read the label on a prescription bottle reflected in someone’s eye or something.
Leo wasn’t that good.
He moved the mouse, clicked a few keys. I saw Alexa hugging another girl who was already in line.
Taylor Armstrong.
They began talking animatedly, touching each other’s sleeves the way girls do, occasionally glancing around, maybe scoping out some guy.
“Can we follow her into the hotel?” I asked.
“Of course. Leo, pull up nine and twelve,” Naji said.
From another angle, just inside the lobby, I could see the girls approach the elevator. The image was fairly smooth. Probably the standard thirty frames per second.
Then the elevator doors came open and the two girls got in. Abruptly, Alexa got out. Taylor remained.
Alexa was claustrophobic. She couldn’t bear to be in enclosed spaces, especially elevators.
“Ah,” I said. “I want to see where that one’s going, the one who didn’t get in the elevator.”
From another camera, probably mounted in the ceiling of the second floor, I watched Alexa climb the stairs.
Another camera showed her arriving at the fourth-floor bar, where she met up with Taylor.
“I like to take the stairs too,” Naji said helpfully. “It’s good exercise.”
We continued watching as they found some chairs. For a long stretch, nothing much happened. The bar got increasingly crowded. A waitress in a skimpy outfit, her boobs almost popping out of her low-cut bra, took their order. The girls talked.
A guy approached.
“Move in on this,” Naji said to Leo. Now he was joining the effort.
The guy had his shirttails untucked. He looked to be in his early twenties. Blond, ruddy face, an overbite. He sure didn’t look Spanish. Alexa smiled, but Taylor didn’t look at him.
After a few seconds, he left. I actually felt sorry for the kid.
The girls kept talking. They laughed, and I surmised it was about the guy with the untucked shirt.
“You can fast-forward,” I said.
Leo clicked on 3x mode, and the video sped up. Fast, jerky movements like in an old silent film. Laugh drink, laugh drink, smile. Alexa took out something and held it up. A phone, maybe? An iPhone, I realized. Taking a picture, probably.
No: She held it near her mouth. Taylor laughed. They were playing around. Taylor grabbed it, and she too put it to her mouth. They laughed again. Taylor handed it back, and Alexa put the phone into a front pocket of her leather blazer. I made a mental note of that.
Another guy approached. This one was dark-haired. Mediterranean, maybe Italian, maybe Spanish. This time the girls both smiled. Their body language was open; they looked at him, smiled. They were more receptive. This was a side to Taylor I hadn’t seen—no sullen pout. Lively and animated.
“Is there a different angle on this?” I said.
Leo opened another window on his monitor, and then I could see the man’s face in profile. He zoomed in for a close-up.
Spanish or Portuguese. Maybe South American. In any case, a handsome guy. He appeared to be in his early to mid thirties. Well groomed, expensively dressed.
The guy pulled a chair over and sat down, apparently having been invited. He signaled for a waitress.
“This man, he comes here often,” Naji said.
I turned to him. “Oh?”
“I recognize him. The regular patrons, I get to know their faces.”
“What’s his name?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He was withholding something.
I turned back to the monitor. The guy and the two girls were talking and laughing. The waitress came, took their drink orders. They talked and laughed some more. The girls seemed to be enjoying his company.
The man was sitting next to Taylor, but didn’t pay her much attention. He was much more interested in Alexa. He kept leaning toward her, conversing with her, barely giving Taylor a glance.
Interesting, I thought. Taylor was at least as pretty as Alexa, if sluttier-looking; Alexa seemed somehow more elegant, pure.
But Alexa’s father was a billionaire.
Yet how would he know that—unless he’d picked out his target in advance?
The drinks came, served in big martini glasses.
They drank some more, and after a while both girls got up. The man remained at the table by himself. He looked around the bar idly.
“Can we follow the girls?” I said.
Leo switched to an already open window, made it bigger. The girls were walking together, holding on to each other, both looking a little tipsy.
“Keep on them,” I said.
Leo made the window on the computer screen bigger still. I watched them enter the ladies’ room.