place for you. It’s right over there, next to Wickham’s Cay,” he said, pointing.
He must have picked up Derek at the apartment, Ava thought, rerunning the timeline since her departure from Guyana. Customs officials must have gone along too, because she couldn’t imagine Derek letting just Davey and Robbins kick him off the island. She looked in the direction Davey had indicated but all she saw was a wall of lights. “Any good restaurants near the apartment?” she asked, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to make a friend.
“Enough with the chatter, Davey. You aren’t being paid to be a tour guide,” Robbins said.
They approached Road Town from the east, taking a route that traced the harbour to the west. She saw signs for Wickham’s Cay II and the inner harbour as they passed through a combination of residential, commercial, and government buildings. The architecture was Caribbean generic, mainly low-rise white stucco housing with the odd dash of coral pink or powder blue. The homes were to the north, set back from the harbour, while the restaurants, markets, government buildings, and commercial offices, with long lists of tenants posted on their exterior walls, crowded near and around the water. Davey turned left off Main Street, following the arrow to Wickham’s Cay I.
Guildford Apartments, a white stucco three-storey building, was right on the cay. To Ava’s eye it looked as if it had been built in a week.
Davey stopped right in front of the building. It had a double glass door that looked into the lobby and a reception desk that was unmanned. “How is security?” Ava asked.
“What do you mean?” said Robbins.
“I mean, is there any? Do we really want to be answering questions about Seto’s current state? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be drawing unnecessary attention to myself.”
Robbins shrugged. “There aren’t any guards. They have a small front desk that’s open from nine in the morning to nine at night. They lock the doors the rest of the time and you let yourself in with your room key.”
“Cameras?”
“What does it matter?”
“How often do they service the apartments?”
“Again, what the fuck does it matter?” Robbins snapped.
“Seto is going to be handcuffed and taped around the ankles and mouth for at least part of the time. We don’t want staff wandering in and out.”
“We’ll ask them in the morning,” he said.
Davey opened his door and went to the trunk. Ava followed. She took out her and Seto’s bags while Davey hauled out the wheelchair and unfolded it. “That’s a creepy-looking guy you’ve got in the back seat there. Looks like he should be peddling drugs to kids or selling porn,” he said.
“He’s in the fish business, so you aren’t far off,” Ava said, thinking that Davey might be trying to make a friend as well.
Robbins got out of the back seat feet first, his arms on either side of the door straining to pull out the rest of his body. He joined them by the trunk and reached inside for a briefcase. “I’m staying the night with the girl,” he said to Davey. “Be here in the morning to pick us up.” Then he turned to Ava. “What time is your meeting?”
“Ten,” Ava said.
“Barrett’s, right?”
“Yes, Barrett’s.”
“Quarter to ten should be fine,” he instructed Davey. “Now help us get this guy upstairs before you bugger off.”
Davey pushed the wheelchair to the door. Robbins inserted the plastic room key and then stepped back as he pulled the door open. As they walked into the lobby, a side door opened and a young black woman with a name tag that said DOREEN, RECEPTION almost ran right into them. She looked at Robbins, staring at his gloves, then at Ava, at Davey, and then Seto, whose head was hanging down, his chin on his chest, drool coming from his mouth. “My friend has a terrible case of food poisoning. We need to get him to the room and into bed,” Ava said.
“What room?”
“Three-twelve,” Robbins said, holding up the key for her to see. “Liang.”
The girl hesitated, then said, “Have a nice evening,” as she walked out the front door.
As they rode the elevator to the third floor, Robbins asked, “What did you knock him out with?”
“Something that should last another eight hours or so. We’ll tape and handcuff him anyway to be safe. I wouldn’t want him roaming around or running off in the middle of the night. I’ll give him another dose in the morning.”
“Do you really need him?”
And if I didn’t, Ava thought, what would you do with him? “Did your brother tell you what I have to do at the bank tomorrow?”
“I have a rough idea.”
“Well, until then I don’t know if I need him. If things go perfectly, I don’t. In the meantime, we have to keep him on ice just in case he has to make some kind of appearance.”
The apartment door opened into a white-tiled living room with a couch, two pine chairs, and the room’s main feature, a forty-eight-inch Panasonic Viera television. On the right was the kitchen, with a wooden table, four flimsy-looking folding chairs, and a sliding door that led out to a balcony. There was one bathroom to the left, the sink visible through the open door. There were three bedrooms between the bathroom and kitchen. “Let’s put him in the middle room. If there’s a fuss we’ll be sure to hear it,” Ava said to Robbins.
He looked at her as if she were trying to trick him. “Stick him the middle,” he said to Davey.
Davey wheeled Seto into the bedroom and Ava followed with her Shanghai Tang bag. “Throw him on the bed and take off his pants and shirt,” she said. As Davey undressed Seto, she went into her bag and took out a roll of duct tape. She wrapped his ankles together and then put a strip across his mouth. The handcuffs went back on. “Could you tuck him in now, please?” she asked.
Robbins watched them from the doorway. When they were done, he motioned to Davey. “A quarter to ten. We’ll meet you outside.”
Ava stood in the living room and watched the small man leave. Robbins walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Your boyfriend bought some stuff on his way here. Too bad he didn’t have time to try it.” He took out a Stella Artois and brushed past her on his way to the couch. He spread himself across it and turned on the television.
From where she stood Ava could see bags of chips and nuts on the counter. She hadn’t had any dinner and wasn’t about to ask Robbins if she could go out. She went into the kitchen and picked out a bag of smoked almonds. She didn’t drink beer, so she hoped Derek had bought some soft drinks. To her surprise there was a bottle of Pinot Grigio. She gave silent thanks.
“I want the bedroom with the king-size bed,” Robbins shouted from the couch.
Ava turned. He was staring at her from across the room, looking at every part of her except her eyes. Almost absently, his hand reached for his head and he stuck his fingers into the furrows in his scalp and slid them back and forth, the latex gloves easing the path. Ava turned away, repulsed. She put the wine back in the fridge and left the kitchen with her bag of nuts. She picked up her other suitcase and went into the bedroom closest to the bathroom. Two twin beds. She was about to close the door when he yelled, “Leave it open. I need to be able to see you.”
She dropped the bag on the floor and went back into the living room. Enough of this crap, she thought. “Listen, you fucking jerk. If you heard your brother properly, we’re supposed to be partners. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow and I need to get organized, I need to get my head in the right space. So I’m going to close my bedroom door until I decide I want to open it again. If you have a problem with that, call the Captain and explain to him just exactly why you need to have it open, and then the Captain can explain to me how that is going to contribute to our getting our hands on some money tomorrow.”
He barely looked at her. “Whatever,” he said.
Ava turned away. She knew she would have to put up with him until the money had found its way to Hong Kong. After that… well, she’d play it by ear.
With the door closed, Ava opened her Louis Vuitton suitcase. She took off her watch, undid her cufflinks, detached the ivory chignon pin, and put them neatly inside their pouch. She stripped down to her bra and panties, carefully folding her slacks and shirt and putting them back in her bag with the jewellery. Then she put on her Adidas training pants and a black T-shirt. She looked in her Shanghai Tang bag and found her notebook and a pen,
