She smiled and cocked her head, and of course her poise only added to her appeal. “Why would I be trying to play you?” she asked.
I wanted to snap her out of this mode, move her outside her comfort zone. So far, I hadn’t managed.
“Because you’re good at it,” I said, still looking at her, “and people like to do what they’re good at. Hell, if they gave out Academy Awards for what you do, I think you’d get Best Actress.”
Her eyes narrowed a fraction, but other than that she kept her cool. Still, I thought I might be heading in the right direction.
“You seem to have a rather low opinion of yourself,” she said.
I smiled, because I’d been half expecting something like that. Most men won’t do anything that could lessen their perceived chances of taking a gorgeous woman to bed. They’re horrified even at the thought that something might accidentally dim the temporary glow of an attractive woman’s sexual adulation, lest all those longing looks be exposed as farce, deflating the always fragile façade of the needy male ego. Delilah knew the dynamic. She had just explicitly acknowledged, even invoked it.
“Actually, I have a rather high opinion of myself,” I said. “But I’ve seen you working Belghazi, and he’s smarter than most. I know what you can do, and I want you to stop doing it with me. Assuming you can stop, of course. Or have you been running this game for so long that you can’t help yourself?”
For the first time I saw her lose a little poise. Her head retracted a fraction in a movement that was not quite a flinch, and her eyes dilated in a way that told me she’d just received a little helping of adrenaline.
“What do you want, then?” she asked, after a moment. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes were angry, her posture more rigid than it had been a moment earlier. The combination made her look quietly dangerous. I realized this was my first peek at the person behind the artifice, my first chance to see something other than what she wanted me to see.
The crazy thing was, it made her look better than ever. It was like seeing a woman’s real beauty after she’s removed the makeup that only served to obscure it, a glimpse of a geisha the more stunning shorn of her ritual white camouflage.
“The same thing you do,” I told her. “I want to make sure we don’t trip all over each other trying to do our jobs and both get killed in the process.”
“And what are our jobs?”
I smiled. “This is going to be tricky, isn’t it,” I said.
“Very,” she said. Her expression had transitioned from I’m-pissed-and-trying-not-to-show-it to something reserved and unreadable. I knew what I’d said had rattled her, although I wasn’t sure precisely what nerve I’d managed to touch, and I admired her swift recovery.
“Why don’t we start with what we know,” I said. “You want something from Belghazi’s computer.”
She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. That hint of incongruous good humor was back in her eyes.
“But you haven’t managed to get it yet,” I went on. “Belghazi keeps the computer with him all the time. When you finally got a crack at it, you couldn’t get past the password protection.”
“We should talk about the other things we know,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Like what you want with Belghazi.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got other business with Belghazi. What’s on his computer doesn’t interest me.”
“Yes, you seemed uninterested in his computer. More interested in him.”
I said nothing. There was no advantage in confirming any of her insights.
“And he was right there. Unconscious. Helpless. I asked myself, ‘Why did this man leave without finishing what he came for?’ ”
“You don’t know what I came for,” I said, but of course she did.
“You’d knocked me down, and I obviously didn’t have a weapon,” she said, looking at me. “I couldn’t have done anything to prevent you. And you knew it. But you didn’t follow through.”
I shrugged, still looking for a way to throw her off. “Maybe I didn’t want to harm a naked woman,” I said.
She shook her head. “I’ve known some hard men, men who can act without compunction. I recognize the type.”
“I wasn’t expecting you. You startled me.”
She smiled, and I knew I wasn’t changing her diagnosis. “Maybe. Or maybe your ‘business’ with Belghazi has to be carried out in a… circumspect way. So that no one would know that any business was done. And you couldn’t pull that off with someone else in the room.”
I hadn’t expected her to follow this line of reasoning. I’m usually good at putting myself in the other person’s shoes, anticipating his next move. But she had outplayed me on this one. Time to try to regain some initiative, give myself a second to think.
“It’s funny, I’m asking myself some of the same things about you,” I said. “For example, ‘Why hasn’t she or her people just taken the computer and run?’ ”
She smiled just a little, maybe conceding the point.
“Let me guess,” I went on. “If Belghazi realized that the information on the computer had been compromised, he would implement countermeasures. No, let me amend that. Because if Belghazi were the only one you were worried about, you’d just put him to sleep yourself and take the briefcase at your leisure. So he’s not the only one who might take countermeasures if it’s discovered that the computer has been compromised. There are others, people or organizations who would be affected by the information you’re trying to acquire. And when you acquire it, it’s critical that they not know. Is that about it? Maybe I’m not the only one whose moves might have to be ‘circumspect.’ ”
She cocked her head slightly as though I’d finally started to say something interesting. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, stealing is easy. Stealing without the victim knowing he’s been robbed, this takes some doing.”
The waitress brought our caipirinhas in frosted glasses and moved away. Delilah tipped hers back and took a long sip. “Like you,” she went on. “Killing is easy. Killing and making it look like something else? That would require some… artistry.”
She used “this” and “that” slightly mechanically, as I would expect from someone who had acquired English later in life. “Stealing” was “this.” “Killing” was “that.” The first was hers, the other, mine. I didn’t think these verbal cues were deliberate. I took them as small, additional signs that my conclusions about what she was after were correct.
We were silent for several moments, each digesting what the other had said, reassessing the situation.
She said, “It seems that we’re in mirror-image positions. Maybe we can help each other.”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” I told her, although I thought I did.
She shrugged. “Your presence makes it difficult for me to do my job. My presence makes it hard for you to do yours. Mirror images.”
“Your mirrors might be a little distorted,” I said, taking a swallow of the caipirinha. “If something happens to you, Belghazi would be alarmed. Or his demise might not look ‘circumspect.’ But if something happens to me…”
Her smile broadened in a way that reminded me of Tatsu, the way he would be pleased when I made a connection he was expecting would be beyond me, and I knew that she was well aware of this flaw in her “mirror image” theory.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s true. My people made the same point when we discussed the situation. Some of them wanted to send a team in to remove you.”
“Did you tell them they’d have to get in line?”
She laughed. “I told them I thought that kind of hostile action would be a mistake. I saw the way you assessed the room when you came into the casino. I see the way you subtly check your back all the time. Even this table, you chose it because it was in the corner. So you could sit with your back to the wall.”