In the hearing, Amelia appears cool. Collected.
The questions, accusations, and constant needling seem to flow right off the persona she honed and hardened out west.
But then they mention her family, and back in her office, Laura sighs. Amelia is very particular when it comes to her family.
It isn’t the snide remarks about her uncle or the insinuations about her one-legged brother. Those make her back rigid as a board.
It’s her father. They mention the one dead Maldonado, and Amelia’s hands go to her lap.
He apparently went to a meeting once.
Amelia leans in.
Details are lost on a TV screen. Everything’s a little fuzzy and nuances that jump out at you in person disappear.
But Laura can still see Amelia’s growing anger over the maligning of her father. Finally she snaps. “I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
The head of the committee has been sitting up there, prying into the lives of American citizens for half a decade, and he is not a man accustomed to being silenced. “I don’t think it is,” he counters, like a school teacher chiding a student.
“What you want is a list of names, isn’t it, Congressman?”
It is. It absolutely is.
The room is quiet. The one on screen, and the one Laura stands in.
Amelia leans into the microphone, cool and calm. She’s a statue carved from marble and set before Congress. “Just give me a few days to prepare it.” She glances around her. Her gaze falls on Chalmers, who suddenly sits back in his chair and looks piqued. “I’ll give you an extraordinary list.”
If she’d left it there, it might have been nothing. Just another Hollywood harlot brought to heel by the big bad boys of DC and forced to bare it all.
But Amelia…Amelia has never met a script she couldn’t devour or a scene she couldn’t explode. So Amelia makes an exit. Waltzes out of the room with bravado to spare, and nothing in the way of an official dismissal.
There’s shouting, and someone pounds a gavel. Lights flash, and Amelia—God damn it—Amelia grins.
The furor’s so loud they probably hear it in the White House.
CHAPTER 19
Laura’s attempt at triage doesn’t start with a visit to Amelia or a conversation with her superiors. It starts with a visit to a smoky jazz lounge. The kind that’s all dark leather, darker walls, and the only real light comes from the stage where a woman’s wrapped around a microphone, singing old standards in a sultry timbre.
The cigarette smoke forms a haze that Laura moves through discretely. The lounge isn’t crowded, but it isn’t empty either. All the patrons are focused on the stage, and the waitresses keep their own gazes averted as they move between the tables.
It’s a good place for a meeting. Out in Baltimore, just far enough away from DC that Laura won’t see people she knows. Not unless, of course, they’re engaged in equally nasty business… or following her.
The woman she’s seeing is decked out in a deep magenta dress that complements her copper-colored hair. She’s smoking a cigarette as she watches the performance, and her only acknowledgment of Laura is the way she slides over in the booth to allow Laura to sit.
Laura orders a drink using a polite accent that’s tinged with bits of Baltimore, making sure she removes any of the polish her usual tone carries. And she watches the singer too.
“We don’t do this often enough.” The other woman sighs. She’s playful. Always playful. The cat and the mouse again.
“Thanks for taking the time.”
The woman smiles. “Anything for you, my dear Laura.” She takes Laura’s glass from the waitress and sets it down. The shiny scars on her forearm are caught in the dim light, but the waitress says nothing. “Now, what is this about?”
She watches Laura with those watery blue eyes of hers. She knows why Laura is sitting in this lounge, pretending to enjoy her drink. Judith Bashkirov—once and future Judy Bass (or Hayseed if you’re Amelia)—is a clever woman.
But she likes her games, likes to toy with her prey. And her friends.
So, Laura doesn’t answer her.
“I was shocked to see all the news about our little friend from 3C.” She’s playing a complimentary tune on the lip of her glass. “I never would have guessed her for a sympathizer.”
It could be conversation. But Laura thinks it isn’t.
“And now with that list? Gotta love her flair for the dramatic.” Judith rests her chin on her hand and keeps watching the stage. Her American accent is so aw shucks. So perfectly Midwest. So much better than Laura’s own snobbish accent, drilled into her by schools in America and England. “She always had a crush on you, you know, back at the Sebastian.”
“Did she? I never would have guessed.”
“Most people wouldn’t, but I was half convinced you were recruiting her to your network.” So pleased with herself. “So I paid attention.”
“Yes, I remember finding you skulking about in rooms that weren’t your own. Right before you set fire to the building.”
“We were both there when it went up in flames.” She always looks a little mad talking about the past, especially the violent bits.
“But I didn’t start the fire.”
She shrugs, no desire to deny the truth.
“I need to know what your plans for her are.”
“Mine?” Judith’s coyly shocked.
Laura stares.
This time Judith smirks. “I don’t work for them anymore. Remember? You burned me half to death, and they left me in the cold?”
She came to Laura a year later, haggard and desperate for a handout. One Laura reluctantly gave. Spies are dangerous, but a good spy with a debt is useful.
“You have connections.”
Talking with Judith is always like a dance. One wrong step and you’re on her toes, and then she’s furious. Much like she is now, suddenly. Eyes wide and hard smile replaced by pursed lips and a tight jaw.
“Awfully fond of 3C aren’t you?”
“Fond of all the girls we knew back then.”
“Oh, I seriously doubt that.”
“I’m fond of you, aren’t I?” She rewards Judith with a brittle smile that the other woman basks in.
If others knew the games she and Judith play, they’d call her cunning. And too cruel. Sometimes when she plays them, she sees the ghosts of those she’s loved, standing just out of focus and looking so terribly disappointed in her.
Judith watches her and scoots closer. “How fond,” she asks, boldly flirtatious.
“I’ve shown you before.”
So terribly disappointed.
“Show me again.” Her knee bumps against Laura’s, and it’s no accident. Judith has been trained for years to be in complete control of her body, even when she’s looking at Laura as if she’s a morsel to be devoured.
Laura puts her hand on Judith’s knee and pushes it away. “Someone’s set her up. I just need to know who.”
She laughs, throaty and rich and cold. “I think, Laura, that 3C wasn’t the only one with a crush back then.”
“She’s a stranger in our world. I just want to make sure she stays that way.”
“And if I’d known about these feelings back then, I would have slit her throat.” She leans in close enough that Laura can feel the ghost of her breath on her skin. “Ear to ear.”
She turns so that she and Judith are near nose to nose. She can see the freckles concealed by powder. “Well, then, it’s a good thing I’ve always been better than you at concealing my crushes.”
Judith licks her lips. She’s hungry and angry, and that’s always when she’s her most dangerous. Sometimes that makes her exquisite, an awful diversion from so much of Laura’s day to day.
But right now, Judith is a distraction.
“I’m in the cold, Laura. And soon your crush,” she spits the word out with a contempt it seems only Russians can muster, “will be too. And this winter? Oh for that woman, it’s gonna be brutal.”
She puts her own people on guard for Amelia. Kids she trained herself that have no affiliation with the CIA, kids who might not even know it exists. Too many of the grunts that fill out the ranks of the agency are former police and military. Big guys in dark suits who scream “up to no good” as they crowd into cars and fill up seats in hotel lobbies.
They’re a threatening group of men, to be sure, but they’re hardly capable of quietly trailing someone.
Laura’s network is.
She sends a squeaky clean college boy in a sweater and tie. It’s nasty business, but the news says Amelia looks… strong.
Laura can’t bear the idea of checking for herself. She doesn’t have the time if she wants to save her. She needs to work.
She takes her business to the congressman from California, Clyde Doyle. The man’s got a hawkish nose that threatens to dip into his bourbon with each slurping sip, and he sniffs each bite of fish before slipping it into his mouth.
Laura crosses her legs, smiles, and talks to him about Michel, their children, the projects in his district, and wines his wife might like. They talk about everything but the woman on trial.
Until dessert comes. He digs in, and Laura rests her elbows on the table, lights a cigarette, and says, “Nasty business with that starlet.”
He grunts an agreement and assures her that Amelia Wright will give up all her comrades.
“I just wonder who gave her up.” Laura keeps her voice breathy and lets herself sound confused. “She’s always seemed so above all… that.”
It earns her a patronizing smile and a light pat on the hand.
She presses for more information, but the congressman knows nothing. Just insists it was anonymous. Only the Chairman knows who gave him the tip.
The Chairman is Mr. John Woods, and Mr. John Woods hates Laura. He doesn’t like her old money, her Mid-Atlantic accent, or the fact that she’s a woman.
But he likes her husband all right, because Michel is a very likable man.
Likable until Laura stands across from Michel in the kitchen and says, “I need your help.”
He’s popping the top off a beer and has his shirt sleeves rolled up. It’s always been one of his most endearing looks. The dark hair running from hand to elbow and the bony narrow wrists.
The lid lands in the sink with a clink, and he raises an eyebrow. “What do you want me to do?”
“An old friend needs help. I was hoping you might speak to Congressman Woods on their behalf.”
He sips his beer, and the noise is cacophonous this late at night, with the children in bed and all the radios and televisions turned off.
He pulls the bottle away with a smack. “A friend.”
“She was here at the party—”
He sets the beer down on the counter and crosses his arms. He knows who Laura means. He has to. Michel is not a stupid man. But he stares at her expectantly, waiting for her to say the name.
“She’s innocent,” she says instead. “Someone’s setting her up, and I’ve a mind to find out who.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s an old friend—”
He shakes his head, and it’s been a long few days. The pomade that keeps his coif in place is starting to fail. A dark lock of hair falls into his eyes. “Why do you think someone’s setting her up?”
“Because Amelia’s not a spy.”
“That you know of.”
“No,” she says evenly. “Period.”
Michel’s jaw sets, and he glares at the tile floor just in front of Laura’s feet. Blindly, he reaches for his beer and takes another gulp. “She’s offered a list—”
“Under duress and definitely not the kind they’re expecting.”
He pulls the bottle from his lips with a pop. “The other night, she was in our home.”
“Invited by Congressman Chalmers—”
He’s bitter. Absolutely bitter. “Walking the halls as if she owned the place. Skulking—”
Oh no.
“Michel.”
What did he do?
He finishes his beer off in one long draught. “If she wasn’t in our home to spy, then what was she here for?”
Me.
Laura wants to tell him Amelia was in their home for her. That she’d come because Laura had pestered her until she’d said yes. That she’d invited herself up the stairs and into their sanctum because she’d needed to see Laura. Speak to Laura. Touch Laura.
But saying all that isn’t so easy. They’re not words that can fall carelessly from the lips.
Because she knows what will surely chase right after them.
She hugs herself with one arm and looks away, toward the window. There’s no moon tonight, just a glassy darkness that looks so terrifying and remote from the comfort of a warm kitchen.
Michel sighs, and his footfalls sound on the kitchen tiles as he paces. When he throws his bottle at the sink. it shatters, and she shudders.
Laura flinches and is briefly grateful the children are upstairs and far away.
“For you.” Disgust laces Michel’s his voice.
“You’re the one who turned her in,” Laura counters.
He laughs, and it’s as bitter as borax. “I thought she was a spy, but she was just here to seduce my wife.”
Laura laughs too. Not as bitterly. She’s never carried the same illusions as Michel when it comes to their marriage. It’s always been a tenuous treaty to serve their own interests. Not—not whatever he’s currently grieving.
“You’ve got it all wrong, dear. I was the one who pursued her.”
He looks up sharply. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. But I’m a woman of facts, Michel, and I’d like to keep it that way.” She tilts her head, lifting her chin. “What precisely did you tell Woods about her?”
He’s surly and chastened, and Laura’s steeling herself for as brutal an interrogation as she’s ever given when the phone rings.
It’s loud and obnoxious, and never a good sound after ten at night.
Michel glares at her.
A challenge.
Because they both know the phone never rings for him so late. It’s always for her, only for her.
It keeps going. The shrill ring measures out the long moments as the two of them stare at one another.
The conversation will be over Michel says with a look.
But this is just as important.
He turns his back on her. It always is he seems to say.
He fetches another beer, and she picks up the phone and answers with a terse, “Yes.”
It’s one of the kids she has following Amelia. “She’s gone on a trip,” the boy says. “We’ve stopped at a diner an hour out of town.”
Shit.
Laura breathes in long and slow. A meditative kind of breath, not unlike the ones she took when the contractions started and the twins came along.
There’s a crack and hiss behind her as Michel opens another beer. He’s watching her.
Waiting.
Wary.
And Amelia’s running.
“Keep her there,” she says in a low voice. “I’m on my way.”
“Urgent business?” Michel asks, lips half wrapped around the mouth of his beer.
She tsks as she looks distractedly around the room for where she last left her purse. “State secrets, dear.”
“Just be careful,” he says, and he’s frustrated. The way he gets when she
keeps secrets he desperately wants to learn.
“Aren’t I always?”
“No. You’re not.” His chin juts out, as if he’s saying something profound and dangerous. “Especially when it comes to women.”
She spies her purse, there on the counter behind Michel. “That makes two of us.” She comes close, and he doesn’t bother to move so she reaches past him. “When your girlfriend stops, do make sure she doesn’t sleep in my bed? I’ve just changed the sheets.”
They never talk about his dalliances. Just as they normally never talk about hers. It’s peeling off bandages they are both normally perfectly happy to keep intact.
He calls out after her. “You know, at least the company I keep is loyal to this country.”
So is the company Laura keeps.
Even Judith, that spy stuck out in the cold, maintains allegiances to Laura, who is loyal to America.
She refuses to engage him, not interested in having a fight neither of them can afford or picking at the scabs festering in this “marriage.”
She kisses his cheek, squeezes his arm, and walks away.
“Goodnight, Michel.”
CHAPTER 20
Her brother and the other boys always said—say—she has a temper. So short she’s practically Irish.
And at home, Amelia does have a temper. She’s wedged her foot up her family’s backsides so many times she confuses the idiots for shoes.
But on the job, she’s demure. She giggles, acts sly, and never raises her voice because Amelia Wright is the portrait of perfection, the perfect lady who keeps her cool.
Threatening to list all the queers between Hollywood and DC is not what a perfect lady would do.
In the heat of it, under the lights and in the crowded hall, it feels really, really good to promise a list and flounce out. She walks to her hired car and feels like Jesse Owens must have when he won that first Gold.
Then the agent escorting her, shuts the door, and all the flash and pomp of the trial is a dull roar. That’s when Amelia realizes she’s done about the stupidest thing she could have done, short of being seen going down on a lady in the Kremlin.
The Lavender List Page 16