by Janice Weber
“Cortot invited you out?”
“For God’s sake! Am I a leper?”
Not completely. Duncan was just a fidgety old maid whose idea of an orgasm was playing Chopin’s Minute Waltz in fifty-eight seconds. What could Justine possibly want with him? “She’s probably tired of senators,” I said. “Wants to try her luck with a piano player.”
“Aren’t you catty this morning! Justine’s a lovely girl.”
“Girl? She’s ten years older than you. And she’s a politician. Don’t ever forget it.”
“I’m forty-one! I’ll forget what I like!”
Give up, Frost. I returned to the table. Duncan had left me five prunes. “Great weather. Maybe I’ll rent a Harley for the afternoon.”
“Eh? I thought you wanted to see some exhibitions.”
A knock interrupted further pleasantries. In the hallway stood a porter burdened with deep purple orchids. He smiled, my pulse tottered: just a few hours ago I had seen an identical arrangement in Barnard’s apartment. As the fellow sashayed to a sideboard, Duncan snatched the envelope. Intercepting notes on my bouquets was one of his professional duties, right up there with frowning at my apparel and passing judgment on my boyfriends.
“Orchids,” he sniffed with the usual disdain. “How decadent. ‘A cliff-banging performance.’” Tossed the card away. “Who’s your admirer this time?”
“No idea.”
I spent the afternoon riding through the Virginia hills, inhaling the first delicate scents of autumn, wondering who could have seen me dangling from Barnard’s balcony last night. Duncan was half ah hour late for our rehearsal at five. He played beautifully, mysteriously, like someone in love. Neither of us mentioned his lunch with Justine.
Chapter Two
THE DOORMAN BEAMED as I left the hotel: I was in silk and diamonds again. No violin tonight, though. Just a little of Barnard’s blood in my purse. “Cab, Miss Frost?”
“Thank you.” Heat rose from the asphalt, pressed down from the clouds, wilting humans in a moist, invisible sandwich. “Ford’s Theatre, please,” I told the driver.
“I won’t be able to drop you outside,” he said, pulling onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Why not?”
“Bomb threats. We’re supposed to avoid the area.”
Great. As predicted, traffic stalled five blocks from destination. I joined those abandoning their vehicles and walked the rest of the way to Tenth Street, wondering why Barnard had bought a thousand-buck ticket to an outdated play. Maybe someone else had blown the grand for the opportunity to sit next to her. Blind date? I was suddenly nervous, unprepared to step into her shoes. Totally unprepared to swallow a tampon. However, curious little gambler that I am, I crossed the police line outside Ford’s Theatre. Sailed by the metal detector in the foyer as an attendant fished through the pile of platinum I had dropped onto his plate. “Enjoy the show,” was all he said.
Ford’s Theatre looked much the way it had in April 1865, when Lincoln had taken a bullet in the head. Heavy green curtains framed a modest stage; the audience sat on barely cushioned chairs. Slender beams supported two shallow balconies. Despite the crowd and the lights, my heart skipped upon entering this place: it felt the residual evil lurking here. I walked quickly along the rear wall, checking exits, aisles, faces. Everyone looked rich and terribly important, or attached to such a person. Finally I headed toward second row center: typical Barnard. She had probably planned to arrive three seconds before opening curtain so that no one could miss her entrance.
Three chairs in the second row remained empty. Left of them loomed the immense Vicky Chickering. Seeing me, she broke off speaking with a younger woman at her side. For just a wee moment, disbelief grayed her face. But recovery was swift. “Leslie!” She ooched over a few inches to make room. “I thought you left town last night!”
Had I told her that? “I make exceptions for Schnitzler.” I wedged into the three-quarter space she had left me. “So you’re a fan of endangered species?”
“As is the First Lady.” Vicky’s eyes leapt to a more strategic beast behind me. She not only stood up for this one, but pronounced her name in French. “Justine!”
Egad, Duncan’s dancing partner. Looking right through me, Justine Cortot began wedging down the row as a man in bow tie and Fu Manchu glasses followed closely behind. Very hard to believe she was twenty years my senior. She looked more thirty than fifty. Cortot had packed her ninety-eight pounds into a white Lycra sheath that stretched to the max at bust and butt. Lipstick matched the stiletto heels and her blondish hair had been poufed into an enormous French twist. Her cubic zirconia jewelry glared in the yellow light. This lady was pedal-to-the-metal competing: she had expected to be seated next to Barnard. What a pathetic contest that would have been. It was still pathetic.
I pretended to read the program so that Justine and Vicky could exchange public intimacies like “Did you get my memo?” and “We’re confirmed for next Friday.” Justine’s acquired Etonian accent grated on my nerves. Twice I caught her date looking down my décolletage. Justine noticed me not. She only had eyes for Vicky, and vice versa; if either of them had come to hear Schnitzler, I’d eat my diamonds.
The hall quieted. I looked toward the loge at stage right, where Lincoln had been assassinated. That space would remain unlit, unoccupied, forever. But—rusty me—I didn’t take the fact full circle. Only when a Secret Service agent made a final pass by the first row did I realize that the two empty places in front of me were reserved for the Marvels.
This ticket was hotter than hell!
Justine suddenly acknowledged me. “How is dear Duncan?” she asked, never introducing herself. That would have been insulting—to Justine.
“Fine, thank you.”
With a smirk, she buried her face in the program. The Secret Service drifted quietly to the exits, penning us in as the U.S. Marine Band played a few ruffles and flourishes. All stood. Arm in arm, the Marvels entered. Bobby’s face was flushed; beneath Paula’s rouge I detected fury. They had been brawling again. However, politics being one of the minor performing arts, both bared their gums and waved to the crowd. From a distance, it would look genuine. Just before taking his seat, the president narrowed his gaze from the universal to the specific. Had I not been watching his eyes, I would have missed the shift from anger to shock to utter vacuity as he discovered not Barnard, but me, in her place. We stared for a split second as a few million volts passed between us. Then, smiling as if I had tickled him, Bobby turned his back and sat down.
Ice crept through my guts as the lights dimmed. I had not been expecting such a reckless game, not even from Barnard. What had Marvel’s smile meant? Perhaps I had misinterpreted his glance … and perhaps the earth was flat. Without intermission, Schnitzler’s saucy play came and went. Trapped between giant on the left, pygmy on the right, president’s head looming like a cannonball two feet in front of me, I saw nothing onstage. Each time Vicky Chickering resnuggled into her seat, she squeezed me another few centimeters toward Justine, whose stuporously sweet perfume should have been buried in a canister in Nevada. After Schnitzler bit the dust, we were treated to idolatrous speeches about animals. Paula pinned a medal on the oldest actor’s lapels. Everyone applauded. Then the Marvels left.
The lights came up. Vicky stood, breathless; she had been clapping herself silly for the last twenty minutes. “What a treat!” she preached, scribbling one last note to herself on the little pad hanging from her neck. We began shuffling toward the aisle. “You were so lucky to get a ticket!”
Fishing? I’d nibble her line. “Someone sent it to my hotel.”
“Is that so! And you just came here out of … curiosity?”
I winked. “Wasn’t you, was it?”
She stiffened. “You live dangerously.”
Get off the soapbox, sister. I concentrated on Justine’s plummy rear end, wanting to get out of that theater, out of Washington, out of America. I wanted to be back in my studio in Berlin, pla
ying Beethoven to my plants, slithering unnoticed into the night. I didn’t like Bobby Marvel and now he was part of the job. So was Chickering. So was this gremlin in front of me. God! What had Barnard been doing with them?
Engulfed in bodies, I shuffled up the aisle. Then a tap on my shoulder: I faced an egg-shaped man in a flax suit. His fluorescent tie clashed nicely with the “Save the Ocelots” badge. Slicked-back gray-blond hair, around fifty with the round eyes of either a naïf or a hopeless degenerate. Smelled of heavy money. “Leslie Frost?” he asked with that annoying local familiarity. “What a pleasure. My name is Fausto Kiss. Your recording of the Sibelius concerto is the greatest.”
I had never even listened to it: the performance had cost me two lovers. “Thank you.”
“So sorry I missed you last night but I was out of town. Never mind. I detest concerts in the East Room.” The man confronted Chickering. “How’s that three-ring circus at the White House, dear?”
For him, she smiled. “Getting by, Fausto.”
Half hummingbird, half blimp, he whirred back to me. “How long will you be in Washington?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Could you join me for a drink tonight?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Breakfast then?” When I laughed in his face, Kiss tucked a business card into my hand. “Call any time. For any reason. I’m at your service.” With lubricious delicacy, his mouth brushed my fingertips. “Do take care of these.”
Chickering’s indulgence evaporated as Fausto’s enormous yellow suit melded into the crowd at the rear of the theater. “Maybe he sent your ticket,” she snorted. “Fausto loves to play practical jokes.”
I eventually reached the sidewalk. Halos of humidity sanctified the street lamps. Now that the Marvels had taken off, bums and taxis had been allowed back to work the throng on Tenth Street. I wanted to walk far and fast away from there, neutralize the acid burping through my system like a tank of bad gas. I needed a Harley, a cold shower. Too many people had seen me and I, dully relying on providence, had seen nothing in turn. I had made a huge mistake coming here unprepared to play poker with my life—and win. Now, out in the night, my feeble antennae sensed crosshairs on my back. I hunted in my purse, dropped coins onto a beggar’s blanket as my eyes flitted over the crowd. Took only a moment to find the shadow across the street. She stood in front of the house where Lincoln had died. A column of dark flesh amid a sea of legs, heads, hands: Maxine.
We drifted to F Street. I waited on the corner as she crossed to my curb and without a sideward glance, continued toward Union Station. I gave her half a block then began to follow her past ever tawdrier storefronts and raunchier women. The Queen was dressed like a tart and her epidermis matched the demographics of the neighborhood: few locals looked twice. Leading her bejeweled, lily white agent through this scorched earth was obviously another of Maxine’s little rehab exercises: if I couldn’t fend off a couple of drug addicts, the odd gang or two, I obviously wasn’t up to Barnard’s killers. I saw men approach her, then drop away. They didn’t touch me, either; perhaps they sensed the claws and fangs behind my nail polish and lipstick. That didn’t prevent them from exercising their right of free speech as I passed by, of course. After a dozen invitations to sit on a face, I would almost have preferred a fight.
My stiletto heels were not designed for inner-city hikes. Well aware of that, the Queen maintained an Olympic pace, finally diving into the Metro station at Judiciary Square. Different world down here, clean, quiet, devoid of pushcarts. Until the train whooshed in, Maxine and I observed our companions on the platform. Most of them wore neckties and vapid stares, at least until they got a load of Maxine’s knickers and my slightly overexposed breasts. I followed her into a car and sat at the opposite end, kneading my feet until she sprang out at Woodley Park.
We stalled at the turnstiles until everyone had gone, then took the steep escalator to Connecticut Avenue. The only person who had boarded with us at Judiciary Square strode uphill, scything the thick air with his briefcase. The Queen cut into a dark street bordered by woods. Finally, when my shoes were ruined, she disappeared into the brush. Hilly, heavy going; I could only pant after her and curse the branches clawing my face. Sweat trickled into my eyes, down my cheeks. My dress was history. She slid through a clever break in a chain-link fence. We hit macadam, signposts: the zoo? Maxine veered into a thicket tittering with crickets. A second uphill slog and suddenly I was alone against a wall of rock. Had she flown away? No such luck. With the heel of a dead shoe, I tapped the rock face. When the sound turned hollow, I ran my fingers over the warm stone. A small depression, smaller ping as the hinges gave way.
The single halogen bulb snapped on only when the door had shut behind me. I stood in a cell crammed with the tools of my other trade: keyboards, monitors, slots. Inch for inch, this playpen had probably cost as much as a space probe. The Queen was already taking two cans of soda from the minifridge. She hadn’t even broken a sweat, but she was more panther than human. “Eleven seconds behind,” she said, dropping into the only chair. “You really are out of shape, Smith.”
“Let’s trade shoes and try again,” I retorted, frowning at a stain on my hem. “Nice little hideout.”
“Glad you like it. You’re the second tenant.”
Poor Barnard. “Where are we?”
“Between the wolves and lions.” Maxine grinned at a wide run in my stockings. “How was Schnitzler?”
“Couldn’t tell you. Bobby Marvel’s head blocked my view.” Removed my other shoe: looked as if it had been through a lawn mower. “I sat between Vicky Chickering and Justine Cortot.”
“His and her White House staffs? That must have been a farce in itself.”
“On the way out someone named Fausto Kiss introduced himself.”
“Humpty-Dumpty meets Oscar Wilde. Bet he liked you.”
“He liked my Sibelius concerto. Invited me over.”
“Don’t disappoint him. Who sat behind you?”
“No idea.” I hadn’t looked: bad, bad.
“So you still don’t know where Barnard got that ticket.”
“Don’t laugh,” I said, sliding to a small space on the floor. This room was designed for only one occupant. “But I think it came from Bobby Marvel.”
The Queen laughed coldly. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” Her slender finger touched a video button. “Watch.”
On screen appeared an opulent bathroom, daytime. Surrounded by plants and potpourri, a blue ribbon in her hair, Barnard soaked in a marble tub. She was a staggeringly beautiful woman. Door opened and in tiptoed Boy Marvel wearing only a white towel. When Barnard opened an eye, smiled archly, he dropped the towel and stepped into the suds. Great tight ass, considering how much time he’d been sitting on it over the past few years. Barnard poured champagne, their mouths moved, they laughed. Then Bobby grabbed his bathing partner. The water began to churn. Barnard nearly drowned, giggling all the way. Marvel left the tub. After Barnard flung her champagne at him, the screen went black.
I looked across the table. “Touching.”
“It’s a copy. I found it here. God knows who’s got the original.”
“Any messages with it?”
“Barnard never liked sending interim reports.”
“Whose bathtub?”
“It ain’t at the White House.”
“Is the picture real?”
“Nothing in this town is real. But you can be sure Barnard made that tape on purpose. My guess is she was trying to flush someone out of the bushes.” Maxine took a long swig of soda. Quite a compliment, really, exposing her throat to me like that. “On July first, we picked up some e-mail from Krikor Tunalian to Louis Bailey.”
Tuna I knew: arms merchant. Should have been dead twenty years ago. “Who’s Bailey?”
“An ethnobotanist.” The Queen couldn’t resist translating for me. “Jungle medicine. Witch doctors. Natural hallucinogens. Oxford trained. Now he’s a bi
g-shot professor at Richmond. Studies plants, sees if they might contain a cure for cancer or AIDS. Almost won the Nobel Prize two years ago.”
“What would Tuna want with him?”
“Nothing too noble. They met at Bailey’s home in Virginia. Next day Tuna wired five million dollars to a Swiss account in Bailey’s name. When the doc left the country, I put Barnard on the case. She took a crash refresher course in botany then went to Belize. That’s where Bailey goes whenever school’s out.”
“How’d Barnard manage to blend into the woodwork down there? Wearing a monkey suit?”
Maxine looked down at me. “She posed as a researcher collecting specimens for the International Red Cross. Put on a little bandanna and stumbled into Bailey two weeks after setting up camp in the jungle.”
She must have made one hell of an impact. “Let me guess. She became his assistant.”
“They worked together for six weeks.” Maxine looked bleakly at me. “On September first he disappeared.”
Excuse me? No one ever got away from Barnard. “How?”
“I got no field reports. Could have been equipment failure. Jungles have a way of eating communications gear.”
“Whatever you say. Bailey disappears. Barnard follows his trail to D.C. but still doesn’t fill you in?”
Obviously not. Our group didn’t work like that. We were paragons of independent study and the Queen knew better than to interfere with an agent teetering on the brink of extinction. “I suspect she was chagrined at losing her man. It was the first time.” And the last. “All I know is that she set herself up at Watergate. Soon she was screwing the president. You know the rest.”
“Did she ever find Louis?”
“Couldn’t tell you. No one else has seen him. If he’s here, he’s invisible.”
“Where’s Tuna?”
“Panama City. He hasn’t heard from Louis, either. Probably thinks the doc is still in the jungle.”
I opened my purse and laid the tampon on the table. “Blood-work.” The Queen stared a moment before putting Barnard’s only remains in her pocket. “Give me a few leads,” I said.