‘You have to know,’ she told him, ‘that wall isn’t soundproof.’
The outer edge of the balcony was a waist-high pink plastic-sheet wall, with a black iron railing along the top. Parker held to it, leaned forward, and looked around the outer edge of the privacy wall at the balcony next door. Potted plants filled the bench he could see over there, and the rest of the space was occupied by a white plastic table, four chairs to match, a gas grill, and a StairMaster. That apartment’s glass wall was completely shielded inside with white drapes. There was no one on the balcony.
He leaned back to turn and say, ‘There’s nobody there.’
She was wide-eyed, both hands pressed to her chest. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said.
‘Sit down, Lesley.’
They sat side by side on the iron bench against the pink wall, he facing inward, she facing the view. He said, ‘I’m going to tell you what’s going on.’
‘All right,’ she said. Now she looked solemn, as though she were being inducted into somebody’s secret rites, like the Masons or Cosa Nostra.
He said, ‘Don’t ask me any questions, because I’m only going to tell you what I want to tell you.’
‘I understand.’
‘All right. The guy you know as Roderick owes me some money.’
She looked disappointed. ‘It’s some kind of debt?’
‘Some kind. He’s with two other guys. Have you seen them?’
‘I’ve never even seen Roderick.’
‘Well, the three came here with just enough cash to put the down payment on that house. Some of the cash they used was mine.’
She said, ‘Do they intend to roll it over? Don’t tell me they have a buyer.’
‘Lesley, listen,’ he said. ‘What they are is thieves. I don’t mean from me, I mean that’s what they do, who they are.’
‘You, too,’ she said.
He said, They want the house because there’s a job going down and they know they can’t get off the island afterwards.’
‘If anything big happens,’ she said, ‘they raise all the drawbridges. And they patrol the Waterway very seriously.’
‘That’s why they don’t want to have to leave. They want to be established here, already known and not suspect. If I rented this condo here right now, and two weeks from now it happens, the cops would be at the door, they’d want to know all about me.’
‘And you two months old,’ she said.
‘So that’s why Melander he’s Roderick that’s why he wanted to be already in place, nobody wondering about him.’
‘They’re going to do a big robbery,’ she said, ‘and then go back to that house and wait for the excitement to die down.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But they used your money to buy the house.’
‘A quarter of it.’
‘For the down payment,’ she said. ‘So when they do this robbery, you’re going to be there to get your part of the money back.’
‘To get it all, Lesley,’ he said. ‘They shouldn’t have taken my money.’
She studied him. ‘You mean that.’
‘Of course I mean it.’
She nodded, thinking about this. ‘So it’s a lot of money.’
‘Yes.’
‘And some of it will come to me, because I’m not cheating you, I’m helping you.’
‘Yes.’
‘If they hadn’t cheated you, you would take a quarter.’
‘Yes.’
She looked past him, out at the ocean. ‘This is a little scarier than I thought,’ she said. He waited, and she looked at him again. She said, ‘You’re here to find out if you can trust me, and I’m here to find out if I can trust you, and if either of us guesses wrong, we’re in trouble.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But I think,’ she said, ‘if I guess wrong, I can be in a lot worse trouble than you.’
‘Trouble is trouble,’ he said.
‘Maybe so. What is this robbery?’
