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CHAPTER 105
“HEY, DO YOU LIKE gadgets, Iliana?” Gabe suddenly said, snapping his fingers after he finished his call. “I want to show you something.”
From the pink-silk-lined inside pocket of his suit, he took out a metal ingot. It was matte black, about the size of a matchbox. He placed it carefully on the inlaid wood console between them.
“Check this out. This runs on Wi-Fi,” he said as he pressed a button on his phone. Suddenly six legs sprang out of the ingot with a tiny click and it immediately began moving forward, just like an insect. It stopped at the rim of a drink holder, its little wire legs probing. Then it began to travel nimbly around the right side of the holder.
“Weird. A little toy robot bug?” Iliana said. “Is it remote control?”
“It can be,” Gabe said, smiling proudly. “Or it can just crawl around on its own. The artificial intelligence it has can make it learn and remember things. It also has an audio-video feed. I can send it places. Boardrooms. Ladies’ rooms. Only kidding. I wouldn’t do that.
“One of my tech companies came up with it. We have a big one we’re working on for the government, about the size of a deer, that can carry five hundred pounds. I love robotics, don’t you? I call this little guy Willis because he has a will of his own, get it? Look at Willis go.”
Willis actually gave her the creeps, but she nodded politely as she took another sip from the bottle. Was this guy some kind of inventor? Definitely an odd duck.
“Hey, how do you like the champagne? Not bad, huh?” Gabe said, rolling his neck.
“It’s very good. It’s like soda. Dom is French, right?”
Gabe nodded quickly as he zipped down the black glass divider that separated them from the driver. God, this guy is restless, she thought. Or coked up, maybe? The driver was a very smooth-skinned black man who, even seated, seemed to be very tall.
“You hear that, Alberto?” Gabe called up through his big cupped hands. “Look at me. I’m living the American dream tonight, baby. German car, French champagne, and a Ukrainian beauty!”
“Yes, you are, sir. Yes, you are,” Alberto said, grinning.
They both stared at her then for a long awkward moment. The driver from the rearview, Gabe from the left. Both with the same unblinking expression. Flat and patient and rapacious. Iliana thought of a picture from the frayed fairy-tale book at the orphanage in Dnipropetrovsk where she’d grown up. They both looked like the wolf seeing the first of the three little pigs.
There was something between them, she realized. Like they were friends. More than employer-employee. Something weird.
She glanced at the little bug thing as it made the rim of the console and probed and turned around. It suddenly stopped and turned and seemed to stare at her as well. She held her breath, suddenly extremely scared for some reason she couldn’t name.
Rylan had assured her that his friend knew she didn’t do weird. Sometimes men forgot, though. She had been hurt by very cruel, sadistic men her whole life. That was why she carried the stun gun in her purse. The bodyguard she could handle, and this soft American, too, no matter how much money or ego he thought he had. She stared at the metal thing, resisting the urge to smash it with her fist.
Pretty Woman, she thought, disgusted with herself. She wasn’t even alive in 1990. Get over on this weird bozo and move along.
That was when she started to feel light-headed. She zipped the seat to upright, and when she looked forward at the driver, he was still staring, which didn’t make sense.
The car is moving. How can he drive and keep staring at me at the same time?
“Could we put up the divider, Gabe?” she said, setting the bottle down.
“Alberto, Alberto, Alberto. How many times do I have to tell you? Ladies don’t like it when you undress them with those big eyes you have,” Gabe said as he hit a button and the tinted divider started to rise again like a dark tide.
When it was up, she tried the button for the window to get some air, but it kept clicking uselessly.
“Gabe, could you pull over? I think I’m going to be sick,” Iliana said as she slumped against the white-silk-lined, vaultlike door.
Gabe leaned over and put his long fingers to her neck just below the jawline.
“You’re going to be fine, lliana,” he said as he stared at his watch. “Take a little nap now, OK? I’ll wake you up in a little bit.”
Iliana’s heavy eyelids began to droop. The last thing she saw was the metal bug on the floor, pausing briefly before it began to climb up her white stiletto heel.
CHAPTER 106
BY 10 P.M., WE WERE speeding down a dark street in the Wakefield section of the Bronx near the border of Mount Vernon. The block of row houses flying by off to my left would have been charming if every single one of them hadn’t had plywood windows.
We were now down to the chicken-with-its-head-cutoff strategy in trying to pinpoint Chayefsky. Robertson, back at the Harlem office, had gotten a list of Luminous Properties holdings and was feeding us addresses.
