The shadow of the building was a little longer, reaching out across the sand toward the sea. Out near the horizon two boats, widely separated, both slid south. Parker stood and paced, and she watched him. After a minute, he stopped and put his hand on the railing and looked out at the sea. He said, “This Mrs. Fritz's house. I'm thinking it's on the ocean but it doesn't have a beach.”
“No, it doesn't,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “It's a seawall along there. It's not far from where that drifting cargo ship ran onto somebody's terrace a few years ago.”
“I know these guys,” Parker said. “They're gaudy. They're going to like Mrs. Fritz's house because it isn't a commercial space, it's a private space, so control can never be one hundred percent. They're going to like it because they can come in from the sea, go back out to the sea, and duck right back in again down at their own place, while everybody's searching the Atlantic Ocean for them.”
“It isn't that easy,” she insisted.
“They don't expect it to be easy,” he told her. “They expect it to be tough, and that's why they'll be gaudy. I don't know what they have in mind, but it'll shake people up.”
“If you mean scare them,” Leslie said, “it would take a lot to scare people in Palm Beach. Not so long ago, you had a militia of these octogenarians on the beach, still in their white pants, with their big-game hunting rifles, marching back and forth on the sand, drilling, ready to repel Castro.”
“Good thing for them Castro didn't show up,” Parker said. “But the point is, Leslie, I'm not going to steal the package, Melander and the others are. I don't have to have a plan, I just have to know what theirs is. But I know them, I know what business they're in, I know they're sure enough of themselves to sink all their cash into this thing, and I know how their minds work. They won't mess with bank vaults, and they won't try to get into the middle of a huge hotel on its own acres of grounds. An armored car on this island is hopeless—where would you take it? So that leaves Mrs. Fritz, in a private house on the ocean with a seawall. That's where they're going to do it, so the question is when.”
“After everybody's gone home,” she suggested, “and before the jewels are loaded back into the armored car.”
“No. I told you, these guys are gaudy, they won't want to sneak in and out. A lot of rich people all dressed up in one confined place, wearing their own big-dollar jewels. That's the time to come in, when you can make the maximum trouble, the maximum panic. What are guards gonna do if there's a thousand important people running back and forth screaming?”
“I don't know,” she said.
“They won't do a lot of shooting,” he said.
“No, I suppose not.”
He said, “Show me Mrs. Fritz's house.”
“I can't take you in there,” she said, surprised. “It isn't on the market.”
“Drive me by it.”
“You won't see much, but all right. We'll take my car. We'd better find a place where you can put yours in some shade.”
“Good.”
She stood and looked out at the ocean. “Are they really going to do that, do you think? Come in from the sea?”
“That's their style.”
“Like James Bond,” she said.
He shook his head. “More like Jaws” he told her.