The Manolo Matrix

by Julie Kenner

  I’m chuckling over one of the cartoons when my quarry steps through the glass doors, his hand held out and a smile on his face. “Miss Paroti,” he says. “A pleasure to meet you. I’m Thomas Reardon.”

  I rise and take his hand, my smile full of charm. I know that I’m attractive, all the more so when I smile. High cheekbones, arched eyebrows, a wide mouth. All features that light up when I’m happy. According to my mother, I was never happy enough. My response? With a mother like her, why would I be?

  His grip is firm, but cold. And as I study his face, I decide that I don’t like him. There’s weakness in his eyes. A sense of self-loathing.

  I never find my job distasteful; far from it. But in this case, I find my mission to be even more palatable than usual. I will be doing the world a favor.

  I continue to smile as he leads me to his office, my expression fading only a bit when Thomas steps toward his desk without shutting his office door. I clear my throat, and he stops in his tracks.

  “I don’t mean to silly,” I say, “but I was hoping we could keep this just between us. At least until I sign a retainer. I’m so very particular about my privacy.”

  “Of course.” He moves back to shut the door, and when he does, I pull the gun from my purse. It’s well hidden in the folds of my skirt by the time he turns back and then gestures to one of the guest chairs.

  I sit, then adjust my skirt to cover the gun and show off my legs. He sits as well, behind the desk, and his gaze drops to my knee. Oh, yes. This one will be so, so easy.

  “You mentioned you had some business concerning a friend,” he says, referring to some handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad in front of him.

  I nod, and try to look sad as I make a mental note to take that pad with me when I leave. “Yes. More of an acquaintance, really. But I respect the man and I’m trying to tie up some loose ends for him. At his request, you know.”

  “You were rather vague on the phone. Why don’t you give me the full story now.”

  “I’d be happy to,” I say. I lean back in my seat, my hand still hidden in the folds of my skirt. “I think you know my acquaintance, actually. The one who needs my help.”

  “Do I?” He looks appropriately interested. “Who is it?”

  “Archibald Grimaldi.”

  That gets him moving. He sits up straight, his eyes flashing with alarm. “Archie’s dead. He’s been dead for well over a year now.”

  I nod. “I know. Such a pity. A brilliant man, cut down in the prime of his life. A brilliant man who left so many loose ends hanging.”

  “What loose ends? “he says, and as he speaks, his hands creep toward the edge of the desk.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say, and as I speak, I stand. The gun in my hand is aimed right for his heart, and the expression of stunned disbelief on his face is priceless. That, my friend, is what makes my job so rewarding.

  He holds his hands high in the air, well away from the panic button that is surely under his desk.

  “Roll backwards,” I instruct, because once I was burned by a clever executive who tripped the signal with his knee. That wasn’t the incident that landed me in prison, but the experience had been too close for comfort.

  He complies—who wouldn’t with a gun aimed at his heart?

  “Who the hell are you?” he asks.

  “I told you. I’m doing a favor for an acquaintance.” I don’t know much about what is going on, just the limited information that has been transmitted to me in the form of this additional assignment. But I do know that Thomas Reardon wasn’t the only one helping to keep the game alive. Beyond that, I have nothing but supposition. And what I suppose is that Reardon knew too much. That others had played the game before me (lucky bastards) and that the authorities were closing in.

  “If someone put you up to this…”

  “Someone did,” I assure him. “Did you think you were the only one helping Archie out with his game?”

  “Archie is dead.”

  “So,” I say, “are you.”

  Chapter

  21

  JENNIFER

  “M aybe it’s a hoax,” I said, not really believing it. Someone was serious enough to shoot Andy. I was sure they were serious about getting me, too. “I mean, how? How can they say ten tomorrow with such certainty?”

  “Sniper? Poison?”

  I frowned, feeling lost and sulky. Not that he’d said anything I hadn’t already thought myself. I just can’t say that I was too keen on thinking it.

  He sat down beside me. The beard stubble made him look sexy and dangerous, and I was desperately glad that he was there. For better or for worse, I knew that Devlin Brady really would protect me. He might not protect himself, but for me, he was willing to go the distance.

  Except for my parents, was there anyone else in the whole world who’d do that for me? Was there anyone I’d do it for? I’d been “assigned” to protect Devlin. If it came down to it, could I? Would I? Even more, would he let me?

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to think about bloody conflicts or being a protector or even my parents. Especially not my parents. Because if I thought about them, I’d want to call them. And if I called them, they’d worry. Worse, they’d call the cops.

  All these thoughts were raging through my head when Devlin took my hands in his. He squeezed, and I looked up at him, trying for a stalwart smile, but managing only a grimace.

  “We don’t have enough information to know what’s going to happen tomorrow. All we can do is follow the clues. It’s a kill switch. An incentive.”

  “To make us play the game,” I said, the prize pupil.

  He touched the tip of my nose, a ridiculous, silly gesture that had me wanting to cry. “Exactly. So we play. We solve my clue. We follow where it leads. And along the way, we’ll figure out how to stop whatever it is that’s going to happen to you.”

  “Oh hurry,” I sang, “or I may be dead.”

  “Exactly,” he said, then passed me the message. “Be brilliant.”

  “Speedy Delivery,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s who delivered it. He wouldn’t tell me who dropped it off, but he did tell me that his boss gave it to him. Maybe we could call. Talk to his boss. Figure out who’s behind all of this, and then we can—”

  “Wait.”

  He spoke with such firmness that my mouth closed automatically. And believe me, that’s not something that happens often.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But not yet. First we figure out the clue. First, we make sure you’re safe.”

  Since I was behind that plan one thousand percent, I didn’t argue. I didn’t argue, but—“I don’t know what to do with this,” I said, tapping the message. “Do you know what to do with this?”

  “ ‘Play or Die’ is pretty clear,” Devlin said. “But I don’t have a clue what this gibberish means.” At this, he pointed to the weird combination of letters like “ANA” and “AKKI.”

  “Or this,” I said, also pointing. “What does ‘If the understudy becomes the lead’ mean? Other than my life’s dream, that is.”

  He looked at me with interest. “You’ve been an understudy?”

  I scowled. “You really need to learn not to take me so literally. If I ever get a job, and if I’m ever assigned as the understudy, then it’ll be my life’s dream.”

  “Maybe you’ll nail the lead right off the bat,” he said.

  I was liking him more and more. And I was just about to say so when he held up a finger. “Actually, you may be on to something.”

  “I may?” That was news to me. “What?”

  “If the lead in a show is the first, then the understudy is the second. Right?”

  “Okay.” I said the word slowly, wishing I knew what he was talking about.

  “This list of shows is in alphabetical order,” he said, his finger once again tapping on the paper.

  “Right. Broadway musicals in alphabetical order.”
>
  “And these nonsense words have to be in code.”

  “I certainly hope so,” I agreed.

  “And I think we have the key to the code right here. Understudy, lead. Second, first.”

  I made a whooshing gesture over my head. “Not following.”

  To Devlin’s credit, he didn’t roll his eyes, look away, or do anything else to suggest that he thought I was an idiot, and he feared for his mortal safety with me cast in the role of protector. Then again, considering his doom and gloom persona when we first met, maybe he didn’t give a shit about whether I could protect him or not. But since that wasn’t our current problem, I wasn’t going to worry about it. Instead, I just scooted closer, focused on the paper, and said, “Show me.”

  “Take this one,” he said, pointing to the first weird word in the sequence: ANA. “The understudy becomes the lead, or the second becomes the first. So we look down the list of musicals—the alphabetical—list, and find titles with the second letter of A.”

  He did that, his finger stopping at Cabaret.

  “So since the second becomes the first, then the letter we’re looking for to undo the code is the first. So the letter is C.” I said all that, and when Devlin nodded, I sat up straight, just as proud as if I’d recited all fifty states from memory (which is not, for the record, something I’ve ever managed except before my tenth grade social studies midterm).

  “And N is the second letter of Annie,” he said. “So the second letter of our interpretation is A for Annie.”

  “Right. And we’ve already translated the A in our code and we know it’s C. So that means the word is CAC.”

  Our eyes met and the apartment fell completely silent. Not even the creak of the walls or the thud of feet in the apartment above. And then the silence was broken. I broke it, actually. I said, “Well, shit. We’re screwed.”

  And you know what? He laughed. He actually laughed at me.

  “What,” I demanded, “is so funny?”

  “You,” he said. “Stick with theater. I’m thinking you don’t have the patience for investigative work.”

  I made a face. “In case it escaped your attention, I never claimed to be interested in the detective arts.”

  “If you’re going to survive through tomorrow, I suggest you develop an interest really fast.”

  That sobered me up. “Right.” I frowned at the message. “So what are we doing wrong?”

  “Maybe it’s—”

  “Wait!” I had it. I was right. I knew I was right. “There are a whole bunch of options. We have to set them all out and then choose.”

  “Show me.”

  He grabbed a felt tip pen off the table and handed it to me. Then he shoved a copy of Men’s Health in my direction and tapped the cover. “Scratch paper.”

  I was tempted to suggest that he actually read the issue, but this really wasn’t the time for levity or advice regarding healthy living. Instead, I ran my finger down the list of Broadway titles and wrote the following:

  A N A

  C A C

  D D

  F F

  H H

  L L

  M M

  V V

  Then I started working across to see what words I could come up with. I ended up with these: CAL, DAD, DAM, FAD, HAD, HAL, HAM, LAD, MAD

  “Go with ‘had,’ ” Devlin said.

  “Why not ‘mad’?”

  “Looks like a sentence,” he said. “That’s the most likely word to start a sentence with.”

  I could think of a lot of sentences that started with Dad or Ham, but I wasn’t inclined to argue. And I had a gut feeling he was right, anyway. I wrote HAD in big letters across the top of the magazine.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Devlin said.

  “Are you kidding? It has to work. It’s the only clue we have!”

  “Not that,” he said. “The magazine. Hang on.” And then he got up, disappeared into the back room, and came back with a yellow legal pad.

  Okay. Much better.

  I moved on to the next word:

  R N E R N E N

  B A J B A J A

  R R

  “Barbara,” Devlin said, before I’d even written the final A in my chart. “This one’s easy. You can practically see the word.”

  It took me a second longer, but he was right. The word had to be BARBARA. I wrote that on the legal pad, just after HAD.

  Had Barbara…what?

  We kept going. I thought the next word would be pretty easy since the only translation for the KK in AKKI was OO. Unfortunately, A and I both had a lot of options. The word list we came up with was COOK, COON, COOP, COOT, FOOT, HOOK, HOOP, HOOT, LOOK, LOON, LOOP, LOOT, MOON, and MOOT.

  All well and good, but none of those words really seemed to fit. Had Barbara cooked might make sense. Or looked. But to just sit there? I had to wonder if our tormentor cared about verb tenses. More important, had we screwed up on the HAD BARBARA part of the equation?

  I was just about to suggest to Devlin that we move on to the next word—figuring maybe that would give us a clue to this one—when he tapped the paper. I looked down, saw that he was tapping COOK, and then looked back up at him.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  “You’re sure.”

  “Positive.”

  I wasn’t and so, being both reasonable and nosy, I asked.

  “Barbara Cook,” he said. “Broadway musical star. Starred in—”

  “Any Wednesday, Carousel, Candide, The Music Man,” I finished. Then I leaned over, took both his cheeks in my hands, and kissed him. He looked surprised, but not annoyed. Score one for my team. “You’re brilliant,” I said.

  “Duly noted.” He nodded at our notes. “But we still have a long way to go.”

  “At least we know the theme. And we know we’re doing this right. We’ve got a list of Broadway musicals, and now the name of a star. That can’t be a coincidence. We must be on the right track.”

  My enthusiasm was like a living thing, pushing me along as I moved on to the next word and the next and the next. Unfortunately, living things die, and this was seriously hard. We were still making progress, but it was slow going. More to the point, the message we were revealing wasn’t striking lightning in either of us. After working our tails off for two solid hours, all we had was HAD BARBARA COOK ACTED PROFESSIONALLY & SEARCHED FOR HER WHITE KNIGHT ON THE RIVER.

  I was starving and discouraged and, frankly, I was a little pissed off. “I thought the first clue was supposed to be easy. Get the game rolling, and all that.”

  “Relatively easy,” he said. “Maybe this is a breeze compared to what’s coming next.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thanks so much for helping me feel better.”

  He grinned, and then we split up the words and went to work. Another hour later, we’d solved the entire puzzle—for all the good it did us.

  HAD BARBARA COOK ACTED

  PROFESSIONALLY & SEARCHED FOR HER

  WHITE KNIGHT ON THE RIVER, SHE WOULD

  HAVE FOUND HER ANSWER HIDDEN IN A FACE WITH

  MOURNFUL EYES.

  I read it out loud, then looked up at Devlin. “I’m so screwed,” I said. And, damn the man, he didn’t disagree.

  Chapter

  22

  JENNIFER

  “W ell?” I said.

  “We’re not beaten yet. We just need to break it down. Figure it out one piece at a time.”

  Which, I figured, was a nice, polite way of saying that I was dead meat.

  “We also need to eat,” he said. “We’ve been at this for hours. It’s no wonder we can’t think. What do you want?”

  “I don’t know. Pizza,” I said. “Pepperoni. Mushroom. Extra cheese. And sausage on half, too.”

  “I thought you didn’t know?”

  “I figured it out,” I said. It’s a bad habit, I know. I say I’m undecided, when I really know exactly what I want. It drives boyfriends nuts. I think it’s a girl thing.

  Devlin d
idn’t look annoyed. But he did point to the decoded message. “You’re on a roll. Figure that out.”

  And then he took the phone and disappeared toward the front of the apartment. If his place is like mine, I figured that was where he kept the delivery menus.

  I, meanwhile, grabbed my bag and went the opposite direction to the bathroom. I’d washed my hands and was searching for my makeup kit when my cell phone rang.

  I snatched it up, hoping for Mel but getting Brian.

  “I thought we were going to have drinks tonight! Where are you, and why have you left me alone with Fifi?”

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “If that means you’re leaving me with him for the evening, I have to agree. The little queen is driving me nuts. I swear I don’t know how people survive with roommates. Much less with spouses.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.” He didn’t know how sorry I was.

  “I can’t possibly forgive you. Unless it involves sex. If you’re getting laid, I can find it in my heart. So long as he’s cute and I can live vicariously through you later.”

  “I’m not getting laid,” I said, though I wouldn’t mind.

  “Then you’re screwed,” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered. Then I added, “But I am with a guy.”

  “So there’s still hope,” Brian said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “There’s hope.” I thought about the bizarre clue. A tiny, dismal ray of hope, but hope nonetheless.

  “Then I forgive you for standing me up.”

  I almost grinned at that. Even in the crappiest of circumstances, Brian always made me feel better. “I promise you a rain check,” I said. And since I had every intention of surviving, that was one promise I absolutely intended to keep.

  “I’ll let you get back to almost getting laid,” he said. And he was just about to hang up when I had a brilliant idea.

  “Brian!”

  “Jenn?”

  “Hang on a sec. I need a favor.”

  “No way. That’s way too kinky for me.”

  “I happen to know that nothing is too kinky for you.”