I Was Paid to Betray You

How it begins

I was paid to ruin Nico Damas at nine on a Thursday.

By eight forty, I had found the wrong number.

It sat in a column of staff compensation, neat enough to escape anyone who trusted the report's expensive cover. I had trusted it too. For three weeks I had been very good at the job his rivals wanted done.

The number belonged to another year.

The signature beneath it belonged to a dead woman.

Nico found me in the empty breakfast room, staring at the page.

"You look disappointed."

"I am."

"That the case isn't worse?"

I deserved the question.

Outside, hotel staff were removing the flowers from yesterday's wedding. White petals clung to the carpet. Somebody had left a child's paper crown on the piano, and the cleaner lifted it with more care than the occasion appeared to require.

"Did your mother sign this?" I asked.

He read the document.

His face changed, but not in the way I had prepared for.

"She died six months before that."

"I know."

The kitchen door opened. Coffee arrived without being ordered. He thanked the waiter by name.

I had spent three weeks collecting evidence that this was an act.

Now I had to decide whether a person could be courteous and still be guilty, and whether my eagerness had helped someone remove the distinction.

"There are real payments missing," I said.

"From this hotel?"

"Yes."

"Then don't stop looking."

He pushed the report back toward me.

My telephone vibrated.

Release approved. Send at nine.

Nico saw the message.

For a moment, every possible version of the morning seemed to wait in the room with us: the one I had sold, the one he wanted, the one the staff had never been asked to approve.

I turned the telephone off.

"This doesn't mean I believe you."

He looked at the paper crown on the piano.

"No," he said. "It means you might finally be investigating me."