TEN

The third time they drove past the hotel, Crissa said, “Pull over.”

Chance guided the rental Chevy into the parking lot of a seafood restaurant. He drove to the far end of the lot, parked beneath a palm tree.

From this angle, they had a clear view of the hotel across the street, could see the blue of the ocean beyond. Cars sped by on Seabreeze Boulevard. He shut the engine off, powered down his window.

“Here’s something I don’t like,” he said. “Beach in back. Only way out is the front, right into all this.” He nodded at the traffic.

She took the digital camera from the floor. “Late enough, it might not be too bad.”

Chance sat back to stay out of frame. She raised the viewfinder to her eye, took a shot of the hotel. It was smaller than its neighbors, only twelve stories high, pink stucco. The portico out front read LA PALOMA. A U-shaped driveway curved beneath it, a cluster of palm trees shading the front entrance.

She took more shots, changing the angle each time.

“We’ll need to get out on the beach, too,” she said. “Get a look at the back.”

A red Porsche pulled up in front of the hotel, a valet coming out to meet it. The driver got out, handed his keys over, was greeted by a uniformed doorman. The valet climbed in the car, pulled away, and turned down a ramp into an underground garage.

“Service entrance, left side of the building,” Chance said.

She twisted to find the right angle, took a shot of it. It was a recessed doorway semihidden by a concrete wall topped with flowers.

“Someone will need to take a look down there,” she said. “See what the setup is.”

“I might could do that.”

She tracked up the front of the hotel, the rows of windows, some with curtains drawn. Each room had a balcony, a sliding glass door. She took more shots.

It was almost dusk, the sky behind the hotel darkening to a deeper blue. A spotlight hidden in the palms out front flickered on, bathed the face of the hotel in pale blue light.

“The balconies,” she said.

“What about them?”

“If the beach side is the same, that’s the way we’ll go in.”

“How do we get up there?”

She lowered the camera. “Rappel maybe.”

“From the roof?”

“Or another balcony.”

“Hold on, no one said anything about that.”

“You scared of heights?”

“Scared of falling from them.”

“It’s no big deal,” she said. “A half hour’s practice with the equipment and you’ll be fine.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“Rock climbing. This will be easy compared to that.”

The valet came back up the ramp, sat in a folding chair by the front entrance.

“I used to do that,” Chance said.

“What?”

“Valet. At a high-rise condo in Seattle. I was nineteen. Wore a uniform and everything. It was a good gig, lots of tips. Then a resident caught me smoking a joint in the parking garage one night, got me fired.”

“Too bad.”

“Not really. I kept my uniform. A month later, I came back with a guy I knew. Middle of the night, we went in with masks, tied the valet and doorman up. For the next two hours, I stood outside in my uniform. Every car that came in, I drove two blocks away and onto a car carrier parked on a side street. Porsches, BMWs, Mercedes, a ’Vette. By the afternoon they were all on a container ship headed for Kuwait. I made a lot of money that night.”

“Pretty ambitious for a nineteen-year-old.”

“I had my moments.”

Darker now, stars showing in the blackness over the ocean. A worker in a blue jumpsuit with NBS MAINTENANCE stitched on the back came out of the service entrance, lit the row of tiki torches that lined the driveway. Oily smoke drifted up.

“Get some shots of that uniform,” Chance said.

She squinted through the viewfinder in the fading light, shot until the worker went back in the building, then lowered the camera.

“So far,” she said, “it’s just the way he told us.”

“It is.”

“So what do you think?”

“It’s doable.”

“In that time frame?”

“Maybe. If we can figure out a way to get in that doesn’t include me climbing down the side of a building.”

They watched as another car pulled up in front of the hotel, the valet springing up to meet it.

“So tell me something,” Chance said.

“What?”

“What do you do with your money? I mean, when you work.”

“Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“Construction projects. Strip malls. There are always people looking for loose cash to sink into an investment, give you a return on it you can legitimately claim.”

“You pay taxes?”

“Every year. You don’t?”

He looked at the hotel, shook his head. “I’m off the grid.”

“You think you are,” she said. “Until they nail you.”

“I’m good so far.”

“Makes me wonder if it’s all worth it, though.”

“What?”

“The money. What we get for what we do, the risks we take. How it balances out. Or doesn’t.”

“Beats working in a factory,” he said. “I’ve done that, too. You watch your life blow by you every day. And the days you’re not working, you’re too friggin’ tired to enjoy anyway. You say you saw Wayne?”

“Two days ago.” She’d flown from San Antonio to New York, then taken Amtrak to Florida.

“How’s he making out?”

“Hard to tell. He doesn’t talk much about what goes on inside.”

“Doesn’t want to worry you.”

“Maybe.”

She took shots of the boulevard, north and south. The light was all but gone now. She lowered the camera.

“Let’s find a Kinko’s or something, print these out,” she said. “Then go see Stimmer.”

He started the engine. “So, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” she said, “that it’s a go.”

*   *   *

Stimmer laid the guns out on the coffee table, a Glock 9 mm, a Browning automatic, and a short-barreled MP5 machine pistol. She picked up the Glock, turned it over in her hand, felt its weight.

They were in a bungalow Stimmer had rented a few miles west of the city, in a neighborhood of dead lawns and single-story stucco homes marked with gang graffiti. The living room furniture was a battered couch and cheap table, a pair of metal folding chairs. An open door led into the single bedroom. She had the couch, Stimmer and Chance the chairs. Paper printouts of the hotel shots were on the table.

“What’s with the grease gun?” Chance said. “You looking to clear a room?”

“It’s psychological,” Stimmer said. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and cargo shorts. There was a fanged skull tattoo on his upper arm, an elaborate crucifix on his calf.

He picked up the MP5, extended the metal tube stock, locked it into place.

“Weapon like this gets people’s attention. Lets them know you’re serious. That’s what we want, right? What do they call it? ‘The illusion of imminent death’?”

The house smelled of mildew and rotted fruit, the jalousied windows covered by dirty pull shades. She wondered how he slept in here. A palmetto bug scuttled across the linoleum in the kitchen, disappeared beneath the refrigerator.

“I bought all of these down here,” Stimmer said. “They go right into a canal when we’re done.”

She set the Glock back down. “I put together a list of what I think we’ll need,” she said. She tapped a printout. “We were looking at those balconies.”

“So was I,” Stimmer said. He laid the MP5 across his lap. “The room with the game is on the beachside, 1102. The balconies are wider there, better for us. There’s no way we’re getting in the front door of that room while the game’s going on.”

“We’ll need to figure a way to get through that sliding glass door,” she said.

“Not an issue. No one smokes in the room, they have to go outside. So they leave the door unlocked.”

“We’ll need rappelling equipment for two people. Can you swing that?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

“Black jumpsuits for two of us,” she said. “A blue one for the third. We have to fake some stitching on the back, name of a maintenance company. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just enough to pass casual inspection.”

Stimmer nodded. “Masks and gloves, too. I can do all of that.”

“About this rappel thing,” Chance said. “I don’t know if I’m down with that.”

“You don’t need to be,” Stimmer said. “I’ve done it. All you’ll have to do is help organize the equipment up top, watch the safety lines.”

“That’s better.”

“We need someone to take a look inside,” she said. “Maybe get some pictures.”

“I’ve been in there,” Stimmer said. “Couple weeks back. I stayed there one night, walked around the place. Eleventh floor, too.”

“Sure that was smart?” she said.

“I used another name and credit card. Nothing to worry about. Eleven-oh-two is at the end of the hall, north side. I was in 904, two floors down and one room over. Layout’s probably the same. I sketched it all out.”

“Good,” she said.

“If it’s different, we’ll play it by ear when we get in there. Players start arriving about nine, but the game doesn’t pick up speed until midnight or so. I figure we go in around one. Too early for people to start dropping out, but late enough that they’re starting to get tired. Easier to handle.”

“That sounds right,” she said.

“Now, on every hall there’s a maintenance closet,” he said. “Locked, but easy to pick. Each one has a trash chute that goes down to the basement, directly off the garage. That way we don’t have to carry anything downstairs. We pack it all into a pair of duffels—money, guns, masks, everything—dump them into the chute. We walk away clean, just in case we’re stopped. Then we meet up in the basement, pick up the bags, and get gone.”

“How do we get into the basement?” Chance said.

“It’s a maintenance shop as well, open during the day. I was able to get a look inside. There’s tools in there, so they lock the door at night, but it’ll be easy to get through. No alarm. There’s a reserved parking spot in the garage, right outside the door, for the maintenance company van. They’re independent contractors, only there during business hours or emergencies. I got a couple shots of their vehicle.”

“So we’ll need a van?” Chance said.

“I got that covered. The van’s old, white. Easy to match. I found one like it over in Davie, bought it for five hundred cash. They’ll keep it there until I pick it up. We’ll need to do a paint job on the side, re-create the logo, but we’ve got the pictures to match it against.”

“So who’s paying for all this?” Crissa said.

“I am, so far,” Stimmer said. “Afterward we’ll do a normal split. Expenses off the top, then a three-way divide.”

“What about your inside guy?” she said.

“That comes out of my share. I’ll take care of him.”

Or maybe he’ll end up in a canal, too, she thought. Stimmer seemed the type. Cheaper than paying him, and one less loose end. In the long run, though, it was a bad way to do business. Bodies had a way of turning up, and greed and paranoia could ruin the best of plans.

“We’ll have another car parked nearby,” Stimmer said. “We roll out of there in the van, split up when we reach the car. Whoever’s driving the van takes the equipment and the money. Then we meet up later, here.”

He nodded at the Glock. “You want to take that now?”

She shook her head. “Night of. We’ll leave everything here until we’re ready.”

“Fine with me,” he said.

“I think we’re done here,” she said. “We’ll meet tomorrow, get the equipment sorted out, run through everything again. We don’t have much time.”

“That’s an understatement,” Chance said. “One day to get ready. Can we even make that work?”

“We will,” she said.

*   *   *

Chance dropped her at her hotel in Deerfield Beach. She went up to the room and got the disc Leah had given her, then let herself into the hotel’s business center with her key card. The room was empty, the three computers and fax machine shut down for the night.

She sat at a terminal, powered it up, and slid the disc in.

There were twelve photos on it, all recent. Maddie at a swimming pool, water wings on her arms, splashing. Another on the front lawn of the house, Maddie crouched and smiling up at the camera. In the next, she was blowing out candles on a birthday cake, Jenny beside her. Then a class portrait on the school steps. The bottom of the photo read GRADE FIVE — ELKTAIL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — TWO RIVERS, TEXAS — 2011.

She clicked through all the pictures twice, with that same pull inside she’d felt at the playground. You’re a beautiful little girl, she thought. But you’re not really mine anymore, are you?

This was a mistake, she realized. She should have waited until she got home to look at the photos, when the work was over. Right now she needed her edge, needed to be cold, smart. No tears.

She ejected the disc, punched the power button, watched the screen fade to black.