She raised her hand and flipped off the camera nearest to her. His response was to turn on the air-conditioning to high. Bastard.
Lily wasn’t sure who was worse, Tío Leo or Max. At least with Lie-o it had been all about the money. It wasn’t as easy to figure out Max’s game, but that didn’t make him any less scary.
Although it was late, Lily resisted trying to sleep. Max usually waited until she was in a deep slumber before revealing himself. She’d awaken with the sense that something was wrong, and something was. The perv would be standing at the foot of her bed, staring at her. Staring. She never knew how long he stood there watching her, whether it was minutes or hours. The jolt was in opening her eyes, and finding him there. She had screamed the first two times, and he’d laughed, almost like he was getting his rocks off.
Maybe he was. Mad Max had an agenda, even if she didn’t know what it was. That scared her.
Last night he hadn’t awakened her, but Lily wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. Max had left calling cards behind, images he had positioned around the room. They were all different, but similar. The girls in the drawings resembled Lily. They had her dark hair, fair skin, and large green eyes. Most wore sheer gowns. The young women were human, but there was an otherworldly quality to them.
In some of the images, the women were bathing in the outdoors, their bodies embraced in the reflected light of the moon shimmering off of the water’s surface. In some others, girls her age were happily swinging from the moon, or serenely perched in the middle of a crescent moon. Not all of the drawings were modern. She suspected some of the images came from old paintings.
Lily gathered all the images of her look-alikes, and put them away in a drawer. She wanted no part of these moon maidens. She wanted no part of Max, but there was no getting away from him. Awaking to the images only confirmed her worst fears. Chance hadn’t brought her to this prison; her captor had been looking for someone like her. He had been seeking his moon woman.
Max had said she was his guest. Max had lied.
Lily wondered if there had ever been a prison like hers. The bars might not be visible, but she was completely confined, hidden behind the darkened windows. There was only one door in her suite, a heavy steel security door. Max had told her that he was on the other side of it. There was a slot in the door that opened from his side for the purpose of sliding food through, just like how prisoners in movies got their food delivered. That was much more preferable to Max delivering it in person.
Her living space had been stripped down to its essentials, with everything bolted down, from the lamps to the television. There were no utensils and no tools. The prison had been designed so that there was no potential for weapons or projectiles. There was nothing sharp or heavy. It wasn’t enough to put her in a birdcage. They’d also clipped her wings.
The room was getting colder, but Lily resisted covering herself in a blanket. She didn’t want to give Max the satisfaction of thinking he could control her every movement.
There was no clock to tell Lily what time it was, but she suspected it was after midnight. The Las Vegas lights drew her close to the window, although her fear of heights kept her a few feet away from the glass. Lily avoided looking down, but instead took in the distant lights. They twinkled like stars. And they were just as unreachable, she feared.
She thought of the film Tangled. This was her high tower. In the movie Rapunzel had seen distant lights in the sky that she had thought were stars, but after discovering they were floating lanterns, she yearned to follow them. As much of an asshole as Tío Leo was, most mornings he let the girls watch Disney movies. Lily knew he hadn’t done that to be nice; it was how he kept them occupied and controlled them, but it was the only good part of their day. The three other girls he’d been trafficking hadn’t spoken English, and Lily didn’t know much Spanish, but they’d still found a way to talk with one another. The girls liked singing the songs from the movies, even though they didn’t know what the words meant.
Lily hummed softly under her breath. She didn’t want Max to hear. But looking at the lights, she thought of Rapunzel singing “I See the Light.” It had been one of their favorite songs. In a whisper, she sang, like Rapunzel had, of how blind she’d been.
Too bad she didn’t have long golden hair like Rapunzel’s. But even if she had, Lily knew there was no one out there waiting to climb her hair. She was by herself. That made everything worse.
Lily went to bed, but not so much for sleep as to hide under the covers. She wasn’t going to let Max see her tears. It was only under the covers that she could express her feelings without the need of putting on a front. Where she could admit to herself that she missed her old life.
She missed her mommy.
After a time, Lily cried herself to sleep.
* * *
It was not a prince who came to her.
The loud bang caused Lily to awake with a start. She threw up her arms to ward off the perceived threat.
Max was wearing workout clothes, a black-and-white yin-yang sweatshirt and sweatpants. But the yin-yang fish had been transformed into the faces of black-and-white snarling wolves.
“It’s a beautiful night to dance, is it not?”
Lily was too scared to answer, but that didn’t seem to make a difference to Max.
Laughing, he backed up half a dozen steps, then ran at the window, throwing himself at it again. The impact knocked him back, but he landed on his feet. His toothy grin, pale face, and dark beard confronted her.
“Would you like to dance with me?” he asked, clicking his long thumbnails together, like a crab brandishing its claws.
Fighting her trembling, Lily shook her head.
“Such a shame. But at least we can have a late-night snack together. I took the liberty of ordering some of your favorites.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
There had been a few times when Lily had eaten with him, only to fall into a deep sleep afterward. She didn’t think that was a coincidence and suspected Max of drugging her.
“Suit yourself, Nataliya, but I still expect you to join me in the next room while I dine.”
Lily felt the hairs on her arms rise. Nataliya. He had called her by that name again. And now Lily remembered where she’d heard that name before. It was Karina who had said that Lily looked like her friend Nataliya. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? What else had she said? Lily struggled to remember. And then it came to her. Karina had said Lily’s eyes were just like Nataliya’s.
Shit. That explained why Max was always studying her face. It was like he was trying to look into her skull. But now she knew it was her eyes.
Lily took a seat in the living room, trying to keep as much distance between herself and Max as she could. The creep’s eyes were on her now. She refused to meet them. What had happened to Nataliya? She wanted to ask the question, but was afraid to.
Max gestured to the food in front of him. “You really should avail yourself of the cuisine we have. Our kitchen employs some of the best Chinese chefs in the world. Their baozi is unsurpassed, not to mention the shou mian.”
He pointed to some noodles that were laid out on a plastic sheet and said, “We have patrons who travel many thousands of miles to partake of this dish.”
She watched Max eating with his plastic fork. All the food was delivered precut without silverware or even plates. Her choice was to eat with her hands or with a plastic fork.
He was looking at her, expecting her to say something. “No thanks,” she said.
“That is your choice, of course, but I think it to be an ill-advised one. The English translation of shou mian is ‘noodles of longevity.’ If I were you, I would make a point of eating them.”
Despite being afraid, Lily looked into the black holes of his eyes. He smiled and said, “After all, it wouldn’t do to tempt the fates.”
XXXI
Nathan Bines felt the vibration coming from his wallet. In a slot designed for a cred
it card, his special cell phone—the size and thickness of a credit card—was vibrating. Bines found himself grinding his teeth. He didn’t like being at the beck and call of another. The vibrating stopped, but that only meant the clock was ticking. Bines had two minutes to drop everything and find a spot to take the call in private.
Geofredo Salazar didn’t like to be kept waiting.
Bines wished he could ignore the summons. He felt the clench in his gut. For the better part of a decade, Salazar had been represented by Bines, an arrangement kept secret by both parties. Several other law firms worked for the billionaire hedge fund manager and were his on-the-record lawyers. All clients have baggage, but Salazar had more than most. Now, looking back to the beginning of their relationship, Bines wished he had known just how much baggage that was.
He finished another conversation and closed the door to his office. Salazar didn’t keep him waiting.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt your golf game,” Salazar said.
“As I’ve told you before, I rarely have time to play golf.”
“What lawyers say, and what really is, I have often found to be contradictory.”
Salazar sounded as if he were joking. His mellifluous Spanish accent— Bines thought it reminiscent of the late actor Ricardo Montalbán—certainly sounded affable. But Bines knew Salazar was neither genial nor good-tempered. Despite his image to the contrary, he was as cold and calculating an individual as Bines had ever met. At the same time, Bines and the firm had grown dependent on the billable hours charged to their anonymous client and his shell companies. That tended to happen when you were billing up to fifty million dollars a year in legal fees.
“Tell me about our case,” Salazar said.
“Everything is proceeding as hoped. Tomorrow morning, Judge Irwin is going to publicly smack down Deketomis. After he gets through with him, Deketomis will be hamstrung. I expect he’ll be so judicially constrained that his case will wither up and blow away.”
Instead of being pleased, Salazar said, “That’s not enough.”
“Excuse me?”
“Deketomis needs to be humiliated.”
Nathan Bines did not like Nick Deketomis, but he liked even less what he was hearing. It was one thing to work the legal system to your advantage, but quite another to endorse the equivalent of beating a dead horse.
“I can assure you that his ultimately losing this case will be punishment enough for him. Deketomis would sooner eat excrement than he would a serving of humble pie.”
“Excrement?” By his tone, Salazar was clearly mocking Bines for his euphemism. “He needs to be dragged through a pile of excrement, so that when he comes out on the other side he will be fouled, and bowed, and beaten. Deketomis must be an example so as to discourage any other foolhardy lawyers from ever considering taking up a similar case.”
“I cannot endorse anything inappropriate or illegal.”
Salazar began laughing. Bines wasn’t sure if he had ever heard him laugh before. “Inappropriate? We have been in bed together for far too long for you to start making protestations of your virtue.”
“I am an officer of the court,” Bines said.
“You say that with pride, but the only difference between you and those who work on their backs is that your hourly wage is so much more expensive than theirs. And so much less gratifying.”
Bines could feel his throat tighten. Salazar had a reputation as a great philanthropist. The stated purpose of his international foundation, the Global Union Manifest (GUM), was to advance justice throughout the world. Those in many progressive camps liked to proclaim themselves as “gummies” or “gummy bears.” But by no stretch of the imagination was Geo Salazar a gummy bear, or the good guy he pretended to be.
“I assume you called me for a reason other than offering insults.”
Salazar said, “No insult was intended. I merely offered what seemed to me was a needed reality check. As for the purpose of my call, I wanted to discuss the amicus brief you filed last week.”
“Amicus brief?” Bines said, puzzled. An amicus brief was filed by nonlitigants in cases where interested parties wished to make their opinions known. The Latin translation of amicus curiae meant “friend of the court.” An outsider writing the kind of brief Salazar described was essentially endorsing the action.
“I filed no such brief.”
“The record speaks to the contrary.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“No mistake. We took one of those law firm letterheads where your name is so prominently featured and attached it as a cover letter to the legal document that you filed in an ongoing appellate court case.”
“What!” yelled an outraged Bines.
“It’s only a three-page opinion.”
“You’re telling me my name was put on an amicus curiae brief. My name.”
“That’s right. We had a need to use your name. Aren’t you the voice of reason for the media? Don’t they always call upon you to comment on the legal story of the day? And didn’t you tell me you had thousands of Twitter followers?”
“You make my point,” Bines said. “All those are reasons I need to be protective of my name and what it stands for.”
“I doubt whether your amicus brief will get much attention, but should anyone take notice, I am certain you will be able to justify your arguments.”
“You submitted a forged document to an appellate court, and I’m supposed to go along with that?”
“You are paid more than an ample sum to go along with it.”
“What case?” Bines said.
“It was one that you didn’t want to dirty your hands with. You might remember its particulars. I wanted you to challenge the government’s age restrictions requiring all H2B workers to be eighteen and older. Our position is that the legal age should be lowered to fifteen so as to allow the kind of internship programs that exist in many countries around the world. When you begged off representing my interests, I retained another firm to take up the action.”
“I told you in good conscience I couldn’t take that case,” Bines said. “I was against the idea of minors entering the workplace.”
“And I accepted your decision.”
“Yet you submitted an amicus brief in my name that supports positions you knew I was not comfortable endorsing?”
“Everything in the brief was in keeping with your usual First Amendment arguments and your well-documented distrust of the government overstepping its bounds and impinging upon individual freedoms.”
The knot in Bines’s stomach loosened a little. Maybe the amicus brief wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.
Bines said, “Were those arguments solely applied to adults they might very well fly, but that is not the case. We’re talking about children here.”
“That’s where your brilliant legal mind took on ageism,” Salazar said, not sparing his sarcasm. “In the brief you referenced American cultural exceptionalism and detailed how it was out of step with much of the world.”
For a moment, Bines couldn’t speak. This was worse, far worse, than he ever could have imagined. “That’s—that’s—”
He struggled to find a word adequate to his outrage, but couldn’t.
Salazar blithely continued, “I’m not saying we’ll win this case, but it will give us traction for the next case, and the one after that. If we can erode the laws bit by bit, we will ultimately prevail.”
“Do you realize that by signing my name to that brief, you have put my legal reputation in jeopardy, and potentially undermined my effectiveness in working the Welcome Mat case?”
“A mal tiempo, buena cara,” Salazar said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s a Spanish saying that translates to, ‘In bad weather, a good face.’”
“Having a good face won’t help me represent your interests in court, especially if I have the reputation of being morally bankrupt.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot tha
t you are a man of the people, and fight for the rights of individuals.”
“I need to withdraw that amicus brief,” Bines said. “I’ll say someone in my office mistakenly sent it. I won’t go on record publicly defending the notion that a fifteen-year-old child from another country should be allowed to enter the workplace and treated like an adult. My daughter is fifteen. I am of the belief that she and all other teenagers need to be afforded the protections that come with being a minor.”
Salazar made tsk-tsk sounds. “I am afraid you painted a very different picture in your amicus brief. You pointed out that culturally, and historically, the notion of adulthood has been an extremely fluid concept. Even the age of consent, as you so sagely noted, isn’t something necessarily written in stone. Was not Romeo’s beloved Juliet only thirteen years of age when she succumbed to his charms? That work of fiction, as you were quick to note, was certainly within the norms of its time.”
“This is insane! I am your advocate. What possible advantage is there in setting me up as your fall guy?”
“Don’t be a drama queen. At most, you have dirtied your hands, even though they have never been nearly as clean as you’ve imagined them to be. We needed a spokesperson to go along with the positions we are advocating. You were the logical choice.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Friends of mine. The same friends who have significant, if not visible, positions in Welcome Mat Hospitality.”
There were long-standing rumors of Salazar being involved with criminal enterprises. When Bines had first begun representing Salazar, he had thought he could keep clear of those potential entanglements and not have to be concerned about the Spaniard’s silent business partners. But sometimes there was no avoiding stepping on gum, despite your best efforts to avoid it. And when that happened, the gum somehow found its way into clothing and hair.
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