Exact same ting!”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Preacher,” Stoke said. “Me and Ross here, we badass lawmen of the hop and pop, snatch and grab variety. We find this pencil-dicked shithead killed our lady friend, he only going to be wishing his ass was still grass.”
There was a deep rumble of thunder above, brilliant lightning blooming in the towering clouds, and the wind gusting up, bending the crowns of the royal palms. No rain yet, but Stoke could smell the sharp ozone in the air as they made their way up the drive to the hotel’s entrance. A big doorman smiled at Stoke, holding the door open for them. The homeboy Cholo, who looked like some four-star general in Rasta National Guard.
“Most cordial welcome to de Fountainbleau, Tiki-mon,” Cholo said.
Stoke shook his head, didn’t say anything, just followed Ross inside.
“When’s the last time you see a hotel lobby like this, Ross?” Stoke asked rhetorically. Ocean’s Eleven, 1960, that’s when. Damn, that was a good movie. Shit!”
As they made their way through the vast sea of candlelit tables filling the Grand Ballroom, a lot of heads swiveled in Stokely’s direction. They were headed towards Table 27, the designated location inscribed neatly on the invitations waiting for them at the entrance where all the little old red-, white-, and blue-haired Latino ladies sat. Patriotic, you had to say that.
“Hell they all looking at, Ross?” Stoke whispered.
“Stoke, if you could see yourself right now, you wouldn’t be asking that question,” Ross said, smiling.
Unable to find black formal wear large enough to fit him, Stoke had been forced to rent a white tuxedo with wide white satin lapels and white satin stripes down each pants-leg. Normally, he would have been embarrassed, but, earlier, when he’d met Ross for a drink down in the lobby bar at the Delano, the Scotland Yard detective had told him he looked resplendent. Resplendent sounded pretty damn good to Stoke, and, he had to admit, it wasn’t a half-bad look. Be honest about it, way all these Cuban folks looking at him now, he must look pretty damn resplendent.
You got it, you strut it, Stoke thought, strutting through the endless maze of rich folk. Ring-a-ding-ding, and call me a cab, Calloway.
They took the last two empty gold bamboo chairs at the round table for ten and smiled all around at their dinner companions. The handsome black-tied men all looked like Don Ameche or Fernando Lamas and all the pretty ladies had low-cut dresses and more diamonds than the whole damn Tiffany store on Fifth Avenue. The appearance of this strange duet at the last minute was met with obvious surprise.
“No society like high society, am I right?” Stoke asked his dinner companions, a big smile on his face. “I’m Stokely Jones Jr. One of the Joneses of the West 138th Street Joneses of New York City. How you doing?” He stuck out his huge hand, and shook hands with a beautiful white-haired woman seated next to him. No one seemed to know quite what to do.
“Dolores Velasqueno,” the lovely woman said. “How nice to meet you, Mr. Jones.”
“Charmed,” Stoke said. “I’m sure.”
Then Ross said something that sounded like “ahem” that diverted everyone’s attention from the giant black man dressed all in glittering white.
“Good evening, everyone. How do you do,” Ross said to the startled table, bowing slightly from the waist. “I’m Detective Inspector Ross Sutherland, New Scotland Yard. My colleague and I are last-minute invitees, actually. Sorry we’re a bit late. Traffic, you know.”
Ross breathed a sigh of relief as Cesar de Santos took the podium. Everyone became silent, eyes on the elegant silver-haired chairman. Ross looked out over the crowd, pleased with the location of their table. They were near the front and on the edge of the ballroom, two or three steps higher than the main floor. He could get a pretty good look at the entire crowd from this vantage point. White-jacketed waiters were already circulating among the tables serving the first course. There had to be a thousand people in the room.
It was going to be fiendishly difficult to pick out a chap just by looking at his eyes, even if they’d gotten outrageously lucky and the man was in this very room. But Ross’s investigative instincts were all telling him this was a good place to start, no matter what transpired.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and bienvenidos,” de Santos said, his voice filling the huge room over the p.a. system. He launched into his remarks in beautifully accented English, thanking everyone for their generosity over the past year, highlighting individual achievements.
Stokely was far more interested when the lady seated to his right, Senora Velasqueno, opened her small white sequined evening bag and withdrew a tiny pair of pearl and gold binoculars. She put them to her eyes and focused on the podium. After a moment, she set them on the tablecloth.
“What power are those things, Dolores?” he asked, pointing at the jeweled binoculars.
“I beg your pardon?”
“How strong are they?”
“Strong as I could get them, senor,” she said. “I’m blind as a bat.”
“Can I take a look?” Stoke asked.
She smiled and handed them to him. “Please, be my guest. I’ve been to this dinner every year since 1975. It doesn’t change much except for the surgery sisters over there at Table 25. They all have brand-new faces every year.”
She giggled and put her hand over her mouth and Stoke slapped his knee and laughed.
She was right about the binocs, though. They were small, but powerful. While de Santos continued with his remarks, Stokely used them to scan the faces of the men in the crowd. “Ross,” he said suddenly, handing the instrument to Sutherland. “Check out glamour boy over there sitting at the table by the exit sign.”
“He’s wearing sunglasses.”
“Damn right. And these candles ain’t all that bright either. So, who’s that hiding behind them mirrored Foster Grants?”
“…and now we come to the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” de Santos was saying. “It is time to bestow our cherished Ca d’Oro award to that individual who has most thoroughly distinguished himself in the eyes of not only our judges, but our great Cuban community…will you bring the house lights down, please?”
As the lights went down, the music of the orchestra swelled. There was a collective gasp from the audience as a single spotlight picked out an object descending from out of the darkness above. Stokely put his glasses on the thing. It was a model of some kind of futuristic building, all towering glass wings with gold and silver beams inside. Suspended on a huge platform, it stopped just above the heads of a crowd who instantly burst into loud and sustained applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” de Santos said, “may I present the new Quixote Fox Center for Special Surgery at Sisters of Mercy Hospital! It is my very great honor to announce the man who made this magnificent addition possible. Although new to our cause, already his great humanity and generosity have made him a revered figure in the community. The winner of Ca d’Oro is Senor Quixote Fox! Senor Fox, unfortunately, was called away to an emergency this evening. Please be so kind as to welcome his representative at the podium to receive the award.”
All eyes turned towards the table of honor in the center of the room. A single spotlight swept the table. No one stood up. Stokely trained his binoculars on the table. It was where the guy with the mirrored sunglasses had been sitting. Now, his chair was empty. No man made a move to rise, but a woman did. Stokely never took his eyes off her as she made her shimmering way to the podium. She was maybe the best looking woman Stoke had ever laid eyes on in his life.
“Dolores,” Stoke whispered to his new friend, “Who is that?”
“Her name is Fancha. She is a famous recording star from the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. Very beautiful. She is the…friend…of Don Quixote Fox.”
“This Don Quixote’s a pretty lucky fella,” Stokely said, watching through the glasses as de Santos tried to get the blue ribbon with the medal around Fancha’s lovely neck without rearranging her hair-style.
“They say he is very handsome, but I wouldn’t know. I am not surprised he is not here this evening. He rarely appears in public.”
“Really?” Stoke asked. “That’s interesting. Why is that?”
“He’s going blind. Apparently he suffers some very rare form of eye disease. He cannot bear exposure to any kind of light, natural or artificial.”
