“But anybody could have it.”
“No.” He shook his head, adamant. “It’s not just anybody. It is this man who was at Beranger’s, who is now up the river, and… and you need to go up there and get the damn thing for me… for us.”
Oh, right. And that’s what this was all about? Levi welcoming her with open arms, not because she looked like a guttersnipe, but because he thought he could order her around?
Good God, the man was delusional.
“So where am I supposed to go?” Really, it couldn’t be this easy, but he looked so relieved when she asked that for a moment she thought it was going to be this easy.
“You don’t need to know that.”
The hell she didn’t, but she could let it ride for a minute or two.
“You’ll be going with Gervais, and he knows the name of the place and where it is.”
“Uh, what about you?” she asked. “Where are you going to be?”
He slumped back in his chair and squinted up at her from under his bushy gray eyebrows-and he burped.
“Suzi, you know I’m not a well man.” He reached for more champagne and filled his glass.
No, she didn’t. Overweight, old, and out of shape, yes, flat-out cowardly, yes, but not unwell.
“Actually, you look great, Levi,” she lied.
He beamed for just a second or two at the compliment. “So do you, my dear. You know, you’ve always been one of my favorites.”
“Thank you.”
“We need to work together on this,” he continued, taking a short gulp of wine before he continued. “Gervais wouldn’t know an authentic artifact if it hit him in the head, but you will, and if we present a solid front, this other man can’t play us off against each other.” He was making the hard sell and proving once again that for a real player, money trumped sex every time. “The piece starts at a million, we both know that, and he will, too, but working together, maybe we can keep the price from going to five, which means we both make money, profits to be split fifty-fifty.”
He had a buyer. She could see it in his watery gaze, and he was offering her a cut of the money, which told her exactly what he thought about this whole “up the river” plan-sketchy at best, dangerous at worst.
“What’s your client willing to pay?” All she needed was a name, and he’d have to give her one before she got on a boat heading anywhere.
He hedged for a minute, then said, “Eight.”
Which meant ten.
“Who is it?” she asked, even knowing he wouldn’t say. Push, shove, push back, pull-it was the game they played.
“He’s Japanese.”
“Ahh,” she said. All the good stuff was going to Japan these days.
“What about you?” he asked. “What’s your client willing to pay?”
“Twenty.” Twenty thousand, not million, but that was a minor difference in this situation.
His eyes widened for the briefest moment, and she knew he was hooked.
“Twenty? Well, yes, then, I think we go with your client on the Sphinx, and I’ll find my Japanese friend some other exquisite Middle Kingdom artifact.”
And there she was, making another fifty-fifty deal on something no one she knew had ever laid eyes on.
“Your buyer isn’t interested in a chance at immortality?”
“Suzi, please.” Levi gave her a long-suffering look. “The stories are good for increasing the price. If I had a dollar for every four-thousand-year-old magic statue I’ve handled, I’d be retired in the south of France by now.”
She, too, but she’d never handled a magic statue endorsed by the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.
“So where am I going tomorrow morning?” she asked again.
He just stared at her, blinking owlishly silently perturbed. She knew he didn’t like being pushed once, let alone twice-but neither did she, so she stared right back.
“You’ll have to shrust me on this,” he said, starting to slur his words.
Trust, she was sure, was what he meant, and the hell she did.
She scooted her chair back and started to rise, but he caught her arm with his hand and held her in place.
“Sit back down, S-uzi,” he whined. “Pul-lease, you need to-”
That’s as far as he got.
“Mr. Asher,” a strong masculine voice interrupted with a tone of command she instantly recognized.
Dax.
She turned and found him closing in on her and Levi.
The old man quickly released her, then immediately looked for his men.
“They went back into the casino,” Dax informed him, pulling up a chair from the next table. “We need to talk.”
“And you…are?” Levi asked, trying to draw himself up into a figure with some authority-and failing. Despite his effort, he was still slumped in his chair, all sweaty and drunk.
“Danny Kane, from The Daily Inquirer,” Dax said, flashing his press pass. “I’m down here following a story, and-”
“I’m, uh, sure that I don’t talk to reporters,” Levi said, not actually sounding too sure of anything. “And, Suzi dear”-he turned to her and started to rise shakily out of his chair-”I don’t think you should talk to any, uh, reporters either.”
“No, Levi,” she agreed, being careful not to look over at Dax. She stood, too. “Do you want me to walk you up to your room?” He wasn’t very stable on his feet
“No. No, my dear.” He was holding on to the table. “It’s been a frightful day, truly frightful, and I’m not feeling all that well.”
After four shots, numerous glasses of champagne, and a couple of pounds of deep-fried squid and bacon-wrapped dates, Suzi wasn’t sure that she’d be feeling very well either.
“Yes, Levi, I understand, but-”
“Ah, Gervais.” His gaze shifted to somewhere behind her, and his face brightened. He lifted his hand and beckoned the man over, then returned his attention to her. “You will be here in the morning, right? We have a deal?”
“Yes, but it would be best if you told me-”
He let out a short laugh. “Oh, no, Suzi. No, no. I’m not that drunk. In the morning. You can go with Gervais.”
Dammit.
The burly Frenchman hurried to Levi’s side, took him by the arm, and the two of them started off.
Dammit. Watching him leave just took it out of her, her last ounce of strength. The day had been too long, too brutal, too awful. Frightful, just like Levi had said. All she’d wanted was one damn name to make it all worthwhile, and she hadn’t been able to get it.
She turned to Dax, but before she could say anything, Levi called her name.
“Suzi… dear?”
She shifted her attention back to where he was standing a few feet away, Gervais by his side, still holding on to him, a small, pudgy old man in a very damp and wrinkled pale blue suit.
“Yes,” she said.
“I never got the sh-chance to, well, because He paused for a second, his brow furrowing as he looked at her. “Well, because we haven’t really run into each other lately, but I’m sorry.”
Sorry about something and drunk. She turned back to Dax, hoping to come up with something to say, because the “sorry” word wasn’t going to work for her, not with him. She was on a mission, not a social outing.
“About the girl in Ukraine,” Levi said from behind her back, his voice suddenly sounding painfully clear. “The one you’d set up with Pierre Dulcine in New York, to work in Dulcine’s gallery. He told me the girl was killed in Odessa, on vacation or something, such a terrible tragedy.”
Yes, a terrible tragedy, and poor old Levi didn’t know the half of it.
She took a breath but couldn’t quite find the strength to turn around and face him. It was too much at the end of a bad day, the same way the girl’s death had been too much three months ago. An eighteen-year-old Alabama girl who’d thought she was heading for a life of adventure in Europe, to work at a first-class resort. Instead, she’d ended up at a fourth-rate brothel on the shores of the Black Sea, a grim existence full of brutality and meagerness, and she’d died there.