Killer Move

I thought about getting a sandwich but couldn’t get the idea to generate any traction and so I wound up going to the Ben & Jerry’s instead. The area inside had the air, as usual, of having recently withstood a concerted attack by forces loyal to some other ice cream manufacturer. I noticed a girl I hadn’t seen before, standing behind the counter.

“Hey,” she said as I wandered up.

She was skinny, early twenties, curly black hair in goth/emo style. Drapey black clothes under the corporate apron, a stud through her nose. The effect was not unattractive, though had I been the place’s manager I might have wanted the staff to look like they’d be dishing out fresh dairy products full of organic, carbon-neutral goodness, rather than bat wings sprinkled with toad’s blood.

“Hey,” I said. “I’ll take a . . .”

I trailed off. I actually had no idea what I wanted. Maybe nothing. The conversation with Max had pissed me off more than I’d realized, and I was struggling to pull my mood back up. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted ice cream or if I was just in here to get out of the tail end of the afternoon’s heat.

“I know what you need,” the girl said.

“You do?”

“You bet. You want to take a seat outside? Oh, and give me six bucks. That allows for the generous tip you will wish to confer upon me, after the fact.”

Slightly bemused, I did as she asked. Five minutes later she emerged onto the sidewalk with a bowl of something pale orange in color. I peered at it.

“Hell is that?”

“Mascarpone Mandarin frozen yogurt, with a twist.”

She stood there pertly while I took a tentative mouthful. It was refreshing and yet not too tart, and actually very nice. “Good call,” I said. “I’m liking it.”

“It’s supposed to be called Multimazingmagical Mandarin Mascarpone Madness, for your future ordering convenience. Only, saying all that makes me want to kill myself.”

“I’ll remember it. You nailed me.”

“It’s my superpower. One of several, I might add.”

“I thought people were only allowed one superpower.”

“Nah. That’s just the story they put around.”

I reached my hand up. “Bill Moore. I work up at The Breakers, on Longboat. For Shore Realty.”

She shook, a smart up-and-down motion. “Cassandra.” She slowly turned about the waist to point back at the ice cream parlor. “I work . . . here.”

I ate the yogurt slowly, but the process still filled up less than half an hour. Toward the end the server girl came back out again, divested of white apron and carrying a long black coat.

“Have a good evening, Mr. Moore.”

“You too.”

Halfway to the corner she stopped and turned around. “I never asked. What’s your superpower?”

I was slightly dismayed at not being able to come up with a smart answer right off the bat. I shrugged, rolled my eyes, as if to suggest it was such a long story that I didn’t know where to start, but it was weak.

“Aha,” she said, however. “You’ve yet to discover it. How exciting.”

She winked, and disappeared around the corner.

I got to half past eight largely by catching up on blogs on the phone and updating my Facebook profile with links to the best of them, and then drove back across to Longboat Key. I continued past The Breakers and a succession of similar developments to the upper half of the island. The southerly end of Longboat holds condos on the gulf side and a few communities on the other, bay side—the latter not dissimilar to the kind of place where Steph and I lived, except every house had access to the waterway and they all cost about three times as much as ours. The top half of the island gets a lot narrower and holds larger private dwellings. While they don’t reach the heights of the real glamour compounds down on Siesta Key, there are few that don’t fall into the “price on application” bracket. The address I had been given lay about midway along this section, gulf side.

I slowed as I got into range, peering at the properties I passed. For the half mile coming up to Warner’s place, everything looked swish and expensive and cool. No minicondos, nothing in danger of being pulled down and noisily rebuilt, nothing overgrown on account of a diminishing and cantankerous oldster inside, a relic of the premodern phase of the key, who might raise lunatic enviro-hippy objections to your plans for six additional tennis courts. All good.

I pulled into the driveway, which curved through a piece of landscaped and watered gardens. About forty yards from the highway it revealed a set of gates hidden from the road within a small grove of palms. Also good.

I stopped in front of the gates, wound down the window, and jabbed the buzzer. Nothing happened. I waited a couple minutes and then pressed it again. Nothing continued to happen, or happened again.

I gave it five minutes and a couple more presses. Then I got out of the car and walked up to the gates, wondering if Warner was waiting in the driveway space beyond. There was no sign of anyone. A few lamps were lit around the area, but the house itself looked dark.

I went back to the car and pulled Karren’s notes out of my folder. A quick look was sufficient to confirm I was at the right house. I got out my phone, then realized I didn’t have a number for Warner. He’d taken mine, but deftly circumvented my attempts to get his. I searched back through my call history until I found incoming from just before six that evening.

It rang for quite a while before anyone answered.

“Bill Moore,” I said in a clipped voice. “I’m supposed to be meeting with David. Right now.”

“I don’t work for him twenty-four-seven, you know.” Melania sounded tetchy. I could hear the sound of a television in the background.

“Neither do I,” I said. “It remains to be seen whether I work for him at all. My point is I’m at the house, he’s not, and it’s after quarter past.”

“Christ,” she muttered. There was a pause. “Oh god,” she said then, contrite. “I’m so sorry. I just checked the BlackBerry. His dinner is running late so he asked me to see if you could meet him in Sarasota, around ten?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her to inform her boss that he could meet me during office hours at Shore, or not at all. It seemed dumb to blow it when I’d already sacrificed the evening to the cause, however, and I’d be driving that way home anyhow.

“Am I meeting him anywhere in particular? Or is guessing the venue an exercise for the Realtor?”

“Krank’s,” she said quickly. “I think you met him there once before? Look, Mr. Moore, I’m really sorry. He’s got your phone number, right? I don’t know why he didn’t just call you himself.”

Because that’s also how these people roll, I could have told her. The big house and the money are not enough. That’s just cash wealth—and existential wealth is what counts. You’ve got to make it clear to everyone, every day, that your life is different, that you don’t have to jump through the conventional hoops, that politeness is for those who cannot afford to behave otherwise. That you rule. That you’re god.

You learn this within days of starting in the luxury real estate business, and I looked forward very much to behaving this way myself.

As a start, I ended the call without saying anything more. If she had any sense, Melania would have realized that I now had a choice over whether I revealed that she’d failed to pass on her boss’s message. Which meant she owed me, which in turn meant that being jerked around would wind up playing to my advantage in the end. If you’re sharp enough to see through the games people play, you start to pull ahead. Bill Moore understands this.

Bill Moore is fit for purpose.

Except . . . the asshole didn’t show up there, either.

Krank’s is a newish bar/restaurant on Main in Sarasota at the intersection with Lemon Avenue (the street name a remnant of the days when the town was only here to grow and ship citrus), the kind of zeitgeist-crazed trend pit where you have to be ever vigilant in reminding yourself that you are not there merely to kowtow to the