RainStorm

you thought I had a videotape. That's not trust, it's duress."
    She smiled, her eyes alight with humor. "You need me to get to
    him, and you can't get to him while I'm in the way. This means
    you'll have to trust me. Why use an ugly word like 'duress'?"
    I laughed again. What she said was true. I didn't have a lot of attractive
    alternatives. I would have to try "trusting" her.
    Because direct means of contact would be unacceptably dangerous,
    we agreed that, if I needed to see her, I would place a small,
    colored sticker just under the buttons in the Oriental's four elevators.
    I had seen the stickers in a local stationery store. The elevator
    placement would enable me to leave the mark in private, would
    give Delilah the opportunity to check for it several times a day
    without going out of her way or otherwise behaving unusually, and
    would be so small and discreetly placed that anyone who didn't
    know what to look for could be expected to take no notice. She
    would do the same if she needed to see me. The meeting place
    would be the Mandarin Oriental casino; the time, evening, when
    Belghazi liked to gamble at the Lisboa.
    "I don't see how Belghazi would hear that we left the casino together
    tonight," she said. "But just in case, we'll use the original
    story, that I told you I was going to the Lisboa and you asked if we
    could share a taxi. There are taxis lined up in front of the Oriental
    all evening, so even if he were inclined to do so, he would never be
    able to check the story."
    "There are cameras all over the Lisboa casino," I said, wanting to
    see how many moves ahead she was thinking. "There won't be a
    record of your having gone in tonight."
    "I know. But he has no access to those security tapes. Even if he
    did, I would tell him that I wanted to get rid of you because you
    seemed a little too interested, so I went shopping in the hotel arcade,
    instead. There are no cameras there."
    "What about me?" I asked, already knowing the answer but enjoying
    her thoroughness.
    She shrugged. "You're Asian, much harder to pick out of the
    crowd, so it would be harder to be certain that you weren't there
    tonight. And even if they could be certain, how would I know why
    you had decided not to go in? Maybe you hadn't wanted to go to
    the Lisboa tonight at all, you were only trying to pick me up.
    Maybe you were discouraged when I brushed you off, and left."
    I took a long swallow from my glass. "Which would also explain
    our failure to acknowledge each other if we happen to pass each
    other in, say, the Mandarin lobby. Ordinarily people who've shared
    some time at the baccarat table and a cab afterward wouldn't act
    like strangers afterward."
    She smiled, apparently pleased that I was keeping up with her.
    "Maybe you were unhappy about the results of our meeting and
    are in a bit of a sulk?"
    "Maybe. But you can't count on any of this. Even when there's
    a reasonable explanation for something, people can overlook it and
    go straight to assuming the worst."
    "Of course. But again, the overwhelming odds are that no one
    noticed us and no one cares. The rest is just backup."
    I nodded, impressed. I knew her explanations would go even
    deeper, positioning her for increasingly remote possibilities. Belghazi
    learns she was seen in this bar with me; she tells him she was
    bored because he was gone so much. When I invited her, she came
    along, then thought better of it. She had lied to him because she
    didn't want him to be jealous or to think poorly of her. Confessing
    to some lesser offense to obscure the commission of the actual crime.
    Yeah, she was good. The best I'd come across in a long time.
    "I'll leave first," she said, getting up. She didn't need to explain.
    We didn't want to be seen together. She started to open her purse.
    "Just go," I told her. "I'll take care of it."
    She cocked an eyebrow. "Our first date?" She said it only with
    that attractively wry humor, not playing the coquette.
    I smiled at her. "Maybe you better pay up after all. I don't want
    you getting the wrong idea."
    She looked at me for a moment, as though considering whether
    to say something. But in the end she only smiled, then turned and
    left. I imagined her checking the street through the windows
    downstairs before moving through the door.
    I finished my caipirinha. The couples on the couches continued
    in their embraces, their soft laughter just reaching me above the
    music from the ground floor.
    I paid the bill and left. I wondered