Aboard Fado, Harry’s digital audio recorders were picking up everything he was hearing at the party, so Stoke didn’t pay too much attention to most of these drunks. Still, some of what they were saying would no doubt prove useful to some intel wonk at Langley down the line. Harry also had rigged an online feed to VICAM. He could send video stills of anyone who caught his eye to D.C., right from Fado, and get instant rap-sheet feedback, should any of these distinguished gentlemen have a criminal record.
Stoke was hoping to bump into Ramzan himself, but so far, the birthday boy hadn’t shown for his own gig. Wanted to be fashionably late, Stoke guessed, an old Chechen custom, maybe. The Russians he did meet were mostly big and noisy. Most of them were noisy in slurred English. Vodka, Stoli, Imperia, all headed down wide-open hatches by the gallon at various bar tables situated under the palms around the property.
Not a drinker, he’d passed on the vodka in favor of Diet Coke, but he’d put away about a pound of Beluga caviar so far and felt he could probably go for another. There were mountains of the delicious stuff everywhere, so you didn’t have to feel greedy spooning two tablespoons onto your toast points.
The women, he had to admit, were mostly beautiful. Lots of low-cut dresses, sequins, and major bling. A whole lot of very big blonde hair. You had a good cross-section of wives, trophy wives, girlfriends, and professionals. Some of them had to be imports from the Ukraine, some of them were clearly home-grown, and a few were right up there with South Florida’s finest.
Sharkey deserved a lot of credit and maybe a raise for the idea of using Fancha’s yacht as the surveil vehicle. Since the party was mostly on the back lawn around the pool, the docked boat was the only feasible way to cover this assignment. He had to laugh every time he looked out at Fado, thinking about the countless hours he’d spent staking out some dirtbag in Queens, munching doughnuts, freezing his tail off behind the wheel of some crummy Dodge Dart with a bad heater.
Down below in the cabin, positioned in front of his monitors and camera controls, Harry Brock was a busy boy. Every time a couple of guys or a group out on the lawn strayed anywhere near the boat, you’d see that portside outrigger come creeping around, dangling the little Skycam over their unsuspecting heads. He even had instant replay on the damn thing.
Harry had been right about the outrigger as a camera and boom mike. People were so deep into the cocktail hour now that nobody seemed to notice when the stray outrigger on the big sportfish did weird things, waving around over people’s heads like a magic wand.
Stoke decided to make his way inside the palazzo. People were coming and going, and it wouldn’t hurt to see what was going on indoors, beyond the camera’s reach. The house, mobbed with people, was pretty much what you’d expect, a style Stoke called Early Boca. Twenty-foot ceilings. A lot of heavily gilded furniture and artwork that was supposed to look as if it had come from some Italian castle. Big curving stairway with a huge bad portrait of the owner’s wife halfway up the curving wall. Chandeliers of melting icicles they’d maybe bought at Mickey’s Magic Castle Gift Shoppe over in Orlando.
He pushed his way into the foyer (fwa-yay, as his buddy Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve would say) and stepped through the double front doors at the home’s grand entrance. There he paused to admire the steady stream of gleaming Bentleys, Rollers, Escalades, Rangers, and big black Hummers. None of them, of course, could hold a candle to his 1965 black raspberry GTO convertible, capable of a standing quarter-mile in less than eight seconds. Street legal.
The gleaming parade of pimped-up rides was coming through the ornate iron entrance gates and rolling to a stop under the portico where the valet boys waited. A bright red Ferrari Enzo rumbled up, and three valet guys converged on it as if somebody had just dropped a million-dollar bill on the pavement, which they probably had.
Stoke checked his watch. It was past nine o’clock, and Fancha was supposed to sing “Happy Birthday” at nine-thirty sharp, so a lot of people were eager to get back to the pool. Stoke thought half the guests had probably come because she was singing. Wouldn’t surprise him if it was more than half. Girl was climbing the charts.
The woman he maybe loved was maybe, just maybe, on her way to stardom, and it made him proud to catch her name whispered around the room.
Have you heard that beautiful girl sing? Fancha? Go! Go out there! You’ve got to hear her!
Something was going on out on the front lawn. There was a white bakery truck, looked like, motor still running, pulled over on the grass, and the driver was standing outside surrounded by a few of the black-shirt boys. Pretty tense situation. Stoke decided he had time to go check it out.
“Fuck you doing, coming in the main gate?” one guy was screaming at the driver. “You didn’t see the sign, ‘Service Entrance,’ around the side? Whaddya, blind, you dumb shit?”
The delivery guy, who looked like a big blond bear in white pajamas, wasn’t backing down. He’d didn’t look as if he’d back down from Mike Tyson, to tell the truth. He got up in the guy’s face quick.
“Listen up, pal, like I said, I got the freaking birthday cake in the back there. It won’t fit through the pantry door. So I’m bringing it around to bring it in the front door. Because it’s wider. Okay? Just like your caterers in the kitchen told me to do. Awright with you, you skinny fuck?”
The driver’s white outfit had the name “Happy” stitched over his breast pocket. It said “Happy’s Bake Shoppe” on the side of the white truck. This Happy character was a big guy, seriously large, and the security guys were having some second thoughts about messing with his ass too much.
“Is there a problem?” Stoke asked, pushing his way past two of the black-shirted Russian muscle boys.
“There was one. Now we have another one. You. Who the hell are you?”
Russians so full of attitude lately, you notice that? Still pissed about that Cold War thing, Stoke figured. And now that they were rich, well, you know how that goes. He smiled at the guy, stuck out his hand.
“Sheldon Levy. Suncoast Artist Management. I’m coordinating this evening’s entertainment for your employer, Mr. Lukov. I hate to interrupt this little scuffle, but the lovely Fancha is scheduled to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the guest of honor in fifteen minutes. I’m afraid if we don’t get that cake through the door and out to the stage, all of our timing will go down the tubes. I don’t think Mr. Lukov would be very happy about that, do you gentlemen agree?”
Happy the Baker smiled at Stokely. “Finally, someone around here who makes some freaking sense.”
“Can I offer you a hand with the cake?” Stoke asked Happy.
“Nah, we’ll help him,” a black shirt said. “C’mon, guys, gimme a hand here with this freaking cake, all right?”
As the security team opened up the van and unloaded the huge white and pink cake, Stoke went over and offered Happy his hand. Something about the guy looked very familiar.
“Sheldon Levy,” he said.
“I’m Happy,” the baker said, pumping his hand. If he’d expected Stoke’s hand to be small and breakable, he was sorely disappointed.
“Yeah? You’re Happy, huh? Good thing your momma didn’t name you Gay, right?” Stoke laughed. The guy didn’t seem to get it.
“Have we met before?” Stoke said. He was sure he’d either met this guy or seen his picture fairly recently.
“The Steiner wedding?” Happy said. “Maybe that was it.”