AMY OWENS COMES AWAKE slowly, like she’s being dredged up from the bottom of a lake. She finds herself on her living room couch. Clothes sweated through. The TV playing.
She gives it a minute before moving.
Lights a smoke, hands on autopilot.
Amy pushes herself upright and an icy wave of fear jolts along her nape. Someone’s in the room. She feels it before she sees it: a man in her deckchair by the balcony doors. He has a paperback open on his lap.
‘Who the fuck?’ she hisses, hand fumbling for her handbag.
‘Oh, you’re up.’
She knows the voice.
Mr Sally. The shonky locksmith she called yesterday.
‘I let myself in,’ he says. ‘I thought you’d have better locks, doing what you do. With what you have over there, you may as well leave the door open.’
She rubs at her face. ‘What are you doing in here?’
Mr Sally shrugs. ‘You called, so here I am.’
‘Okay, give me a second.’ Amy goes to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of water from the tap. It’s warm as tea. ‘We could have done this over the phone. I need you to open a safe.’
‘Is it here?’
‘Is what here?’
‘The safe.’
‘It’s too early for this.’ Amy grabs her handbag off the couch. She withdraws the polaroid of Bill Webber’s garage set-up. ‘Here.’
Mr Sally glances at the image. ‘What’s the budget?’
‘Colleen Vinton’s eternal gratitude.’
‘What’s that worth?’
‘Let me find out.’ Amy calls around for Colleen and gets her on the third try. Before Amy can get a word in, Colleen quizzes her on the other job: Allan Watts. What’s Allan up to? What’s his game? Amy stalls. ‘Give me another day.’ Then she tells Colleen about Mr Sally and his haggling.
‘He wants what?’ says Colleen. ‘Put that fucking nonce on the phone.’
Mr Sally takes the receiver and listens. His facial expression remains unnaturally still, like he’s hearing hold music. When it’s done, he replaces the phone and says, ‘I’m at your disposal, it seems.’
This scares the shit out of Amy. Only a psycho would react to Colleen Vinton like this. Amy gives him Bill Webber’s address. ‘He’s a cop, so don’t take any chances.’
‘Great,’ says Mr Sally, with a yawn.
‘Can you get out of my apartment now?’
‘With pleasure.’
An hour later, Amy is out the door too, on her way to find Allan Watts. He has a place on the river, down where the Strip tapers off into monied suburbia. The glare outside is pure, white hell, but otherwise the day is mild. On the walk across town, Amy stops at a restaurant for coffee and strikes gold. There he is: Allan having brunch with a girlfriend. They have a small, grey dog with them, sitting at the table in its own seat. Amy watches them eat. They don’t really talk to each other much. It’s quite a scene, actually. The girlfriend tenderly feeds her dog from a separate fork. Allan smiles when looked to, but otherwise sits there sullen and tired, obviously recovering from his big night at the Silver Fish hosting the police commissioner and his cronies. After a while, Allan gives the dog a pat and turns a cheek to the girl, then darts out. Amy follows.
Allan runs errands. A stop at a real estate agency. Flirting with the local florist, placing an order. Picking up fancy booze from the bottle shop. He checks in on the Silver Fish.
From there, Allan heads to another restaurant where there’s a party waiting. Allan plies his trade, glad-handing the group, calling in waiters and drinks. Amy watches him take a call at the bar. He hands the phone back to the bartender and orders a shot.
Something’s up.
He’s flustered now.
No goodbyes to the party, just out the back door, down a service alley and into a side street where a car is waiting. He disappears inside and the car takes off.
Still standing there cursing, Amy catches a break. A cab comes around the corner. She hails it. ‘Follow that silver Falcon at the lights.’
‘For real?’ says the driver, but he’s clearly into it.
‘I’ll pay you double if you can do it,’ Amy says.
Allan’s car puts him out at a grimy workman’s pub down in Miami. It’s absolutely not his sort of place, but he disappears inside without hesitation. It takes Amy a couple of minutes to find him in the crowded interior and when she does, he’s with a fair-headed man. The man is younger, dressed in footy shorts and a chambray shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Whatever this meeting is about, it’s not going according to plan. Allan motions about with his hands, clearly frustrated. From her spot across the room, Amy snaps off quick photos with her ‘tourist camera’, a thin black Kodak Ektralite. She walks closer to them, trying to listen in, but they’ve got the Commonwealth Games blaring on the TV.
Allan is pointing at the man, beet-red in the face.
The other guy shrugs.
A steak is delivered to the table, and the man takes it, but as he’s readying to eat, he does something truly strange: he shoos Allan Watts away. Just shoos him with his fork hand, like Allan is an annoying mosquito.
Weirder still, it works. Allan storms off.
From a front window, Amy watches him jog back across the street to his waiting car. They tear off.
There’s no cab waiting this time. Amy goes back to the dining area and the other man is gone.
His meal is sitting there, half-eaten.