The Escape Diaries: Life and Love on the Lam

by Juliet Rosetti

  He smoothed my hair off my forehead and gazed into my eyes. This was it! Ben Labeck was going to kiss me and I was going to kiss him back, because I had been through an awful lot in the past twenty-four hours and I deserved a reward, damn it! One little closed-mouth kiss—was that too much to ask?

  Bending his head, Labeck lowered his mouth toward mine. Then he stopped, six inches short of my lips, frowning.

  “What’s this?” He touched the angry red blotch on the side of my face, where I’d used my cheekbone as a fire extinguisher for my flaming hair. “This looks serious, Mazie. I think it’s a second-degree burn—”

  “It’s nothing! It doesn’t hurt, it’s no worse than a bad sunburn. A little aloe vera and it’ll be as good as new,” I babbled. “And another short of that Bushmills stuff wouldn’t hurt.”

  Labeck shook his head. “You’re a walking disaster, Mazie. Maybe I ought to kidnap a doctor and force him to treat you at gunpoint.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Then I guess it’s going to have to be my grand-mere’s famous burn remedy,” he said. “We’ll need the kitchen.”

  The kissable moment had passed, and I wasn’t sure whether I felt disappointed or relieved. Labeck pried ice out of his freezer trays, tossed the cubes into a large bowl, added water, and stirred the stuff until it was the consistency of a soda fountain drink. He dipped a towel into the icy water and ordered me to hold it against my face.

  “Better?” he asked after a minute.

  “Much. Your grand-mere is a genius.”

  Then we both turned our attention to Luis Ruiz’s backpack. Labeck set it on the table, took out the 7-Eleven bag, unsnapped the rubber band that held it closed, and reached into the bag. My heart was beating ridiculously fast. A blackened banana peel would be inside the bag, I told myself. Five hundred generations of fruit flies were about to burst out.

  No fruit flies. Photos. Instamatic photos. Dozens of photos. Handling them gingerly, as though we were crime scene technicians, we studied them. They were amateurish, off-center, and slightly blurred, as though they’d been snapped in a tearing hurry by someone lurking in the shadows with a cheap camera. By Luis?

  A familiar face appeared in a photo.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Labeck’s eyebrows skidded toward his hairline.

  Oh, yes, indeed! It was Bear Brenner as he might appear if time-lapse photography worked in reverse. Say, eleven or twelve years in reverse, around the time he’d been interning at the family plant in Mexico.

  “Got a Hulk Hogan thing going there,” Labeck commented.

  Blond, mustachioed, and wearing a muscle shirt, this Brenner was a far cry from the exquisitely barbered, star-spangled-tie-wearing politician who advocated stricter penalties for drug offenders. He wasn’t introducing a bill to have June declared National Cheese Awareness Month here. And he wasn’t checking up on container production either, because beer cans were aluminum cylinders, whereas the products in these photos came in heat-sealed blister packs.

  “He’s running a meth lab!” Labeck said, incredulous.

  “Not meth,” I said. “I think it’s Mexican valium.” The stuff he’d used to drug me. Flunitrazepam, as Nurse Nasty called it, legal in Mexico, but a banned drug in the United States. During my years in an inner-city high school, I’d learned a lot about the vile stuff.

  We carefully examined the rest of the photos. Some were taken in the manufacturing lab, some showed the pills being concealed in empty beer containers, and some showed the beer containers being loaded into semitrailers. Other snapshots showed Bear in Uncle Teddy mode, hosting parties where the liquor flowed in a never-ending river, the doobies were set out on plates like appetizers, and the partygoers were teenaged boys. One snapshot, nearly identical to the one I’d found in Kip’s stash, showed Bear with his arm around Luis.

  Except the boy couldn’t be Luis. Luis was the photographer, wasn’t he?

  I flipped the photo over and read the words gouged deep into the paper with ballpoint.

  Éste es mi hermano Miguel Javier Ruiz,

  narcotizado y matado por Tío Teddy el 14 de julio de 1999.

  “Can you read Spanish?” I asked Labeck.

  “I can pick out a few words. Mi hermano is my brother. I think narcotizado is drugs, or drugged. Tio Teddy, of course, is Uncle Teddy.”

  “Matado?”

  “It think it means murdered.”

  “So . . .” I puzzled it out, wishing I’d taken Spanish instead of French. “Miguel was drugged to death. Maybe Brenner did him the way he did me, crushed a pill into the boy’s drink.”

  Labeck nodded. “When I was in college, a girl OD’d on roofies. Only it was called Easy Lay on my campus. She popped a couple at a party, went into a coma, and died. Lay was all over the college scene about ten years ago. Dirt cheap, two bucks a pop. Kids used ’em to get high at raves. But the stuff was dangerous. Sleazy fraternity guys would dope girls’ drinks, then rape them.”

  “So when Miguel died, Luis must have blamed Bear. He told Eddie he was in Milwaukee to revenge himself on the man who’d killed his brother.”

  Labeck started to crumple the 7-Eleven bag, then stopped. “There’s something else.” He shook out a floppy disk. Labeck held it up, turning it in his hands. “Let’s try running this thing on my computer.”

  A few minutes later Labeck’s up-to-the-second, bells-and-whistles Hewlett-Packard was up and humming, spitting out file after file. Lists of transactions, coded numbers that might have referred to bank accounts, names, phone numbers, shipment dates, suppliers—the entire cosmos of a drug empire.

  “I do not believe this,” Labeck breathed. “I fucking don’t believe it. Brenner was making hundreds of thousands off the pills. Maybe millions.”

  Someone rapped sharply on the front door and we both jumped. Muffin was on it instantly, a land mine on legs, rocketing down the hall to the door.

  “I’m selling magazine subscriptions,” rasped a deep voice on the other side of the door.

  Labeck let him in. Six and a half feet of bewigged Magenta in French maid getup was too much for Muffin, who went into Doberman spaz attack mode. Displaying amazingly swift reflexes, Labeck nabbed Muffin before he could sink his teeth into Magenta’s ankle.

  “Maybe you should try adding Zoloft to his Alpo?” Magenta suggested. He tugged off his wig and removed his platforms. This somewhat placated Muffin, who settled for glaring at Magenta and growling out threats about what would happen to his liver and spleen if he tried any funny business.

  Labeck made formal introductions.

  “Mazie Maguire—this is like, so thrilling!” trilled Magenta, clasping my hands in his. “I’ve been rooting for you every moment of your escape! You look much cuter in real life than on TV! I am your absolute number one fan!”

  “Sorry, position filled,” Labeck said.

  “I’m good with second banana. Why am I here? How did you two get hooked up? Am I supposed to do something with Mazie’s hair?”

  “I’m going to swear you to secrecy before we tell you anything,” Labeck said.

  “Cloak and dagger, I love it!”

  I was putting my life into the lace-gloved hands of a man who spent his evenings lip-synching to a movie whose showstopper was “Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul.” But Labeck appeared to trust Magenta, and somewhere in the past two hours I’d entrusted my own soul to Ben Labeck. Ergo, whomsoever Labeck trusted, I trusted.

  I told Magenta everything. It was a long, involved story, and both men often interrupted with questions. We were all starved by the time I’d wrung out the last syllable, so we raided Labeck’s fridge and indulged in an impromptu smorgasbord that was guaranteed to keep us awake with indigestion all night.

  “What I don’t get,” Labeck said, “is how Kip got his hands on that first snapshot, the one he hid in the lamp. How did he know Luis?”

  “No idea.” I watched in fascinated disgust as Labeck piled potato chips, olives, and braunschweiger
onto a wheat bun, then swizzled Russian dressing over the entire mess. “They didn’t move in the same social circles. Luis was an illegal immigrant who worked in a pickle plant. Maybe he met Kip when he was moonlighting on some job.”

  “Is it possible Luis did yard work for you guys?” Labeck asked.

  I shook my head. I was the yard help.

  “Where did your husband hang out?” Magenta asked.

  In motel rooms with twenty-year-old waitresses, I thought, but didn’t say. “He golfed a lot. Played tennis, sailed.”

  “What else?”

  I tried to think, but it required a massive effort. My eyes burned, my muscles ached, my Girdle of Venus throbbed. I wanted to curl up in Labeck’s warm, king-sized bed and wake up to find myself twelve years old again. But I flogged my tired brain into action. “Strip clubs. Sports bars. His mother’s place.”

  “What about Stodgemore?” Labeck asked. “Maybe Luis Ruiz did odd jobs for her.”

  “Maybe he was her cabana boy,” Magenta suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.

  Prentice in a bikini, muy yuck! How would she hold up the top? While the guys went back once again to the Brenner files on the computer, I started cleaning up the kitchen. We’d used paper plates, but there were knives and plastic containers to wash up. I ran water into the sink and squirted in detergent. I’ve always found running water conducive to thinking; my best ideas occurred to me in the shower. I screwed the lids back on the pickles and olives, wrapped the cheese in foil, replaced the buns in their package. And then something shifted in my cerebellum.

  “Facebook!” I said.

  “Is now the time?” Labeck asked, but I shoved him aside, brought up Kip’s Facebook on the computer, clicked on the wedding photos, and explained my thinking. “Eddie told me Luis sometimes moonlighted as a waiter. Kip’s Facebook had photos from a wedding he attended a few weeks before he was killed. Luis might have been on the staff that night.” I hadn’t paid any attention to the waiters when I’d looked at the photos on Kip’s Facebook. The help sort of blends into the background at these occasions. Now, clicking from photo to photo, I scanned for waiters who fit my mental image of Luis.

  I scowled as a photo of Brenner came up, arms around the bridal couple. And there, a few feet away—

  “There he is!” Magenta shrieked, pointing at the photo. “Make him bigger!”

  I zoomed. Half-hidden between two women stood a small, dark man in a waiter’s uniform, toting a tray of dirty glasses, his gaze focused balefully on Bear Brenner. His face was flushed, his hair was falling into his eyes, and his bowtie had come un-bowed.

  “The guy is blitzed out of his mind,” Labeck said, grinning.

  “He looks like Miguel,” I said. “If Miguel had lived to grow up.”

  Leaning over me, Labeck performed some slight of hand with the keyboard, then dug out his cellphone.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Texting the president of your fan club.”

  “Eddie? It’s two in the morning. He’ll be in bed.”

  Labeck snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. The kid is sixteen.”

  It took him only a few computer taps to find Eddie’s number, then he texted: Dude, fvor 4 MZ MG. ID waitr in px. Is yr cuz Luis?

  I felt like Methuselah. You could send Internet photos over a phone? Apparently while I’d been away in prison, where we weren’t even allowed pens and had to write in crayon, texting had become the universal form of communication. The lingo might as well have been ancient Sumerian to me, but Eddie Arguello made perfect sense out of it, because Labeck received a reply about thirty seconds later.

  +ID. Y U need 2 no? Iz MZ OK?

  “Translation?” I asked.

  Labeck smiled. “Positive identification. Why do you need to know? Is Mazie okay?”

  “Text him back,” I said, and for the first time that day I managed a smile. “Tell him MZ is very much OK.”

  But Bear Brenner was not going to be okay. Bear Brenner was going down.

  Escape tip #29:

  There’s no such thing as

  too tight or too low-cut.

  “You’re going to make a spectacular blonde, hon.” Magenta swished warm water around my head to rinse out the dying solution. “I’m thinking subtle—more Madonna than Marilyn, know what I mean?”

  More like Marilyn Manson, I thought, judging from the gunk he’d slathered on my hair. But he was right about the blonde dye. Doctor Richard Kimble would have done the same thing.

  “Is she finished yet?” Labeck poked his head around the screen. He was dog-sitting. He and Muffin were best buds now and I was jealous. Muffin wrinkled his nose at the ammonia fumes in the air.

  “Go away,” Magenta flung a wadded-up towel at Labeck, who backed out hastily. “Get a haircut, you bum. Rent a tuxedo—and for God’s sake don’t let them talk you into a shirt with ruffles. Gold cuff links—not silver. If you show up with patent leather shoes I will personally chop your feet off.”

  I was sitting with my head in the shampoo basin of Magenta’s beauty salon, which was a single sink, a padded chair, and a cabinet, all tucked behind an embroidered Chinese screen at the rear of his Brady Street shop.

  “I’m not even licensed to run a beauty parlor,” Magenta confided as he dried my hair with a magenta-hued towel. “I only do hair for a few select clients.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “Honey, you are going to be my masterpiece.” We moved over to the styling counter and I plunked down in the swivel chair. Running his fingers through my hair, Magenta studied me in the counter mirror. “An upsweep, I think. Conceal the frizzle where that asshole burned it. Strands falling over those fantastic cheekbones. We just need to wait a few more minutes for the color to set.”

  He took a bottle of cranberry juice from the mini-fridge beneath the shelf, poured glasses for both of us, and turned on the large-screen wall TV, its screen saver the pouty lips logo of the Rocky show.

  Bear Brenner appeared on a local channel. My heart gave a dull, panicky thud. Brenner was being interviewed by a fawning young female reporter in his downtown office. No trace of dirt under his nails, no burrs on his pants today; he wore a pin-striped suit, a gleaming white shirt, and a tie with a federal eagle print. He looked tanned, relaxed, and senatorial. “The BodyWorks show is a feather in Milwaukee’s hat,” Brenner was saying, flashing a boyish grin. “I’m proud to have helped bring it to our city. We expect it to generate some much-needed revenue for our fabulous public museum.”

  “I understand you’re emceeing the opening ceremony,” the reporter cooed. “The three-thousand-dollar-a-plate gala tomorrow night?”

  Bear grinned modestly. “I’m not up to Jay Leno standards, but I’ll do my best.”

  “Oh, so will we, Senator,” Magenta said, his voice going hard and gravelly, massaging my shoulders as though I were a boxer about to go into the ring. Magenta was in civilian wear today: T-shirt, baggy white shorts, espadrilles, and tiny hoop earrings. Turquoise eye shadow brought out his green eyes, although I had to admit that minus the Rocky Horror makeup, Magenta was a bit vanilla: large nose, scanty eyebrows and brown hair pulled back in a pony tail. He claimed to be thirty-two, but I thought that was probably ten years off the expiration date.

  Scratch Magenta’s flamboyant exterior though, and you discovered a cool, calculating tactician. He’d come up with the most creative ideas for our plot, but had reined us in when we wandered too far into fantasyland. We’d all stayed up until dawn last night, going over Luis’s photos and stolen files, discussing ideas, and finally roughing out the kind of plan you formulate when you’re punch-drunk with fatigue and the desire for justice is the only thing that keeps you going. We had a three-pronged goal here: to expose Brenner publicly in such a way that he couldn’t lie or bribe his way around the truth, to find a safe venue for me to surrender, and to use the files and photos as a bargaining chip to keep the guys on my team safe from prosecution. Magenta and Labeck had even given the whole cobbled-togethe
r crapshoot a code name: Operation Payback.

  Guys, I swear.

  Magenta whisked the towel off my head, blew my hair dry, finger-combed it, then spun the chair around so I faced him. “Time to gild the lily! This is going to be the most fun I’ve had since I showed up at my ex-wife’s second wedding in full drag.”

  “You were married?”

  “Honey, some gays are. I just discovered I was more attracted to my wife’s brother than to my wife. I’m a guy with an identity crisis, know what I mean? I enjoy being a girl, but I don’t want to wear pantyhose every day. Why doesn’t the sisterhood get its act together and torch all the pantyhose factories?”

  That would be one parade I’d be happy to lead.

  He led me out from behind the screen into the shop, which he’d modestly named Magenta’s. It looked like a collision between a rummage sale and Bergdorf Goodman’s. Gently used designer clothes originally priced in the thousands sold here for a fraction of the original cost. Saunter around a corner and here was an Yves St. Laurent gown layered with a Balenciaga sweater; turn another and there was a Dolce and Gabbana beaded purse or an Hermès scarf draped over a table lamp. Magenta began flicking through the racks, giving each beaded, sequined creation a second of squinty-eyed consideration before sliding on to the next. Finally he plucked a red gown off the rack. “This is a Gaultier. Let’s see how it looks.” He gestured toward a cubicle curtained with heavy striped silk.

  Zipping into the dress, I was uncomfortably aware of how long it had been since my legs and armpits had last encountered a razor. I checked the gown’s price tag and sucked in my breath. Originally $3,600, a steal at $390. Feeling unworthy of the dress, I emerged from the dressing room and modeled for Magenta.