The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [55]
Sarah finally pointed across the room. “I see somebody I know over there. A friend of mine. I’m going to say hello to the lieutenant.”
“All right. I wouldn’t admit to knowing that deadbeat character, though.”
53
A MOMENT LATER, Sarah came up behind Stefanovitch. She lifted the earphones off his head.
“Are you the one who got me the personal invite down here to see this? If you are, I just wanted to thank you.”
Stefanovitch slowly swiveled around. He was smiling, for a change.
“The scribe has arrived. I guess we can start now. Pull up a card table chair. You can sit here and watch the Midnight Club in action. This is the way it really is on a stakeout.”
Sarah picked up one of the nearby chairs. She brought it over next to Stefanovitch.
“This is the real thing, huh?”
“Well, they’re all here. This must be the Club. Tino Deluna from Miami. Ten Hsu-shire from Hong Kong. Daniel Steinberg from London and Paris. All the biggies in the mob. What comes next, I do not know.”
Sarah quickly discovered that “surveillance” was just another word for Chinese water torture. For the first time, she understood what a police stakeout was about. After three and a half hours of sitting, occasionally listening in on the most banal and disgusting conversations at Trump’s, she couldn’t take any more.
She wandered around the Tropicana suite. Sarah went and talked to David Wilkes again. She came back to Stef and discussed everything from real-life godfathers to the night he’d seen the diving horse on the old Steel Pier, one of the unforgettable moments of his youth. “Family entertainment, back when there used to be families,” Stefanovitch said.
Sarah got better at surveillance—at listening, at concentrating—but a little past three, she decided to put her head down on one of the cots in the adjoining suite. Stefanovitch had taken another two-hour turn. He seemed to be getting nourishment out of what he was hearing over at Trump’s. He was an insomniac, anyway, at least he had been since the night of the shootings at Long Beach.
As he sat behind the reflective picture windows in the Tropicana, Stefanovitch pointed the directional mike this way and that. The bosses didn’t seem to be talking about anything worth recording. His attention went wandering again. Something was still bothering him about the meeting.
Around four in the morning, Sarah reappeared. She touched Stefanovitch’s shoulder, and he turned.
She was wrapped in a brown hotel blanket, looking lazy and comfortable. Images from her beach house filtered back.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked. Her eyes were still glassy and damp from her nap.
Stefanovitch shook his head. “Not tonight.”
“I don’t know. Everything looks so quiet over there now.”
“Most of the gentlemen who run organized crime around the world are there. How quiet can it be?”
Over in the penthouse, a session was developing among four or five of the bosses. They had traveled from different time zones, and apparently needed to stay awake to avoid jet lag.
Stefanovitch shuffled through a deck of photographs. Each picture was marked on the back with a name and brief profile.
One of the soldiers at Trump’s crossed in front of a window. The man stopped walking suddenly. He had an oversized walrus mustache, a little like the TV host Gene Shalit’s, only the soldier’s deeply pocked face wasn’t particularly friendly.
Walrusman seemed to be staring directly across at the Tropicana. He was looking right about where Stefanovitch and Sarah sat.
“He can’t see us,” Stefanovitch whispered. Still, the soldier did seem to be staring at them.
“He sees something. I wonder what’s going on inside all their heads? They’re the ones being shot at.”
“I can’t work up too much sympathy.”
Stefanovitch yawned, and he shook his head. Now he was getting tired. Right at the start of his watch.
“Why don’t you go lie down?” Sarah said. “I’ll sit out here for you. Go ahead. I’m up now.”
“Looks like they’re pulling all-nighters, too. They ordered more food,” Stefanovitch said and yawned again. “My grandfather