Sex on the Moon (23 page)

34

Thad did his best to conjure up the theme songs to either
Mission: Impossible
or James Bond as he strolled along the edge of the highway, but the notes just wouldn’t come, his mind simply couldn’t focus past the image of the restaurant parking lot—which he could already make out over a low hedge embankment a dozen yards ahead. The never-ending stream of cars whizzing by, some so close he could feel the hot wind of their exhaust against the back of his neck, didn’t help; the roar of engines mixing with the metronomic beat of his own sneakers against Florida-hot asphalt was the only score he was going to get as he made his approach.

Getting dropped off two blocks from Italliani was about the only part of the newly reformatted plan that he actually liked. When Gordon had returned to the hotel room, just ten minutes ago, Thad had practically begged the two of them to let him handle the deal on his own; there was no need for them to be in the restaurant, and it seemed like such a stupid risk. His plan to protect Rebecca, no matter what, would be seriously hampered if she were caught with him, red-handed. And then there was the added loose-cannon factor, Gordon. The guy had seemed even more high when he returned from his pizza expedition, and there was no telling what he would do in the restaurant.

As it was, Thad had practically ordered them to wait at least ten minutes before entering the place, and they had agreed to play the part of a couple who’d just happened to wander into the restaurant—without any connection to Thad. If things went well, and Thad felt comfortable with the Belgian’s sister-in-law and her husband, he’d call them over and together they could all return to the hotel to show the buyer the moon rocks.

It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. Steeling himself—without the help of a really good theme song—Thad skirted past the low hedge and across the crowded parking lot.

As he stepped through the front entrance of the restaurant, he did his best to take in all the details at once—the kitschy, Italian decor, the red-brown curtains that obscured the glass picture windows, the low booths that lined three walls of the rectangular space, the waiters and waitresses wearing black and white, the hostess stand where a young woman stood talking to a pair of middle-aged-looking customers. It was the kind of restaurant that could have appeared in any town in America, and it seemed like the perfect public setting for a deal to go down. As Thad approached the hostess, he was pleased and surprised to see that the restaurant was extremely crowded for six
P.M.
Then again, it was Orlando, which even in the summer was a haven for tourists from all over the world. Hell, he might as well have set the meeting for the middle of Disney. They could have exchanged contraband for cash on the way up Space Mountain.

Except, of course, there would be no exchange of contraband for cash until everyone felt comfortable with each other. Thad hadn’t brought any of the samples along with him, and he was expecting the buyer to be just as cautious.

After the middle-aged couple moved out of the way, Thad walked up to the hostess and told her that he was meeting someone for dinner. He didn’t give the hostess any names, nor could he actually describe whom he was meeting. In any event, the hostess told him that he was the first to arrive, so he opted to wait at the front of the restaurant.

A good five minutes went by as he watched at least a half dozen more tables get seated. The place was really bustling. Standing there, with so many people hovering around, he started to feel pretty nervous. Hell, he wasn’t even certain that the other party was going to show up. Maybe the woman had chickened out at the last minute. Maybe she had even called 911. Thad knew his own nerves were working against him, and he had the sudden urge to just turn around and walk out of there.

And then he saw her, the woman as she had described herself in an e-mail, dark-haired, respectable-looking, wearing a tailored suit-skirt combination—she looked like a schoolteacher or a businesswoman, and there was a nervous smile on her youthful face.

She immediately recognized him from the outfit he had told her he’d be wearing: a black shirt and silver necklace sporting a dolphin pendant. The pendant had sentimental value—Sonya had given it to him years ago—but he wasn’t sure why he had chosen it for this moment.

She shook his hand, introducing herself as Lynn Briley. Thad didn’t give any name himself, and let the woman lead him, with the help of the hostess, to a four-seater against the right side of the restaurant, right up next to one of the curtained picture windows. Thad didn’t see the woman’s husband anywhere nearby, so he assumed that she had wanted to meet him first—which made sense, since she was the American. Kurt, Axel’s brother, might not even have spoken English, for all Thad knew. Emmermann’s e-mails had always seemed to be written in that very staccato manner of foreigners who’d learned English in school, rather than on the street.

After they were seated, and a waiter took their order—a random and hastily constructed list of Italian appetizers and entrées—they went right to business. Lynn had obviously noticed that Thad wasn’t carrying anything with him; he was wearing shorts, sneakers, the shirt, and the necklace. So Thad wanted to quickly set her at ease.

“The samples are back at our hotel. After we’re comfortable with each other, we can go back and exchange the money there. Does that sound good?”

She nodded, taking a sip of her water. She seemed as nervous as Thad felt, and that actually made him calm down a little. She was pretty, in that slightly older-woman sort of way, and he noticed that she had left the top button of her dress shirt undone, revealing the angle of her collarbone.

“Okay, where’s your hotel?”

“The Sheraton.”

“If you’re more comfortable with that, we can do that. The Sheraton just down the street?”

“The big tall one,” Thad responded. The woman was talking fast, and Thad really wanted to make her feel comfortable enough to relax. “On the left. It’s been very nice. I’m telling you, this has been the most exciting event in my entire life, I think. Heck, I’m just hoping you don’t have a wire on you! Anyway, you know what my girlfriend said today? She’s like—they could make a life out of my movie.”

Thad knew he was talking too much, but he couldn’t help himself, he was starting to enjoy this, starting to really ride the adrenaline. The woman seemed to be easing up a bit also, and she seemed amused by his obvious enthusiasm.

“You sound very adventurous,” she commented, “and your girlfriend must be very adventurous, too.”

“What she meant to say is, they could make a movie of her life.”

It was an extremely surreal comment to make—both for Rebecca, back at the hotel, and for Thad, here in the crowded restaurant, speaking to a woman who was about to pay him a hundred thousand dollars for stolen moon rocks.

Thad was starting to feel a bit more in control as he took a long sip of his own water. But there were still plenty of loose ends. He asked her about Kurt, her husband, and she explained that he was waiting nearby for her to call, to let him know that things were progressing. In return, Thad told her that his own partners were on their way to the restaurant and would be there soon.

“Do you want to talk to your husband before you meet the others?” he asked, wanting to move this along. His ten-minute grace period was almost up, and he expected Rebecca and Gordon to walk in at any moment.

The woman seemed to think about it for a second, then nodded.

“I tell you what. The music in here is really loud. Let me step out. I’ll call my husband and get him on the way here, and while he’s on his way, you can call your friends, and we can all sit down and chitchat. Sound good?”

Thad was about to answer, when he saw them—Gordon and Rebecca, strolling into the place as if they owned it, actually holding hands, although Thad suspected that Rebecca was just trying to keep Gordon from toppling over. Just as Thad had demanded, they took a table across the crowded place and called over a waiter. Gordon was talking extremely loud—so loud that Thad could hear him ordering Heinekens over the din of the other diners.

Hell, the guy was really making a scene—but it didn’t seem like anyone else noticed, so Thad turned back to the woman.

“That’s fine. I’ll wait right here.”

Thad realized he was sweating as he watched her go. All of his bravado from the moment before was gone, his nerves firing off, his entire being shaken by the sight of Gordon and Rebecca sitting there, across the way.

He took another sip of water, trying to compose himself.

…

Lynn Briley—aka Special Agent Lynn Billings—waited until she’d moved out of earshot of the suspect, whom she knew only as Orb Robinson, before pulling her cell phone out of her front pocket and placing it tight against her ear. She was breathing hard, though she wasn’t particularly nervous; as an undercover agent with the FBI, she had conducted numerous missions in the past. Certainly, this was not the first time she had worn a wire, but there was always that special feeling you got when you strapped the electronics to your body—especially when you weren’t certain what sort of environment you were getting yourself into. But Orb Robinson seemed pretty harmless. Of course, that didn’t make him any less guilty.

“Kurt.” She spoke rapidly into the cell phone. Even though she was out of earshot, she never broke character during a mission. “Things are going very well. His other two friends are here, um, that are involved in this as well. He does not have the samples on him right now, so they want to go to their hotel room. Which is the Sheraton just down the road by I-4. He said it’s the big tall one. So his two friends are already in the restaurant. They have not sat down at the table yet. They want to get comfortable with you, and then we’re gonna go and everything should be in the hotel room at the Sheraton; just advise—advise our friends. You know, why don’t you do that right now. Um, well, go ahead and do that. I think that might help. Okay, and, um, just come in and we’ll be waiting for you.”

With that, she hung up and deftly slid the cell phone back into her suit pocket. She did a mental check, making sure the digital recording device was still well hidden beneath her clothes. Pasting a calm, collected smile back on her lips, she headed back to the table.

…

The woman was already talking, before she even fully settled back into her seat.

“I forgot to ask before I left,” she said, and she seemed to be more relaxed after her phone call, “if you wanted him to bring the money. So, he’s going to. Just, I figured that was the safest thing to do.”

“Can we leave it in your car?” Thad didn’t like this development at all. A suitcase full of money did not belong in this restaurant, and it seemed like an unnecessary danger. After all, they were going to all have to go back to the hotel anyway, to look at the moon rocks.

“You don’t want him to bring it in?”

“No.”

“It’s up to you; I can tell him not to.”

Thad took a breath. He didn’t want to fuck this up by being too paranoid.

“Okay, I don’t want to open up a briefcase full of money in here. But he can bring it in.”

He wanted to keep the woman happy, and comfortable. Especially because he could really hear Gordon now, over the din of the restaurant, saying something to the waitress, something about some huge tip he’d obviously given her. Thad wasn’t sure, but he thought Gordon was on at least his third Heineken. Which was kind of a terrifying thought, considering how high the kid already was.

“It doesn’t matter,” Thad quickly added. “I’ll follow him out to the car afterward, and look inside real quick—”

He had barely gotten through the sentence when he saw a man approaching the table—tall, square-jawed, maybe a little too thin, wearing a somewhat stiff-looking blue blazer and a tie. Kurt Emmermann certainly looked European. And he was holding a briefcase in his left hand.

As he introduced himself, shaking Thad’s hand and giving Lynn a little kiss on the cheek, Thad couldn’t keep his gaze off that briefcase. Sure, he had no intention of opening it here in the restaurant, but he knew what was inside.
More money than he had ever seen in his life
. More money than he could imagine in one place. Enough money to change everything.

“Unbelievable,” he said, realizing he was saying it out loud, but not really caring. “You spend so much time thinking about it. I mean, you see it in a movie in your mind, and then it happens. It’s happening right now. It’s weird. I almost feel like I’ve lived over the last two months, you know, this whole ordeal, I don’t know how to feel. I really don’t want too much more.”

Both the woman and her husband were looking at him, maybe trying to decipher what he was saying, maybe just wondering what was going to happen next. The woman’s eyes still seemed kind of amused, but the man was much more about business. Thad didn’t care. He felt like he had one foot in the fantasy world he had been building for the past year, and one foot in reality. It was a wild sensation.

He quickly glanced at Rebecca, catching her eye. He was glad to see that Gordon was too busy with his Heineken to notice. Rebecca separated herself from the table and headed over by herself. She had to weave between a pair of diners being led by the hostess to their table—and as she passed them, Thad noticed something for the first time, something that seemed the littlest bit peculiar.

Other than the hostess, the other people in the restaurant—and there had to be at least fifty of them—all seemed to be middle-aged. No kids, no teenagers, no families. Nobody that was in their twenties, other than Thad, Rebecca, and Gordon.

Well, maybe there was some sort of convention nearby. Or maybe it was just Florida. Thad filed it away in the back of his mind. He stood as Rebecca reached the table, introducing her to Lynn and Kurt.

“You’re really close to what I was expecting.”

Thad wasn’t sure why Rebecca had just said that, but from her voice, he could tell that she was really nervous. He gestured for her to take a seat, next to him. Kurt and Lynn were across from them. Lynn turned toward Thad.