Fake Alibis

by Frank Sibila

  This surprised her. She bobbed her head in fresh appraisal and patted the armrest of the chair beside her. “Why don’t you sit down while you explain that, Frank? You wouldn’t want me to get neck strain from looking up at you.”

  By every conceivable standard, trapping himself in another conversation with her, even one that improved over his situation on the plane by allowing exits that didn’t require explosive decompression thousands of feet over the earth, was a bad idea. Frank knew this. He knew she knew it. He knew she knew he knew it. It was, however, preferable to leaving her here on Yorick’s floor, capable of getting into God alone knew what mischief. He sighed and took her invitation.

  The elevator light dinged. The doors opened, revealing an elderly couple notable in that the man and wife both seemed to possess equally impressive jowls. They stared at Frank and Monica, openly wondering what he had wondered, which is why anybody would find the easy chairs across from the elevator bank a conducive place for a conversation. Frank wanted to provide them with the newest explanation that had occurred to him, which was: Don’t you get it? This is Switzerland! Neutral territory! We’re two warring nations enjoying a momentary cease-fire before we start shooting one another again! But the door closed before he could. He supposed the poor bastards would always wonder.

  Monica said, “Go ahead. This is ever so fascinating.”

  “Client or not,” Frank said, “that schmuck in there is not in your league. He’s just a harmless little guy who’s temporarily forgotten who he is and hasn’t found his way back to being himself yet. If he’s a client, and I’m not saying he is, I’m only here to make sure he doesn’t screw up his life too badly in the meantime.”

  Monica seemed struck by this. She crooked a finger, as if just now struck by a brainstorm. “Oh, boy. I never realized this before, but you’re noble.”

  It may have been exhaustion, but he laughed out loud.

  After a moment of measuring his sanity, she laughed, too. “So tell me, Frank. Is that true of everybody on your client list? Are they all harmless little guys who’ve temporarily forgotten their own better natures?”

  “Well, if we’re talking clients, they’re not all guys. That’s to start. Even if you do think of me as an emblem of man’s fundamental rottenness to women, as you seem to, this has not been a male-dominated enterprise by any means. I have just as many women needing alibis to use on their men. Maybe even more.”

  She yawned. “Plus, I presume, a few women-on-women and men-on-men situations.”

  “Right. And even counting them, only about forty percent of the situations we provide for involve actual cheating on partners. We have students needing alibis for late class work, employees needing alibis for time off, even cases where people told tall tales about themselves and want us to come up with proof to impress their friends. We had one case where a guy was a no-show at his own wedding because of too much partying the night before and needed us to document hours trapped in an elevator, because it was the only explanation that would get his fiancée to set a new date. They’re expecting their first baby in January. Was helping him out a bad thing?”

  “Wow,” she said, in a little-girl voice. “Not just noble, but also a defender of true love and a giver of life.”

  He felt sheepish. “A little rehearsed, huh?”

  “Yup,” she said, not without warmth. “I heard you use that very spiel, almost word for word, on The Clark Dilton Experience. You’re very good at it. You were also very good at defending Mr. Yorick as a harmless little guy who’s temporarily forgotten his own better nature. My question to you is whether you’d characterize all your philandering clients that way. Like my husband, for instance.”

  “Again,” he told her, “I’m not admitting he’s a client.”

  “Of course.”

  “Or that I know he’s philandering.”

  “Again, of course.”

  “But, no, I wouldn’t characterize your husband that way. I don’t think of him as a man who’s temporarily forgotten his better nature.”

  “What else would you call him?”

  He hesitated. “Frankly?”

  “Pretty much anything you say would have to be frank, Frank.”

  “All right, then.” He made an L out of his thumb and index finger and raised the symbol to his forehead.

  It seemed to strike her as funnier than it might have had it not been so late at night after such a grueling cross-country day, and she exploded with laughter. “Oh, Frank. We do have an impasse, don’t we?”

  “We sure do,” he said, with genuine regret. “I’d like to return to my room and get a few hours of sleep, but I’m too concerned that if I did you’d just go bother George again, and I’m afraid I can’t have that.”

  “And I could use a few hours of sleep, too,” she said, “but I’m too concerned that if I let you out of my sight for five minutes, you’ll just move your client to another hotel and ruin any chance I might have of causing you some serious mischief in this town.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Gee. That’s a real poser.”

  “Yes. Too bad we can’t think of some way to keep an eye on one another and celebrate our mutual conviction that my husband’s a real schmuck.”

  “That, too. Some way that would table our mutual antagonism and make sure that the truce lasts until morning.”

  “Some way that would take advantage of our down time.”

  “Yes. Some way that might leave us feeling better tomorrow.”

  “At which point,” she said, with something like wonder, “it would be every man for himself again.”

  “No quarter asked,” he provided. “None given.”

  She provided a truly heroic shrug. “Gee whillikers, Mr. Science! It’s too bad we can’t think of something.”

  He said, “I don’t know about you, Monica, but I’m sure stumped.”

  She took his hand and dragged him to the elevator. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  A new day rises on Vegas. The desert blinks as it realizes that the sun still triumphs over the neon as the brightest light in the immediate vicinity. People wake up with headaches and empty wallets, or intact buzzes and bankrolls fatter than those they came to town with. Some wake up next to strange partners they cannot recognize by gender. Some know who they slept with and lack only the why. Others understand the who and the why and even the how, but not the what next. Come to think of it, winners or losers, that’s the overwhelming question: Well, that was interesting, but how is this gonna complicate things?

  For Frank, who woke up in a room not his own, tangled in bed sheets with pulled muscles reducing his limbs to elbow macaroni, the first question was how could he have been so unforgivably, outstandingly, cosmically stupid? The answer to that one was that he didn’t know. The second was whether any part of him had been amputated or Krazy Glued to any other part. The answer to that was no, and he greeted it with a combination of relief and dismay. Relief because no man relishes the prospect of becoming that kind of urban legend, dismay because if Monica wasn’t going to be that obvious about this, he was probably in even greater trouble. Yorick-quality trouble.

  But no, there was his wallet, with all his IDs and credit cards and cash intact. And there was his cell phone, the one he’d equipped with a password to prevent any person more unscrupulous than himself from obtaining his client list.

  He sniffed his clothes from the day before, found them passable, wondered whether there would have been any alternative had she poured vinegar over them, decided not, then left, walking funny, aware as he did so that she’d honored the terms of the cease-fire, but could, for all he knew, be waiting around the corner with a crossbow.

  He didn’t encounter her at all for the several minutes it took him to return to his own room, wash the strangeness of the last twelve hours off his skin, get dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and casual jacket, and
head down to rendezvous with Yorick at the breakfast buffet.

  The breakfast buffet turned out to be a crowded pavilion occupied with too many families whose children, baffled by the phenomenon of a resort filled with so many games they were allowed to look at from a distance but not approach or play, now leaped at the opportunity to use the booths and stand-alone tables as ersatz jungle gyms. The various conjugations of Jimmy-don’t-do-that seemed like railroad spikes driven into the spines of the remaining clientele, disproportionately comprised of gray-haired ladies snarling from temporary separation from their cigarettes, and younger, glummer men in the final stages of Viagra detox. The buffet itself was generic, with the usual assortment of ham, scrambled eggs, sausage links, and trays that had been removed for refills, suggesting the prior existence of finer, more exotic dishes that the customer had not been fast enough or lucky enough to claim before more adventurous, more fortunate souls swooped in and took all there was. A fine metaphor for the entire Vegas experience.

  He found George Yorick at a booth across from a young woman Frank could not place but who seemed vaguely familiar from recent experience: one with feathered blonde hair, the most adorable little button nose, and eyes like the sky in the morning. She was dressed in jeans and a tight black T-shirt against which well-formed breasts provided sufficient curvature to emphasize the friendly mockery in the white lettering, THESE ARE NOT THE TITS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR. MOVE ALONG. She wore almost no makeup and looked like a high school cheerleader. Yorick was eating a mound of pancakes with enough whipped cream to induce a diabetic coma. She was having grapefruit and black coffee. Two largish suitcases on wheels rested against their knees, like pet dogs huddling for warmth.

  Frank, wondering about what fresh hell he’d walked into now, approached the pair with significant trepidation. “George? Is everything all right?”

  “Hunky dory,” Yorick chirruped, adding that to the growing list of phrases he was capable of using without embarrassment. “You know Felicia Starlight, right?”

  “No,” said Frank. “Please tell me the greeter made you share a table.”

  Yorick waved a fork bearing a misshapen glob of multiple syrup-saturated pancake-like material. “It’s all right,” he said, a trifle too loudly. “She’s with the agency.”

  Frank, who had almost forgotten that he’d asked Destinii to send somebody, felt a surge of relief. But the blonde, caught in the act of imbibing coffee, almost performed a spit-take worthy of Danny Thomas.

  Frank gave her a closer look. “Careful. She’s with the agency?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Felicia’s eyes went round. She used one hand to rush a napkin to her lips and extended the other palm-first in the universal sign for stop.

  “It’s okay.” Frank said, extending his own hand. “I’ve been expecting you. My name’s Frank. I’m the owner.”

  Felicia needed another cough before she could establish something approaching coherence, even if the voice that emerged was both unnaturally high and breathless. “Frank?”

  “Yes,” said Frank.

  “The Frank?” she said, her eyes widening. “Frank from New Jersey?”

  The day seemed to have taken an unseasonably surreal turn. “New York.”

  “Wow,” she said, needing another cough to regain control of herself before scooting away to make a space for him, substantial awe and nervousness coloring her tone. “I only heard of you from the stories. I always thought you were affiliated with the Jersey guys.”

  Frank felt his eyebrows try to become one. “No,” he said, with considerable puzzlement. “It’s just me from New York.” He took the seat next to her, handed over her orange juice, and said, “I take it that our friend George has explained the situation?”

  “I’m supposed to drive him east, right? I know that part. See? I even went home and packed.”

  “That’s right,” Frank said. “I want you to rent yourselves a nice, comfortable car and head to New York. Take your time, be safe, stay in touch, stop when you need to, but get him to New York. I’ll fly ahead and work out his story, so it’ll be okay for him when he gets there. Is that all right?”

  Her eyes had gone wide again. “This isn’t gonna be, like, dangerous, is it?”

  “What do you mean, dangerous?”

  “I mean there aren’t gonna be people looking for him, right?”

  Frank hesitated. “Shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m not sure about this anymore….”

  He mentally castigated Destinii for sending him somebody so manifestly unprepared for the task. “Look, it’s perfectly straightforward. Nobody’s looking for him. He needs to get to New York, but he can’t get on a plane. He doesn’t have a valid driver’s license, so he can’t drive. He’s carrying a check too valuable to take with him on a bus. He’s an important client, and we want him shown every possible courtesy, but we don’t expect any problems and don’t see this as anything that a reasonably competent person should be unable to handle.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “If you’re that worried, I’ll see to getting you some backup, somebody who can meet up with you on the road. But it’s no big deal. If Destinii chose you, it’s because you’re the best for the job. All you have to do is obey the speed limit, get receipts for your expenses, and have a good time on the way.”

  “Destiny,” Felicia repeated, a trifle faintly.

  Frank nodded. “This is an opportunity, Felicia. We pay very well. You do this right, and we can keep you in mind for bigger and better assignments.”

  She blindly stabbed at her grapefruit and didn’t seem to feel the juice as it struck ground zero on her right eye.

  Yorick, beaming his pleasure through a mouthful of pancakes, swallowed enough to be respectable and said, “I like the way things happen around you, Frank. My little jackpot last night. Felicia here. Destiny. Under the circumstances, I’m glad I took so much cash for traveling money.”

  “Don’t go too crazy, George. You can have fun, but you shouldn’t call too much attention to yourself. After all, I’m still dealing with your last mess. If you want, maybe I’ll hold the actual check—”

  Yorick shrugged. “Why not? As long as I have expenses covered, and you can go ahead fulfilling our contract.”

  Felicia, whose complexion was already close to milky, now went a shade whiter as she heard that last word. Her hands trembled a little as she raised her glass of orange juice, hesitated as she carried out some kind of arcane inner calculation, then became steady again as she arrived at a moment of combined resignation and resolve. By the time she put down her glass again, she was looking at Yorick with a level of respect dwarfing anything she’d displayed before Frank’s arrival. If Frank noticed this at all, it was only as a sudden shift in barometric pressure, a slight alteration in the quality of the air. She said, “You want my cell phone number, Frank? You can call me as often as you’d like. To keep tabs, I mean.”

  “That would be good,” Frank said. “We’ll get you a calling card and a disposable before parting ways. I usually carry a few all charged up with me for the business, but I didn’t carry any this trip.”

  “No problem,” said Yorick. “This was kind of a last-minute thing.”

  “And besides,” Felicia said, projecting full understanding of the mission’s critical importance, “a guy like you expects his people to pick up the slack.”

  Frank frowned again, once more sensing something strange in the air, not at all sure what it was, but wholly disturbed by it nevertheless. He did not identify it as coming from Felicia. It would have been nice to have a Geiger counter attuned to oddness so he could follow its tick-tick-tick to the source, because whatever it was, his hackles were turning inside out. He persisted, “All right, then. Soon as you two get done with breakfast.”

  “Just us?” Yorick asked. “Aren’t you hungry?”

&nbs
p; Frank thought about it. He should have been. It had been a while since he’d eaten, and he’d had a night of the energetic sort that usually left him ravenous the next morning. But his appetite was missing. He had the feeling, again undiagnosed and therefore not wholly understood, that causes an antelope on the savannah to stop grazing and look up, little black eyes searching the horizon for the fringe of a ruffed mane visible between stalks of tall grass. Hunger was, for the moment at least, not the most important autonomic response. That primordial sense of danger was. “No,” he said, after a moment. “The way I feel right now, breakfast would just slow me down. I’ll have something when we get the two of you equipped and on the road.”

  “All business,” Yorick said. “I like that.”

  Felicia studied Frank intently. “Me, too.”

  And that just increased Frank’s sense, still unexamined and unidentified, that he was missing something critical. Even as he nodded, his face impassive in a way that reflected his disquiet but that people who didn’t know him, like Yorick and Felicia, could easily mistake as steely eyed determination, that impression intensified. He didn’t know what it meant but had the feeling that it would bother him the rest of the day, even as he sat aboard his plane and dozed through dreams of everything he had worked for becoming untethered to gravity and flung headlong into airless space.

  He didn’t know that his edginess gave him the air of a coiled spring under pressure and that this had been picked up, and deeply appreciated, by Felicia.

  Nor did he know that he would have understood the nature of his misgivings had he merely turned around and taken a look into the adjoining booth.

  Monica Custer, who had been nursing a yogurt and melon breakfast as she pretended to read the morning newspaper over multiple refills of her bottomless cup of coffee, sat hidden beneath a mousy brown wig and a pair of wraparound amber sunglasses so round and concealing that more than one guest observing her that morning had wondered if the poor dear was hiding evidence of domestic abuse. Her makeup, pancaked a little too heavily around her cheeks, was designed to make her look, if not dowdy, then like a woman twenty years older than herself trying hard to look twenty years younger and not quite succeeding in that impression. At least one group of out-of-towners had followed her behavior in the last few minutes with considerable concern, as her trembling cheeks and shaking shoulders testified to the sorrows of a woman whose world was falling apart. They wondered about her story. Had her husband lost the mortgage betting on blackjack? Had he flown home without her? Had she found the cad in bed with a farm animal? What?