probably be waiting near the two most likely exits. He strolled along, testing the knee for hitches, but the elasticity of it seemed to have returned. He crossed the casino and made one circuit of the lobby before he turned to join the line at the ballroom. There middle-aged women in PTA dresses were ranged along a cash register to admit candidates for brunch, which they did with a stony and repellent efficiency, spotting hand signals from the waitresses with the impassive eyes of casino pit bosses.
The watchers weren’t easy to spot this time. He didn’t see any familiar faces, and he didn’t see anyone who made a habit of staring past him into the distance. He had known the old couple would be gone, but it hadn’t occurred to him that they might not be replaced by someone as obvious. He flashed a glance down the line for someone. If the watcher weren’t very good, he would pick that moment to turn away or adjust his glasses or at least touch his face; nobody did.
Inside the ballroom he found a banquet laid for the purpose of proving to the eye that any paroxysm of human greed or voracity could run its course and still be buried in inexhaustible plenty. Pyramids of champagne glasses filled beyond the brim towered over mounds of scrambled eggs and sausages; bleeding slabs of beef were being expertly shaved into pink pages by shining blades. Piles of chicken breasts seemed in danger of spilling over their silver bins to crush the ornately decorated layered pastries. People of all descriptions assaulted the tables in celebration of their acceptance into this place where there could be no such thing as lack or unfulfilled desire.
Mothers piled extra squares of pastry, oozing globs of hollandaise, and slabs of pate on the plates of their children; elderly people balanced second plates on their skinny forearms as they picked their way back to their tables.
They drank and ate and then rushed to the serving trays to accumulate more while their first plates still were heaped with untasted food. All around the ballroom the obsequious starch-coated functionaries circulated like gentle spirits, filling glasses, deftly clearing spilled food and broken crockery from the aisles, and always, unceasingly and untiringly, replenishing the splendor of the serving tables—all of it calculated to foster in each guest the illusion that he had somehow managed to encompass the whole banquet with the amplitude of his desires and to engulf all of it in his insatiability; the pitiful rodent-inroads he had accomplished on the feast were made to stand in his mind for the fulfillment of Gargantuan yearnings in the soul of a restless and heroic being. As it always did, the management had succeeded in concocting a substantial form to stuff into the yawning emptiness of the clients’ dimly perceived insufficiencies.
He had to wait a little longer because he was alone, and the management always balked a bit before devoting a table to one person. But he knew there would be a waitress who remembered that a man alone tips more generously than he does when his wife is watching. It took a few moments before one of them noticed him, cut him out of the gaggle of detainees, and conducted him to her region of the ballroom. It was a tiny table for two along the far wall, where he could survey the entire room without seeming to.
It wasn’t until he saw Orloff that he knew where to look for the watcher. Orloff’s short, corpulent body bobbed up into the line of people waiting for a table, and a man in a light blue cowboy shirt nodded to him and left. It was typical of Orloff, he thought—always in a hurry, always running three minutes late for an appointment somewhere else. He’d waste a face so he didn’t have to stand fidgeting in a line, his pudgy fingers wandering over the immaculate surface of his gray suit coat as though something important were in one of the pockets.
He watched as Orloff’s fat white hands fluttered impatiently at a passing waitress, then pointed at his table next to the wall. The waitress nodded and Orloff waddled rapidly down the aisle toward him. When Orloff reached the table there was a dewy mist of sweat on his face, as though he had just passed through a cloud. He was a little out of breath, but it sounded more like agitation than exertion. He was taking gasps of breath through his thin red lips and blowing them out his nose in nervous little snorts.
He pushed the chair opposite him away from the table with his foot and Orloff settled into it, his elbows already on the table.
“Have you lost your mind?” said Orloff.
“Why, have you found one?” he answered.
“It’s Wednesday, the fifteenth of February,” Orloff hissed, then paused to snort twice for emphasis. “Our agreement was that you would pass through here on Friday the seventeenth in the evening.”
“I finished early.”
Orloff’s face seemed to bloat suddenly with suppressed anger. At that moment a waitress appeared with a jug of coffee, which she poured with cool precision in a stream from the height of about a foot. When she disappeared Orloff pronounced with malicious triumph, “You’ve made a serious mistake.” Then he shook his head, making his jowls wobble. “It was not discreet. Not discreet at all.”
“Don’t worry,” he answered. “They don’t give a shit about you. They just wondered if I was here working, and I’ve taken care of that.” He took a sip of his coffee, which he decided was rather good. It was a shame Orloff was here to distract him. He was getting hungry.
“Oh, I’m sure you have,” Orloff sighed. “You show up three days early looking like that and then give me your assurances that everything’s fine. You’ll pardon me if I don’t bubble over with confidence in your judgment.”
“Sure. I’m not your psychiatrist.”
Orloff almost smiled. “The condition of your face would indicate you’ve miscalculated before.”
“If you’re worried about it pay me now and I’ll go away.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Orloff, his hands beginning to flutter about in his suit coat again before he located his handkerchief and mopped his brow. “It’s a sizable sum and it isn’t here yet. Which, if you had lived up to our agreement, would have been here at the moment you arrived.”
“Don’t start talking breach of contract,” he said. “You may be a terrific lawyer, but save it for a court. Nobody refuses to pay me.”
“You’ve made it much more difficult. How do you imagine it’ll look to them when a large sum is passed from us to you? It’s much more difficult.” He shifted his eyes to his coffee cup, staring at it as though he were surprised to see it. “Much more difficult, more difficult and more expensive.”
“You’ll get it. Nobody refuses to pay me,” he smiled.
Orloff cocked his head and stared at him. “No,” he said. “I suppose they don’t.” He pushed his coffee away as though afraid he would spill it, then ascended to his feet like a freed balloon. “Friday,” he said. He rushed back up the aisle, glancing at his watch.
He watched the fat man out the door, then went to the serving area to select some food. It was too stupid even to think about, he told himself. Orloff was afraid because he knew they would see the connection as soon as the money came out. But the first thing Orloff had done was walk right up and sit down with him in a public place where they were sure to be seen. What was that for? Maybe to prove to someone he wasn’t afraid. Afraid of what?
None of the old men should care about it one way or another. It was a straightforward set of contracts between outsiders on outsiders. He carefully picked out fresh vegetables from the platter with a pair of silver tongs. Maybe it had something to do with the money: he’d said there was trouble getting it together. But they always said that, the lightweights and small timers—as if they were afraid he’d want more if they didn’t pretend that was the last dime. Still, it didn’t make any sense. Orloff was genuinely worried about something.
He moved along the serving line, picking small portions of food that looked as though they’d be good for him. By the time he had returned to his table he had worked enough of it out. There was a third party involved in it somewhere, a third party Orloff was afraid of. And if Orloff was more afraid of the third party than he was of him, he guessed maybe he’d better start worrying a little bit too.
ELIZABETH TRIED TO CONSOLE herself as she struggled to get the airplane seat to lean back at the proper angle. There wasn’t much material to work with, but she tried. She’d been away long enough already, for one thing. It would be nice to sleep in her own bed and not have to worry that she was running out of ways to recombine the few outfits she’d had time to throw into the suitcase. She looked at the profile of Hart in the seat beside her: of course, his time was up too. The FBI had jerked him back to Washington as they’d said they would. Wednesday was the limit. It didn’t matter that the two of them had spent most of the time shuttling from disaster to disaster like a pair of reporters, always just a few hours too late to do anything but visit the spot where something was supposed to have happened. And there would be lots of work waiting for her when she got back to the office; Brayer had made that clear. It might not be work that made any difference, but somebody had to do it no matter what, and she was drawing the salary so it would be she. Elizabeth watched the stewardess making still another circuit of the cabin with her tray of drinks, offering each passenger one more chance whether he or she showed any interest or
