Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel (26 page)

“Mrs. Daniels, you shouldn’t have come here!”

“I had to,” Laura said. “I had to find out what he’s doing.” She pointed down to the floor below. Nikki followed the line of the accusing finger and found it pointing at a broad dark-haired man with a wide jaw, a sneering, twisted mouth, and a profoundly ugly, bright purple shirt.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Laura said, pointing more firmly. “The one you chased. I followed Amein here and I saw him give a CD to that man, and then Amein left. You’ve just missed him.”

“Shit,” Nikki said, and she grabbed Mrs. Daniels’s emphatically gesturing hand, hoping it wouldn’t attract attention.

Nikki squinted in disbelief as the man in the purple shirt waved to attract the attention of Jirair Sarkassian. As she watched, Sarkassian joined the first man, who promptly began to shout in his ear and pull him in the direction of the stairs, pointing upward. Nikki scanned the room, looking for Z’ev, and spotted him coming off the dance floor and cutting a straight line toward the two men. She saw Ugly Shirt gesture toward Z’ev, and Sarkassian’s head swiveled around, looking for the distinctive American. From her vantage point, she saw Sarkassian nod in understanding to whatever Ugly Shirt was saying, and equally clear was his quick jerk of the thumb, indicating that Ugly Shirt should leave. The strange pantomime finished as Z’ev arrived, his head turning to follow Ugly Shirt’s exit. Sarkassian and Z’ev did the man hug/chest bump, and Sarkassian led him to the stairs.

“They’re coming this way,” gasped Laura in thrilled tones, reminding Nikki that her mission was not to investigate but to protect the woman next to her.

“Yeah, I know,” said Nikki sourly.

She started to drag Mrs. Daniels in the opposite direction, expecting the back stairs by the stage to be open. After that she would just have to grab Val, and it would be just a short dash to the emergency exit. But as they approached the stairs she found their way blocked by a wall of bouncers arguing with a contingent of drunken marines. Nikki backpedaled, looking for an escape. Z’ev and his companion were nearly at the top of the stairs.

“This way,” said Laura, breaking away. She apparently had not grasped that she was being rescued.

“No,” Nikki said, diving after her. She dodged the crowd streaming to watch the fight on the stairs, as Laura ran straight into a room marked
PRIVATE
. Nikki muttered a swear word under her breath and then went in after her.

“Mrs. Daniels,” Nikki hissed, gently closing the door. “We’ve got to get out of here. Those men can’t see us.” The room was decorated in brightly colored velvets. Heavy drapes muffled the reverberating bass coming from outside the room. It was all very plush, and there was a bottle of champagne chilling. One wall was a two-way mirror that looked out onto the second-floor bar. Laura Daniels had managed to find the VIP lounge.

“Call me Laura. And we have to be in here. I saw that other man come out of here earlier and I want to search it.”

“What?” Nikki tried not to screech, but Laura’s stupidity shocked her. “If Sarkassian came out of here, just where do you think he’s heading now? They’re coming back here!”

“Oh,” said Laura, her face going from excited to sober as she realized the truth of Nikki’s words. “I didn’t think of that. What do we do?”

Nikki opened the door a fraction and peered out onto the bal
cony. Z’ev and Sarkassian were stopped to watch the fight, but were still standing in clear view of the door.

Keeping an eye fixed on the view outside the door, she flipped open her cell phone and thumbed a text message to Val. Then she turned her phone to Vibrate and tucked it into her waistband. It sounded as if the fight was starting to wind down, which meant she and Laura were running out of time. Nikki scanned the interior of the VIP lounge. A couch, two chairs, and a coffee table completed the furniture arrangement. No closets to hide in. No convenient back exits.

“What do we do? asked Laura, wringing her hands and looking around the room and clearly arriving at the same assessment as to the number of exits. Nikki looked through the sliver of open door again. The two men were moving toward the private room.

“We hide,” said Nikki. Quickly, she pulled the couch away from the wall, threw Laura on the floor, and shoved the couch nearly back into position. “Whatever you do, don’t move,” she hissed. With barely a second to spare, she pulled the heavy velvet drapes away from the wall and ducked behind them herself. She tried to flatten herself against the wall and look as fabric-y as possible.

The door opened. Nikki heard the immediate hubbub of the club as well as the voices of the men as they entered.

“Look,” Z’ev said, “if you’re going to take these last-minute trips, I just wish you’d tell me. There’s a lot of international pressure right now, and I can’t protect your interests to the best of my ability if I don’t know where you are.”

“Jim, relax,” said the voice Nikki recognized as Sarkassian’s, and with a jolt she remembered that Z’ev had been using the name Jim the last time they’d met. “I appreciate your attention to detail,
but you’re too uptight. Bringing you out to Thailand was supposed to make you worry less!”

“I might worry less if knew what was going on with that security director of yours.”

Nikki could practically hear the finger quotes around “security director.”

“Are we on that subject again?” Sarkassian asked, scorn filling his voice. There was the sound of the champagne bottle being opened, followed by the distinctive splash of the foamy liquid into glasses. “Victor does his job. You do yours. Why is that so hard for the two of you?”

“Well, it’s a little hard to trust a guy who disappears like a ghost every time I show up.”

“He doesn’t like lawyers,” Sarkassian said. “And I tell him you’re really nice for a lawyer, but he doesn’t believe me.”

“Thanks for that impassioned defense,” Z’ev said. Nikki heard the couch springs creak as he flopped onto it. She winced sympathetically and hoped that Laura wouldn’t get too squished. There was a rustling fabric sound, and for a moment Nikki had the paralyzing thought that Laura was being discovered.

“What’s that?” asked Sarkassian.

“Someone’s jacket,” Z’ev responded.

“Oh, it’s Victor’s,” said Sarkassian casually. “He was in here earlier. Here, I’ll take it.”

“You didn’t just arrive? How long have you and Victor been here?” Z’ev asked. Nikki could hear the faint surprise in his voice as he realized that Victor and Sarkassian must have been there ahead of him.

“Victor wanted a drink; we got here just before you did. Here, I’ll take the coat.”

The command was more distinctively a command this time, and behind the curtain Nikki tensed.

“Sure,” Z’ev said, his voice suddenly neutral as if he didn’t care about the whole situation. “Where did you want . . .”

Whatever Z’ev had been about to say was cut off as the door flew open and banged against the wall.

“Oh, hey,” came Val’s voice. Nikki breathed a sigh of relief. Val would surely do something clever to clear the room. Smoke bombs possibly, or something else from Rachel’s selection of gadgets.

“Sorry,” she continued. “I thought my boyfriend was hiding out in here with some floozy. My bad.” The door closed again, and behind the curtain Nikki gaped. What sort of rescue was that?

“You know,” said Sarkassian thoughtfully, into the silence that followed Val’s exit, “that sounds like a woman who’s interested in finding a new boyfriend.”

“And you’re thinking of applying for the position?” Z’ev said, laughing slightly.

“Why not?” he responded. “It wouldn’t hurt you to start interviewing a few possible candidates yourself. Stop you from pining over that wife of yours.”

Behind the curtain, Nikki smiled.

“Who’s pining?” replied Z’ev. “Unless you think that go-go dancer in Hong Kong looked like pining?”

Nikki ground her teeth.

“Then come out to the bar, we’ll see if we can find something for you.”

She heard the two men leave, but the door had barely shut before it opened again.

“Forgot my wallet,” Z’ev said. “I’ll be right there.”

The door shut again, and Nikki, peering carefully through the
curtains, saw Z’ev cross the room with quick strides and, with rapid fingers, begin searching Victor’s jacket. She saw him look out the two-way mirror into the bar and grunt in dissatisfaction, as he carefully returned the jacket to its former position. He was reaching for the door when it opened of its own accord. Nikki yanked her covering curtains back into place as she heard Sarkassian speak.

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah, right behind you,” said Z’ev as the door shut again.

Nikki counted to ten after the door closed behind them and then slid out from behind the velvet curtain with exaggerated care.

“Laura,” she whispered, hurrying to the couch and tugging it away from the wall. “Laura, are you all right?”

The ambassador’s wife responded with a deep groan.

“I’m not as slender as I used to be,” she said, sitting up. “That was not pleasant. And I’m pretty sure there are some undergarments under there, and Lord knows where they were before they got there.”

“Well, with undergarments it’s a pretty easy guess, actually,” Nikki said, leaving Laura to stare through the two-way mirror. Outside the window, she saw Sarkassian sliding onto the barstool next to Val. Val did look good sitting there, with her black hair swinging at a provocative angle against her cheek and her lips caressing a maraschino cherry. Nikki could see why Sarkassian would be interested. What she was more worried about was that Z’ev still hadn’t moved far enough away from the VIP lounge for her comfort. She and Laura would be spotted the second they left the room.

“Watch him,” she told Laura, indicating Z’ev, who was ordering a drink from a waitress as she began to ransack the pockets of Victor’s jacket. “If he comes back this way, tell me.”

The pockets were mostly empty. A few receipts, a Pai Gow domino, and a cell phone were all they contained. Nikki stared at the phone—the model looked familiar—and it reminded her of something she’d read in her cell phone manual on the plane ride over. There was a trick she thought she could use here.

“What’re you going to do?” Laura asked, trying to talk over her shoulder without taking her eyes off Z’ev.

“I’m going pull out the battery and SIM card,” Nikki said, reciting steps one and two.

“What’s a SIM card?” asked Laura helplessly.

“Watch the window,” ordered Nikki, as she popped out the SIM card and then found the narrow slot in the side of her phone and plugged it in. A green download bar began to chug across her screen.

“What are you doing?” asked Laura.

“Well, theoretically I’m uploading all the info on his phone into mine. And when we’re done . . .” The phone dinged and indicated that it was now safe to remove the SIM card. Nikki replaced the phone in Victor’s pocket and tucked her own phone back into the waistband of her skirt.

“He’s going to the bar,” whispered Laura.

“Great,” Nikki said, grabbing Laura by the arm. “Time to go.”

Moving quickly, she dragged Laura into the hallway and down the stairs. She pushed her way through the crowd and into the street, expecting the cool thrill of night air, but feeling instead only the sticky grittiness of a Bangkok night. At a loss as to what to do next, she was relieved when her own phone vibrated with an insistent buzz against her hipbone.

“Yeah,” barked Nikki, flipping it open.

“So my meeting is running longer than I thought it would,” Val said.

“What?”

“I won’t be able to meet you for dinner like we planned,” said Val, and Nikki sensed the slightly gritted teeth at the end of the sentence. She sighed. It was a clear sign she was being dumb again.

“You should just go back to the hotel,” continued Val, “and I’ll meet you later.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Nikki objected. “You shouldn’t be in there without backup.”

“Trust me,” said Val. “I have everything under control. I’ll meet you later.” And then she hung up. Nikki stared at the phone in fury, wondering if she should call back.

“What do we do now?” asked Laura.

“We take you home,” Nikki said, “and I wait for Val to report.” She didn’t like this plan, but she tried to sound as if she were behind it one hundred percent. She couldn’t show anything less than a united front to an outsider.

“Well, all right,” said Laura, getting into a taxi. “If you think it’s the best plan. I’m so glad you’re here! I would have messed this all up without you. But it turned out just great!”

“Uh, yeah . . .” said Nikki with a backward glance at the club. It felt wrong to leave her partner alone inside, but what else was she supposed to do? “Just great.”

THAILAND V

The After Party

Nikki quietly shut the door of her hotel room. She had left Laura with assurances that she would call with any updates or information. Laura had been reluctant to leave the matter there. With crossed fingers and a guilty conscience, Nikki had claimed to be a professional and that Laura should trust her to do her job. Surprisingly, Laura seemed to buy it and had gone inside. After that, Nikki had spent the cab ride back to her hotel trying to make sense of the events of the evening, but without much luck.

She dropped her purse, overstuffed with her original ensemble, on the bed and walked to the window, stripping off her heels as she went. The city of Bangkok glimmered beneath her window like a Lite-Brite. She adjusted the air-conditioning and washed off her makeup, then sat on the bed and opened her phone. But several minutes of poking the buttons produced no results. She couldn’t find the information she had theoretically downloaded from Victor’s phone.

With an angry sigh, she paced the length of the room. She felt
useless, confused, and worried. Val wasn’t with her. Z’ev was in town. And she’d already botched her first attempt at using Carrie Mae technology. Sighing, she kicked at her luggage. Half a step later she was back at her luggage and digging out the Carrie May–issue computer.

Nikki looked in dismay at the tangled octopus of cords and computer. Setup should have been a simple procedure, but faced with the dusty bits that Val had simply jammed in the computer bag, it looked more complicated. After a frustrating five minutes, the computer was at last plugged in and humming with electricity. She deftly logged on to the Carrie Mae website and sat staring at the blinking prompt. With a sigh for her ineptitude, she grumpily clicked on the Do You Need Assistance? tab.