Macklin drank some of his martini. The sheets on Faye's bed were lavender.
'Nobody else?'
'Nobody,' Faye said.
Staring up at the mirrored ceiling, she liked the way they looked. He was slim and smooth. He was so blond that his hair was nearly white. He looked a little pale now, but she knew he'd get his tan back. She loved the contrast of his white-blond hair and his tan skin. She examined herself carefully. Boobs still good. Legs still good. They ought to be. Forty-five minutes every day on the goddamned Stair Master She rolled onto her side, and looked at her butt. Tight. Stair Master does it again.
'Checking out the equipment?' Macklin said.
'Uh-huh.'
'Seems to be working okay,' Macklin said.
She giggled.
'How about yours?' she said.
'Pretty soon.'
They finished their martinis in silence.
'What are we going to do?' Faye said.
'The same thing mostly,' Macklin said, 'but I was thinking maybe we could try it in the chair.'
Faye giggled again.
'I don't mean that,' she said.
'I mean what are we going to do, you know, like with our life?'
'Besides this?'
'Besides this.'
Macklin smiled. He sat up higher in the bed and poured another martini for himself and one for Faye.
'Well, tomorrow,' Macklin said, 'we're going up to Paradise and look at real estate on Stiles Island.'
'What's Stiles Island?'
'Island in Paradise Harbor. It's connected to the rest of the town by a little bridge. Bridge is gated and there's a guard shack and a private security patrol. Everybody lives there is rich. They got a branch bank out there just for them.'
'How do you know about this place?'
'Guy I was in jail with, Lester Lang, kept talking about it, called it the mother lode.'
'You ever seen it?'
'Nope.'
'We going to buy property out there?' Faye said.
'Nope.'
'So why we going up there to look at real estate?'
'We're scoping the place.'
'For what?'
'For the mother of all stickups,' Macklin said.
Faye put her head against his shoulder and laughed.
'I'll drink to that,' she said, touching the rim of her glass to the rim of his.
THREE.
Suitcase Simpson came through the open door into Jesse's office without knocking.
He said, 'Jesse was that your ex-wife I seen on TV last night?'
'I don't know, Suit,' Jesse said.
'What did you see?'
'Channel Three News,' Simpson said.
'They got a new weather girl, Jenn Stone.'
She'd used her married name.
'Weather girl?' Jesse said.
'Yeah, they said she was from Los Angeles and were joking around with her about how it would be pretty different trying to report New England weather.'
'And it looked like Jenn?'
'Yeah, I only seen her that one time, but you know she's not somebody you forget.'
