The Halston Hit

by Angela M. Sanders

  Custard yanked her up by the shoulder and hooked an arm around her neck. He marched her to the room Joanna hadn’t yet explored. With his free hand, he raised the bolt barring the outside of the door before flicking on the lights. It was some sort of operating room, complete with an operating table, surgical lights, and hospital cupboards.

  “People are expecting me,” Joanna repeated. “They know I came here.”

  “If anyone thought you went anywhere, it was to Marquise’s. Not here. They won’t find any trace of you next door.”

  Would they? She’d left her purse near the wardrobe.

  “Are you thinking of this, perhaps?” He pulled her satin bag from a rear pocket with one hand, keeping the other clamped on her. “I won’t lie. You’d benefit from a touch of lipstick, but you won’t need it here.”

  “What are you going to do?” She looked at the operating table with its light suspended above it, the tray of scalpels and stainless steel implements she couldn’t identify.

  “You’ll get to visit VC soon. She’ll appreciate your costume.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a reel of plastic tubing.

  Joanna edged to the door, but he yanked her back by the waist and pinned her to the counter. He cut an arm’s length of tubing from the reel, pulled her hands behind her back, and tied them together.

  “Up on the table,” he said.

  “No.” Her voice shook. Surely he couldn’t lift her.

  “Up,” he said with force. Before she could reply, he pushed her toward the operating table, swinging up her legs. He was more agile than he looked. As he tied her ankles, she tried kicking him against the counter. He regained his balance and threw his weight over her body. She screamed in pain as his bulk settled on her knee. He clapped a hand over her mouth. Her vision narrowed as the spasming in her knee brought her to the edge of consciousness.

  Lewis Custard stood. Her ankles were now firmly bound. The false courtesy in his voice was gone. “You won’t go anywhere now, and the room is soundproofed. I’m going to close up things at Marquise’s and move your car. We’ll see what happens next.”

  “They’ll come,” Joanna barely managed to say. The throbbing in her knee had stabilized to a steady ache. “They’ll never believe I left. They’ll know it was you.”

  He opened the door, then turned to face her. “But when I’m finished, they won’t know it was you.”

  He turned off the lights. She heard the heft of the outside bolt as it slammed into place.

  There was no doubt now. With the ID manufacturing in the next room, Custard could transform a person into anyone he wanted. He had been a plastic surgeon. No. A wave of nausea rose. The thought was too gruesome. She remembered the apartment upstairs. Once a client was transformed, he could rest there until he was completely healed. A handful of clients a year could buy a lot of maps.

  Custard was at the center of the ring the police had been trying to break up, the ring that allowed criminals to arrive in Portland, then never be seen again. Here, they could get a whole new identity. Custard was planning to destroy her identity—then kill her.

  Joanna lay still a moment. Paul knew she’d never run away. Didn’t he? Apple must have told him where she’d gone. Maybe he’d try to find her at Marquise’s. Try—and fail.

  She pictured the empty bottles of champagne stacking up on the counter and the guests glancing at their watches. The drooping flowers. The tepid soup.

  Figure it out. She could almost hear her grandmother whispering in her ear. Well, what tools did she have?

  She was in a room with sharp instruments. She was alert and conscious, even if her knee was messed up. What she didn’t have was much time. With luck, Old Blue wouldn’t start right away. The car’s ignition was testy. That might buy her a few minutes.

  She was also bound and trapped on an operating table. That could change, at least. She swung her legs to the side, then carefully lowered her hips. She couldn’t see anything—the dark absorbed light like black velvet—but the tip of her sandal touched linoleum, and she slipped to her feet.

  Now what? Her hands were tied behind her back. She’d always been limber. As a kid, she used to entertain classmates by grabbing her hands behind her back and pulling them over her head. That wouldn’t work now. But could she still get her hands in front by sitting on the floor and scooting back through them?

  There was only one way to find out. She lowered herself to the ground and brought her bound wrists under her hind end. That part was easy, although she felt the dress rip further under the arms.

  Now for the hard part. She had to fold her legs back at the knees, then slide her arms forward and over her feet. She knelt, sitting on her feet. Her knee screamed in pain. Quickly, she leaned back and forced her arms past her feet, all the while cursing the modest heels of her sandals for the extra inch she had to stretch. It felt as if her arms would be ripped from their sockets, but it worked. One success: her arms were now in front.

  But she was still bound. On the floor, she could use her fingertips to pull at the tubing securing her ankles. She backed up, scooting inch by inch, to the wall and used it as a support while she stood. Then, gently hopping to save her knee from whatever pain she could, she approached the operating table, then felt her way along it.

  At a mechanical click and whirr, she startled, her pulse racing. Keep calm, she told herself. It was just the heating system.

  Keeping her side in contact with the operating table for guidance, she inched toward where she remembered the tray of tools. At last she bumped against it. Gingerly, she felt for a scalpel. There it was. Now she dropped to the ground—crouching was impossible—to cut the tubing from her ankles. It took a few minutes with her tied hands, but at last her feet were free. She rotated them to get the blood flowing again.

  Now for her wrists. This would be trickier. She wedged the scalpel in her sandal, sharp side up, and started to work. Because the scalpel kept slipping, she cut herself once and had to will herself to return to making tiny nicks and fissures in the tubing, closer and closer together, until she was finally able to lift her wrists to her mouth and tear at the tubing with her teeth. Every few moments she stopped and listened. Was Lewis Custard coming?

  Her dress was torn and probably bloody, but at last she was free. A wave of hysteria, mixed with tears and laughter, rose in her chest. Breathe, she commanded herself. Stay calm. With delicate movements, she felt her way to the operating table and set down the scalpel. Even after all this time, there wasn’t enough light for her eyes to adjust to the dark, and she didn’t dare turn on the overhead fixtures to avoid alerting Custard that she was free. She might as well not have had eyes at all.

  What next?

  “You can do it. You’re killer.”

  The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. Joanna squinted against the tannic dark. Did she really hear it?

  A form seemed to gather in the corner of the room. A dark-skinned drag queen wearing a gold lamé Halston gown. VC. The specter’s chin lifted, and she caught Joanna’s gaze. Trembling, Joanna squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. The form had vanished. Her words, “You’re killer,” echoed in her mind. She began to formulate a plan.

  Favoring her knee, she hobbled back to the operating table. She tucked a scalpel into her bra, sharp end up. She waited.

  At last, straining her ears, she heard a distant door open. She was strangely cool, almost as if she were watching herself from the room’s corner. Feeling her way along the counter, she stood at the front wall, behind where the door would open.

  And it was happening. The plank securing the door lifted, she heard it slide. The bolt snicked open. And now the door.

  Light flooded the room, almost blinding Joanna more than the pitch dark had.

  “What the—”

  In a lightning move, Joanna pulled the scalpel from her bra and plunged it full force into Custard’s beefy neck.

  She didn’t stop to see the damage. She ran. She ran toward the door sealing off
this part of the basement, and, nearly crying with a mixture of relief and desperation, she clawed at the handle until it opened.

  A gurgling yell and footsteps came from behind her, but she pressed ahead. Don’t look back.

  She ran past boxes of soda mix, bags of flour, racks of glasses. She threw open the door at the basement’s far end and ran up the steps and burst into the Imago Mundi dining room.

  “Call the police!” she yelled.

  Heads swiveled toward her. She was bloodied, her hair in pieces around her dirt-stained face, her dress shredded.

  “Call!” she repeated. “Now!”

  The bartender reached for the phone.

  28

  Detective Foster Crisp took Joanna’s story quickly and efficiently. He’d sent uniformed policemen to Imago Mundi’s basement to remove Lewis Custard before Joanna would venture down again. She showed him the counterfeiting and surgery rooms and the door she’d entered from Marquise’s. In the surgery room, she glanced to the corner where VC had appeared, but all she saw was a dangling surgical gown.

  She wouldn’t have been able to do it if she didn’t know Paul was on his way. As soon as the bartender had finished his call to the police, she had grabbed the phone to call Paul. She hadn’t been able to read his tone. Still, she took comfort in the fact that he said he would come.

  But she hadn’t seen him yet. Right now, she and Crisp were in Marquise’s basement. In an eerie echo of exactly a week ago, crime scene investigators were photographing the wardrobe where VC was killed.

  “Is there a bathroom down here?” Crisp asked.

  “Sure. Over there.” Joanna pointed through the racks of show dresses to the bathroom that backed up to the kitchen.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up. Your boyfriend’s upstairs, by the way.”

  For the first time in hours, Joanna’s mood started to lift. “He’s here? Send him down.”

  “Not yet,” Crisp said. “Come on.”

  They walked through the dressing area, then cut to the left before the kitchen to arrive at the bathroom.

  “Sit.” Crisp pointed to the closed toilet. As Joanna lowered herself, she caught a glimpse in the mirror and did a double take. Her hair hung in strands, but that wasn’t bad. It was her battered face that shocked her. Dried blood smeared one cheek, and the other was beginning to purple with bruises. She didn’t even want to think about the lace wedding dress hanging in shreds from her body. Thank goodness for the slip underneath.

  “Here.” Crisp handed her a damp washcloth.

  She took it and smiled at his kind gesture before going to work on her face. “Thank you, Crisp. You’re a lifesaver, and I mean that.”

  “Do you need a paramedic?”

  “No. I’m fine. Shaken, but fine.” And very lucky to be so. “Lewis Custard is the person you’ve been looking for, isn’t he? The person who’s been changing the identities of criminals you’ve tracked as far as Portland?”

  “It looks like it.” Crisp folded his arms and leaned back against the doorjamb. “A neat operation, too. New papers, new facial patterns. He must have a post-op room upstairs where his clients could wait until they’d healed.”

  “That was my thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole top level is an apartment for his clients. Imago Mundi’s security system is top-of-the-line.” She remembered Custard lovingly gazing at his maps, how he was transformed touching each fragile leaf of paper. “The maps,” she said.

  “The what?”

  “He did it to raise money to buy old maps. He showed me his collection once. He’s obsessed.” She rose to soak the washcloth with fresh, warm water. The heat felt so good on her skin. If only there were a deep bathtub to climb into right now.

  “Could be,” Crisp said. “Forensic accounting will tell us a lot. There’s more investigating to do. Whether Bing killed Bo Milton or not, he was almost certainly involved in Custard’s operation. We’ve seen people coming into Marquise’s, people we’ve had an eye on, but we figured they were coming out as drag queens.”

  Joanna couldn’t help but snicker. The thought of some drug lord suiting up as a female impersonator to elude the police was worthy of its own movie. To his credit, Crisp smiled, too.

  “Now,” Crisp continued, “my guess is that Bing let them in—probably without Marquise’s knowing it—and passed them through the connecting entrance to Custard’s basement. They got their new papers and their new look, and left through Imago Mundi some busy night at dinner.”

  “Which explains Roger’s sudden bump in savings. But shoot VC?” It still seemed incomprehensible. “The cook adored Marquise. He’d never do something that would reflect poorly on the club.”

  “VC must have interrupted something without knowing. Maybe Bing was passing another customer through, someone unexpected.”

  “Had to be unexpected. It would be too risky during a show, but it would explain the odd angle she was shot at.” Joanna unpinned her hair and tried to rearrange it in some semblance of tidiness. “So, Roger Bing killed VC because she could have blown the whole operation, which would have made Marquise’s Showplace look even worse.”

  “That’s about it. We’ll know more after we question Custard.”

  “No wonder he was so freaked out when he saw VC’s ghost.” Joanna’s hands dropped from her hair. She faced Crisp. “He’s alive, then.”

  Crisp didn’t even blink. “Sure. You slowed him down, and he bled a lot, but he’s at the station talking right now.”

  Joanna drew a deep breath and returned to the mirror. “Anything new on VC’s mom?”

  She saw his nod in the mirror. “She told the judge it was an accident, just like she told us. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s out on bail Monday.”

  “Strange justice,” Joanna said. Obsession, devotion, a mother’s love—how easily passion tipped to madness.

  “Agreed,” Crisp said.

  Joanna looked like someone washed up from a shipwreck, but at least she was clean. “Can I see Paul now?”

  The hint of a smile passed his face. “All right.” He turned away and murmured a few words into his cellphone. He followed her out of the bathroom, near the darkened rows of satin ruffles and silk in riotous colors. “You might as well check in with each other. Being that it’s your wedding day and all.”

  Crisp had barely left the bathroom before Paul was down the stairs. Crisp and Paul nodded at each other as they passed.

  Paul embraced Joanna with an urgency that left her breathless, then tilted her head back to inspect her face.

  “You’re okay?” he said.

  “Fine. Now that you’re here.”

  “You’re bruised. Here, and here.” His fingers brushed her cheek and shoulder.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Good.” He still held her hard against his chest.

  She pushed back enough to see his face. “You didn’t really think I skipped out on the wedding, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  She rested against his chest again, calmer now.

  “Crisp said you were all right, but I wasn’t sure if he really checked. How did you get these bruises?”

  Joanna took his hand and led him to the wardrobe concealing the entrance to Imago Mundi. The crime scene team had already taken photographs, and the nook was comfortably quiet. For the next ten minutes, Joanna told him the story of stopping on her way to the wedding and what followed.

  He listened intently. Joanna kept becoming distracted by his crisp black suit—an early 1960s suit Apple had helped him buy. Joanna had never seen him dressed up. He was beautiful. Had he been a businessman, the occupants of acres of cubicles would have swooned over him.

  “Go on,” Paul urged when she lost track.

  At last she came to the end of her story. “I didn’t want to stay at Imago Mundi. I made them take me back here.” She leaned against Paul’s chest and breathed his scent.

  Around the corner at the long dressing table came voices. Ma
rquise’s performers. Was it already time for the matinee show?

  Joanna pulled away. “I’m sorry for messing up the wedding. What I did was so stupid. I had no idea—”

  “You’re safe. That’s what matters.”

  Joanna looked at her feet a moment. Her sandals, amazingly intact, had suffered a few scrapes. She held both of Paul’s hands. “I’m glad you knew I didn’t run out on you.”

  He squeezed her again and released her. “I know you better than that. You’re a fighter. If you really didn’t want me, you’d have come back and told me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I mean, no—no, I wouldn’t leave you, but I would have told you. You know what I mean.”

  He smiled. “It took only five minutes after Custard left for me to decide to come find you. Apple said you’d stopped here. I broke into Marquise’s, and I found this.” He held up her grandmother’s bracelet. It must have broken off when she fell on the wardrobe. “I called Crisp, and he said the police were already on their way. If I’d known you were just next door, I would have found some way in.”

  “Paul.” Something she’d been holding in check broke apart and dissolved, leaving a warm pool of emotion. “I can’t believe it. It’s all over.” She wanted to cry, to lie down with a fluffy blanket between her and the world, to laugh with relief. “What about the guests? Were they….?” Her voice trailed off.

  Conversation picked up in the dressing area. Someone—Marquise?—was humming “The Wedding Bell Blues.”

  “I want to talk to you about that.”

  “Okay.” Paul’s hands were elegant but strong. She ran a finger over the callus on one finger.

  “We can still get married today.”

  She glanced up. “Today? It’s hours past the ceremony. The courthouse isn’t open on Sunday.”

  “We can get married right now. Apple and Penny loaded their cars with the leftover food.” He pulled a hair away from her eyes. “We’re down a few bottles of champagne.”

  “What about the guests?”