The Heist

said.
    “Compared to flying an airplane, piloting a yacht is like riding a skateboard. When are we leaving?”
    “We’re checking out of here today, spending the night in the Sheraton at LAX, and flying out tomorrow morning.”
    “Great, what will I be flying?”
    “An economy-class passenger seat,” Kate said.
    While Kate and Willie were packing up and checking out of Fantasy Springs, Nick Fox was sipping champagne high above the Pacific Ocean, sitting up on his full-size bed in his first-class compartment on a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380. His cubicle was private and wood-paneled, with a 23-inch flat-screen television, wireless Internet connectivity for his MacBook, a personal refrigerator, and a separate dining table, where his snack of lobster salad, caviar, fresh bread, and an assortment of fruit and cheese was laid out for his dining pleasure on a set of fine china.
    He sipped his champagne and thought about the FBI. This plane trip, the entire covert op, were being paid for by a secret FBIslush fund filled with money taken from crooks. Nick wondered how long the agency had been skimming from confiscated cash. What else were they doing with it? And more to the point, how much money had they stolen? And where was it stashed? The money certainly wasn’t on any accounting ledgers that the Justice Department or Congress could see, and if it went missing the feds couldn’t really go after anyone for stealing what they shouldn’t have had in the first place. The FBI was running a huge con. He thought it was very cool. And he thought it would be even cooler if he could scam them out of the money.

Kate and Willie left Indio around noon for the two-hour-plus drive to the Sheraton at LAX, where Kate had booked two rooms for the night on a “fly package.” They rolled into the Sheraton, dumped their suitcases in their rooms, and hustled across the street to Denny’s.
    Kate had a grilled cheese with bacon, fries, and a chocolate shake, and Willie put away a Macho Nacho Burger with a banana split chaser, for a combined calorie count that was reaching five figures.
    “So what’s the deal with you and Foxy?” Willie wanted to know, scraping up the last of her ice cream.
    “There’s no deal. We work together.”
    “If it was me there’d be a deal. The guy is hot. He could talk a girl out of her panties before she even knew what was happening. And have you noticed how his eyes sparkle when he smiles? How does he do that?”
    The sparkling eyes were good, Kate thought, but they were chump change compared to the way his eyes had gotten dark when he looked at her in the bandage dress.
    A couple hours later, Kate was in her hotel room, trying to push thoughts of Nick Fox and his dark eyes out of her head, when he called.
    “Just checking in,” he said. “How’s it going?”
    “It would be going a lot better if you’d grow up. ‘Huffnagle’? Are you kidding me? Was it really necessary to put ‘Huffnagle’ on my passport?”
    “I’m a sentimental kind of guy. Eunice Huffnagle will always have a special place in my heart.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Singapore. The Raffles hotel, to be exact, on my veranda, having a red prawn Niçoise salad with Mediterranean sardines.”
    “What are you doing in Singapore?”
    “Establishing our covers, and making the arrangements for your arrival in Bali. The truth is, I’m enjoying my layover. I couldn’t come all of this way without spending at least one night at Raffles.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “It’s colonial elegance from another, more adventurous time. The hotel was built in 1887 as a bastion of British elegance and nobility in an exotic land. From my veranda I can almost see Somerset Maugham, the writer and spy, sitting in a rattan chair under a frangipani tree in the Palm Court garden, writing one of his stories in longhand. Or I can go to the hotel bar for a Singapore sling and sit under the vintage wicker-blade ceiling fans that were churning the humid air on that day in 1902 when the last surviving wild tiger, perhaps lonely and looking for a cocktail, strolled inside and was shot dead. You’d love it here.”
    “Maybe someday,” Kate said, not completely convinced she’d love Raffles what with the poor last tiger getting shot when all he wanted was a cocktail.
    “When do you arrive in Bali?” he asked her.
    “Willie and I will leave L.A. in the morning on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. We’ll switch planes for the second leg of the