Flight: AMERICAN AIRLINES 1635
Departure: SPNDRFT INTL 9:30 AM
Arrivaclass="underline" SAN JUAN PR 2:11 PM
Date: 13JUNE-SUNDAY
Flight: AMERICAN AIRLINES 5374
Departure: SAN JUAN PR 3:00 PM
Arrivaclass="underline" TORTOLA BEEF IS 3:39 PM
Which made her wonder if he'd already booked the flights.
So she kept surfing.
CARELLA WAS SITTING there at the desk with his head on his folded arms, wondering why this wedding today had been so joyless for him, wondering why he hadn't danced with either his mother or his sister today, wondering why both the champagne and the music had seemed so flat today. And he thought, My father should be here today. He thought, My father should still be alive. But of course, his father was dead.
Luigi Fontero stopped in the doorway to the banquet hall's small office, looked in, puzzled, and then went to the desk, and came around it, and put his hand on Carella's shoulder.
'Steve?' he said. 'Ma che cosa? What's the matter?'
Carella looked up into his face.
'Figlio mio,' Luigi said. 'My son. Dica mi. Tell me.'
And Carella said, 'I miss him so much,' and threw himself into Luigi's arms, and began sobbing again.
*
SHE WAS WRITING for him when he got back to the apartment with the violin. He set it down on the hall table, next to the phone there, as casually as if the Strad were worth a nickel instead of more than a million. He put the blue sports bag containing the Uzi on the floor then, just under the table. Turning to her, he said, 'I see you got back all right.'
'Oh, yes,' she said. Took a taxi over from the Knowl-ton. Hardly any traffic at all.' She nodded at the violin case. 'I see you got back all right, too,' she said.
'Indeed.' He came across the room to her, arms outstretched. 'What've you been doing?' he asked.
'Surfing your computer,' she said.
'Oh?'
'Yes.'
He looked at her. Arms still stretched to embrace her, but not so sure now. She couldn't tell whether the look on his face was quizzical or amused or just what. She didn't much care what it was; she knew what she knew.
'Now why'd you do that?' he asked.
Quizzical, she guessed. The look. Or amused. Not at all menacing. Not yet, anyway.
'Oh, just keeping myself busy,' she said. 'A girl can learn lots of things from a computer.'
'And did you learn lots of things?'
'I learned how much the fiddle there is worth.'
'I told you how much it's worth.'
'Seven figures, you said. Isn't that right?'
'Yep.'
'That's what the computer said, too.'
'Why'd you have to go to the computer to learn what I'd already . . . ?'
'You didn't tell me you were stealing a precious violin, Adam.'
'There was no need for you to know that.'
'No, there was only a need for me to socialize with junkies . . .'
'You were free to choose your own messeng
'. . . and fuck a bodyguard, and let a chauffeur think I was about to fuck him.'
'Is something wrong, Lissie?' he asked, trying to look concerned and pleasant and caring.
'Oh yes, something is wrong,' she said, and reached into her handbag, and pulled out an American Airlines ticket folder and flapped it on the air. 'This is wrong,' she said.
'Where'd you get that, Liss?'
'Top drawer of your office desk. Right under the computer.'
'You have been busy.'
'It's a one-way ticket to Tortola,' she said. 'Made out to Adam Fen.'
'There's another ticket in that drawer, Liss.'
'No, there isn't. I turned it upside down and inside out, I looked through that whole damn desk, and your dresser, too, and all the pockets in all the suits and jackets in your closet, and there is no other ticket. There is just this one ticket, Adam. Your ticket. You never planned to take me with you at all, did you?'
'Where'd you get such an idea, Liss? Of course you're coming with me. Let me find the other ticket. Let me show you
'There is no other ticket, Adam.'
'Liss.'
'There is none!' she said, and shook the folder on the air again. 'You never planned to give me any part of that million-whatever, did you? You just used me, the same way Ame Carter used me. I was just a handy little whore to you, wasn't I?'
'Well,' he said, and smiled, and spread his hands reasonably, 'that's what you are, isn't it, Liss.'
Which was perhaps a mistake.
He realized this when he saw her dip into her bag again and come up with not another airline ticket, but with what looked instead like a small nine-millimeter pistol.
'Careful,' he said.
'Oh yes, careful,' she said, and waved the gun recklessly in the air. 'Know what else I found on your computer, Adam? I found
'I can assure you, Lissie, there is another ticket in my desk. Let's go look for it, shall. . . ?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'We'll look for it togeth
'No, we won't look for it together because it doesn't exist. Would you like to know what else I found?'
He said nothing.
He was wondering how he could get to that blue sports bag under the hall table, wondering how he could get his hands on the Uzi in that bag before she did something foolish here. He was not eager to get shot again. It had taken too long for Dr. Rickett to fix him up after the last time a woman shot him. He did not think she was going to shoot him, but he did not like the way she kept tossing that gun around so negligently.
'I found a file titled "PROSPECTS,"' she said, 'and another one titled "BUYERS," which had some of the same names and addresses in them, little bit of duplication there, Adam? Little redundancy?'
He said nothing.
He was wondering how he could back slowly away from her, toward the sports bag, without tipping his hand. He certainly did not want to get shot here. Not again.
'I'm figuring these are the names of people who might care to own that little Stradivarius across the room, Adam, am I right?'
He still said nothing.
'Names and addresses of all those prospects and buyers, I don't think they'd give a rat's ass who they bought that fiddle from, you or me, so long as they get their hands on it, am I right?'
'Backups, Liss. Merely backups. In case the fiddler refuses to pay the piper.'
'Meaning?'
'We'll offer the Strad to Sallas first. If he pays what we want for it. . .'
'We?'
'Of course, Liss. You and I. We. Us. If he gives us what the fiddle's worth, it's his again. If not, as you surmised, there are all those redundant prospects and buyers out there. Can you imagine such people in this world, Liss? People who don't know how to play the violin, who don't care at all about music, people who just want to own something beautiful and precious.'
'I can imagine them, yes.'
'Like you,' he said, and tried a smile. 'Beautiful and . . .'
'Bulshit!' she said, and waved the gun again.
'Careful with that thing,' he said, and spread the fingers of his right hand on the air, sort of patting the air with them, urging caution.
'What I'm going to do right now,' she said, 'is buy myself a ticket to Paris or London or Rome or Berlin or Buenos Aires or Mexico City or Riyadh, where all these backups seem to live, and see which one of them might care to take this fiddle off my hands. I feel sure
'Why don't we just do that together?' he suggested.
'No, why don't we just not do that together!' she said, and rattled the gun on the air again. 'I want to be on that plane alone. Without you, Mr. Fen. Just me and the Strad, Mr. Fen. And then I'll see about all these violin-lovers all over the world. Maybe they'll be willing to pay a handy little whore even more than
'I never called you a . . .'
'Oh, didn't you?' she said, and waved the gun at the floor. 'Lie down, Adam. Face down. Hands behind your head. Do it!'