"Tell her I'm coming. Tell her I'm on my way right now." He was already moving through the crowd, one hand up in apology, the phone pressed to his ear. "Twenty minutes. Fifteen."
"Drive careful."
"I'll drive careful. I love you. Tell her I love her."
He hung up. Delphine caught his eye from across the room and he mouthed the baby and she put a hand over her heart. Then he was through the lobby, past the brass doors, and out under the amber glass of the porte-cochère into the October night, and the line at the valet stand was nine people deep.
* * *
Teo saw him coming before Ashby reached the podium, and he saw his face, and he knew.
You learned faces at a valet stand the way you learned cars. There was the face of the man who has had too much to drink and is about to argue about the tip, and the face of the woman whose date has gone badly, and the face of somebody who has just gotten a phone call. Ashby had the third face. Teo had worn it himself, once, in a bus station in San Pedro Sula.
The stand was a mess. A wedding reception in the hotel's garden room had let out at the same moment as the gala's first wave of early leavers, and Marisol had run for a Lexus at the back of the overflow garage on Grace Street, and the third valet, a college kid named Bryce, had called out sick at six. Nine stubs were lined up on the podium and two of them were waving at him.
"Mr. Ashby."
"My daughter's in labor," Ashby said. He held up his claim ticket. "I'm so sorry. I know you're slammed. Is there any way—"
Teo looked at the line. He looked at the cabinet. He looked at the side lot gate, thirty steps away along the east wall, where the green-black Maybach sat nose-out in the first row under the floodlight. A three-minute errand for him. Thirty seconds for a man who knew exactly where his own car was.