by Scott, D. D.
“Good question,” Clito said, fanning herself, probably not from the heat, but rather from the new cabana boys whose shift was getting ready to start.
“I thought so too,” I said, waiting on someone to answer it.
“Good question, but one that we don’t know the answer to either,” Bunny said, then sighed and looked out toward the sea. “We’ve been trying to solve that riddle for years.”
CHAPTER TWO
Later that night, as we all waited for the curtain to go up for Clitopatra’s Duval Street Cabaret Show, I was still trying to process the day’s events.
“What’s bothering you? If it’s this whole thing with Clitopatra, we can go,” Roman said, squeezing my hand in that wonderful way he does when he knows I need his strength to bolster my own.
“No. No. I love Queens. I’m actually looking forward to the show. I will admit I’m still a little hung up on her nickname,” I said then laughed, “but otherwise, I’m all good with that.”
Roman laughed with me, which was rare for him, but something I was glad to note had increased in frequency since we’d gotten together.
“So what is it then?”
I wasn’t sure how to say it without hurting his feelings, and I’d never do that. But, I also had to be honest with him. We used to play cat and mouse games, but not anymore. Now we were painfully honest. And, yeah. This one was gonna be painful.
“It’s your family’s past. Frankly, you know it’s always scared the hell outta me. But now, after hearing about R killing his father and knowing that this key was enough for countless people to be killed over? Well...now we’re the ones looking for this key, which means we’re in hot water...again.”
Roman remained stoic. Not a muscle flinched except along his jaw line which always tightened and released when he talked about his past.
“We’ve got to find this key, Princess. But, I promise you, I’ll keep us safe. No one will hurt you.”
“What about you? And R? And Bunny?” I looked at my new family seated at our table, a family crazier than hell but beyond loveable too. “Your Grandma and Grandpa? Your brother? And now Clito too?”
Roman looked at each person seated with us, and it may have been my imagination or the candles on the table playing tricks, but I thought his eyes moistened.
“We’ll all be fine, Princess. As long as we stick together, we’ll be fine,” Roman said, then leaned over and kissed me.
Every time his lips touched mine, I seemed to temporarily escape whatever hell we were currently in.
“Let’s enjoy the show,” he said, then gave me one more quick kiss.
The house lights dimmed and the spotlights lit up the stage as the announcer let us know that World Famous Queen Clitopatra was about to perform.
The crowd roared. And as a disco tech version of The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” hit the speakers, Clitopatra treated us to a very Priscilla, Queen of the Desert rendition...feathers, sequins, and sparkles galore.
At least sticking with this family was never dull. And damn did I love all the bling!
CHAPTER THREE
I sat looking in the mirror attached to the wall in my tiny dump of space in the backstage dressing rooms of the Duval Street Cabaret. My hand shook ever so slightly as I applied my larger-than-life glossy, glitter-dusted lips. Men weren’t made to use makeup brushes.
I’d done a lot over the last few decades to protect what was mine. But becoming a Queen took my dedication to an entirely new level.
It certainly wasn’t that I didn’t have people to do this job for me. But, I didn’t trust any of them to get the job done to my satisfaction. There was trouble in the lower ranks of my operation, and I had to weed out and wipe out the troublemakers.
I’d ordered a hit on Bunny, but a lot of good that did me. She was still here and, from the look of things, was anxiously awaiting my performance tonight.
At the time I’d paid to get her painting, I’d also paid for her hit, thinking I’d get rid of the last thing reminding me of Valerie and finally get back my precious key, both in one night. Bunny, unlike Clito and Raulf, looked just like her mother, each had that Audrey Hepburn-like classic beauty, and I couldn’t bear to see it.
But someone had interfered with my plans and protected her. I got my painting, but not her.
Clito? No worries there. I’d use him for what I needed, then make him disappear, just like I arranged for his mother and my brother Alonzo. Leave it to Alonzo, the weak mother fucker, to steal Valerie’s heart and then attempt to turn on the family.
Even now, after all these years, with my wealth and power at its greatest heights ever, I stood to be taken down...by my own son. I’d survived his attempt on my life when he was only five, but he wouldn’t survive my attempt on his.
Allowing my mind to refocus on the task at hand, I took stock of my royal transformation. From Mob King to Drag Queen. Not bad for an old guy.
I’d already caked on the foundation and powder, just as I’d learned from YouTube. My fake lashes were secured. Fake tits in place and other parts held in place beneath a very uncomfortable thong.
Tonight, I would debut as Star Fish, The Duval Street Cabaret’s newest Queen. But underneath the glamour and gogo boots, I was about to play and win a very dangerous game.
Checking one last time to make sure the key was securely hidden in the fake bottom of my wig box, I puckered up for the mirror, like I soon would be for my new fans, and waited for my nephew Clitopatra to give me my cue.
CHAPTER FOUR
Queens like Clitopatra sleep till way past noon. And hanging in their world, meant I was sleeping in later too. We’d gotten home from her show sometime after 3 AM, and by lunch, it was still only Bunny and I awake in the Bellesconi Key West mansion.
Well, let me correct that. Roman and R had been up at their usual daybreak, had their breakfast and had then gone to R’s lab to do who knew what. Fact was, I probably didn’t want to know till I had to.
But I had learned this morning that, apparently, The Bellesconis had a more than keen interest in presidential politics. At first, I thought it was just one of Bunny’s quirks. Actually more like an obsession.
She read absolutely everything on this year’s presidential race. But from what I’d seen, it appeared that the Republican Candidate, Governor Rett Crumley, of Massachusetts, was her primary concern.
Not a day went by as far as where he was concerned that, she didn’t mutter a few stern expletives. Whether the word of the moment was Bastard, Fuck Cluster or Son of a Bitch, I got the impression she was after.
And all this time, I thought it was Cluster Fuck. Although I much prefer the ring of the Bunny-speak version - Fuck Cluster.
Whichever term she used, Governor Crumley was a schmuck. A dark and very evil schmuck.
“If it’s not Central American Coffee Cartels, it’s Vegas Casino Kings and the Chinese government,” Bunny said, slamming down the Wall Street Journal on top of her laptop.
The fact the laptop was closed meant she’d already read the morning edition of her favorite news source, the Huffington Post. Apparently, she wasn’t too happy with those stories either.
I’d already read both papers online, so I knew she’d be whooped up by the time we had brunch.
“I don’t understand what our family has to do with all of this,” I said, fairly certain I didn’t want to know, but also certain I needed to know.
Bunny took a large swig of her Bloody Mary then bit off a large piece of the beef stick the butler had added in with the celery stalk.
“As you’re learning, my dear, in today’s world, most everything and everyone can be bought. And nothing...Nothing...is as it seems.”
“Take this cup of coffee for instance. The beans ground for this very cup more than likely come from fields of Salvadoran oligarchs who use their coffee fortunes to fund the right-wing death squads who’ve killed tens of thousands of people for decades,” she said, then pushed away her cup as if the thought
of drinking it disgusted her.
Suddenly, coffee didn’t have quite the allure it usually has for me either.
“So what about Casino Kings and Presidential Races? Where do they fit into the mix?”
“For starters, it’s Casino Magnate Ben Adelyang, one of the wealthiest men in the world, due to his ownership of The Sandelsohn Casino Corporation, who’s one of Governor Crumley’s largest donors. The Coffee Cartel families are next on the major donor list.”
“And the Chinese government?”
“Also in Adelyang’s pocket, and you can bet your ass he’ll be a huge influencer of the United States’ policy and attitude towards China. That’s where half of his profits come from on account of his four casinos there,” Bunny said, decapitating the leafy head of her celery stalk.
“But where does that leave our family?”
“I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is that The Berninis have worked with all the families involved for years regarding the goods they distribute through our Naple’s ports and the derivative trades they shuffle between their international bank accounts. R’s father, Giotto, also had a big problem with Ricardo Kardeneira, one of the heirs to the largest coffee dynasty. And that problem doesn’t seem to ever go away.”
“Do you think the missing key could have something to do with all of this?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
She finished off her Bloody Mary then slid this morning’s local papers across the table.
I didn’t have to read them. I already knew what they said.
Today, Governor Crumley was making a campaign stop in Key West, which was to be followed by a few private meetings with influential local donors.
“I take it we’re somehow going to be a part of these events?” I asked, although I didn’t really have to.
By now, I knew how the Bellesconis operated. They always went straight to the source of their troubles.
“Let’s just say I hope you have something patriotic looking in your wardrobe,” Bunny said, taking an American flag out of the vase of flowers in the center of our table and waving it high in the air.
CHAPTER FIVE
Duval Street was lined three to four people deep on both sides with rowdy, donkey-loving supporters. Here in Key West, a city known for welcoming alternative lifestyles and the people living them, one rarely found elephants, as in card-carrying members of the GOP. What on earth a GOP candidate thought he or she could gain by making this city a campaign stop was beyond me.
But then again, Governor Crumley wasn’t the smartest guy who’s ever tried to become our next president. He may have made his mark in the business world, but it was at the expense of the American workers who make up this country.
Very few people gathered wealth like that of Rett Crumley, wealth he wasn’t willing to divulge in tax trails because the evils of the world played major roles in his portfolios.
As I’d come to expect, now that I was part of the Bellesconi Family, we had a reserved place on the grandstand stage to hear the Governor’s speech. And that alone proved Crumley had to have crossed paths with the underworld my husband came from. No one gets that close to a candidate unless they’re related, which we weren’t, or the candidate owes them something. Now that was a highly plausible explanation for our prominent placement.
I took in a deep breath, trying to steady my jumpy nerves. When that didn’t work, I resorted to scanning the crowd and reading all the funny signs, making the local’s disdain for Governor Crumley beyond obvious.
My personal favorite I’d seen so far was the bumper sticker people were holding up that read: “GM is alive and well. Osama bin Laden isn’t.”
No matter how much I understood why Roman and his family were trying to make good on their past, I’d never get used to the shadowy figures we’d have to continue to fight till our freedom, and the freedom of the world’s everyday people, had been won.
Playing politics was bound to come along in this journey at some point, I knew, because, let’s face it, there are very few clean politicians. Money and power go hand-in-hand in a vicious circle of influence and dread.
Done reading the rabble rousers’ signs, and shaken by an anxiety that kept getting deeper with each new source of evil we hunted down, I fiddled with the large pearls around my neck.
Never one for understating anything, I’d decided on the most bodacious bunch of baubles I owned. I was used to dressing for red carpets, television cameras and paparazzi lenses, not stodgy political campaign stops. So, along with my rather boring color-blocked admiral navy and white suit, I’d chosen a multi-strand, pearl-filled and charm-linked necklace. I figured, if necessary, I could always use the thing as a weapon to choke the shit out of someone. And thanks to all the cool gadgets R was forever creating, I was beginning to think along his lines. Fashion was no longer a career and lifetime passion of mine. It had already saved my life a few times.
Clitopatra and her new stage partner, Star Fish, were green with envy over my baubles and had fussed over them something fierce.
Speaking of envious, I can tell you for sure who wasn’t envious, and that would be the poor secret service studs who were trying to lead Governor Crumley through a crowd, who, for the most part, would not vote for him.
The Governor, who had always rubbed me the wrong way on the screen and on paper, slithered up to the podium, his product-heavy comb-over more than likely able to hold its own here in hurricane country.
Just imagining what dumb, offensive things would come out of his mouth this time made me about giggle out loud. Lately, it appeared everywhere he went, including the Olympics, he pissed people off, including our biggest allies.
I suppose, when you think you can buy your way into the Oval Office, and have more money than most of our government agencies combined, people-pleasing isn’t your priority.
Before taking the podium, his emotionless, vulture-like, beady eyes surveyed our three small rows of VIPs. He went from Roman to me with a practiced smile, a smile that grew when he acknowledged Bunny and grew bigger still when he honed in on Clito, who was sporting an over the top va-va voom Madonna Rock The Vote look.
But when The Governor saw Star Fish, I’m not sure what transpired between them. Whatever it was, it gave me the chills.
“Did you see that?” Bunny asked Roman and I, covering her mouth with her program to block reporters from being able to lip-read her comments. “What was that about? The asshole looked like he’d just seen a ghost.”
“Maybe he did,” I said, even more worried, because it wasn’t just my hyperactive imagination that something wasn’t adding up about Star Fish.
I looked at Roman, who wasn’t saying a word. Well, to me and Bunny he wasn’t. He was busy talking to his wrist, which meant R was close by and also having a nice conversation with his wrist.
• • •
One utterly boring stump speech later, we were seated inside The Governor’s campaign bus, waiting for him to join us.
Talk about stiff and quiet. I knew Roman, my boss. And I knew his style. He would want to wait out our prey and make them anxiety-ridden enough to spill their beans. And hopefully even more beans than they’d ever planned on letting slide out of their jar.
But, this time, he may have met his match. Crumley’s crew of advisors wasn’t saying a word. It was a total standoff situation. We were a long way from checkmate.
And I couldn’t afford to wait that long. That’s not how Berninis played. If I had one thing in common with my father, it was that I always called the shots. And I was prepared to do that now. My brother and sister’s lives, as as well as my beloved Bellesconi Family’s well-being, were on the line.
This wasn’t going to be some policy wonk cuss and discuss either. And this certainly wasn’t going to be one of those interviews about what the candidate’s reading, what’s on his iPad or if he watches the Kardashians. We were headed in a much darker direction.
As The Governor finally joined us
on the bus, I couldn’t shake the slither factor in front of me. My instincts were right on the mark. This guy definitely was the type to do business with my father.
He sat with his wife, who looked like a blond, bob-cut Barbie Doll, too expensive to ever hit store shelves. She would have been a custom-order-only, call-for-pricing edition.
“Look, why don’t we just get right to it. I know we’re busy and so are you,” Governor Crumley said, without even the slightest fidget on his leather sofa.
“Is this about Box 438?” His personal attorney and blind trust administrator asked, also without a fidget.
So that’s the way they’re going to play this, I thought. What a chicken shit to simply lawyer up. Although, Rett obviously had one of the shrewdest ever in Bradford Valt. Bradford was their lawyer, as well as the trustee of their blind trusts.
“I’m sure you’ll have to agree that it’s a first when it comes to a United States Presidential Candidate having Swiss Bank Accounts, as well as international tax havens in the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Panama and the Cayman Islands too,” Roman said, his voice cloaked in a timbre of deadly resolve to ruin this candidacy and protect the people he most cared about.
“Look, if this is about our tax returns again, I can assure you, we’ve paid everything and provided every detail we are legally required to,” Rett said, loosening his tie.
“We’re not concerned about what’s legally required. And I think you’ll agree that all of us on this bus are smarter than that. What’s legally done isn’t the issue here, is it?” Roman baited The Governor like the pros they both were.
“We all know there are a variety of gray areas.”
Rett took the bait with a smug grin I’m sure would set Roman on edge, because it had me about ready to finish the job in a different way than we’d planned.