65

As Adelina’s car climbed the winding streets of Punta Paitilla, I grew more and more pissed off at Sam.

Over the course of the last half hour, I’d raced through an obstacle course of emotions. First came the excitement when Adelina said she knew Sam, then came the joy that he was alive and okay. Next in line was relief that maybe Sam hadn’t done anything wrong-he had legal paperwork, which had been drawn up at the specific request of Forester-to possess the shares and to sell them and the property. Then there was the agony of living it all over again as I told Adelina what had happened. And then the fear had rolled in. Sam might have had the legal right, but Adelina said all the properties had been sold. Where was the money now? In his own bank account? Had Sam gotten rid of Forester by paying Dr. Li in order to make it easier for him to take and sell the shares? If not, why had he been at Forester’s the night he died?

Anger was next and by far the most powerful emotion on the obstacle course, and it was the emotion I couldn’t get around. It came when Adelina told me that, as far as she knew, Sam was living in a penthouse condominium in Punta Paitilla, one of the city’s luxury areas.

“What’s he doing there?” I’d asked.

We were still sitting in the car at the café’s curb. It was hot, and Adelina had started the car, but the air-conditioning had yet to conquer the sticky air.

“I do not know exactly,” she said. “I believe he is enjoying the city while we wait for these last properties to close.”

And so, as the car now grew closer to Sam, and as I thought of him “enjoying the city” in a luxury apartment, my desire to kick his ass grew exponentially with each block.

“Flub him,” I muttered, then, “Fuck him,” then “Sorry,” to Adelina.

I looked out the window and tried to calm down. Adelina had described Punta Paitilla as a luxury area, so I’d expected something like the Upper East Side of New York or the Gold Coast in Chicago. The reality was different. The streets were hilly and curved in a pleasing way, but the buildings and houses were rather nondescript, at least from the front. Some were five to ten stories high, and every so often there was a high-rise thrown in and then, randomly, a small vegetable market on a corner. Certainly, there were no designer boutiques or flashy restaurants.

“This is a somewhat older section of the city,” Adelina said. “When it was built, it was during a time when Panamanians were afraid to flaunt their wealth. This was not because we don’t like to do so.” She smiled. “It was simply out of necessity.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was more crime here at that time. If you flaunted what you had, you were asking for trouble.”

As the car rose higher on the hills of Punta Paitilla my hands shook and my insides trembled with fury.

The car stopped in front of a white stucco condo building with a line of palm trees nearly obscuring it from the street. Brown-red metal gates protected the front of the building, a guard’s station in the center.

Adelina pulled up to the station. She spoke in Spanish to the guard. He grunted and pushed a button, which parted the right side of the gate. We drove in and down a slope to a covered parking area. As we got out of the car, Adelina began to sift through a host of key rings in her purse.

“Okay,” she said, finally deciding on one. “You are ready?”

“Oh, I’m ready.”

She led me into the building-the foyer a cool oasis of yellow marble, decorated with palm trees and vases of fresh flowers-and into an elevator.

“You do not want me to call him?” she said. “There is a phone in the unit.”

“Please, don’t. In fact, I’d like it if you’d give us a little time to ourselves.”

Adelina tapped her lip again. “I do not know.”

I squeezed her hand again. I felt strangely comfortable doing it now, as if Adelina and I had grown close in a few short hours.

“I am very nervous about this situation,” Adelina said. “I know Sam had the legal right to sell, but now you are telling me the authorities are looking for him, and Mr. Pickett is dead. I want to know the real story of all this.”

“I do, too. And that’s exactly what I’m going to find out. Believe me, I will tell you everything, and I will protect you if I can.”

The elevator arrived at the seventh floor, the highest in the building.

Adelina stood still a moment as the doors opened to a small vestibule.

She nodded at a front door made of carved wood. Using her keys, she unlocked two locks and opened the door for me.

“Go,” she said. “And I will be waiting in the car.”

“Thank you,” I said softly. “Thank you.”

I walked through the apartment. “Sam?” My voice echoed off the vast amount of marble in the place. No answer.

The apartment was mostly empty except for a chair here and a couch there. In the master bedroom, a green beach raft lay in the corner. Folded next to it were a towel and a blue T-shirt I knew very well. I walked over to the shirt and picked it up. It was powder-blue and silky soft from so many washings. On the front it said Coltrane and under that, the name of Sam’s favorite John Coltrane album, Dakar.

But the place was empty. Except for an old piece of fruit and a bag of Panamanian chips in the kitchen, it barely looked as if anyone had spent time there.

“Sam!” My words echoed again.

And that’s when something caught my eye. I was standing in an immense living room with dropped, molded ceilings. To my right were two cut-glass doors leading to a large balcony. I moved to the doors. I opened one and peered over the balcony, down to the pool and the sea below that.

And there he was, sitting at the side of the pool on a white chair, shirt off, reading a book. Just like a man of leisure should.

Rage coursed through me. I ran through the apartment and back to the elevators. I took one to the foyer. To the right was a sign that read Pool with a tiny gold arrow under it. I followed the arrow through a small hallway toward the back of the building. I pushed open the backdoor, the sunlight hitting me squarely in the face.

I blinked a moment to let my eyes adjust and when they did, I saw Sam’s face turning up from his book, his mouth open. He looked shocked. There were other emotions in his face, but I couldn’t read them. He stood and took a step toward me, the pool sparkling like diamonds behind him.

I realized I wasn’t breathing. And I didn’t care. My feet carried me toward him. It was almost as if they belonged to someone else. I could feel nothing in my body. I couldn’t see anything now except Sam and that glittering pool. My purse slid from my shoulder and landed with a thud on the tile.

“Red Hot,” he said, his nickname for me. And those two words-which used to make me feel wanted and loved and longed for-only enraged me.

I started running. Sam’s face shifted from one of surprise to something more scared. But I didn’t give him a second to react.

“You asshole!” I yelled.

My feet pounded on the marble as I sprinted toward him. And I tackled him right into the pool.