“Very different.”
“Very. Around four o’clock? You have a nice one to show me?”
“Does it need to be furnished?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Good,” she said, sounding relieved. “There’s a lovely two-bedroom in the Bromwich, ocean view. I could meet you in the lobby.”
“Fine,” he said, and hung up, and drove the Subaru back to the airport. He left it in its old spot in long-term parking, picked up the Jaguar, and drove to the exit.
This clerk was a Hispanic woman, chunky and bored, who said, “You come in today? This the long-term.”
“I forgot my passport, gotta go back for it, screws up the whole day.”
“Tough,” she said, and gave him his change.
6
The condos along the narrow strip of island south of the main part of Palm Beach yearn toward a better life: something English, somewhere among the landed gentry. The craving is there in the names of the buildings: the Windsor, the Sheffield, the Cambridge. But whatever they call themselves, they’re still a line of pale concrete honeycombs on a sandbar in the sun.
Parker arrived at the Bromwich at five after four. Two Hispanic gardeners worked on the long bed of fuchsia and impatiens along the low ornamental wall in front with the place’s name on it in block gold letters. Signs at the entrance indicated residents’ parking to the right, visitors’ to the left. The visitors’ area was farther from the building.
Parker drove to the gleaming blacktop expanse of the visitors’ parking lot and left the Jag next to Leslie’s blue Lexus. He walked through the sun to the boxy cream-colored building, seeing none of the residents, though the other lot was full of their cars, mostly big old-fashioned boats, traditional Detroit iron.
The lobby was amber faux marble with a uniformed black security guard at a long chest-high kidney-shaped faux-marble desk. The lobby seating was several round puffs of magenta sofa; Leslie rose from one of them. Today her suit was peach, her pin a gold rose. “Mr. Parmitt,” she said with her working-hours smile, and came forward to shake his hand. “Right on time.”
“Afternoon, Ms. Mackenzie,” he said. Her hand was soft and dry and without pressure.
She turned to the guard to say, “We’re looking at 11-C, Jimmy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave Parker a disinterested look, then looked downward again. He had the Globe newspaper open on his desk, among the phone systems and security screens.
The elevators were around behind the desk. As they rode up together, she said, “You don’t want a condo, you want a place to talk.”
He shrugged. “What else?”
“So I’m hired,” she said with a bland smile, as though it hardly mattered.
He said, “It doesn’t work exactly that way.”
“You’ll explain it,” she said, and the elevator slowed to a stop.
He waited for her to lead the way, but instead of leaving the elevator she held down the button that would keep the door open and said, “If you have to check me for a wire again today, we’ll leave now.”
He shook his head. “Once was enough.”
“It certainly was,” she said, and led the way out of the elevator and down to unlock them into 11-C.
It was completely empty, as bright and bare as the beach down below. Their shoes made echoing sounds on the blond wood floor, bouncing off the hard white walls and, in the living room, the uncurtained wall of glass doors that opened to the balcony. The place had been repainted, to make it ready for sale, and the smell of the paint was a faint tang in the air.
Parker crossed to open the sliding balcony door. It was hot out here, but with a breeze. The afternoon shadow of the building lay on the beach down below, where no one sat or swam.
Pink plastic-sheet walls on both sides shielded the view of the balconies to right and left, and openwork iron benches were built into both of those walls. Pointing to one of them, “We’ll sit here,” he said.
“You have to know,” she told him, “that wall isn’t soundproof.”
The outer edge of the balcony was a waist-high pink plastic-sheet wall, with a black iron railing along the top. Parker held to it, leaned forward, and looked around the outer edge of the privacy wall at the balcony next door. Potted plants filled the bench he could see over there, and the rest of the space was occupied by a white plastic table, four chairs to match, a gas grill, and a StairMaster. That apartment’s glass wall was completely shielded inside with white drapes. There was no one on the balcony.
He leaned back to turn and say, “There’s nobody there.”
She was wide-eyed, both hands pressed to her chest. “Don’t do that,” she said.
“Sit down, Leslie.”
They sat side by side on the iron bench against the pink wall, he facing inward, she facing the view. He said, “I’m going to tell you what’s going on.”
“All right,” she said. Now she looked solemn, as though she were being inducted into somebody’s secret rites, like the Masons or Cosa Nostra.
He said, “Don’t ask me any questions, because I’m only going to tell you what I want to tell you.”
“I understand.”
“All right. The guy you know as Roderick owes me some money.”
She looked disappointed. “It’s some kind of debt?”
“Some kind. He’s with two other guys. Have you seen them?”
“I’ve never even seen Roderick.”
“Well, the three came here with just enough cash to put the down payment on that house. Some of the cash they used was mine.”
She said, “Do they intend to roll it over? Don’t tell me they have a buyer.”
“Leslie, listen,” he said. “What they are is thieves. I don’t mean from me, I mean that’s what they do, who they are.”
“You, too,” she said.
He said, “They want the house because there’s a job going down and they know they can’t get off the island afterwards.”
“If anything big happens,” she said, “they raise all the drawbridges. And they patrol the Waterway very seriously.”
“That’s why they don’t want to have to leave. They want to be established here, already known and not suspect. If I rented this condo here right now, and two weeks from now it happens, the cops would be at the door, they’d want to know all about me.”
“And you two months old,” she said.
“So that’s why Melander — he’s Roderick — that’s why he wanted to be already in place, nobody wondering about him.”
“They’re going to do a big robbery,” she said, “and then go back to that house and wait for the excitement to die down.”
“That’s right.”
“But they used your money to buy the house.”
“A quarter of it.”
“For the down payment,” she said. “So when they do this robbery, you’re going to be there to get your part of the money back.”
“To get it all, Leslie,” he said. “They shouldn’t have taken my money.”
She studied him. “You mean that.”
“Of course I mean it.”
She nodded, thinking about this. “So it’s a lot of money.”
“Yes.”
“And some of it will come to me, because I’m not cheating you, I’m helping you.”
“Yes.”
“If they hadn’t cheated you, you would take a quarter.”
“Yes.”
She looked past him, out at the ocean. “This is a little scarier than I thought,” she said. He waited, and she looked at him again. She said, “You’re here to find out if you can trust me, and I’m here to find out if I can trust you, and if either of us guesses wrong, we’re in trouble.”
“That’s right.”
“But I think,” she said, “if I guess wrong, I can be in a lot worse trouble than you.”