Killer Move

Because that’s also how these people roll, I could have told her. The big house and the money are not enough. That’s just cash wealth—and existential wealth is what counts. You’ve got to make it clear to everyone, every day, that your life is different, that you don’t have to jump through the conventional hoops, that politeness is for those who cannot afford to behave otherwise. That you rule. That you’re god.

You learn this within days of starting in the luxury real estate business, and I looked forward very much to behaving this way myself.

As a start, I ended the call without saying anything more. If she had any sense, Melania would have realized that I now had a choice over whether I revealed that she’d failed to pass on her boss’s message. Which meant she owed me, which in turn meant that being jerked around would wind up playing to my advantage in the end. If you’re sharp enough to see through the games people play, you start to pull ahead. Bill Moore understands this.

Bill Moore is fit for purpose.

Except . . . the asshole didn’t show up there, either.

Krank’s is a newish bar/restaurant on Main in Sarasota at the intersection with Lemon Avenue (the street name a remnant of the days when the town was only here to grow and ship citrus), the kind of zeitgeist-crazed trend pit where you have to be ever vigilant in reminding yourself that you are not there merely to kowtow to the whims of the staff. I parked with ten minutes to spare. Being inside the bar was like being punched in the face with music, so I got a bottle of Ybor Gold and took it onto the terrace out front instead.

I drank the beer. Twenty-five minutes later, Warner hadn’t arrived. I got another Gold. I drank that one, too. Warner still didn’t show. The beers were, however, doing what beers do the night after too much wine: making me feel a lot better.

So I had one more. By the time that was done it was coming up on eleven o’clock, and I was done, too. I considered calling Melania again but dismissed the idea. All that would achieve was showing that her boss had no compunction about standing me up again. The blogs all say that people take you at your own estimation, and that’s true, but people sure as hell take you at other people’s estimation as well. Melania didn’t need to know I’d been stood up a second time—not from me, anyway.

I paid my tab and drove carefully home.

When I got to the house, the lights were on Steph’s I’ve-Gone-to-Bed setting. I stood for a moment in the living room, wondering whether I’d gain any material advantage from having a swim. I decided not. Instead, I gently let out the burp that had been building since the last beer and caught a tiny hint of mandarin on my breath.

I went to the kitchen to get a couple of glasses of water for the bedroom—Steph never bothered to do this for herself, but liked it when I did—and tramped upstairs. She was still awake, propped up in bed reading.

“Hey, babe. Success?”

“No. He didn’t show.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So what have you been doing all this time?”

“Waiting.”

“Where?”

I got into bed beside her. “Outside his house, then at Krank’s—where his assistant said he’d be.”

“Kind of a busted evening, hey.”

“Say that again.”

She turned out the light, and rolled onto her side.

CHAPTER SEVEN

His abductor has only one question. The man understands perfectly well what it means. He gets what the guy wants to know. He also realizes that once he answers the question, he’s probably going to die.

And so he hasn’t answered it.

Yet.

He woke several hours before. Consciousness crept upon him slowly, as if unsure how good an idea it would be to get reinvolved. Eventually it stabilized. His eyelids seemed broken, too heavy to lift, and so initially he left them closed. His head felt stodgy, as if after a long evening of turgid red wine. He was aware of businesslike alerts from various other angles of his body, as if they’d collided with something hard. He was not hungry. He was very warm.

These impressions came to him in an orderly procession, as if presented on burgundy-colored velvet cushions held up by tiny, deferential servants. For a moment, in fact, he believed he could actually see these minuscule helpers bowing and scraping in the dark corridors of his mind. Then they fled, all at once, darting chaotically to either side to clear the way for bigger news, as it suddenly declared itself.

Somebody had punched his right thigh, above the knee. Either that, or hit it very hard with a hammer.

This hadn’t occurred recently—it didn’t have the raw edge of the this-just-happened—but the pain was still very large. It was large in a measured, I-can-keep-this-up-forever style.

It was large enough for the man to feel it was probably time to open his eyes.

The first thing he sees is his own lap. His head has, he realizes, been lolling forward. He sees blurred images of gray sweatpants, now mottled, and the crumpled front of a lilac shirt. He recognizes these. They belong to him.