She cleared her throat and spoke into the forest of microphones.
“I am private first class Athena X. Roberts, U.S. Army, retired. I am also the private hairdresser of Congresswoman Reverend Cady Stanton. I am here to finish doing the Reverend's hair so she can go on your TV shows and give you all the answers you want. But you cannot expect a lady of her quality to go on camera without having her hair done, now can you?” She turned to the officer again. “So can I go in now?”
“She must be with Sybil's team,” someone said. “Are you with the CNN crew, Miss Roberts? For the Sybil Diaz-Dreyfuss interview?”
“No press. No more press,” the officer said. “We cannot guarantee their safety.”
Meanwhile, Mikhail put on a wig even worse than the one he'd given Regina.
On the screen, another young black man appeared behind the gate.
“Athena!” he called. “Fatima is sick with worrying about you, girl.”
“Let me in, Jamal, honey,” Athena said. “Sorry I can't stay and chat, officer.” She shook off his arm as he grabbed for her. “It's okay. I'm not the press.”
The officer was firm. “No, ma'am, I'm sorry. But we have strict orders. Nobody goes in there but family.”
“I am family. Cady Stanton is my aunt.”
Regina froze. Sinclair had no daughters.
“Do you have any proof of that, ma'am?” The officer sounded skeptical.
“As a matter of fact. I have my birth certificate right here.”
As Athena took something from her large purse and held it up to the camera, Regina felt as if someone had put her stomach in a vise. She couldn't look.
“See,” Athena said. “Right here. My father was Sergeant Leroy Lewis, Reverend Cady Stanton's half-brother.”
Her daughter. This lovely, confident woman was her daughter. Regina looked back at the TV. Some idiot cameraman was focusing on the birth certificate.
“Oh, Mikhail do you think can anybody read it, the birth certificate?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Regina Ingram of Berkshire, Mass. I am afraid so. Damned idiots!” He muttered something in Russian. “They are letting her in. Those morons let that poor girl into that compound. They might as well have put a bullet in her brain.”
“What are you talking about? Won't she be safer there than with a bunch of trigger-happy policemen?”
Regina was beginning find Mikhail's attitude irritating. She didn't know why he had dressed himself entirely in black leather, with a 'fifties rocker wig and tacky mirrored sunglasses. She stared at him, trying to make some sense of it, but all she could see was her own reflection in his rocker sunglasses.
She looked like a man. A pudgy, aging man in a Las Vegas lounge act.
“Mikhail,” she said, “Why do I look like Elvis Presley?”
“Old Elvis-young Elvis,” he said, pointing first to her and then to himself. “They are the real thing. Mr. Presley's actual costumes. I borrowed them from the boss's collection. I thought we could sneak into Las Vegas as impersonators. Come on, your Highness.”
He scooped her into a wheelchair waiting in the corridor.
“We have a more pressing engagement. Your daughter is in that Beverly Hills mansion with one of the most deadly assassins in the world: an assassin who has been hired to kill her.”
“What assassin? I thought no one had been allowed in but Sybil D-D.”
“Exactly. Sybil is the killer—she's the 'freelance terrorist' they call the 'Queen of Clubs'.”
“Sybil, a killer?”
Mikhail's scowl showed he wasn't joking.
“But what can we do? She's all the way down in Beverly Hills!”
Mikhail wheeled her out of the medical building and into the rainy night.
“I happen to have access to the fastest helicopter in the world. Also the quietest. And it has stealth design that makes it close to invisible.”
“Why would a pop star own a stealth helicopter?”
“Because he can. It is handy for controlling the more brazen paparazzi.” Mikhail wheeled her down a long pathway toward a black structure perched on a round landing pad ahead.
Regina stared in disbelief. No wonder she thought she'd been abducted in a UFO.
The thing looked like Darth Vader in a propeller beanie.
Mikhail wheeled her past a shed where a couple of mechanics were exchanging jokes in what sounded like Russian.
“Aren't these men going to think we're a little weird—with the costumes and all?” she whispered to Mikhail.
“They work for weird. Weird pays great. A lot better than who they used to work for.” He bent down and gave her a quick kiss. “Do not worry. We will be there in time. Look.”
A TV was on in the shed. There was Sybil D-D—not assassinating anybody, but politely interviewing Cady, who looked like a cross between Sleeping Beauty and Della Reese in angelic white and long flowing tresses.
The Russians looked away from the TV long enough to laugh at their appearance.
“Old Elvis-young Elvis.”
Mikhail wheeled Regina up a ramp and helped her into the cockpit. He leaned out and called to the men.
“She ready to rock and roll?”
“Yeah. Party on, Mickey,” said the Russians.
“It is a lot more fun than the KGB, too.” Mikhail reached for the door. “Thank you verr' much,” he said, in an Elvis baritone. “Party on, dudes!”
“I hope this thing is fast,” Regina said. “Is Sybil really this assassin? Will she hurt my daughter, or just try to kidnap her?”
Mikhail's face darkened as he put on a high-tech helmet; the one that had made him look so alien when he rescued her from the cliff. He gave her a similar one to put on.
“We do not know,” he said. “She has been ordered to kill your daughter if I don't deliver the bomb. But she may double-cross her employer and hold Athena for ransom for herself, if she thinks the bomb deal will fall through. There is no telling. She has always been a loose cannon, and now that she is so close to being exposed, who knows?”
“Double-cross her employer? But who's that? Who is behind all this? Is it the person who was trying to kill me?”
“I'm afraid so. It is your husband's mistress, Titiana.”
“Titiana—and Max?” Regina's brain had trouble taking this all in. “Titiana wants to kill me—and my daughter? Why?”
“Because you are getting plump. Max has always been crazy for plump. All the San Montinarans are. Selective breeding. In those long cold Alpine winters, only the fat survive.”
“Oh, my god, so that's why she always kept me on those diets! But they didn't work—and Max was getting interested. He did refill my amaretto glass. On the night Titiana was supposed to be gone. She must have been the one who staged all those accidents!”
Regina tried to picture stout Titiana severing ceiling cables and crawling under Ferraris.
“No. She must have hired somebody. And paid off somebody at the Recovery Clinic. Somebody who killed the Spoon—I mean, Tina Davis.”
“That was an accident. He had poisoned a chocolate bar intended for you.”
“Who's 'he'?”
“A Brit named Nigel Halliwell. He once had a respectable reputation as an assassin, but substance abuse takes its toll, no matter what your profession. Luckily he screwed up those accidents. And I think the FBI is about to finger him for cutting the cable on that elevator.”
“Good. He hope they get him for killing the poor Spoon.”
“I doubt he will be alive long. You do not cross the Reverend Elmo Greeley. He has connections of his own—I do not mean holy ones. Old Vegas connections.”
“But now Titiana has hired Sybil. And you think she's a better assassin than Nigel?”
“Oh, yes.”
“We have to get to my daughter!” Regina couldn't bear it. “I can't have found her just to lose her now.”
Mikail patted her leather-clad knee as he started the engines.
“Do not worry, my love,
” he said. “Sybil may be the Queen of Clubs, but a queen cannot beat a pair of kings.”
Chapter 45—Cady: Terrorist Activities
Cady had been smiling so hard for Sybil's camera, her face hurt. Where were Fatima and Jamal? If someone could provide a distraction for a few minutes, maybe she could collect her thoughts and counter Sybil's ambushing questions with some actual facts.
But Sybil wouldn't stop asking about her relationship with Tyrone. Cady almost preferred her earlier questions about terrorists and whether poor Florence was the notorious assassin known as “the Queen of Clubs.”
“I'm so glad you asked me about Mr. Magee, Sybil.”
Cady spoke in carefully modulated press-conference tones.
“I'm sure the viewing audience will be happy to hear that I do not live permanently at Mr. Magee's residence. As a minister of the Baptist Church, I feel it's important to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Because I am a resident of Massachusetts, I don't have a residence in Los Angeles at this time. That is why, after the accident at the Silver Cathedral, when my doctor ordered me not to travel, Mr. Magee offered to let me stay here at his estate to convalesce.”
“And he made this offer because you and he were childhood sweethearts?”
“Not sweethearts. We grew up together. As neighbors.”
“Neighbors. Homies from the 'hood, dear?”
Sybil's teeth flashed very white against her wine-colored lipstick. Her sleeked-back dark hair showed off her fine cheekbones, but the effect was just the slightest bit Halloween-y. So was the prominent collarbone that protruded from her perfectly starved chest.
“You and Power haven't seen each other in thirty or forty years, but because you were neighbors forty years ago, he's given you the run of his mansion?”
“I haven't exactly been running, Sybil. I was in an accident. I've been bedridden.”
“All right, let's talk about this accident, Cady.”
Sybil changed her vocal range from Barbara Walters-sincere to Joan Rivers-'can-we-talk' “Were you really injured at all? Because if you're suffering from any medical problems, dear, I'd love to know where I could sign up for them. Honestly, Cady, I think you're prettier now than when we were in college together.”
“Thank you.” Too much flattery. Was Sybil about to hit her with a question about the diet pills?
Sybil's smile broadened. “So can you explain to us why we heard all those news reports about you being blinded in that alleged elevator crash? Were the reports a diversionary tactic to draw focus from your terrorist activities? Or was the whole thing a publicity stunt to benefit your new talk show?”
Cady had to use every ounce of self-control to keep from walking away from the camera in rage. But she couldn't show any reaction that might suggest Sybil's ridiculous accusations had an ounce of truth to them.
“If anything, the accident may have canceled the opening of my talk show. And my injuries were very real. My doctor will confirm…”
“The accident wasn't staged to publicize the show? So it was related to your terrorist activities?”
“What terrorist activities? I have never been involved in any terrorist activities!” Cady knew she was losing control. She took a breath. She didn't want to appear irrational to the television audience.
Sybil gave a closed-mouth smile as she opened her large, efficient-looking Coach bag.
“Do you recognize these two men, Reverend?” She held up a grainy photograph of two young white men in crew cuts and button-down shirts. They looked like a folk-singing duo from the early 1960's.
“Not even a little bit.” Cady could speak with real sincerity.
“That's strange, since you arranged a blind date with one of these men for your foster sister Regina in 1965. And after these men raped Regina—within hours, they were mysteriously liquidated by an assassin using a Russian-made explosive device.”
“1965? I was a freshman in college in 1965! I vaguely remember Regina having a blind date that went badly, but, assassinations? Explosive devices? That's ridiculous.”
The interview was entering the realm of the surreal.
“Ridiculous?” Sybil pulled more papers out of her bag. “Is the American government ridiculous when they say these two Princeton students, known as Franz and Frederick, were recruited by East German Intelligence—and that they had been selling secrets, not just to the East Germans, but to anti-American Islamic countries as well?”
“I don't have the slightest idea.” Cady wondered if Sybil had mental health issues.
“You deny all knowledge, then.”
“Of course.” Cady stood up. It was time to end this embarrassment, for both their sakes.
Sybil stood, too, following Cady with the microphone as she signaled at the cameraman.
“Do you also deny that you made weekly trips to Princeton during that year? Do you deny that you had intimate contact with an Islamic terrorist there named Abdullah?”
“You know Abdullah was my boyfriend, Sybil, but to call him a terrorist…”
“Oh, so you don't deny it?”
“I don't deny…”
“Good,” Sybil smiled at the camera. “So you won't deny, Reverend Cady, that you lived with the members of a black revolutionary organization in New Jersey, and became pregnant by their leader, Abdullah? And that in January of 1968, you terminated that pregnancy with an illegal abortion that left you sterile?”
Cady steadied herself. Her head felt like a bomb about to go off. How could Sybil betray an old college confidence this way?
“That's just dorm gossip,” she managed to say after an awful pause. “College gossip of thirty years ago. Why are you wasting the viewers' time with this?”
“Did you or did you not get pregnant by a known revolutionary and subsequently have an illegal abortion? I don't think your 'family values' supporters out there would be totally bored with that information, Reverend.”
Cady made her way back to the bed and sat down. She looked helplessly at the cameraman, who was wearing a Tweety Bird baseball cap and had a face like a vulture. He kept the camera rolling.
Sybil was still rolling, too.
“Isn't that abortion the reason why you counseled your foster sister Regina not to abort the child she conceived with your brother Leroy? Isn't that why you forced her to bring the baby to term and give it up to the Black Panthers?”
If Cady's head hadn't hurt so much, she would have burst out laughing. She wanted to tell Sybil how absurdly wrong she was: how wrong to imagine Cady ever forced Regina to do anything; and absurd to think that Regina would have had a baby and given it away. Especially to an organization so far removed from her culturally elite world.
“Why would Regina give her baby to the Panthers? They weren't exactly famous for their fashion sense, Sybil, dear.”
“If she didn't give the baby to them, who did she give her to? Where is that baby girl now?” Sybil's teeth bared in a vampire smile, her lips blood red. “Tell me, Cady—where is Princess Regina's daughter?”
Cady's head pounded. She felt as if someone were drumming inside it—a whole gang of rappers, banging the hostile rhythms of the street right behind her eyeballs. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, Sybil's lips had vanished. So had Tweety Bird. The room spun around in blackness.
She was blind again.
Chapter 46—Cady: The Goddess out of the Machine
The incessant beat went on in the darkness. Somebody seemed to be playing chords on an electronic keyboard. People may have been dancing. Cady could feel rhythmic pounding on the floorboards.
“What are you doing, young lady? Give me back my microphone!” Sybil shouted.
But she was soon drowned out by the music and Fatima's rough alto voice.
“I am LadyFat. LadyFat's my name—I ain't skinny, and I ain't tame.”
The drumming volume mercifully came down.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Fatima said. “Thank you for giving me this opportun
ity to preview a song from my new CD, called 'Fat Chicks Have More Fun'. I would like to thank my good friend Reverend Cady, and my mentor, Mr. Power Magee. I know a lot a people can't see why Power and Cady got together, because the Reverend used to call Power a pornographer.”
Why was the girl saying this? Cady prayed Tyrone wasn't watching.
“It's true Power Magee makes films with lots of naked skin,” Fatima went on. “But that's healthy skin, people: healthy, happy, folks-having-a-good-time-together kind of skin. He don't want women getting hurt. And he don't want us women hurting our ownselves—not with drugs or booze or all that starving and carving and lipo-sucking that the fashion designers tell us we gotta do. Power Magee is saying women are hot just the way God made us.”
“Give me that microphone!” Sybil's voice went shrill. “Put your clothes back on, you disgusting fat…”
The drumbeat got louder. Fatima resumed her rap—
“Bitch come from high-class so-ci-ety
“Got no class if you ask me.
“Got no class. Got no ass.
“Got no hooter. Look like a neuter.”
“Let go of me!” Sybil screeched. “How dare you touch me! Don't. You're making me dizzy.”
“Turn her 'round, front to the back.
“Got no butt—got a back with a crack.”
“Turn off that videocam! Stop staring at that girl's breasts! This is live, you imbecile!” Sybil sounded like demented bird.
“What? You don't think this ensemble is suitable for prime time viewing?” Fatima laughed.
“Give me that microphone, you fat pig!”
“Watch out who you are calling names here,” said Athena, bursting into the room. “I'd say some bitch who left her tits and ass back home along with her manners had better watch how she criticizes other folks' bodies.”
“Get your hands off me,” Sybil said.
“Athena! Where the hell have you been, girl?”
“Checking up on my family tree,” Athena said. “Is that thing off or on?”
“Off,” said a voice, which must have been the cameraman's. “The camera, the mike—they're all off. They'll be going insane over at the studio. You okay, Ms. Diaz?”
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 101