by Wyborn Senna
Bea wanted to sit down but opted for leaning against Ryan, who held her steady. Inside, it was everything they expected. Facing the mirrored, white staircase, the guide called their attention to rooms on the right—the living room with a sofa that seemed unsually long and, beyond that, a doorway framed on both sides with stained-glass artwork depicting peacocks that led into the music room, where a mid-century television set and a black baby grand remained.
Ryan looked down at the guardrail preventing entry and grimaced.
“Look, but don’t touch,” he whispered to Bea.
She offered him a wan smile.
The tour continued with a look at Elvis’s parents’ bedroom, which was blindingly white from the walls to the carpet, except for the queen-size bed that was covered with a grape-colored velour spread. Bea pointed at the glassed-in closet where some of Gladys Presley’s dresses were displayed. Ryan nodded. He was focused on the pink bathroom off the bedroom that was cordoned off.
As the morning progressed, Bea showed increasing fatigue, and Ryan and she fell behind. A bald-headed man turned around not once, but twice, looking like he wanted to say something to Ryan.
Upstairs, where Elvis died in August 1977, was off-limits. Instead, they were taken through the bar and billiards and media rooms in the basement before heading up to the Jungle Room, where Ryan could easily picture Elvis kicking back and having fun.
Next, they headed across the backyard toward Vernon Presley’s office and made their way across the lawn to the trophy room. Bea tugged on Ryan’s arm and led him to a white fence that penned in grazing horses.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Bea sank down into the grass. “I feel a little faint. Maybe it’s the humidity.”
Ryan watched the group enter the trophy room where Elvis’s gold lame suit was on display. The bald-headed man who had given Ryan a second glance broke away from the pack and made his way across the lawn.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Do you guys need help?”
Bea tried to smile but failed. “I’m just lightheaded. I need to rest a moment.”
The man eyed Ryan. “Guess I don’t have to tell you who you look like.”
“Yes, I know, and no, I’m not an Elvis impersonator, and I don’t have a show in Vegas. Ryan Wyatt.”
He stuck out his hand, and the man clasped it with his own, his rings flashing.
“Ben Andover. But you can sing, right?”
Ryan debated whether or not he should issue an aw-shucks-maybe reply, then rethought things. He simply said yes.
“How do you feel about Hollywood?” Ben asked.
Ryan laughed. “Considering we’re from Beverly Hills?”
“Oh!” The man sounded surprised.
He pulled a business card from his billfold and handed it to Ryan.
“What’s this?”
“They’re having auditions for a new singing competition called The It Factor on the Lynx Network. The competition runs twelve weeks. It would give you a lot of exposure. Plus, if you win, you get a record contract. When are you going back?”
“We’re only in Memphis this weekend,” Ryan told him.
“Great,” Ben said. “Auditions are this coming Wednesday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Think you can make it?”
Ryan looked at Bea, uncertain.
Bea rallied a real smile.
“You’ve got to try out,” she told him. “I’ll be mad at you if you don’t.”
Ben laughed and returned his billfold to his back pocket. “Guess you better listen to the little lady.”
Ryan helped Bea back to her feet.
“I always do.”
Chapter 50
Ron Fletcher and Logan Lockhart sat in Peter Corcioni’s office on the sixtieth floor of one of the Marina City towers on Chicago’s State Street, waiting for the old man to conclude a meeting. Both wore plaid shirts, jeans, and sneakers. Ron had gelled his dark hair flat, combed straight back from his forehead, and Logan slightly modified his fauxhawk so that it spiked to the left. After Ron checked his iPhone for messages and logged into Gmail to find out if anyone had written, his attention turned to Corcioni’s trove of CIA spy gear, displayed in barrister cabinets throughout his thirty-foot-long executive suite carpeted in oatmeal berber. The tower his friend Phil’s father worked in was one of two corncob-shaped buildings that overlooked the main branch of the Chicago River to the south and, beyond that, the Chicago Loop. In the opposite direction, Wrigley Field was a short four-and-a-half-mile jaunt away, lit up for night games every spring and summer.
Ron wasn’t as enthusiastic about the views as he was about Corcioni’s gadgets, though, and there was always a new gizmo or two he wanted to ask him about. He knew about the shelf of fake calluses that were used to cover microfilm placed against the skin, and another shelf that contained men’s smoking pipes with cavities that had been hollowed out to hide information. There was a shelf filled with pens containing invisible ink so messages could be written on a spy’s skin, and beside them were a handful of false glass eyes, bleached and painted inside so they could hold information. Then there was a shelf filled with stacks of thick foreign currency that had been boiled apart so microdots of information could be put inside the bill, typically in a spot where the bill was darker, before it was glued back together. Beside the paper money, there were stacks of coins with tiny holes in them. If you put a needle into the hole in any coin, you could pop it open like a tin of Altoids.
Ron waved Logan over to join him before he lifted the glass door on the bill and coin cabinet and reached for a coin that sat apart from the neat stacks. He held it up to the light before he reached into his pocket to retrieve his bifocals. While Ron gazed at the coin, his concentration was so deep he didn’t hear his friend’s father enter the room.
“Going blind like me, I see?”
Ron gave a start and turned. “Still quiet as a fox, old man?”
They hugged and examined each other at arm’s length before Ron introduced him to Logan and explained Logan’s condition.
“Can’t talk?” the old man asked. “Wish the secretarial pool here had that problem.”
“He’s our graphics guy,” Ron explained, “so if he has any questions about the formats you provide, he has his iPad.”
Corcioni led them over to his desk, and Ron asked him how his son, Phil, was doing as they sat down.
The old man settled into a desk chair impressive enough for the Oval Office. “Are you done with the niceties? I spoke with him last night, and he mentioned you two talked only a few days ago.”
Logan thought he was the only one who blushed until he watched Ron’s face flush a lovely shade of pink.
Corcioni pulled out a pipe and a pouch of tobacco while Ron composed himself, unlatched his briefcase, and pulled out his laptop. He opened the layout of the first issue Logan had done and slid it across the massive desk to Corcioni, who took a puff on his pipe, leaned forward, and looked.
“She wants them to look like NetFlix mailers with perforated edges.”
The old man shushed him.
Ron dug around in his briefcase and pulled out a sample first issue from PPP that Marilyn had given him. He pushed it across the desk, but Corcioni ignored it.
While they waited ten minutes, Ron entertained Logan by sharing stories Corcioni had told him about dead drops. Forested areas were always good. You could use a hollowed-out branch or, better yet, a hollow spike with a capped lid you’d insert into the ground and step on ‘til the cap was flush with the ground and virtually undetectable. You could even use garbage and stuff a message written on a napkin into the bottom of a cup, returning it to the refuse bin or tossing it on the ground with other litter. Good dead drops lasted for hours. In the event of problems, you could leave chalk marks to signal to an agent there was a change of plans. But the biggest thing to consider when sizing up a suitable dead drop was realizing you had to have a reason for being there. While there wasn’t much call for wandering around the wo
ods at night, a far better choice for a drop was an underground parking garage filled with cars. It was simply a matter of getting out of your car, getting into the car of the person you were meeting, exchanging information, and then parting ways. As a paparazzo, this was Ron’s preferred method of meeting sources.
Corcioni looked across the desk. “We can do this, no problem.”
Ron beamed. “With the perforation and everything?”
“Right here in Chi-Town.”
Corcioni had taken advantage of the fact The Chicago Sun-Times had stopped the presses, closed its printing plant, laid off four hundred employees at its South Ashland Avenue facility, and moved to the Freedom Center downtown. There was equipment to be had in the transfer, and he made haste to secure what he could for his firm.
“She’s gonna want to know how much.”
“With distribution?”
“Yep.” Marilyn had filled Ron in on what to ask for, what to get.
“What’s your price point?”
“She wants them to go cheap so they’re an impulse purchase. Thirty-five cents, tops.”
“Tell her to lower it to a quarter. I can run these at five cents each, with distribution of a hundred thousand copies to ten major cities coast to coast, and get them on the racks at the registers right next to The National Enquirer. That’s ten thousand issues per city with leftovers being picked up when trucks deliver the next one. You got any more issues besides this first one?”
Ron came around and looked over the old man’s shoulder. As a cloud of sweet, cherry-smelling smoke enveloped them, Ron showed him a list of stories in the making Marilyn had given him.
“Good, good. Keep ‘em coming. We’ve got trucks going out every day. If you’ve got the stories, we could theoretically do seven runs a week.”
“And you really can get them on the racks near checkouts, right next to The Enquirer?”
Corcioni looked up at Ron, his thick neck swallowed by a cashmere turtleneck that nearly ran up the underside of his chin. “Kid, you ever hear of a little thing called connections?”
Ron’s iPhone rang. “Yeah, Dan, what’s up?”
As he listened, his face fell. He moved to the chair across from Corcioni’s desk and sat down hard. After he hung up, he shared the news. “Marilyn was found raped and beaten in Venice. She’s alive, but barely. Dan thinks ex-cons hired by Flash did it.”
Corcioni sucked on his pipe and blew out a plume of smoke.
“Flash is where she worked before?”
Logan and Ron nodded simultaneously.
“And she left and took a lot of staff with her?”
“She cherry-picked the best,” Ron said.
Corcioni tapped his pipe on the ashtray. “Surprised they didn’t kill her. This business—” he stopped and coughed, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Chapter 51
Because Bea wasn’t feeling up to it, Noah accompanied Ryan to It Factor auditions at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where thousands turned out to audition. The show’s host was both hyperactive and charismatic, jumping around onstage, welcoming the throngs. Interns gave everyone a number, and the potential contestants lined up at screening tents set up on the grounds.
After eight hours of waiting, Ryan was granted the chance to sing a few bars of “Love Me Tender” for a team of judges and was greenlighted to meet the star panel. He emerged from the tent, hugged Noah, and pointed to a squat, windowless building that looked like it belonged in Quantico. “We’re supposed to go over there.”
The two of them crossed the grounds, found seats, and watched Bartelmus Starr roughhouse with little kids. Ryan and Noah were dressed for the hot weather, but the sun was still beating down hard at five in the afternoon, and they were a sweaty mess. Finally back to business, Bartelmus approached the boys and read the sticker on Ryan’s gold-and-white striped T-shirt. “181-226-343-442-551.”
Ryan looked down. Only the first six numbers were on it.
Bartelmus broke into a wide grin. He wore a three-piece suit but still looked as fresh as his newly pressed pocket square. Noah nudged Ryan. Bartelmus was making a joke, and they were obliged to laugh.
“Oh, right.” He stood up and towered over Bart, who hugged him around the waist. Then, throwing his arms wide as if to welcome Jesus, he flagged down some men with cameras and scrutinized his clipboard again.
The lights from the cameras lit up Ryan and Bartelmus.
Bartlemus spoke directly to the blinking red light on the first camera. “This is Ryan Wyatt, and he’s ready to meet the judges. Where are you from, Ryan?”
“Right here in Southern California.”
“Specifically?”
“Beverly Hills.”
“And you are how old?”
“Eighteen. Nineteen in October.”
“Whoa, don’t rush it,” Bartelmus chuckled. He winked at the red light on the camera. “We get old too fast, don’t we?”
The middle-aged viewership must love this little leprechaun.
Bartlemus looked at him, eyes wide. “So, are you nervous?”
Ryan shrugged. “Not really.”
Still seated in his folding chair, Noah spoke up. “He does a lot of karaoke.”
The cameras swung wide to include Noah, dressed in a solid blue shirt and denim shorts, his sandy hair matted with sweat. The pride and admiration he felt for his friend was written all over his sunburned face. Bartelmus took a seat beside him, grabbed his hand, and pumped it. “You’re here for Ryan?”
“Yes. I’m his friend.”
“And your name?”
“Noah. Noah Che—”
Bartlemus didn’t let him finish. He dropped Noah’s hand as though he’d been grasping something unsavory and jumped back up. He grabbed Ryan again and led him to the crouched, concrete building that looked like it was trying to hide from its prey. Bartlemus pointed toward the shiny metal door. The cameras were tracking them.
Bartlemus looked serious, but his words carried a lilt, suggesting hope.
“This is it, kid.”
“This is it,” Ryan parroted. He rubbed his hands together.
“Go get ‘em, and good luck.”
Chapter 52
When Marilyn was released from the hospital, she had Tobias drive her straight home, where she stayed in bed, beneath her white goose comforter for days, in a haze of painkillers. On the seventh day, Pia and Tobias stopped hovering, decided she would be OK for a few hours—especially in light of the three new locks on the front doors of their adjoining apartments—and left. That afternoon, however, someone began pounding on the door, and Marilyn jolted upright, her heart battering in terror.
Then, just as abruptly as the pounding began, it stopped.
She opened the door to her bedroom and looked out.
In her purse on the bed, her cell phone rang to the tune of “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend”. She answered it.
“Marilyn?”
“Yes?” She didn’t recognize the caller’s voice, which frightened her further.
“This is Tom. The security agency sent me over so you could interview me.”
Still on the phone, Marilyn crept to the front door and peered through the peephole. An impossibly tall man stood there. She couldn’t see his eyes, but he had a strong, square chin.
She noticed a card for Best Bodyguards on the dining room table, and she picked it up, trying to remember what was going on. “I’m gonna hang up and call the agency and verify your identity. What’s your name?”
“Tom Nielsen.”
She disconnected the call and dialed the number on the card. “Did you send a giant to my place?”
There was laughter on the other end of the line before the woman called over her shoulder to someone else in the room. “How tall is Nielsen?”
“The Dunkin’ Dutchman’s evil twin is seven-feet-five-inches,” a woman in the background shouted.
“The Dunkin’ who?”
The woman on the line sighed. “Rik Smit
s. Indiana Pacers?”
Marilyn shook her head and peeked through the keyhole again. Tom was pacing.
The woman sounded certain. “That’s the guy we sent. Did you forget about today’s appointment?”
Marilyn unlocked and opened the door, and Tom breezed past her as though he was afraid she’d push him out if he stood in the doorway. He stopped in the middle of her white shag rug and looked down. “Uh, my shoes may be dirty.”
Marilyn closed and relocked the door before she crept over to him and looked up. He towered above her and had hair so blond it bordered on white.
She extended her hand. “Marilyn.”
He treated her hand as though it were made of fine china. “Tom Nielsen.”
“I know. The agency sent you.”
He looked around, then at her shirt. “What’s Pink+Dolphin? A rock band?”
She didn’t hear his question. She sat down on the sofa and felt the bandages on her head. “I must look a mess.”
Tom looked down at the waif of a woman, her head swathed in white, both eyes blackened, bandages on her hands, arms, and legs. A wave of pity washed over him.
“I’ve seen worse,” he reassured her, though he knew it wasn’t true.
Chapter 53
Ryan had never seen Crann Berry, Deth Mental, or Tamarind Toxic in person before, but here they were, sitting before him at a long table filled with cups promoting StazUp Cola, the drink that promised to keep you awake not only all night but forty-eight hours straight. Deth was the token, hardcore rocker who nearly died by overdosing throughout the sixties and seventies, only to discover rehab and fidelity with one of Hugh Hefner’s pets at the Playboy mansion before the eighties ended. Wearing a full Native American headdress and suede dress for the auditions, he wouldn’t even touch the Staz, though he kept the cup right in front of him per the sponsor’s request. Instead, he waited for breaks and had his assistant serve him green tea, pistachios, and dried fruit to keep him going. He was the hardass on the panel, the one who said what he thought even if it drove contestants to despair, and there were always a few bad singers included in the mix just so everyone could have a good laugh when Deth ripped them to shreds.