winning any Olympic events, but she was tight enough to make most twenty-five-year-old women jealous. Not bad for somebody past forty.
She leaned against one of the mirrored walls and took a big slug from her water bottle. She was hot, and sweaty enough so her headband wasn’t stopping it all from running into her eyes. She wiped her face with a towel. Another fifteen minutes and she’d be done. Then she could shower and maybe have ’Berto help her stretch some other muscles. Yes. She’d give him a call, have him meet her in her cabin in half an hour or so. That would be pleasant.
But when she punched in his name on the ship’s intercom, there was no answer.
She tried his phone. Got a leave-a-message recording.
Chance frowned. Maybe he was taking a nap, had the intercom and his phone turned off? Wasn’t supposed to do that, but everybody did.
She called Security.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Is Roberto Santos in his cabin?”
“No, ma’am.”
She waited a couple of heartbeats. “All right. Do you know where he is?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She waited a few seconds, shook her head at the literal-mindedness of the security officer. “Would you mind telling me where? And if you say, ‘No, ma’am,’ I guarantee you’ll be looking for a new job in about thirty seconds.”
“Yes, ma’am. He took a chopper to the Mainland about an hour ago. He’s probably in Florida by now.”
Now she really frowned. What? She hadn’t told him he could leave the ship! What the hell was he doing?
Why the hell was his com turned off?
“Anything else, ma’am?”
“Yes. Get me the pilot of the helicopter — call me when you have him.”
She shut off the intercom. This was unacceptable. Unacceptable! Who did he think he was?
She threw the towel on the floor and headed for her cabin. She would find out exactly where Santos had gone, and he had better, by God, have a very good goddamned reason for going there!
Santos drove his rental car to the area called Sunrise, to the Saw Grass Mills Mall. It was a huge place, full of outlet stores, acres of parking, most of it occupied. There was a very ugly construction near an entrance, some kind of modern art perhaps, that looked like a giant unfinished house frame, colored the same shade as a pink flamingo.
These North Americans were nothing if not gaudy, especially in Florida.
He glanced at his watch. He was forty-five minutes early, and that was good. He wanted to be here in plenty of time to set things up.
He wore tan linen slacks, alligator leather shoes with rubber soles, and a pale blue sport shirt, and while it was winter, it was certainly warm enough so that he did not need a jacket. He did, however, wear a long and loose tan suede leather vest, under which he had concealed a.45 Colt Commander in a waistband holster over his right hip. The weapon was small enough to hide under a vest, but fairly potent. A hit from just one of the bullets would make any attacker pause and think seriously about stopping what he’d had in mind before he was shot. And while guns were not his joy, he knew well enough how to use one. And in this case, he would be a fool
He found a spot more or less in the shade of a building and pulled into the slot. When he came back, it would be by a long and roundabout method, to assure that he was not followed.
The meeting was going to be in the middle of the mall, people moving past left and right, in plain view, so the chances of either side trying to steal from the other were lessened. Not completely impossible, a robbery, but he thought it unlikely.
At stake was a fair amount of cash. Hardly a fortune, but enough to buy outright, say, a new and fairly well-made automobile. The cash he had in a cheap black nylon backpack on the seat next to him, in nonsequential twenty-and fifty-dollar bills. Amazing how much room it took.
What he was supposed to buy with those thousands of dollars was a hundred coins, Maple Leafs, almost pure gold. And the reason he was meeting the seller in a mall was because the price of those coins was three- quarters market value.
Which meant, of course, that the deal was in some way illegal. Probably the coins were stolen, but there were other reasons they could not be sold to a legitimate dealer: a divorce, perhaps — one spouse trying to avoid splitting the proceeds. Or maybe someone’s grandfather passed away and they were avoiding the inheritance penalty. Or just somebody who did not wish to pay income tax on the proceeds.
Whatever. The reason did not matter to him, only the price. If the coins were good, where they came from was not important. They would join his others in the bank vault, and eventually wind up back home. There were no serial numbers on coins.
It was too good a deal to pass up, but because of that, Santos was cautious. Thus he had brought the gun. He would be alert before, during, and especially after the transaction. The gun was cocked and locked, and it would be the work of half, maybe three-quarters of a second to have the pistol out and firing.
If the deal was some kind of sting, the seller would find that he, too, had a stinger.
The place was huge. He saw signs for a Banana Republic, a Hard Rock Cafe, cinemas, Disney, Neiman Marcus, Calvin Klein, dozens and dozens of others. Such choices they had in the States.
The mall was too cool, and the air itself smelled stale. These
He found the arranged spot in the mall, a place with skylights, benches, and potted tropical trees: thirty- foot-tall palms, small banana trees, like that. The floor looked to be wood, or some clever fake. He passed the place, strolled down the mall, looking for somebody who might be paying too much attention to that area.
A loop in both directions came up clear. There were a lot of people milling about, in and out of the stores, and it was noisy. Parents put children on little choochoo trains, couples strolled along hand in hand, old people exercised in pairs, moving quickly in their thick-soled walking shoes. He saw nobody who seemed to be watching the appointed rendezvous. He did see a couple of uniformed security guards on patrol, and that was good.
He found a small shop selling sporting gear from where he could watch the meeting place, and he stood there and pretended to look at fishing reels.
A few minutes later, his coin seller arrived.
The man was fifty, overweight, red-faced, wearing a Hawaiian shirt with blue blossoms against a black background, yellow Bermuda shorts, and leather sandals. He had a cell phone clipped to his belt. He carried a briefcase. A hundred ounces of gold — that was only 2.8 kilograms, 6.25 pounds, not very heavy. The man looked around nervously, wiped his face with a handkerchief, then sat on one of the benches. He put the briefcase on his lap, both hands gripping it tightly, and looked from side to side, searching for Santos.
Santos hoped the security guards didn’t come back. The man was entirely too nervous. He looked guilty just sitting there.
Appearances could be deceiving, of course, but this man in yellow shorts did not look dangerous. He looked terrified, and exhibited none of the coolness Santos would expect from a professional thief. Amateurs were bad — he’d rather deal with pros — but this Yellow Shorts here seemed to be no more than he appeared.
Santos scanned for backup. It took all of ten seconds before he spotted a woman about the man’s age, fifty feet away, pretending to be window-shopping as she held a cell phone to one ear, but obviously watching Yellow Shorts. She wore a sundress and straw hat, and carried a big straw handbag.
A wife, maybe? But — no. On reflection, they had a kind of sameness about them.
A sister, he decided.
He would bet that Yellow Shorts had his cell phone turned on, so that the woman could listen to the conversation. Amateurs, to be sure.
