Marty held up his glass and rattled the ice. The bartender caught the gesture and began to make him another drink. "Onni. I can't believe it. Beck must have walked right into it."

"Of course. Minute she makes her move, he'll turn right around and lay it off on you. He'll claim you acted on your own. He never authorized you to do anything. You took it on yourself."

"But it's his signature. Loan aps, incorporation papers -"

"Marty, get serious. He'll say he's never had a head for the financial end of things. That's how I was able to get away with the money I stole. Gosh. Guess he should have wised up, but some guys never learn. You told him to sign so he signed. He trusted you and this is what he gets for it. Shamey-shame on him. Meanwhile, you're under federal indictment."

Marty shook his head. "I don't know. This is freaking me out." The bartender brought his drink. Marty took out his wallet and extracted two twenties. "Keep that," he said. As the bartender left, he was well on his way to draining his glass.

During the brief interchange between the two, Reba shot me a look. It's your show, I thought, before she glanced away.

She patted Marty's arm, her tone brisk. "Anyway, ponder the implications. That's really all I ask. Even if you decide I'm making it up, it wouldn't hurt to cover your ass. Once the subpoenas are issued and all the warrants are in place, you'll be shit out of luck. In the meantime, if you're on your way upstairs, how about the two of us tagging along?"

Chapter 19

I'd passed the entrance to Beck's office building half a dozen times without ever taking in the sight. The façade was thickly overgrown with ivy, integrated seamlessly into the architectural conceit of an ancient Spanish town. Flowering trees had been planted along the front. To the left of the entrance were side-by-side stairs and escalators, giving access to the additional parking structure at the corner of the mall. A high-end luggage shop occupied a portion of the ground floor, presumably paying Beck a big whack of high-end rent.

We pushed through glass doors that swung closed soundlessly as we entered. Windows stretched upward the full four stories to a slanting glass roof. The interior atrium was oblong, done in a mottled rosy granite, floors and walls forming a hard canvas on which natural and artificial light played according to the time of day. High on the wall, there was a clock with long brass minute and hour hands and six-inch-diameter brass dots representing the hours. A curtain of dark green ivy and philodendron hung from a miniature oasis above the clock.

There were two elevators on the wall dead ahead. To the right of these, in an alcove, there were two more elevators, facing each other, one with a much wider door, which I assumed was designed to accommodate freight. A digital readout next to each elevator showed that all were at lobby level.

In the center of the lobby, a perfect circle of granite was sunk in the floor, sloping sides washed with a constant Niagara of water spilling from a six-inch channel around its rim. The sound was soothing, but the look, I fear, was closer to toiletlike than the restful pool it was meant to suggest.

A uniformed guard sat at a high polished-onyx desk. A lean man in his sixties, he had salt-and-pepper hair and a blank handsome face. Briefly I wondered what curious set of circumstances had landed him here. Surely there was little to guard and less to secure. Did he simply sit for the whole of his eight-hour shift? I saw no indication he had a book in his lap discreetly shielded from view. No radio or pint-size television set. No sketch pad or crossword puzzle book. His eyes tracked us, his face turning slowly as we clattered across the cold expanse of polished granite floor.

Marty lifted his hand and received an unblinking stare in response. Reba smiled at the guy, giving him the full benefit of those big dark eyes of hers. She was rewarded with a tentative smile. She caught up with Marty outside the elevator doors. "What's his name? He's cute."

"Willard. He's on nights and weekends. Can't remember who's been covering days."

We entered the elevator and Marty pushed the button for four. "You made a conquest. First time I've ever seen him smile," he said.

"Getting along with guards turns out to be a specialty of mine," she said. "Although, in my case, 'correctional officer' is the appropriate term."

Since Beck's offices took up the entire fourth floor, the elevator doors opened directly into the reception area, hushed with thick pale green carpet. Lights blazed everywhere, but it was clear there was no one on the premises but us. Modern furniture and contemporary art were mixed with antiques. Etched-glass partitions separated the reception area from an airy conference room beyond. From our perspective, corridors opened on four sides like the spokes of a wheel. The hallways appeared to stretch on at length with wide bands of color forming sweeping loops along the wall.