44
“Get out of bed and get dressed,” Malic ordered Kayla, who looked as if the king-sized bed had swallowed her whole. She was lying with the gold-threaded brocade duvet cover pulled tightly up to her chin. Her knuckles white, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.
“I’m ill,” she spit out. “I vomited an hour ago and I still have to vomit. You are not helping me.”
“This is an important night,” he said, trying to control his anger. “How will it look if I show up alone?”
“I don’t care how it looks, Malic—”
Kayla leaped from the bed and ran into the bathroom. She knelt at the bowl with her back to her husband and stealthily slid her finger down her throat until she puked. Long and hard.
Malic looked away in disgust.
Kayla stood slowly, holding herself up at the lavish sink. Weakly, she splashed water on her face and rinsed out her mouth. She walked silently back to bed and slipped under the covers, ignoring her husband’s scrutiny.
“Is Mommy sick?” little Saarah asked, sticking her head in the doorway.
“She’ll be fine, my love,” Malic said as he struggled to button his heavily starched tuxedo shirt. “Go back in with Adelina.”
“I love you, Mommy,” she said.
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
That was good enough for Saarah, who galloped back into the living room with the nanny.
Malic gazed at his wife, who was crying again and looked pitiful. He started to upbraid her but grabbed his Armani tux jacket and stormed out of the room before he said something he would live to regret.
Kayla dried her eyes and checked the time on the bedside clock.
Malic walked briskly across the lawn, looking like an ad from GQ. The man was so self-absorbed, he didn’t have a clue as to why his wife was crying. He was seething and Hassan took a reflexive step back from the desk, where he had been working when Malic pushed through the doorway.
The mahogany wall panel that hid the Matisse was open and lit. Malic knotted his tie as he looked at the empty space and felt a surge of rage. He would get his life back in order and fly to Iraq personally to pick up his work of art when the sheik’s one million eight was safely returned to his account.
He couldn’t bear to watch as Hassan picked up the bubble-wrapped parcel that contained his treasure and placed it in a Zero Halliburton aluminum suitcase that had been lined in memory foam to protect the masterpiece.
Malic sat down behind his desk and hit one of the buttons on the pull-out panel. The television set was revealed and as it blinked on, Angelica Cardona could be seen lying on the bed, in much the same position as his wife, seemingly lost in thought. Malic had an impulse to smash the set. What he really wanted to do was sample the wares, but it was not to be.
“One bullet to the back of the head,” he said without any feeling. “If she doesn’t become shark bait, it will look like a mob hit to the police, and her father will have to look at his own organization for revenge. Did you fuel up the boat?”
“Both tanks,” Hassan answered. “More than enough to get to the back side of Catalina and home. And Raul? What did he have to report?”
“Retribution for his early release. He was beaten and will still be sitting at the dais tonight. He should have been an example for Kayla.”
Hassan dared not go there. He knew a wise man never interfered in another man’s marital strife.
Malic keyed a sequence into his desktop computer, and sixteen different cameras fed sixteen different squares on his computer screen, providing different views of the compound. His wife in her bed, his daughter in the living room, his cigarette boat safely tied off at the dock, the front gate, and every other square inch of his protected domain. All was good.
Malic stood tall, straightened his jacket, and snugged his bow tie. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.” He stopped at the door. “Hassan, you are a good man. My right hand. Your loyalty will be rewarded. I will have a handsome bonus for you and your family at the end of the month.”
Malic walked out without looking back.
The yellow sun dropped below the horizon, leaving a darkening blue sky as Jack paddled his inflatable Avalon away from his boat. He had moored it around the bend of the promontory, away from prying eyes. The ocean was glassy, the air clean after last night’s rain. He tied off on the neighbor’s dock and felt his blood pressure rise at the sight across the way. Malic’s cigarette boat was docked, and bright security lights surrounded the compound.
Jack was dressed entirely in black with black running shoes and a black watch cap. He checked the time and started up the stairs to the top of the neighboring property.
The seven-foot tall, locked, metal gate and security fence, both topped with razor-sharp spears, had been built five feet below the cliff’s edge so as not to tarnish the view from the estate above. The left side of the rusted gate had been anchored securely into the shear cliff face. The fence to the right, welded at a forty-five-degree angle, jutted out eight feet over empty space and the rocky shoreline below. A convincing deterrent to unwanted visitors.
Jack threw a canvas bag with his equipment over the gate and made his move. He clambered hand-over-hand across the fence’s uppermost crossbeam. His legs dangled precariously over thin air and the rocks fifty feet below. Jack gripped the base of the metal spear at the end of the fence, reached around the outer edge slick with condensation, grabbed hold, and carefully made his way back. When the fence met the gate he pulled himself up and stepped safely onto the stairs.
Jack grabbed his bag, bound up the last few steps and squat-ran along the cliff’s edge to Malic’s compound wall, where he caught his breath and waited in shadow for full darkness to descend. A crescent moon was on the rise, merely a slash in the night sky.
Kayla’s text had been cryptic. I have key, was all she shared—besides where they’d meet.
He texted Deak Montrose, the Coast Guard captain, alerting him to the coordinates of Malic’s cigarette boat, and put his phone on vibrate.
Jack cupped his hand over the Bluetooth device in his ear, his eyes narrowing as Cruz reported a stretch limo traveling toward the compound gate at a slow rate of speed.
Malic had been spotted driving alone in his Town Car toward the city an hour earlier, and Jack wasn’t happy to hear about surprise visitors.
But he was going in regardless. Tonight was the night. If Malic was being forced to clean house, sitting in front of a thousand witnesses was the perfect time to do it, Jack thought. No, Jack knew. He felt it in his bones.
The black stretch limousine pulled to a smooth stop in front of the massive steel gates protecting Malic’s compound.
The sheik had sent three of his men to do the job of one. A not-too-subtle show of force if his old friend decided to renege on their deal. And a reminder that his reach was vast.
The uniformed guard in the gatehouse was gazing at the monitor that had multiple views of the property, minus the main house. Kayla had demanded her family’s privacy from the security team, and Malic had reluctantly acquiesced. The Iraqi gang member tapped one particular square, and the image of the limo idling at the front entrance enlarged to fill the entire screen.
The guard signaled to another member of his security team, who slid out a side door to check out the occupants of the stretch. Then he banged on the gate, which swung open, and trotted in behind the car as the gates closed securely behind.
Hassan, having been notified of the men’s arrival by security, stepped out of the pool house with the metal suitcase in hand, locking the door behind him. He knew how upset Malic was, losing a prized possession, but Hassan had more on his mind than a rich man’s emotional attachment. He had to kill his prisoner.
Hassan hoped Malic was serious about the bonus. After losing the shipment of drugs and now the painting, he wasn’t sure where any surplus would come from. His wife had been badgering him about a new car. It would be good to shut her up, he thought as he walked past the pool toward the front gate. He never sensed Kayla standing at the kitchen sink, tracking his movements.
Malic al-Yasiri stood in a tight knot gathered next to Philippe Vargas, his attention on the mayor, who was holding court in the front of the Catalina Ballroom on the third floor of the Bonaventure Hotel. The cardinal, in his red finery, nodded in appreciation at something of import the mayor shared, and then the men broke their huddle and made their way to the head table.
Raul was already seated. But not at the head table with the mayor. He had been placed with McCarthy and Associates, the group recently hired to run Vargas’s leasing campaign. One of his eyes was swollen and ringed in a purple-green. His damaged hand was completely wrapped in gauze. The other held a drink.
Philippe Vargas walked past his son’s table as if he were invisible and took his seat next to the man of the cloth, forcing Malic to accept the chair on the end.
Malic glanced down at his cell phone, which he had put on vibrate, but he spied no text messages. Therefore no bad news. It did little to assuage his mood. His future was supported by a house of cards, and he was overleveraged. He thought about the sheik’s analogy of pulling a single thread out of a rug and being left standing on a dusty floor. In an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, he prayed that losing the ten-million-dollar Matisse wasn’t the beginning of his end.
Malic chastised himself for harboring negative thoughts and then waved off a waiter’s offer of wine. He took in the room, filled with the wealthy, powerful, and politically connected, and reminded himself that he belonged. Glancing at the members of the media in the back of the room, Malic steeled himself for the accolades to come and his time at the microphone.
The lights dimmed. The mayor stepped up to the spot-lit dais, and the room went silent.