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I’m one hundred percent certain that literally anyplace else in Macau is cheaper than the Venetian. It’s damned impressive, I’ll give ‘em that. A Michelin starred restaurant, of course, Bristol loves that shit. Chock full of suites, that’s good, the more breathing room we can give each other when we’re on a job, the better. They’ve also got a big goddamn shopping mall with a McDonald’s and a Uniqlo and a hundred other things and I’ll bet that just sticks in her craw to see. They’re really committed to the whole aesthetic, though, It occurs to me that maybe Bristol picked this place because she thinks Bits’ll like it. Like, there’s a place with an Eiffel Tower right down the street, she could’ve picked that and didn’t. One of these days I’ll have to ask her how many Eiffel Tower proposals she’s gotten.
I take the elevator up to the top floor, because I guess she couldn’t resist the notion of going all the way to the top. The hotel is real quiet, not like every cheap joint I’ve picked. Must mean that the walls are thick enough to actually have real art hung on them, or real copies of real art, maybe even with wood frames instead of wood-look recycled plastic, and the carpet is plush enough that even when I try to stomp like a fairytale giant, my footsteps are swallowed up. If there’s people sittin’ and looking at the security cameras, they’re probably laughing. Or Bits is already in the machine, and they’re just looking at a loop of the last time the hallway was empty on repeat, with the timestamp advancing the way anybody would expect it to. She always erases our footsteps behind us, like when horses are dragging branches in an old cowboy movie.
I get to our door and don’t even have to wave my key at it, it’s unlocked, and I push it open to a room nicer than I’ve ever owned, with a view across the city to the harbor. I wonder if all those windows open, and honestly pray that it never matters; this is pretty far up, and there ain’t a lot that I’m afraid of, but it doesn’t mean I wanna free climb down the side of this bitch either.
Bristol is pacing back and forth on the phone with somebody, speaking French and making faces so that her tone of voice comes out right. Like, everybody knows that when you smile on the phone, people hear the smile in your voice or whatever, but she takes it to a whole ‘nother level. Bits is swallowed up on one of the couches, cushions galore, and the window-sized TV is tuned to the weather channel but has a feed of local news layered over the bottom corner. TV’s’ve been doing that about forever now but you hardly ever see anybody use the in-picture thing. I drop my bag from a little higher up than I need to and Bristol turns and raises her eyebrows at me. I grin and wave, and she rolls her eyes and vanishes into one of the rooms, the door closing, whisper-quiet. This whole quiet hotel thing is gonna get to me real quick.
“How was your flight?” Bits asks.
“It was great, I got bumped to first class after Chiba, so they gave me drinks in a glass like a real grownup. Lemon scented hot towels. Dessert.” I flop on the couch next to her, put my boots up on the coffee table. I probably should’ve grabbed something outta the minifridge first. Or no, those things cost a bajillion dollars. But I didn’t notice any vending machines either. There’s a point at which hotels class themselves outta having a vending machine on any of the floors and I just think that’s really sad. Probably no ice machines either, they’re all in the rooms. Places really lose character when they take out those little common area touches, capsule everything off. “We got a timeline yet?”
“Yes and no? The auction’s just a few blocks away, and the objects being auctioned, which are not all ridiculously expensive dogs, have been arriving for a week or more. Bristol’s trying to figure out if our target is here yet.” She glances at me, smiling a little.
“Well is it?”
“Yeah.”
I laugh. “Well did you tell her?”
“You know she doesn’t like being interrupted on the phone.” She laughs too. Of course Bits would have the intel; once she had access to the auction catalog, I’m sure she was tracing the dog’s owner, the dog’s handler, the dog’s seller, the flight manifests, so many numbers that it just makes my brain swim but she’s really in her element.
“I think we’re all a little bit jumpy about that. How many times have good things happened when Bristol was on the phone?”
“I’m sure plenty, but the bad ones stick out.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” I get up and look out a window; 38 floors. I wonder if hotels still have that superstition about having or not having a thirteenth floor; I didn’t notice it when I was in the elevator and it would be too weird for me to go back out and check. Maybe that’s a Western thing anyway, different cultures have different lucky and unlucky numbers. Different lucky and unlucky colors. And animals.
“Dolly, hello! And here we gather!” I wonder sometimes what Bristol’s original accent was, because the way she talks now isn’t how anybody talks. Not outside of old movies, like that one I found and then made Bits watch with me because the main character was just one hundred percent Bristol, she had to’ve seen the movie and done it on purpose, there’s no other explanation. But that’s part of the point. We don’t ask each other for explanations like that. We’re the people we are, not the people we came from. Just some of us changed a little more than others, I think. I don’t think I changed much at all.
“We sure do! And we’re starving, actually. Were you getting us room service?”
“You’re always starving.” She comes and perches on the edge of one of the overstuffed chairs, and I lean way over and pull a bottle of water from the minifridge just to watch her flinch a little. She’s real good at hiding it. But also I’m sure there’s only so much real money we’re paying for this place anyway. And there’s only so real money seems, after awhile.
“Fair enough. What’s our plan?”
“Well, I have secured my place at the auction,” she says.
“Oh your paddle number?”
Bits snickers and Bristol stares at me. “My what?”
“Don’t you get a little fan or paddle or something that you wave when you bid? That’ll have a number on it.”
“I don’t...think they call it that, no.”
“So you don’t have one.”
“Nobody said anything about paddles, no.” She’s fun to rile up, but I gotta be careful not to take it too far.
“Okay okay so you’re going into the auction through the front door. Then what, you’re just gonna pretend to have the cash or whatever to outbid everybody for the dog?” It’s possible that she just actually has enough money saved to outright buy the dog, but if that was the case, then we wouldn’t be here and laying out a plan to steal the dog and collect a smaller paycheck than its pricetag.
“Yes, and then once I have access to that back auction area, where the goods are kept, I can let you two in and we can make off with the animal.”
Carefully, Bits says “Don’t you think that’s making things a little more complicated than they need to be?”
“Well we need to make sure it’s the right dog, don’t we?”
“They probably number ‘em or something.” I open the fridge again and look at what’s in there. Lots of little snacky things, absolutely none of it prefab like an American hotel that would have like, Snickers bars and stuff. White Claws. “Collars? Tags? Chips?”
Bristol waves her hand. “Regardless, yes, that’s the plan. We’ll have to rent a car of course, and be careful of the interior color, to mitigate the dog hair.”
“And then we’re taking the dog right to your buyer?”
“Well of course, it isn’t as though we have anywhere to keep it. And I don’t know the first thing about keeping a dog.”
“So just a grab and go, that’s not so bad,” I say. Other than Bristol’s insistence on being right there with her face in the action. I’m going to have to take a little walk and get some equipment. Bits and I share a glance, and I think she has more ideas than just about the color of the upholstery. Which, good, ‘cause so do I.