The Shell Game: A Fox and O'Hare Short Story (Kindle Single) Read Free Page A

fit in with Santa Monica about as well as a Taco Bell in Chinatown. She took the elevator up to Drake’s sixth-floor suite, and restrained herself from gushing over the room. It was about the same size as her apartment. Unlike her apartment, though, it was beautifully furnished and it had a view.
    “Nice room,” Kate said. “The presidential suite wasn’t available?”
    “I didn’t want to overindulge myself.”
    She walked to the open veranda window and looked out at the Santa Monica Pier and the Ferris wheel. She listened to the ocean swells break on the sandbar, and she breathed in the sea breeze. She knew that on the beach below her there were piles of dog poop and signs warning swimmers to stay out of the polluted water, but in the encroaching darkness it was magical.
    The table was set for two and looked suspiciously romantic to Kate. Candles, champagne in an ice bucket, a small vase of fresh flowers.
    “Am I interrupting something?” she asked. “I don’t want to put a crimp in your date plans.”
    “No date plans,” he said. “Just a working dinner.”
    “My idea of a working dinner is a Domino’s Pizza, buffalo wings, and a six-pack of Coke served in a windowless conference room.”
    Drake opened the champagne and poured two glasses. “I asked for a windowless conference room when I checked in, but they didn’t have any available.”
    Kate took a glass of champagne from him and chugged it down.
    Drake grinned and refilled her glass. “I like a woman with a healthy appetite.”
    “Yep, that’s me,” Kate said. “I’m all about appetite.” She took a sip of champagne. “And the job.”
    “You take your work seriously,” Drake said, settling the champagne bottle back into the ice bucket.
    “I do. I was an army brat, and I inherited a sense of pride in a job well done from my dad. I firmly believe in the American flag, apple pie, and upholding the law of the land.”
    “Good to know,” Drake said, picking up an iPad up from the coffee table. “Let me show you the route we’ve planned.” He tapped the iPad and brought up a satellite map of L.A.’s west side. “The antiquities are arriving at LAX on a private jet. They’ll get in at eleven A.M. on Monday at one of the freight terminals along the Imperial Highway.” He pointed to a line of warehouses along LAX’s southern runway and the road that paralleled it. “We’ll transfer the crates under armed guard to an armored truck. The armored truck will travel east on the Imperial Highway and up the northbound 405 freeway to the Getty. Once we’re on the Getty property, their security team takes over. The Getty is basically a hilltop fortress, minus the cannons, so I don’t have any worries at that point.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Kate said. “But I’d like to check out the route for myself and think about how I’d take the shipment from you.”
    He set the iPad down. “You can think like a thief?”
    “I can think like a soldier.”
    “They don’t think alike.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    “A soldier’s strategy is all about achieving the mission objective, using blunt force and cold precision. But for a con man and thief like Nicolas Fox, it’s also about expressing himself through the cleverness and audacity of his technique. The value of the prize itself is almost secondary.”
    “Theft as performance art? Who’s the audience?”
    “You are,” Drake said.
    There was a knock at the door, and Drake let the room service waiter into the suite. Conversation stopped while the food was set out. Kate was relieved to see steakand french fries. She’d been worried that a guy looking like Drake might have ordered raw fish or snails or duck liver.
    “This looks great,” she said to him, taking a seat. “Tell me about your company, Intertect.”
    “We’re very good at what we do. If I told you more than that I’d have to kill you.”
    Kate paused with her fork in her hand. “That’s usually just a clever thing