had the place feng-shuied and this is the best I can do with it. For now."
"Feng what?"
"Feng shui. The Chinese art of harmonic placement. Feng shui."
"Oh."
She thought she remembered reading about feng shui. Something about it being the latest cottage industry in L.A. among the cosmically enlightened.
"This place is doomed," Leo was saying. "Bad vibes in all directions. I feel like Dick Van Dyke – comin' in the door and tripping over the furniture. I should just get out of here. But I've been here so long and I have the pool right here and everything. I don't know what I'm gonna do."
They came to the office. Leo's desk was at one end, next to the row of sliding glass doors that looked out on the pool. Lined along the opposite wall were dozens of cases of champagne. Seeing the stacks of boxes gave Cassie pause. In the past, the Leo Renfro she knew and had worked for would never have stolen property in his own home. He was a middleman who set capers into motion and arranged for the fencing of the merchandise afterward but he almost never came into physical proximity with it unless it was cash. Seeing the champagne right in his office made Cassie question what she was doing there. Maybe things had changed with Leo since Max. She stood in the doorway to the office as if afraid to enter.
Leo went behind his desk and looked back at her. He didn't sit down.
"What's the matter?"
She gestured toward the lineup of boxes completely covering one wall. There must be fifty cases, she guessed.
"Leo, you never kept the swag in your own house. It's not only dangerous but stupid. You – "
"Relax, would you? It's all totally legit. I bought it – ordered it through the distributor. It's an investment."
"In what?"
"The future. You watch. The millennium celebration is gonna liquidate all stores of champagne. Around the whole fucking world. What's left will sky-rocket in value and I'll be sitting pretty. Every goddamn restaurant in town will be coming to me. You should see my garage. I'm hoarding five hundred cases of this stuff. Six thousand bottles. I double my wholesale price and take home a couple hundred K minimum. You want to buy in on it? I've got investors."
She came into the room and looked out through the doors at the glimmering surface of the pool. It was lighted from beneath the surface and glowed like blue neon in the night.
"I can't afford it."
She could see the automatic vacuum slowly moving across the bottom, the water tube trailing behind it and the debris bag rising, undulating in the water like a ghost.
She could hear the background hiss of the nearby freeway. It was the same at her house in Hollywood. She wondered for a moment if it was a coincidence that they both had places so close to the freeway. Or was it something about thieves. They needed to know the escape route was close.
"You'll be able to buy in after we do this thing here," Leo said. "Come on, sit down."
He sat down and opened the middle desk drawer. He took out a pair of half-cut reading glasses and put them on. There was a manila file waiting on the desk. Leo was all business. He could just as well have been preparing to go over a tax return with a client as the details of a hot prowl burglary. He actually had studied accounting at UCLA until he realized he wanted to manage money that was his, not somebody else's.
Cassie came over and sat down in the padded leather chair at the desk opposite Leo. She looked up at a string of red coins that was hanging from the ceiling directly over the desk. Leo caught her stare and waved up at the coins.
"That's the cure. The remedy."
"Cure for what?"
"For the feng shui. They're I-Ching coins. They make up for the lack of harmony. That's why I have them hanging right here. Where I do my work is the most important spot in the house."
He gestured to his desk and the open file.
"Leo, you were always paranoid but I think you're finally wigging out."
"No. I believe it. And it works. Another thing is the stars. I consult the stars now before making a plan."
"You're not instilling confidence in me. You mean you're asking some astrologer for a blessing on your moves? Leo, don't you – "