TWENTY-ONE

The driver said, ‘Twenty bucks, I can probably take you around again if you like?’ A wink in the mirror. ‘Might be a little room left in the fee.’

Vincent told him not to worry—he reckoned he’d got a feel for it.

The driver let him out by the front door of the hotel, and Vincent called Beauden on his cell.

‘You still in the bar?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

Vincent said, ‘Maybe switch to cola. I might need your help in a minute.’

‘What’s up?’

Vincent told him.

‘At the bottom of Trenton? Is it the same car?’

‘Probably not. I think it’s the same people, wanting to be noticed.’

‘What do you want to do?’

Vincent said, ‘I’ll call you back.’

He stayed outside for a minute, checking faces. The doormen all looked like doormen, and the people being dropped off and collected seemed harmless enough. He went inside and took an elevator up to Erin’s floor, sharing the ride with a woman in her seventies dressed all in pink, a Chihuahua under one arm. The dog stared at Vincent the whole way. He knocked at Erin’s door, and she let him in without a word. It was a good set-up: leather sofas facing each other across a coffee table. A glass sliding door and a balcony with a view over Beverly Hills—houses hidden by a dark quilt of treetops, twinkle-lit by streetlights below the canopy.

He heard the click of the lock, and then Erin said, ‘I need to play you this.’

Vincent looked at her, but she was typing something on her phone. She set it down on the coffee table, and a recorded voice—digitally distorted, androgynous—spoke:

‘The idea was to kill all of you. But given you’re still alive, I think we need a new arrangement. I’m missing thirty million dollars. You can either clear that debt for me, or you can look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. I hope that’s a simple decision. And I should point out that neither of those options includes making this public. I assume from your message you consider that a possibility. I advise against it. I’ll be in touch.’

The recording ended.

The phone screen timed out and went dark.

Erin said, ‘That was twenty minutes ago.’

Vincent said, ‘What do they mean, “your message”?’

‘Freeman’s last call before he died was to a law firm. Page Swanson. I called them an hour ago and left a message.’

Maybe he shouldn’t have worried about keeping things from her. She was clearly capable in her own right.

‘Saying what?’

‘Saying I want to discuss what’s happening.’

She’d showered and changed—dressed in jeans now and a knit sweater, cheeks still a little rouged from the heat.