"Tell me something I don’t know,” Marc Anston said, gazing over the Ocean Beach seawall toward the fog-filtered Farallon Islands.
Only the footfalls of an occasional daybreak jogger and the squawk of seagulls intruded on the rustle of the low-tide surf.
“That’s the part that’ll cost you.” Daniel Norbett glanced down at his worn Ferragamo loafers, now dusted with sand. The Cayman Island accountant gave a little shiver, unused to the chill of Northern California mornings.
“How can I be sure you’ll deliver?” Anston asked.
Norbett cinched his trench coat tighter, then laughed. “That’s a stupid question. I protected your ass in my Miami case.”
“I wasn’t part of your case.”
“But you were part of what Quinton was doing and I sent the U.S. Attorney off in another direction.”
“Quinton doesn’t seem to see it that way.”
“Only because his ego blocks his view.”
“I know, and it’s the cost of doing business with ex-pat British lawyers. They’re stamped out of the same mold. I hated dealing with those guys even back in the Contra days.”
They fell silent as a runner stopped on the sidewalk behind them and bent to retie her shoe.
Norbett watched her straighten up. “And there’s something else. I think Quinton and Brandon may have outsmarted themselves when they talked to Gage.”
“By saying…?”
Norbett waved a forefinger side to side in front of Anston. “You don’t get that either without a little money up front.”
Anston folded his arms across his chest, weighing the offer and breathing in the salt air. He hated dealing with snitches. Norbett might not have informed on him and Quinton in order to beat his last case, but he snitched on someone.
“How much?” Anston asked.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“I thought Gage only gave you ten.”
Norbett jerked his thumb toward the multimillion-dollar condos spread along the Great Highway behind him.
“We’re in another period of irrational exuberance.”
Anston reached for his cell phone and punched in a number.
“Quinton, this is Anston. Transfer twenty-five grand to Norbett
… That’s what I said, to Norbett… No, not from Pegasus, you idiot, from one of your accounts, then reimburse yourself from Pegasus.”
Anston handed the phone to Norbett. “Give him your account details.”
Norbett read off the numbers from a slip of paper he’d withdrawn from his wallet, then disconnected.
“Sometimes that asshole doesn’t think,” Anston said. “Let’s walk.”
I didn’t tell Gage anything he couldn’t figure out for himself,” Norbett said, as they returned a half hour later to the same spot along the wall. “I kept pushing the insurance angle toward a dead end. And played dumb about Brandon Meyer. But it’s only a matter of time until he catches on.”
“What about the Jamaican woman? How do we know she won’t blabber what she told you to somebody else?”
Norbett raised his palms toward Anston. “Don’t touch her. I need her to keep an eye on Quinton. He doesn’t seem to realize how big this thing is and how hot it might get if it explodes. He may melt.”
“There won’t be time for that to happen. I have a plan to contain things. I’ll just need to move it along a little faster.”
A nston watched Norbett climb into a taxi to the airport in the Cliff House Restaurant parking lot overlooking Seal Rock. Seagulls fought over food wrappers blowing across the pavement, flailing and squawking and tumbling in the air. It gave him a feeling of revulsion, just like Norbett, the snitch who pretended he wasn’t, who pretended he’d protected Anston in his Miami debriefing, when he was only protecting himself.
Anston reached for his cell phone as the cab pulled away.
“You have somebody in the Caymans?”
“No,” Boots said, “not the Caymans. But I got a guy in Havana. An hour flight.”
“Our friend just leaned on me for money and I don’t want to have to keep paying him off for the rest of his natural life.”
“I take it the emphasis is on natural.”
“Exactly. I’ll tell you when.”