtown hotel full of noise, full of tourists and people with name tags drinking and having fun in the bar. He’d become someone else as he felt the glow, breathed the scent of girls in cocktail dresses, girls scouting their own game while Jack looked for ladies wearing respectable diamonds, husbands who brought billfolds out of their jackets or folds of currency in silver clips. He’d take a few days to sort them out, then ride up in the elevator with a likely pair, get off a floor below the button they punch and run up the stairs to watch them going into their suite. An hour later he’d try their door to see if they put on the chain. The next day he’d slip into those rooms while they were snapping pictures in Jackson Square; go through the drawers, their suitcases and bathroom kits, look in their shoes, feel through clothes hanging in the closet. He’d look at the door chain then. If they used it he’d remove the chain and replace it with one he’d brought along that had three or four more links in it. The couple would slip the chain on that night and never notice the difference. He’d come along later, open the door with his fire key, and be able to reach in and slip off the chain. Then hook it up again on the way out, if it was a better-than-average score and he was feeling good. Or else he could cut it going in.
Do all that, get away with it, and he couldn’t tell anyone about it.
He’d hear salesmen bullshitting the girls, trying to impress them with how many computers they’d sold, and he’d sit there at the bar or reach for something like, “Didn’t you and I do a modeling shoot last year?” Or he’d tell them he was learning English and put on a half-assed French accent.