“Okay. Just checking.” They’d reached the steps leading up to the plane. It was a charter booked especially to transport the models on the Enigma tour, and the multicolored feathery arc of the Birds of Paradise logo had been painted on the tail. Clarissa climbed the stairs, turned, waved and smiled once more, then ducked her head to get through the door.
Inside the plane, the atmosphere was calm and quiet, the only sound the soft whisper of the air conditioning. It was different from any commercial flight Clarissa had ever been on, with wide, heavily padded seats and soft lighting. A smiling young man in black slacks and a black tie over a crisp white shirt greeted her.
“Hello, Ms. Cartwright,” the young man said. “I’m Evian. I’ll be your steward.”
“Evan?”
The smile slipped a notch. “No, ma’am. Evian.”
“Like the water?”
The smile widened, even as it lost all sincerity. “Yes, ma’am. Like the water. Can I take your bag?”
As he said the words, the phone buzzed again. “No, if it’s okay with you, I’ll hang on to it.”
He looked doubtful. “Well, when we get ready for takeoff, you’ll have to stow it under the seat.”
“I will,” she said. The phone buzzed again. She throttled back a sigh. “Hey, can I take a phone call?” she said. “It’s kind of important.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “There’s a private compartment in the back. But you’ll have to shut the phone off when we get ready for takeoff.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said, and gave him one of her best smiles. It didn’t seem to have any effect. Most men, when she smiled at them like that, got a cloudy look in their eyes and their jaws seemed to slacken. You could almost see their IQs plummeting. Evian seemed to be hanging onto all his cognitive faculties. Maybe he was gay. She walked past him into the back compartment.
There were only two chairs in this one, set facing each other, and a wet bar along one side. She contemplated pouring herself a drink, but restrained herself. If she started drinking now, she might not stop, and she didn’t need to be landing in Atlanta, the first stop of the tour, red-eyed and slurring. The sharp-eyed paparazzi would surely pick up on that. I am so goddamn tired of making every decision based on whether it might land my picture on Gawker or TMZ or Perez Hilton. She threw herself down on one of the leather seats as if she were angry at it. The warm chair seemed to envelop her, wrap itself around her. It was the most comfortable seat she’d ever sat in on an airplane. It was more welcoming than ninety-five percent of the furniture she’d experienced on the ground. She almost felt like patting it and apologizing to it for being so rough.
I am completely losing my mind, she thought. The phone buzzed. She pulled it from the bag, pressed the button. “What?” she snapped.
“Baby,” Mario’s voice came over the phone. She cut the connection. In a moment, it buzzed again. She looked at the picture on the flat glass screen. It was a photograph of her and Mario at the beach, taken in better times. They looked so happy. She opened the line again. This time she didn’t speak.
“You want to tell me what this is about?” Mario’s voice was calm, but there was an edge to it.
“Maybe you should ask that little blond whore who was jerking you off under the table at that club,” she snapped.
There was a silence. She jumped in to fill it. “You said you had to go up to Rahway to visit your mother in the nursing home, you bastard!”
“I did,” he said.
“Yeah. And what, you stopped by someplace for a cold brew and a handjob afterwards?”
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard…”
“I didn’t HEAR anything, you son of a bitch. Someone sent me a picture. From YOUR cell phone.”
Another silence. “What’d you do,” she said, “have one of your dumb-ass ‘associates’ preserve the moment for you?”
“Aldo,” he muttered. “That dumb motherfucker. I told him to send it to my…god damn it.”
“To who? To another one of your ass-kissing little buddies? Skip it, I don’t care. I don’t need this shit from you, you asshole!”
“Now calm down…” he began.
“Fuck. You.” She enunciated each word carefully, as if making sure he could understand them.
“Clarissa!” His voice cracked like a whip. She’d only heard him speak like that once, to someone else, and the guy had literally turned white. She’d never actually seen that before, but the man had gone so pale it was as if he’d already become a ghost, and he immediately began apologizing to Mario as if his life depended on it. Maybe it had. She herself wasn’t in an apologetic mood, but she fell silent, a twisty feeling beginning to supplant the ball of hot rage in her gut. She began thinking maybe she’d pushed him too far.
When he spoke again, his voice was calm, but with a tightness that told her he was barely holding himself under control.
“You’re upset now,” he said. “And I get that. But you need to take some time to cool down before you make me do something we’ll both regret, okay?” She didn’t answer. His voice took on a tone of satisfaction, as if he was fully aware he’d cowed her into silence. “We’ll talk about this in a couple of days. After the Atlanta show, you’ll be in…where, Vegas? Good, they know me there. I’ll fly down. We’ll talk. We’ll sort all this out. But Clarissa…” His voice grew icy. “You need to be very careful that you don’t do anything rash or stupid, like try and get back at me with another man. Because…are you still there, babe?” When she didn’t answer right away, he snapped, “Answer me!”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“You know I’ll never raise a hand to you in anger.”
No, she said in her mind, I don’t. He went on, “But if I ever hear that another man has laid a hand on you, sweetheart, I’ll kill him. I mean that literally. I’ll kill him as slowly and painfully as I can manage. And you’ll have that on your conscience to the end of your days. Are we clear on this?”
She was almost sobbing now. “Yes.”
“Good. Have a nice flight.” He broke the connection. She sat there, in her warm comfortable seat, cold and trembling. She’d heard stories about Mario Allegretti and more about his father, Silvio, reputed to be bosses or capos or whatever they called it in the Jersey mob. But she’d dismissed them as the sort of thing that always attached itself to successful men with Italian surnames. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
She heard raised voices from the front compartment. “I just want to know why Queen Bitch back there gets a room all to herself,” someone was saying. She could hear Hermione saying something in a placating voice. She sighed and got up. Time to go out front and try to make nice. If she got into a fight this early in the tour, it’d be misery for the next few weeks.
She thought about Mario, about what she’d heard in his voice, and shuddered. Maybe I should think about getting a bodyguard.
TWENTY YEARS on the job, Chunk McNeill thought sourly, decorated twice. And what do I end up doing? Guarding a piece of underwear.
He gazed with a curled lip at the item in question in its locked glass case across the office. The bra was fastened onto a torso mannequin under a spotlight. It glittered like some fabulous treasure from the Arabian Nights, but it was still a piece of underwear.
“Mr. McNeill?” Gareth Gane, the fussy little promotions manager for Enigma, broke into his reverie. “Are you listening to me?” The voice had been steadily climbing during Gane’s tirade, the latest installment in a series designed to let Chunk, and through him, his bosses at Paragon Security, know just how important this project was and how absolute security—that’s how Gane always put it, emphasizing every other syllable—“AB-so-LUTE Se-CUR-ity”—was paramount. As if the money they were paying wasn’t indication enough.
Chunk turned and looked at Gane. He carefully kept his face expressionless, and his voice was soft and polite as he answered. “Yes, sir. I’m listening.” Despite the tone, Gane went a
little pale and pushed back slightly but visibly against his desk chair, as if trying to get away.
Chunk had once been described by an overeager sportswriter in his hometown paper as “a six-four, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound chunk of sheer mean.” The nickname had stuck. Deep down, he’d always been a little hurt by that. He knew his looks intimidated people, but he didn’t consider himself mean, although there were probably quite a few offensive linemen and quarterbacks who’d tell you different. But hitting and getting hit was part of the game. Hitting people as hard as he could and knocking them down hard enough that they didn’t want to get back up very much had been his job. It didn’t make him a bad person. He kept his mouth shut though all the hype, because he knew instinctively that intimidation was also part of the job. He’d been pretty good at it all through high school and college, but a year on the third string of a struggling professional team had driven it home that, while he was making a living, playing football wasn’t going to make him rich. Worse, it would likely leave him banged up and arthritic by his thirties.
So he quit the pros and joined the NYPD. He’d quickly discovered the advantages of being huge, dark-skinned, and scary-looking when it came to dealing with perpetrators. Once he’d advanced through the ranks, he got a reputation as being one of the Robbery Squad’s best interrogators. Suspects started talking as soon as he came in the room and scowled at them. He’d never raised his hand in anger to a suspect; he rarely even had to raise his voice. Cooperation just seemed to flow from anyone to whom he gave even a mildly annoyed look. Occasionally, he’d get full confessions without ever having to ask a question.
“I just want to make sure you’re taking this seriously,” Gane said, a little less bitchily than before.
“Yes, sir,” Chunk replied. “Paragon Security is taking the safety of your property very seriously. As am I.”
“Good,” Gane said. His voice had dropped a couple of octaves, almost back to normal.
“The item itself will be guarded by me personally, when it’s on static display,” Chunk said. “It’ll be transported on the ground by armored car, in a triple-locked metal case, with at least two armed security men next to it at all times. It’ll be taken straight from the armored car to the dressing room by those same men, supervised by me. My only concern is…well, I’m assuming the model won’t want us to be there to watch her put it on. We’ve got a couple of female operatives, but not that many.”
“We use one of the smaller meeting rooms as a communal dressing room,” Gane said. “There’ll be plenty of people there. Believe me, there won’t be a problem with modesty. They’re too busy trying to get the changes done quickly.”
Chunk grimaced. “How many people?”
Gane shrugged. “The models themselves, of course. Then hairdressers, makeup people, assistants…maybe seventy-five, eighty at a time. Not counting the TV production people.”
Chunk fought back the impulse to groan aloud. “Same people? Every show?”
“The hair and makeup artists, sure. And the Enigma staff.”
“I’m going to need names, addresses, social security and phone numbers for everyone in the traveling show,” Chunk said. “We’ll need to do background checks.”
Gane nodded. “Sandra will have those to you by close of business. But I can assure you, some of these people have been working with us for years.”
“Thanks for that, sir,” Chunk said, “but we like doing our own checks.”
Gane smiled for the first time. He seemed to be calming down. “I’m beginning to feel like we’ve hired the right people, Mr. McNeill.”
“I’m glad, sir…”
They were interrupted by a pounding on the door. “Gareth!” a loud voice called out on the other side. “Gareth, you arse bandit, are you in there?” The voice was slurred, with a pronounced British accent. The door swung open and a disheveled young man entered, or at least tried to. At the first knock, Chunk had risen from his seat and gotten between Gane and the door. The young man stopped in his tracks the minute he caught sight of him. His booze-reddened eyes widened in shock.
“Bloody hell,” he said. “Last time I saw somfink like that, he was on a movie screen chasin’ hobbits through the forest an’ killin’ Sean Bean wi’ a bow an’ arrow.”
“Ricky,” Gane said before Chunk could snarl back an answer, “I’m in a meeting.”
The man swayed slightly as he regarded Chunk. He was short, barely coming up to Chunk’s chest, but he carried himself with the exaggerated swagger Chunk had seen a lot of short men adopt as a defense. His thick black hair stood straight up from his head, adding an inch or so to his height. He looked vaguely familiar, but Chunk couldn’t place him.
Suddenly the young man gave a brilliant smile and stuck out his hand. “Ricky Vandella,” he said. “Sorry about the wisecrack, mate. You caught me a bit off guard, like.”
Chunk didn’t take the hand. “Mr. Gane,” he said, “you want me to remove this…gentleman?”
“No,” Gane said, his voice weary. “What is it now, Ricky?”
Vandella sidled around Chunk and threw himself into the chair Chunk had just vacated.
“This is Mr. McNeill,” Gane explained. “He’s handling security for the tour.”
“Ah,” Vandella said. “Good for you.”
“Mr. McNeill, this is Ricky Vandella.”
“I already covered that part, Gare,” the man broke in. He stared blurrily up at Chunk. “You’ve ‘eard of me, I’m sure.”
Chunk nodded. He recognized the man now. “I think I may have seen you on TV,” he said. About three seconds before changing the channel. Vandella’s brand of comedy, as seen onstage, in a few moderately successful movies, and a slew of talk shows, centered around insult humor, sort of like a British Don Rickles. That sort of thing had never made Chunk laugh.
“Ricky’s the master of ceremonies for the show,” Gane said.
“That’s right,” Vandella said, “and I want to ride to the show in the big limo. I want to arrive at the show with th’ girls. Make the grand entrance, as it were.”
“Ricky,” Gane said, “we’ve been over this.”
“Oh, right,” Ricky said, “the silly bitches think I’m”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“sexually ’arassin’ them.”
“That,” Gane said, “and possibly, just possibly, they object to being referred to by…that word.”
“Just a bit o’ fun,” Vandella said. “No ’arm done. And they’ll do what they’re told, won’t they? After all, who’s the bloody ’eadliner here?”
Gane gestured at the bra in its display case. “That,” he said. “And Clarissa Cartwright.”
Vandella’s eyes narrowed. “Are you serious?” he said. “That piece of cloth and that siliconed slag are getting higher billing than me?”
Gane shrugged. “I’m afraid so, Ricky.”
Vandella sprang to his feet. “We’ll see about that,” he said. “I quit.”
“You’ve got a contract, Ricky,” Gane said, with the air of someone wearily rehashing an old argument. “And there’s a pretty stiff penalty clause for not following through. As I’m sure your agent told you the last three times you’ve tried to quit.”
“Yeah,” Vandella said. “Well…well…we’ll see about that!”
“You said that already,” Chunk said.
Vandella gave him a poisonous look, opened his mouth as if to deliver some withering retort. Then he saw the look on Chunk’s face and thought better of it. He turned to Gane. “You’ll be hearing from my people,” he said.
“Tell Sleepy, Grumpy, Doc, and Dopey I said hi,” Chunk said.
Vandella sneered. “Let’s make a deal, rent-a-cop,” he said. “You leave the comedy to the professionals, and I’ll leave the donuts to you.”
He walked past Chunk, a little unsteadily, and exited the room.
“Jesus,” Chunk said. “We don’t have to protect that guy, do we?”
Gane was rubbing his eyes. “No,”
he said, “but try not to kill him. At least until the show’s over.”
ALDO “THE Moose” Cantone was a good head taller than Mario Allegretti, and probably at least thirty pounds heavier. But he took the slap on the left side of his face without visibly reacting or flinching, just as he had the one on his right side.
“Idiot,” Mario snarled at him. Mario had the face of an old-time matinee idol, which he kept baby-smooth with a variety of expensive skin care products, but now that face was ugly and contorted in rage. “Fucking meatball IDIOT. How the FUCK could you have done something so goddamned STUPID?”
“I’m sorry,” Aldo said. The submissive tone only seemed to infuriate Mario further. He drew back his hand for another blow, but a soft voice from across the room seemed to freeze him in place as if someone had hit the pause button.
“Mario,” the voice said. “Enough.”
Mario stood for a moment, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles stood out like cables, his hand still drawn back. Slowly, he relaxed his arm and let it fall to his side. He turned toward the voice.
“So now I got to listen to you tell me how to run my crew, Paul?” he said, like a sulky child.
Paul Chirelli unfolded himself from the chair where he’d been sitting backwards, his arms crossed over the top.
“Aldo,” he said in his whispery voice, “go wait in the car, okay? Don’t play the radio, don’t read the paper, just go sit. And think about what you done.”
Aldo nodded his square head, an expression of relief on his broad face. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks, Paul.”
Chirelli rounded on him and stuck his face an inch away from Aldo’s. “Don’t thank me yet, fuckup,” he snarled. “You ain’t heard the end of this.”
Aldo hadn’t flinched from the blows to his face, but Chirelli’s words snapped his head back like a left jab. “Yessir,” he murmured, and fled.
“Thanks for embarrassing me like that, Paul,” Mario said.
“I kept you from embarrassing yourself, kid,” Chirelli replied. “You were losin’ your temper. Goin’ over the line. With the son of Roberto Cantone, not to mention your best friend since you was both in diapers.”
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