Shimmy Bang Sparkle(74)
“Fuck yeah,” I said as I got comfortable in my chair. Much to my surprise, the suspenders both looked good and felt good. Way better than a belt. She’d make a hipster out of me yet. “I had a feeling if I got too close, I’d never let you go.” I reached out my hand for her, and she laced her fingers in mine. For a few beats, we held each other’s stare. It was fucking blissful, like nobody else existed on earth.
But at that moment, the sheikh jumped into the pool, hollering, “Cannonball, suckas!”
Stella winced and turned away to look at the pool. The backsplash made a little boy start crying. A stooped old man removed his glasses to dry them on his soaking wet shirt.
The guy was insufferable. “What a dick.”
“The worst,” Stella answered.
Together, we took in the scene. The sheikh’s pissed-on Crocs were stuck on the arms of his lounge chair, drying in the setting sun. He sloshed out of the shallow end of the pool, knocking over someone’s bottle of water on his way out. He flopped down on his chair and took a selfie with a folding umbrella from his drink between his teeth. He typed something into his phone, and I heard the burner vibrate in Stella’s purse, but neither of us reached for it. Planted between two nearby palms stood the bodyguard. Except for the Halliburton in his hand, he looked like he was in a natural history diorama about early humans in the tropics.
The tables around us were unoccupied, and I wasn’t concerned about being overheard, but I still wanted to be careful. Plus, she was way too fucking far away. I grabbed the leg of her chair and pulled her over to me. I put my arm around her and got in close. “What was the original plan?”
Stella relaxed into me, one hand on my thigh. She toyed with her pearls, twisting them and letting them go. “I decided it had to be something to do with the hair.”
The guard hadn’t been outside the cannonball range either, and he kept dabbing at his quills—like he was checking to make sure they hadn’t fallen out. “I’m with you so far.”
“We planned to drop something on him. Anything, really. Something sticky or smelly or slippery. Anything messy. Honey. Shampoo. When we were here last, which we timed to coincide with the sheikh visiting, a seagull pooped on the guard. You’d have thought he was attacked by bees. Forty-five minutes later, he came back, hair still wet from the shower. We discovered he leaves the sheikh every afternoon at six-ish, with the briefcase. That was when we planned to do it; I figured the most reliable spot to make it happen was underneath the archway.”
I saw the spot exactly—it was the most logical choice. A path led from the pool back into the hotel, and above that was a walkway that acted as a kind of balcony, providing a direct view, and a direct line, to anybody walking on the path.
The only problem that I saw was that it would require so much precision. Walking at a normal pace, the guard would only be underneath the drop zone for a second. “We’d need to slow him down,” I said, running it backward and forward. “I’ll bet you I could slip him a mickey at the bar. Dose him with something untraceable. He’ll be out like a light.”
She deadpanned me. “Don’t be such a brute.”
Point taken, but still . . . “I think I lost brute status when I put on this hat,” I said. She gave it a playful little nudge with the tip of her finger, and I repositioned it so it sat lower again. Truth be told, I liked it. Al Capone wore a hat, and if it was good enough for Capone, it was good enough for me. Minus the tertiary syphilis, obviously. “You think you can do better? Hit me.”
“I mean, I’m not talking about hurting the poor guy. He suffers enough having to work for You-Know-Who,” she said, looking back at the pool. “Let’s keep it simple. Easy. Basic. Nonviolent.”
“Stella. I’m a criminal. Not a pacifist. This is a jewel heist, not a Buddhist retreat.”
She tossed her head back and shook it, laughing at the clear blue sky. “Oh you.”
Just then, the dog sitter appeared on the path, walking Priscilla. She had her little snout raised and her chest puffed, marching along like a little superhero. “Oh look!” Stella cooed. “There’s our little lamb.”
At that moment, a ball popped out of the kiddie pool and bounced along the path. Priscilla charged after it, accidentally kicking it with her paw. She juked left to chase it and zipped around—tangling up the giggling dog sitter like she’d been snared in a spider’s web.
Very slowly, Stella turned me, wide-eyed. “Nick. Did you see that?”
Holy fuck. It was exactly the same thing that had happened to Stella and me in the hallway. “That damned leash. Can we make her do it on command?”
“She’d chase a cookie anywhere,” Stella said, nodding slowly, blinking once. “All we need to do is practice.”
The dog sitter was still trying to extract herself. Every step she took just made it exponentially worse. She lost her flip-flop, she dropped her bag, and Priscilla kept on zipping and zooming around like it was the best thing she’d ever experienced.
Stella went slack in my arms. She put her hand to her forehead and looked up at the clear sky. “Oh my God. That’s it. That is it!”
A retractable dog leash as a trap was a far fucking cry from doing shady deals in the desert. But the truth was, I liked the simplicity. I liked the innocence. No weapons, no violence. Just a simple heist, with simple parts.