Page 17 of French Escapade

I walk toward Palm Beach. Some agency’s crew is rolling out a red carpet by the main entrance. I step on it as if I’m the guest of honor for whom this is being prepared. That’s one of the first things I figured out when I joined the force. If you don’t want anyone asking questions, you need to act as if you belong.

I breeze through the reception area. At this time of day, no one is there. Since the casino closed a few years ago, there’s no need to present ID to prove we’re not underage or blacklisted.

Both men gasp at the fake Doric columns. I whisper to them, Act as if we’re part of some technical crew. I think they are setting the place up for a party.”

I push open a door that leads to a service hallway. When I was a rookie on patrol, I visited this place several times. The complaints about noise, the rowdy clients, and the bitter losers gave me an opportunity to check out most of the rooms at one time or another. So I know precisely where to go to get the information we need.

We’re on our way to the kitchens.

We take the stairs to reach the basement. There’s equipment stored everywhere. At this time of day, few people are working, and that’s just fine. I look around us for clues. Finally, I spot something interesting on a cutting board. It’s a manila envelope bearing today’s date as well as two words:Birthday Dmitri.

I open it and, as I suspected, it holds all the details for a birthday party. Kenneth bends over my shoulder.

“Looks like a menu,” he says.

He’s right. Every single hors d’oeuvre and dish is listed.

“Foie gras, caviar…looks like someone is going all out,” Jimmy observes.

And he was hungry before we arrived…

But I don’t care about the food. I turn the pages looking for more information. There are detailed instructions related to service, the list of events between the courses, but nothing of any special interest for us if not for one word.

Auction.

What it implies is scary, but I don’t comment on it. Kenneth is tense enough as it is.

I turn another page, and there’s the seating arrangement. I scan the list of guest names. The least I can say is that, whoever Dmitri is, he draws a very diverse crowd. There are politicians, reality-TV stars, businessmen …

The reason I recognize many of the names is not because I read the tabloids, but because I’ve run into a few of them in the course of my business. And in most of those instances, their dealings with the police were not a badge of honor.

“Here, look!” Jimmy says, pointing at the layout.

Sure enough, on the list for table n°1 there’s a name which is now familiar to the three of us:Arkady Oushkin.

I look up to Kenneth and ask, “Any chance of finding a tux in your luggage?”

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