always find flaws. The truth was, any reasonable facsimile normally worked. She was just afraid of running into someone as anal as she was.
She started with a blank page in her notebook and began to practise. The signature was basically a big looping J, the bottom loop curling into the upper, and a relatively straightforward S, followed by a straight line that tailed off to a dot. The J was dominant. If she got that right, imperfections in the rest would pass. The proportions were tricky, though, between the top and bottom loops, and when they were out of sync the signature looked contrived.
Ava began to write J’s — just J’s. She had filled almost the entire page before she managed to get three in a row that looked similar to the ones in front of her. She closed her eyes, envisioning it. I have it, she thought.
She started with the copies of his ID. With one eye fixed on the bank document he’d signed and the other on the paper in front of her, she wrote JSeto nine times in rapid succession. When she had finished, she discarded only the last two — the J was out of whack. Take a break, step away, she thought. She got up and turned on the kettle. While the water boiled she looked out onto the harbour, amazed by the level of activity.
Ava drank half her coffee on the balcony, clearing her head, and then went back to the table. She had written two more lines of J’s in her notebook before she recaptured the balance she wanted. Then quickly she redid the two signatures that looked suspect and moved on to the wire transfer requests. Those went smoothly, the signatures indistinguishable, even to her paranoid eye, from what the bank had on record. There, the easy part is done, she thought, as she organized the paperwork into matching sets.
It was too soon to call Bates. There was no value in letting him think Seto had been well enough to affix the signatures so promptly. She’d wait. It was almost eleven thirty. One o’clock — no, one thirty worked better. Give him time to have some lunch.
She gathered the documents and slid them into their folder. Out of nowhere came a yawn, and Ava realized she was tired. She’d been awake since God knows when, and the morning had been draining. She had time to kill, and a rest couldn’t hurt.
Ava didn’t say anything or look into Robbins’s room as she walked past to hers. If he couldn’t figure out that she had finished working, that was his problem. She closed the door behind her and lay on the bed fully clothed. Her mind was more of a jumble than she would have liked. Bates was more than enough to occupy her, but Robbins — both Robbinses — kept intruding. She tried to shut everyone out, thinking bak mei, crane position: her foot poised to strike, her hands moving faster than light.
When she woke, it was with a start, her eyes darting to the doorway. It was closed. She was on her bed, still dressed, nothing out of place. She lifted her left hand and looked at her watch. Two forty-five. She sat on the edge of the bed, composing herself.
She opened her bedroom door and saw Robbins back on the couch, watching television. She went to the bathroom, locking the door behind her, and washed her face with cold water, slapping at her cheeks. Then she undid her hair, brushed and coiled it again, and put the ivory chignon pin back in place. She reapplied her makeup. Her eyes looked a bit puffy from sleep, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that.
Robbins turned towards her as she re-entered the living room. “I need to call the bank,” she said.
“Use that phone,” he said, pointing to the only one in the apartment, which was on the wall near the kitchen.
She called the number on Bates’s business card, assuming it was his private line. Instead, the receptionist she had met earlier answered with a rolling “Barrrrrett’s.”
“Mr. Bates, please. Ms. Lee calling.”
He came on the line quickly, and she guessed he had been waiting for her call. As he’d said, she was a diversion from his usual routine. “Ava, how are things progressing?”
“Hello, Jeremy. Well, not bad at all. Jackson has signed the draft requests and all the other documents that are needed.”
“Wonderful. So when will I see the two of you?”
She heard the emphasis, however slight and subtle, on the word two. Ava drew a small breath. She knew for certain, knew totally and completely, that no matter how she spun things, Jeremy Bates wouldn’t be sending any wires until he actually saw Jackson Seto. Suggesting anything else, no matter how creative she could be, wasn’t going to fly. She could try to charm him, of course, but she knew there were limits to charm, and when charm had to compete against money, it lost its lustre pretty quickly.
“Unfortunately, Jeremy, there is that continuing problem with Jackson. Frankly, I’m having a tough time getting him from the bedroom to the bathroom, let alone dressed and out the door to visit the bank. In fact, I may need to ask you for the name of a doctor.”
“Ah,” he said.
To Ava’s ear, that simple interjection was filled with hesitation, questions, doubt. She felt a slight touch of panic, and spoke before he could shut any doors on her. “There is another way, though,” she said, in as low-key a manner as she could manage. “Why don’t you come here to collect the documents? I know Jackson would like to see you to say hello.”
He didn’t respond immediately, and for a second she thought she had misjudged the situation. “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” he finally said.
“The sooner, the better,” she said. “He’s exhausted and keeps nodding off.”
“About an hour?” he asked.
“Perfect. We’re in apartment 312.”
“See you both then.”
(36)
Ava tried to put herself in Bates’s position. Every transaction he conducted was a candidate for scrutiny, a potential target for the only person who might scare him: the bank’s auditor. All the good bankers she had known made it a religion to cover their tracks, regardless of the size or nature of the transaction. Following banking regulations had become second nature to them. So to her mind, dinner invitation or not, Bates wasn’t going to treat her differently from any other customer. It was her job to make sure he had everything he thought he would need if an auditor came calling. And she thought she had done that adequately.
He had the email from Seto saying that he wanted to send a wire and bringing Ava into the picture as a trusted associate. He had met Ava, and she seemed to be the person Seto had described. She knew, given the time difference, that he hadn’t had a chance to call the accounting firm in Hong Kong to confirm her position, and from the way he had looked at her card and at her, she knew he wouldn’t. He had seen all the originals of Seto’s identification, and they matched everything they currently had on file. Now he was going to get the signed original copies of the wire transfer requests and signed and dated copies of the same ID. It was, all in all, Ava thought, a paper trail that would satisfy any auditor.
But there was still the important matter of Bates actually meeting Seto, actually witnessing him signing the necessary documentation. It was a chink in the due diligence process, she knew, that might cause Bates problems if he had to explain the situation later. But that would be later, when hindsight would make it easy to adapt what had actually occurred into what was supposed to have transpired. And even then, he could say with all honesty that he had seen Seto. The fact that he was comatose could be explained. Seto was ill, after all, and Bates had made the point of physically going to his apartment to meet with him. He couldn’t be blamed for the fact that Seto was sleeping at the time. Due diligence had been done. The bank couldn’t reasonably expect more of him.
It’s going to hold, Ava thought as she stood up, feeling satisfied.
“We’re going to have a visitor, and I need your help,” she said to Robbins.
“Huh?”
“The banker is coming to meet me and Seto. We need to get organized.”
“Like how?”
“Come with me,” she said, heading for Seto’s bedroom.
He was still out cold, but it had been more than six hours since she’d given him the previous dose of chloral hydrate. She wasn’t about to take the slightest chance that he’d wake up when Bates was there. “Sit him up and
