Phil pulled his camera from his backpack and aimed it at Dio. A Secret Service agent swatted at it. “No photos!” Phil sheepishly stowed away the camera.
Outside the helicopter, two of Dio’s guards were down, blood seeping off the red carpet onto the sand. A Secret Service agent was helping a wounded colleague. Where was Angel? Natalia feared that Dio’s men had forced him into their helicopter, which was rising into the sky. She dreaded that they would kill him.
A swath of bright orange on the pallid desert caught her eye: Angel in his prison uniform. With bullets flying, a hulking Secret Service agent hoisted his limp body into his arms and rushed him over to the helicopter. Reaching down from it, two others hoisted him inside. The agent jumped in and the helicopter lifted off.
As the chopper careened into the sky, Natalia kissed Conchita. “You were very brave,” she said, brushing the little girl’s dark hair out of her wide, terrified eyes.
“I didn’t cry,” she murmured.
“Your mother will be so proud.” She hugged her. “I’ll be right back.” She handed Conchita to Phil and nodded to the book under the child’s arm. “Read her Rosie Revere.”
“Sure thing,” he said.
She made her way over to where Angel was sprawled on the floor behind the pilot’s seat. His eyes closed, he was motionless. A woman in a nurse’s uniform crouched over his body.
Her heart sinking, Natalia whispered, “Is he dead?”
“I think he fainted.”
At the sound of the nurse’s familiar low feminine voice, Natalia looked at her. She took in the pink-streaked black wig under her nurse’s cap, her glittering purple eye shadow, and the pink hearts on her white nurses’ clogs. “Moon?”
Moon blew her an air-kiss, then turned back to Angel. She carefully ripped away his orange prison garb. Underneath it he was wearing a thick Kevlar bulletproof body suit. A slug was wedged into the extra-thick metal padding over his chest. She pulled it out with difficulty. “He is one lucky angel.”
One of his eyelids flickered, as if he were winking in a dream.
“Angel,” Natalia whispered. “Angel?”
He opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and looked up into her face. “Que chido,” he said weakly, smiling. “Did I die and go to heaven?”
“Yes, my angel.” She kissed him on the forehead.
Chapter 61
The White House
January 21, 8:00 a.m.
Natalia watched in the mirror as Angel put the finishing touches on her new hairstyle. She knew that millions of Americans would judge it tonight when she stood behind her husband as he gave his State of the Union address in the Capitol. Some people will be shocked by my hair, so expect a tweet storm, she thought, but I love it. The style was shorter than any she had worn before, making the most of the hair that had grown in since she returned a month ago from what she referred to as her “Baja Adventure.” Angel and she had debated about whether or not to allow the few strands of gray that had appeared among her natural ash-blonde strands. “They’re natural, they’re mine, they stay,” she decided.
Angel unsnapped the plastic beauty-salon cape she was wearing over her Lululemon workout clothes and whipped it off. He studied her face in the mirror.
“Chica, I’d call your hairstyle a cross between Audrey Hepburn and…well, Natalia.”
“Once again, you’ve worked a miracle!”
“It’s way cool, even the whisper of gray. It adds gravitas, dignity!” He adjusted a curl near her ear. “The new you!”
She swung the styling chair around so that she faced him. “I kind of do feel like a new person since, y’know—”
“Does it feel good?”
“Definitely. I don’t feel the old anger, or the fear. I guess you could say I feel in control.”
“I don’t!” He examined his face in the mirror, patting his pumped-up cheekbones and bulbous lips, fingering the space that remained between his plucked eyebrows. “I can’t wait to not look like Pancho Reyes! How many more pinches weeks—?”
“You’re still guapo!”
He tossed his comb onto the counter. “So what are you wearing tonight to go with my new hairdo?”
“I hope you like it!” She stood up and walked into the closet, Angel one step behind her. She checked the number “438” that she had scrawled in ink on her palm and punched it into the keypad on the garment-rack system. The clothes whirred by for a few seconds and stopped at slot 438. Angel removed the hangar holding a red garment that was nestled in tissue and plastic, then led her over to the alcove with a three-way mirror. As he removed the garment from the hangar, she stripped down to her bra and thong undies and stepped up onto the pedestal in front of the mirror.
He glanced at her right butt cheek. “I see your heart mole made it home intact.”
“I’m glad.” She laughed. “It got quite a workout.”
He handed her the short red-wool suit skirt first, which she stepped into and pulled up, then the suit jacket. He buttoned it. The form-fitting jacket had a V-neck, but it wasn’t so low-cut that it revealed her cleavage. “No boob show, huh? Pretty conservative for Dolce and Gabbana.”
“Think it’s too Republican?”
He tugged the jacket down so that there was a discrete glimpse of cleavage. “That’s better.” He stood back and admired her. “Elegante, and red’s definitely your color.”
“Zip me up please?” She turned around and Angel pulled up the back zipper on her skirt. It wouldn’t close.
“Are alterations scheduled?”
“I had it altered last week!” She giggled. “I guess I need to have it taken out again.”
“Yo, you are growing fast, mama!”
She punched an intercom button on the wall. “Sally-Ann? Can you come in here? And call the new maid, what’s her name?”
“Kim Yi,” said Sally-Ann over the intercom.
“I need Kim Yi to make some quick alterations on my suit for tonight.”
“Yo, what happened to Hilda?” asked Angel.
“Gretchen fired her while I was gone.”
“The bitch!”
“I know. I tried to hire her back, but guess what?”
“What?”
“She went to Miami.”
“Miami?”
“Moon is taking her to her sex-change surgeon there. Hilda wants to transition to a man, vták and all!”
“Good for her!”
Natalia put her hands on her belly and looked at herself in the three-way mirror. “Am I showing yet?”
“In your head, yes. In the mirror, no.”
“I can’t wait until I do. The whole thing… I mean, I still can’t believe Rex went along with my terms.”
“You drove a hard bargain.”
The cell phone in his pocket rang. Natalia was glad that she had convinced Rex to allow Angel to carry a phone in the White House.
“It’s Raphael. He arrives tomorrow from Cabo to start his new gig!” Angel answered the phone, listened, then spoke rapidly in Spanish. “Raphael says, ‘hola!’” he called to her on his way out of the room.
Natalia was delighted that Raphael was taking a job as head chef at Lafayette, one of the best restaurants in D.C. He was moving in with Angel; they would be her family. As she waited for him to return from taking the call with Raphael, she thought back to the events of the past month. When she returned from Baja, she had carried through on the condition that Rex demanded for rescuing her: She met with Dr. Steinberg to start a new series of hormone shots so that Rex could get her pregnant in time for the Republican Convention in August. To her surprise, the doctor had discovered that she didn’t need more hormone shots.
“I have good news!” she told Rex after her doctor’s examination. “I’m pregnant!”
“Terrific,” he said. “All that fucking we did before you, y’know, worked!”
Then she told Rex the bad news, for him. “Dr. Steinberg did a DNA test. The baby isn’t yours.”
“It’s that Slovak fuck’s?”
“Couldn’t be anyone else’s.”
“You’re getting a goddamn abortion!” Rex roared.
“No, I am not,” she said. “You either let me have my baby or I will let the world know that you, yes, you, Mr. “pro-life” President, wanted it aborted.”
Of course, Rex couldn’t let the press find that out, so he caved. It gave her the courage to make a deal with him: Rex could have as many affairs as he wished as long as he kept them secret and they didn’t take place inside the White House. In return, she would show up at the Republican Convention with her baby bump to make Rex look like a stud and help him get reelected. If he won, she would stay with him in the White House, raising “their” child, for another four years. If he lost, she would divorce him after the new President was inaugurated and take the baby to live in San Diego. She planned to open a school there for the children of newly arrived Mexican immigrants. It would be a sister school to the Escuela de Alegría that she had visited in Tijuana. If Rex didn’t want to pay for it, she was sure that she could raise the money herself.
It seemed like a great deal, but Natalia was troubled. With the new self-confidence that she had gained on her journey, she had pressed Rex to ease up on immigration and anti-abortion laws, and to propose new laws supporting the LGBTQ community and the environment. “Are you fucking crazy?” he screamed. “My base will kick me in the balls!” And if Rex won the election, as was predicted, she would be stuck living with him for another four years.
I can’t do it, she thought. There’s got to be a way out…
Angel returned to the closet. “Yo, it’s all good,” he said, as if reading the concern on her face.
Sally-Ann was a few steps behind Angel, her iPad at the ready, her tote bag slung over her shoulder. “Ma’am, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. Sally-Ann had been warmer since her return, as if whatever had transpired between Moon and her during Moon’s “tenure” as FLOTUS had changed her for the better. Natalia now considered her social secretary a friend.
Sally-Ann turned on her iPad. “What can I help you with?”
“Can you please check on the status of the immigration petitions the President requested for Rosa Gonzales and her daughter, Conchita?” Natalia had insisted in her deal with Rex that he guarantee U.S. citizenship for both the daughter and the mother. Rosa had been thrilled when she told her the news: Once their legal status was confirmed, Rosa would be free to live with Conchita at her sister’s in San Diego and finish school.
“I checked this morning. Good news! Their papers have been approved!”
“Fantastic!”
“It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you get tough with your husband.”
Natalia stared at her social secretary. Before she fled the White House, Sally-Ann had been meek and obedient. “Excuse me. Did you really just say that?”
Sally-Ann stood there nervously, as if not sure what to say next.
“Dude, go for it.” Angel wink/twitched at Sally-Ann.
She walked over and closed the closet door, then returned to them. “Ma’am, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Sally-Ann’s enunciation and Southern accent were more pronounced than usual, as if what she was about to say was important. “Whatever it is, you can say it in front of Angel. We’re all family here.”
“I know,” she said, blushing. “That’s what I feel too. That’s why I’m telling you this.”
Natalia beckoned Sally-Ann and Angel to follow her over to a sitting area in a corner of the vast closet. They sank down onto a white-leather sofa. “What is it?”
“I have a confession to make.” She hugged the enormous tote bag on her lap.
“A confession?”
“I know the reason I was hired to be your social secretary was because my daddy was a big Funck supporter.”
“No worries. That’s the way it works,” she said. “We all know that.”
“But then Gretchen told me what was required in the job. I should have said ‘no’ to her, but I wanted—”
“‘No’ to what?”
“Gretchen gave me this.” Sally-Ann reached into her tote bag and pulled out a small digital tape recorder.
Natalia shook her head. “Why am I not surprised?”
“She told me to keep it secret, but that whenever I was with you, I was to record your conversations: in your bedroom, your salon, your office. I brought her the diskettes once a week and we would sit down and listen to them. If Gretchen didn’t know who you were talking to on a tape, I’d explain. I mean, most of your conversations were with your mom, or your yoga and Pilates teachers.”
“Or me?” said Angel.
“Sometimes, but Natalia usually kicked me out when you showed up. Anyway, Gretchen got bored. I don’t know what she was hoping for—”
“That I was cheating on Rex?” Natalia laughed. “That I was conspiring to have her assassinated?”
“I’m not sure, but after a couple of months, she said, ‘I don’t have time to listen to this shit.’”
“A long attention span was never one of Gretchen’s strong points.”
“She told me to keep recording the First Lady’s conversations, but only to come to her if there was something incriminating on the tapes, something she should know about. So since she didn’t tell me otherwise, I kept taping your conversations. And then, when Moon became First Lady, I continued. She didn’t say not to. Believe me, once Gretchen made me Moon’s minder, the conversations I recorded got a lot more, er, interesting!”
“Wow, that’s, well, I appreciate that you told me this, Sally-Ann,” said Natalia, stunned. “I appreciate your honesty, and your loyalty.”
“You’re the best, ma’am!” Her cheeks reddened, as if she were about to cry. “I sure wish you were President, instead of your husband!”
“That’s so sweet of—”
“Ask Sally-Ann if she still has them,” Angel blurted out.
“What?”
“The tapes.”
“I assume Gretchen has them.” Natalia turned to Sally-Ann, suddenly hoping that she didn’t. “Do you—?”
“Gretchen told me to destroy them, but I have this thing about trashing stuff. My mom calls me ‘Harriet Hoarder’ cuz I can’t throw things away. Back home in Alabama, I’ve still got every doll I ever played with, every dress I ever wore as a—”
“You’ve got the tapes?” Natalia took a deep breath of anticipation.
Sally-Ann rummaged in her tote bag and pulled out a Neiman-Marcus shopping bag. She opened it.
Natalia peered inside: dozens of mini-tape-recorder diskettes. “Seriously?”
“These are just the conversations I taped after you left for, er, wherever. Some of them are so unbelievable they don’t sound real, but, trust me, they are.” She held out the bag.
Natalia flexed her fingers, wondering if she had the strength to do what she imagined might be possible.
“Chica, you proved you got cajones,” said Angel. “Take ’em!”
Natalia turned to him, unsure. He grabbed the Neiman-Marcus bag from Sally-Ann. With a rustle of plastic, he plopped it onto her lap.
The bag felt light, but her mind raced with how weighty the tapes could be, not just for strengthening her deal with Rex. Her heart pounded as she considered the possibilities.
As if worried that Natalia was zoning out, Sally-Ann said, “I know you don’t want to do anything to hurt your husband. I mean, I was raised to respect whatever my husband says or does, if I ever find one. It’s the Southern way. But ma’am, like, you are—”
“FLOTUS!” Natalia rubbed her index finger over the wedding band on her left finger. “You didn’t notice. I’m not wearing the locomotive headlight.”
“The what?” said Angel.
“My 15-karat diamond engagement ring.”
“Someone stole it?” said Sally-Ann.
She shook her head. “It’s in the safe. I
told Rex I wouldn’t wear it anymore. It’s ostentatious, flashy. It sends the wrong message to the public. I took a stand about that ring. I can take a stand about a lot more!” She gripped the Neiman-Marcus shopping bag and stood up. “The tapes are going in the safe too.”
“Que chido!” said Angel.
Natalia took a deep yoga breath to clear her head and give her courage. “Thank you, Sally-Ann.” She gently took her hand. “Thanks to both of you!” She took Angel’s hand too. Then she beckoned them into a group hug.
EPILOGUE
Los Angeles Convention Center
August 5, 8:00 p.m.
Phil made his way through the mob of revelers in the vast auditorium of the Los Angeles Convention Center. The delegates at the GOP Convention ranged from stuffy, white-haired, old-timers, and shorthaired, clean-cut Yuppies, to what he considered an alarming number of rednecks wearing “Funck More Years” baseball hats and carrying “Funck Forever” signs. Above them, a net stretched across the ceiling sagged under what he had read in the L.A. Times were more than two million balloons, like a giant red, white, and blue storm cloud.
Phil’s special press pass gained him entry to the VIP area in front of the gigantic stage. Natalia had arranged for it, of course. Since returning to the White House, the First Lady had helped him jumpstart a new life. She introduced him to the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest, who promptly bought his photos of Dio’s house. When the story of the drug king’s fortress ran in the June issue with Phil’s photos on the cover, it was the biggest-selling issue in A.D. history and the editor-in-chief made him a contributing photographer. He looked forward to shooting other remarkable houses around the world for the magazine. He was also working on a coffee-table book featuring historic government buildings for National Geographic, a dream gig that Natalia helped get him.
The First Lady Escapes Page 29