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“This is what I need from you, Mr. Sinclair,” Verdi said, withdrawing blueprints from his briefcase and handing them across the desk.
Sinclair perked up, glancing over the blueprints, searching for what Verdi was after. What he was looking at was a very incomplete blueprint, but I don’t think it took Sinclair long to figure out why.
“Interesting,” he said, placing the blueprint down on the desk in front of him.
“I need nine rooms,” Verdi explained. “Three in the basement and two on each of the first three floors. These rooms will not be recorded with the New York City Department of Buildings, nor will they be detectable to anyone who doesn’t already know of their existence.”
Sinclair sat back in his chair, his gaze fixed on Verdi. He was sizing Verdi up, the same way I was sizing up Sinclair, watching him, looking for tells.
If Sinclair didn’t buy his act, this wasn’t some lily-white businessman who would shoo Verdi out the front door. If Verdi fucked up, it was possible he would never see daylight again.
“I’m intrigued,” Sinclair said after a long moment of silence. “Tell me, what might a person do with these… phantom chambers?”
Verdi shifted; the camera angle changed like he’d crossed his leg, turning his body just a little. As he did, his hand moved to his knee, just beneath the desk. With the flick of a finger, he stuck a listening device with an adhesive backing to the underside of the desk.
“I can’t quite say what they might be used for, Mr. Sinclair. My clients depend on me for the utmost discretion, and to that end, I seldom find it beneficial to ask too many questions.”
Sinclair nodded.
This would have come as no surprise to him. Cielo had worked his magic to set Verdi up as the head of a successful real estate firm that dealt with a very particular clientele. And I had no doubt Sinclair had done his research before he’d agreed to this meeting.
“All right, Mr. Verdi. I’ll consider your proposal and get back to you.”
So, he was intrigued, but still suspicious. That was fine. By the time Sinclair had managed to dig deep enough to give credence to his suspicions, he’d either be dead or on a plane headed back to London.
“Fair enough, Mr. Sinclair,” Verdi said, then rose to his feet.
“Come on,” Greta urged, her gaze glued to Sinclair. If he stayed behind the desk, there was no way Verdi would be able to plant a tracker on the man. We’d have ears in his office, but no way to follow his movements.
Sinclair stood up, and when he circled the glass desk, the surveillance room-turned-movie theater let out a collective sigh.
Parting pleasantries were exchanged. Then the handshake. The view from the lapel of Verdi’s jacket didn’t extend down far enough to see what was going on, whether he’d managed to plant the tracker undetected.
So, I watched Sinclair’s eyes for any sign he’d recognized what Verdi was up to.
And then it was over. Verdi turned and we watched him retreat from the glass-walled office, out through the marble-floored reception area, and onto the elevator that would take him down to a car we had waiting for him outside.
“All right,” I said, turning to Vito. “Turn them on.”And hope like hell he’d managed to plant the tracker.
“Si, Signor,” Vito replied as he stood up, turned on the tracker and the microphone, and transferred the feeds onto the monitors in front of us.
The monitor that would project the microphone remained black while a GPS map popped up on the other with a little red dot to mark Sinclair’s movements—assuming Verdi had managed to plant the tracker. And since the tracker wasn’t moving out of the building and down the street with Verdi, I was going to call it a success.
The sound of Sinclair typing projected from the monitor’s speakers. And more typing. A knock at the door.
“Here’s your coffee, Mr. Sinclair,” the receptionist’s voice spoke as high heels clicked and clacked across the office floor.
“Thank you, Janet,” he replied.
Greta shifted in her seat again like she was getting antsy. “I’ve got to say, this show isn’t nearly as interesting as the trailer made it out to be.” She smiled as she set the popcorn bowl on the ground. It was empty. The woman had practically inhaled it.
Now I was hungry. I was just about to go rummage through the kitchen for something to eat when a phone rang, the sound coming through loud and clear from the monitor’s speaker.
I almost laughed when every pair of eyes in the room swiveled to stare at the blank monitor screen.
“Hello?” Sinclair’s voice answered the call.
“Turn it up to full,” I said, hoping to catch more than muffled snippets of the caller’s voice.
