Layover in Dubai (7 page)

It turned out to be like the rest of Dubai—surreal, an artful con, worthy successor to the mirages that must have once fooled thirsty caravans. Super-strength air-conditioning kept the temperature at 29 degrees Fahrenheit beneath a sky blue ceiling. You rented parkas and snow pants along with the skis and poles, and caught the lift straight for the top. Not exactly Aspen, but still fun in a discombobulating sort of way.

Sam, who slalomed down with an easy grace, waited for Charlie at the bottom. The older man descended like Laurel and Hardy, a slapstick of tumbles and splayed legs that ended with an ignoble roll at the bottom. But when he stood, snow in his stubble, his cigarette was still clamped in his lips and he wasn’t at all embarrassed.

“Haven’t done this in a while,” he said. “I think I’ll watch from the bar.”

He nodded toward a big plate-glass window up high in the back. Everyone on the other side looked cozy, steaming drinks in hand, video fireplaces ablaze. A little like the Alps, as long as you didn’t glance to the right, where another big window faced out from the mall’s main concourse. A line of shoppers peered in, all in a row with their sunburns, their bags, and their ice cream cones.

“Did Mr. Hatcher meet anyone in the bar while you were skiing?” Assad asked. “Did anyone approach either of you?”

“No.”

Sam’s only conversation had been with Charlie, afterward in the Alpine bar:

“So how’d we end up traveling together, anyway, young Mr. Keller? Any insights you’d care to share?”

Obviously Charlie hadn’t bought Nanette’s rationale—the idea that Sam needed a chaperone. She had given him a cover story in case this subject came up—a lame one, but it was all he had.

“The travel office thought it would be a good way to save money.”

“Some sort of package deal, you mean?” Charlie snorted. “They obviously don’t know the way things work at the Shangri-La. But tell me something. You weren’t summoned to meet with the lovely Nanette by any chance, were you?”

He had a story for this, too.

“I was. She wanted to update my security status, seeing as how I might be stopping in Pakistan on the way back from Hong Kong.”

Charlie nodded, but didn’t seem convinced.

“Tell me,” he said. “This earlier departure of yours, the one that put you in sync with my schedule. Was that Nanette’s idea as well?”

“Uh, no.” He felt terrible lying. “The travel office handled everything.”

Charlie smiled.

“Whatever you say, boss. But I do kind of like the idea of making her squirm. And I don’t mean in the carnal sense.”

He must have noticed Sam redden, judging from what he said next.

“So even you think she’s kind of hot, huh?” He laughed. “Well, I guess we’re always doing it, aren’t we?”

“Doing what?”

“Sizing them up. Stripping them down in our heads, whether they’re our waitress, our boss, or our second cousin. Wondering what it would be like. Or, if they’re a little too old, what it might have been like ten years ago. Doesn’t take much to set us off, really. A curve of the hip. A certain look in the eye. But let me tell you something about our Nanette. Put together nicely, I’ll grant you, but she’s cut from solid granite. Cold, hard, and sharp at every edge. Probably a little bitter for her own good, but very effective at pretty much everything she does.”

“Why bitter?” Sam immediately wished he hadn’t asked. Better to have let the subject die a natural death.

“Passed over for bigger and better things one too many times, I suspect. That tends to happen when you blow the whistle and no one listens. And, yes, I know all about that poor veep for finance she busted in Africa. But he was an easy mark. The stronger ones with better protection always survive. And after that happens a few times maybe the inclination is to say, hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Or maybe, Sam thought, the inclination was to take out your frustrations on smaller fry, like a quality control officer with a penchant for randy behavior. Assuming that what Charlie said was even true. Obviously there was no love lost between the two of them.

“Well, if you think she’s interested in me now,” Charlie said, “just wait ’til a week from Monday, on the fourteenth. She’ll get all of me she wants.”

“Monday? In Hong Kong?”

“That’s another thing. I won’t be going to Hong Kong. I’m staying here through the week. Go ahead and tell her if she happens to ask. But it’s strictly for business. Tell her that, too. The reckoning is coming, old son.”

Sam told none of this to Lieutenant Assad, of course. Too much to explain. Nor did he even consider revealing his role as Nanette’s spy, which would have raised unwarranted suspicion. But with Charlie now lying dead on the floor, the man’s earlier words took on a new significance. What was supposed to be happening on Monday the 14th, and what was Charlie’s “reckoning”? Or had he prematurely brought that on himself, tonight at the York?

“So, then,” Assad asked, “where did you go next?”

Dinner, drinks in a few places he now barely remembered, followed by a fairly early bedtime. Sam then showered and crashed into a dreamless sleep, with the whine of the Emirates jet still roaring in his ears as he drifted off.

“And this was what time?”

“Maybe ten. No, later. I was pretty beat.”

“So for all you know, Mr. Hatcher could have met someone downstairs. Or gone back out on the town.”

“I suppose.” The idea had occurred to him as he showered, but he had been too tired to stay out longer, and he had counted on Charlie’s age to keep him grounded as well.

“What about the next day?”

“I was up pretty early. Caught a cab to the beach at Jumeirah to take a walk. Charlie slept in ’til noon.”

“Yes. He almost definitely went back out without you.”

Great, Sam thought. Just don’t put that in your report, in case Nanette reads it.

“We had brunch, then took it easy in the afternoon around the hotel pool. We both did some business by phone.”

“Local contacts?”

“Not for me. With Charlie, who knows?”

Assad scribbled a note.

“These calls. He would have been using a smart phone or BlackBerry, correct? Which you say you weren’t able to find?”

“Yes.”

It made Sam curious to see what was in the datebook. He wondered if he should hand it over. But that would be admitting he’d hidden it to begin with.

“And in the evening?”

“We had dinner at Al Mahara in the Burj Al Arab, the seafood place with the big aquarium.”

Assad smiled wryly.

“Did you happen to see a fat local gentleman in a very ugly brown pin-striped suit?”

“Not that I recall.”

“My boss, Brigadier Razzaq. He is there at least twice a week. His banker friends know it’s his favorite. He has been observed drinking alcohol there.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“And you dined alone, just the two of you?”

Was it Sam’s imagination, or was Assad beginning to leer, as if he suspected a homosexual relationship?

“Yes. Just the two of us.”

“Very cozy. And then?”

“Barhopping for the next few hours. Except for a stop at the Palace Hotel.” Sam realized he actually had an item of possible interest for Assad. “Charlie had an appointment there. Someone I didn’t know.”

Assad sat up straighter and flipped a page.

“The Palace Hotel at the Royal Mirage? The big resort?”

“Yes.”

“And you saw this person?”

“From across the room. I was waiting by the front desk.”

He remembered the cab ride up a curving driveway beneath under-lit palms, the spooky feel of arriving at an oasis by night. They crossed a bridge over a man-made creek to enter a massive stone gate flanked by flaming torches. Facing them from the courtyard was a life-size sculpture of eight Bedouin camel riders, galloping straight toward them, as if guarding the hotel’s marble entrance. The lobby featured a high domed ceiling painted in multicolored pastels, with enough room beneath it for a grand fountain and four towering palms.

Charlie made a call from the courtesy phone and crossed the room to wait by the elevators. Sam took a seat on the opposite side. A few minutes later a man came down. To Sam’s surprise, it was not a colleague in Western business attire or resort clothing, nor even a local in a flowing white
kandoura
. It was a member of the hotel staff, looking a bit ridiculous in a white silk turban and a red satin robe embroidered in gold. Hollywood’s idea of an Arab bellhop, or maybe a bouncer.

They stepped into a little alcove on the far side of lobby. The hotel man sat on an overstuffed couch, looking as if he wanted to hide beneath the cushions as he glanced this way and that. Charlie, for a change, seemed deadly earnest. He sat kitty-corner in a chair of carved wood and inlaid ivory. Sam was intrigued enough to stroll closer, hoping to catch the drift of their conversation. But the splashing fountain masked their words. Charlie spent most of the conversation nodding. He paused once to scribble briefly in a small black notebook. The datebook, Sam realized now. Maybe the fellow had been some sort of pimp, procuring women for later. He might even have phoned ahead to the woman in blue sequins. Sam must have voiced this thought, because Assad spoke up.

“A pimp? You may be right. Do you remember his name?”

“Charlie didn’t say. But he was pretty big, built like a wrestler. Full brown beard, neatly trimmed.”

“Yes. That will help. How long did they talk?”

“Maybe ten minutes.”

“Did anything pass between them? Papers? Money, perhaps?”

“Now that you mention it, I think Charlie slipped him something just before they finished. Probably cash, some folded bills.”

“You don’t know how much?”

“No. But when the guy left, Charlie was all smiles. Then he took me around the corner to the hotel’s private club. The Kasbar, it was called. There was a bouncer out front in the same kind of uniform. There was a guest book and a velvet rope, but when Charlie mentioned we were with Pfluger Klaxon he waved us through.”

“Did he say anything about his meeting?”

“No.” Sam hesitated. “But I asked.”

“And?”

“He said it was personal. ‘Personal business.’ Those were his words.”

“Anything else?”

“I didn’t press him for more.”

He hadn’t needed to. In truth, Charlie had talked awhile longer, although none of it was anything Sam felt comfortable sharing.

“Wonder where they got
her
from?” Charlie had said, staring as their waitress departed in a skirt cut to the tops of her thighs. “Whatever. We’ll be seeing plenty more of that later.”

He enjoyed a laugh at Sam’s expense.

“Don’t worry, Sam. I know you’ve been told I’m a bad boy.”

Sam looked down at his drink, tongue-tied. He was unwilling to lie anymore to maintain his cover.

“Well, Nanette’s right. I
am
a bad boy. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one. We’ve got some real predators at Pfluger Klaxon, old son.”

“You mean our pricing policies?”

“Oh, hell, don’t come at me with any of that Big Pharma crap. Yes, we’re profiteering bastards, but our products do save a few million lives. I made peace with all that ages ago. You either
do
business or you go
out
of business. What I’m talking about is personal. People who aren’t bothered by any sort of behavior, no matter who it hurts.”

Charlie made it sound like a confession, and then briefly lowered his head, as if seeking absolution. But when he looked back up he grinned widely.

“But why am I telling you, of all people? From what I hear you’ve got the opposite problem. Shortest leash in the building, and self-maintained. Saint Sam of Auditing.”

Sam shrugged, embarrassed.

“True enough, I guess. But I screwed up early on. Nearly blew a whole account.” He told Charlie about his debacle in Asia, and the ensuing crackdown from upstairs.

Charlie snorted.

“Hell, that’s nothing. And all those warnings? Take ’em with a grain of salt. Learn from it, sure. But always remember, you’re the one out in the field getting his boots muddy, so live like you want. Stretch yourself. Soak up a little atmosphere. They don’t own you, you know.”

The man had a point. There had to be a happy medium between running off the rails and chugging along in the same narrow-gauge track, around and around. Not that Charlie offered such a great example. Follow his path and someday maybe he, too, would be traveling with a correct little junior chaperone.

A similar thought must have occurred to Charlie, judging by his next remark.

“Just don’t overdo it, old son. No matter what some misbehaving old fart like me tells you. Because once you do, atonement is damned near impossible. Only extraordinary measures will suffice. And that’s what I’m all about these days, Sam. Atonement. You’ll see.”

For all his ogling and salacious remarks, Charlie was sounding more like a penitent than a whoremonger. What’s more, Sam liked him, just as he had when they had worked together before. Charlie wasn’t just fun, he was genuine. Flawed, yes, but he knew it, and even seemed determined to do something about it. That was one reason Sam decided then and there to turn off his cell phone, severing contact with Nanette. Anyone with this much need to make amends couldn’t possibly go astray, at least not that night.

Wrong again, as it turned out. And given Charlie’s statement, the murder now seemed like some sort of divine retribution for the old fellow’s fall from grace.

“How long did you stay at the Kasbar?” Assad asked.

“We bought drinks, but Charlie seemed kind of preoccupied. The place was pretty empty. The only time he really perked up was when the guy in the beard came in.”

“The same one? The employee Charlie talked to earlier?”