the chaperone's disguised eye
DeLint, whose peripheral vision’s acuity and disguise was an E.T.A. legend, observed the big journalist chew her nib for a second and then put down nothing more than the Gregg ideogram for pretty, shaking her fuchsia cap.
Context
The counter-surveillant's signature skill is that his watching doesn't look like watching. DeLint's "peripheral vision's acuity and disguise" lets him read Steeply's Gregg shorthand off the corner of his eye while apparently absorbed in his charts — he clocks that she wrote only "pretty," and needles her for it ("Wasn't that pretty"). She takes notes in a cipher; he reads the cipher without seeming to look. The whole interview is two professionals reading each other under cover of watching a tennis match, and deLint's legendary side-vision is the house's edge.