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dead-ended at an intersection, a tall blond woman walked by, her tan legs flashing. Denise, he found himself thinking. Their cocktail waitress. She’d switched the parrot-print blouse for a T-shirt, though, and it had taken him a moment to recognize her.
    Deal turned back to the phone, trying to bury his annoyance with Lisa’s employer. “You’re working kind of late, aren’t you?”
    “You know what they say,” Stone’s secretary chirped. “No rest for the wicked.” She sounded a little too cheery to understand the meaning of the phrase, Deal thought.
    “When are we talking about?” Deal said. “I’ve got to get back to Miami sometime.”
    “First thing in the morning,” Lisa said. “Mr. Stone would like to meet you in the hotel restaurant for breakfast.”
    Deal mulled it over. Tomorrow was Friday, and he’d intended to get back to see how the site preparation on the Port Administration Offices project was going before things shut down for the weekend. That part of the work belonged to the prime contractor for the entire Free Trade complex that would cover forty acres on Carson Island, and strictly speaking, Deal was out of the loop until all the grading and fill work had been completed.
    Nonetheless, if he didn’t go broke first, he was going to be building a five-story office complex on top of fill that someone else had compacted. He was hardly going to take the word of a Metro Dade inspector that his pilings wouldn’t sink straight to China. And there was also the matter of scheduling. Because of one delay and another on the massive undertaking, Deal’s part of the job was already six weeks past the start date he’d planned for. If he couldn’t get under way soon, his own subcontractors would bail out, taking other jobs.
    On the other hand, the development that Franklin Stone wanted to talk about—though a year down the pipeline, at the least—was a project that promised to be of equal, if not greater, proportions where Deal’s involvement was concerned.
    If the two of them could meet in the morning, Deal could still be back in Miami before the close of business on Friday. It wasn’t like he was going to start back tonight, in any case. His room tab and Russell’s were being picked up by Stone, after all. What was one more night on the cuff in a tropical dreamworld?
    “All right,” he said to Stone’s secretary. “What’s your boss’ idea of ‘first thing’?”
    “Seven-thirty,” Lisa answered promptly. “He likes to get a jump on the day.”
    “Tell him I’ll be there,” Deal said, and hung up.
    When he got back inside the lounge, he found Russell Straight on a stool at the bar, the same one the kid had taken over earlier. Just as surprising was the glass of red wine in Russell’s big hand. There was an open bottle on the granite bar top beside him, and Russell was twirling its cork between his thumb and forefinger.
    “Not bad,” Russell said, glancing over as Deal joined him. He lifted his glass in a salute, then raised the cork to his lips. He bit down, tore it in two with his teeth, and handed the pieces to Deal. “Seems pretty fresh to me,” he said.
    Deal stared down at the broken cork. “You
smell
the cork, Russell. To see if it might have gone vinegary.”
    Russell nodded. “That’s what I’ll do next time.” He nodded at the bottle and a freshly poured goblet beside it. “Anyways, drink up.”
    Deal examined the label—a French cabernet, a dozen years old. He glanced at Russell again. “How’d you come to pick this?”
    Russell shook his head. “
I
didn’t. Somebody had it sent.”
    Deal scanned the room quickly. He didn’t know anyone among the green-sport-coat crowd, that much was certain. He glanced at the bartender, who had his back to them, loading drinks onto a tray at the service station. “Who was it?” he asked Russell. “Stone?”
    Russell shrugged. “Bartender didn’t say who.”
    Deal stared at Russell in exasperation. “Where did you