Hot Ticket (35 page)

I slowly opened the door to the music room. The mazurka didn’t stop as a cheerful voice called, “Ah, there you are. Come in,
I’ve been expecting you.”

Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This man, down to the eyelash, was Bobby Marvel except for the voice and the dead, cold
eyes of a trained killer. He fumbled calmly through the Chopin, unfazed by the .45 trained on his chest. When the mazurka
was finished, he lit a cigar. “Put that down, would you? If I wanted to kill you, you’d have been dead halfway down the driveway.”

I didn’t move. He still had plenty of time to kill me on the way out. “Start talking,” I said. Instead he kept puffing so
I shot the cigar out of his mouth. My husband could repair the hole in his wall when he returned from his plane ride. “Thank
you for not smoking. Sit on that couch.” Great ass. That was definitely the one I had seen in Barnard’s video. For a long
moment we studied each other. “That warden at Lorton must have pissed in his pants when the president came to visit.” Impostor
didn’t say a word so I continued, “Bet you could sign Marvel’s name in your sleep by now.”

“Clever girl,” was all he said.

Not clever enough. “Make you a deal. You tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.” I took over the piano bench. “Start with
your name.”

“Cecil Ruske. Soldier of fortune. Why’d you kill Polly?”

“Bad start, Cecil. I found her dead. Fausto didn’t do it, did he?”

“No. He thought you did.”

“Wrong again. Polly was an old friend.”

“You were hanging off the balcony the night she disappeared. I was watching from the street.”

What the hell, I’d go first. “She followed a man from Belize to Washington. Looked all over but couldn’t find him. Two weeks
later she bought it. Her body’s missing. I’ve been trying to find out who did it and why. I keep coming back to. Fausto. Your
turn.”

“So you didn’t kill her?” he asked incredulously.

“Cut the shit,” I snapped. “I found her dead. Her body disappeared while I was dangling nine floors above the pavement. Where’d
you get your face?”

“Mexico, about a year ago. Fausto paid for the operation and told me he’d be using me someday. Kept me on retainer until the
call came a few weeks ago.” Cecil admired his features in a silver plate. “They didn’t have to change much.”

“You’re a perfect clone except for the ass. Marvel’s got more mush.”

“That’s what Polly said, too. You ladies work for the same boss?”

“Irrelevant. What were you supposed to do for Fausto?” I sniffed the Colt barrel. “Don’t irritate me. I’ve had a hard night.”

“He brought me to Washington. Stuck me in this house in the burbs with tapes of Marvel and told me to perfect his voice and
signature. Said I was going to help him have a laugh with an old friend. That’s all he told me. I wasn’t about to ask him
any questions. But pretty soon I was climbing the walls. Fortunately, Polly dropped in one afternoon.” He chuckled. “Nearly
broke my neck.”

That was her preferred foreplay. “Of course you never told Fausto the two of you had met.” Correct. “So you entertained each
other for a week to relieve the tedium. Then someone else moved first. Exit Polly. What were you doing, spying on her the
night you saw me hanging off the balcony? A little jealous, maybe? Wondering if she were really serious about Bobby Marvel?”

He flushed. “I didn’t make the same mistake with you.”

“But you followed me. Sorry, tried to follow me. I suppose the orchids were your juvenile idea of a joke.”

“I was bored stiff, luv. My only sport was visiting the florist and following you. There was a car in the garage and I kept
my breakouts to a minimum.”

“Fausto didn’t order you to follow me?”

“God no! After I told him about you hanging off the balcony, he forbade me to leave the house. But I couldn’t tolerate being
cooped up for so long. You became my secret project. A hired man’s got to keep himself in trim.”

“So you finally got your first role playing president for Tuna. Poor guy really thought he was meeting Marvel, didn’t he.”

“That was a spur-of-the-moment joke,” Cecil replied. “As well as dress rehearsal. Fausto knew I was going mad waiting for
the main event.”

“What did you tell Tuna?”

“Said I’d try to cut him a couple of deals with the Pentagon. Pure hot air but he bought it. I did well that night.”

“Didn’t do too badly with Justine, either.”

He flushed. “You’re a friggin’ cat, that’s what you are.”

If only I had nine lives. “What does that floozy have to do with all this?”

“She manages Marvel. Gives me tips on his personal habits. Liaises with Fausto.”

Repays old debts. “Does she have any idea how far she’s sticking her neck out?”

“She’d stick her neck out from here to China if it wrecked Marvel. But that’s her problem.”

“Why is she screwing my pianist?”

Cecil looked surprised. “I don’t know a thing about that.”

“Fine. So after you snow Tuna, Fausto puts you on the shelf for another week. You behave except for a few more attempts to
follow me. Fausto finally calls tonight to say the show’s on the road. Who told the warden at Lorton you were coming?”

“Justine. She rode out with me. Brought him to the car. Made sure I did what I was supposed to do.”

“And you came through with flying colors. Why didn’t you leave tonight with Fausto?”

“I didn’t feel like going back to Mexico just yet,” Cecil smiled pleasantly at me. “Thought I’d kill you first. An eye for
an eye.”

I blew a bullet hole in my husband’s priceless red divan. Never liked the color much. “You would have gotten the wrong eye.
If you had just stuck around Watergate that first night instead of following me back to the hotel, you would have saved us
both a lot of trouble.” I laid the Colt on the piano. “You almost killed me at Louis’s house.”

“I like to see what I’m up against.” He took the gun. “You’re good.”

Sometimes. “I’m surprised Fausto left you behind.”

“He doesn’t know it yet. He was not what you’d call with it when they loaded him on the plane.”

“Listen,” I said, sitting next to Cecil, Bobby, whoever the hell he was. “I have to know who killed Polly.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing myself. Who was she looking for? She never told me.”

“The guy you just sprang from Lorton.”

“Shit! Figgis Cole? Who’s he?”

“A friend of Fausto’s. Can you lie low for a few days?”

Cecil frowned. “I’m getting a serious case of cabin fever, babe.”

“Fifty grand.” I’d blow Barnard’s slush fund to find her killer. “And you jump off the Washington Monument if I tell you to.”

“You got a deal.”

I stood up. “Who knows about you?”

“Justine and Fausto. That’s it.”

“Let’s hope so.” Told Cecil it was time to get invisible and turned off the lights. We were halfway up Fausto’s driveway when
I noticed headlights coming a tad too slowly down the street. “Duck.”

Rhoby’s Hummer nearly squeezed me into the curb. As she leaned out the window, her tank top revealed half a boob and lush
tufts of armpit hair. The studs in her eyebrows gleamed like fireflies. “Hi Les! I had a feeling you might be rehearsing with
Fausto.”

“Aren’t you working tonight?”

“I’m on my way in. Did you get my message about lunch?”

“I’ve been really tied up lately.”

An awkward silence then, “Chickie hasn’t been leaning on you, has she? That stupid bitch! I’ll cut her in half!”

“She’s pretty big,” I said. “I’ll call you, Rhoby.”

“I’ve been practicing!” she called after me.

I hooked left on Connecticut Avenue. “You can get up now.”

“Who was that?” Cecil asked, unfolding from the floor.

“Another friend of Fausto’s.” I passed Walter Reed Hospital, where Jojo Bailey had lain in state for almost two weeks now.
“Where’d he find you?”

“Through a friend in Belize. Simon. Does all the contracting.”

He was contracting with the worms now. I dumped Cecil with a wad of cash at a flophouse in Silver Spring. He’d relax with
the porno flicks until I caught up with him in a day or two.
Loose cannon, Smith.
Absolutely right. But he was all the ammo I had. Returned to the hotel, tried to sleep but kept hearing footsteps in the
dark so I packed a few things and joined the first wave of commuters on the Beltway. Time to jump jungles again.

C
ALLED THE QUEEN
from Miami just to let her know that Louis had escaped yet again and I was going after him. “Where’s the double?” was her
only question.

“Waiting for me in Silver Spring.” I tried not to take the ensuing oaths personally. “We’re not kidding anyone, Maxine. He
saw me hanging from Barnard’s balcony. Cecil knew she wasn’t just a bimbo named Polly. He doesn’t care what my business is.
He just wants to know who killed her. Even a mercenary has a sense of vengeance.” Plus I was paying him fifty grand.

“What makes you think he’s not going to squeal on you?”

“We made a deal.”

Maxine sighed. I was so far blown I might as well have tattooed Special Agent Smith on my forehead. Ah well, perhaps I’d step
on a fer-de-lance and end her troubles. She could start all over again with seven wilier women. “Where’s Fausto, by the way?

“With Louis.”

“It
is
Louis you’re after.”

“I’ll take care of him first.”

She didn’t ask what loose ends I’d be wrapping up second. The Queen had replenished my insomnia kit in Miami so I gave myself
a booster shot before going to the gate. Every television in the terminal was squawking about Jojo Bailey. Poor Bobby, speaking
from the hospital, looked as if he had been swabbing his eyes with ammonia.

The plane to Belize was even emptier than last time, but we were flying right into hurricane season. I sat behind a bunch
of student archaeologists who had paid two thousand bucks each to excavate someone else’s site. Two fiftyish women with long
red nails and hair like cotton candy, obviously misinformed about the chances of picking up a second husband in the jungle,
struggled past with buffalo-size carry-ons. The two of them filled the cabin with aromas of perfume, sunscreen, mouthwash,
talcum, and hairspray, determined against all odds to smell clean during this expedition. A pair of Creoles with teeth like
kernels of corn straggled on last. We flew over dark blotches on the Gulf of Mexico, then tree-choked earth: soon all that
green would swallow me again. Bumpy landing, inside and out.

Fausto’s Piper was parked at the end of the runway at Belize City. I felt nothing: it was just a machine. Harmless. The old
headache roared back the instant I stepped onto the tarmac. Already my brain was screaming for water. My clothing wilted halfway
to the terminal and breeze only thickened a film of sweat. Cosima Wagner, back for more puff journalism, sailed past a dull
customs official. I rented a jeep. Bought water and machete and once again headed west, passing the same car wrecks under
rotting porches, the same laundry on sagging lines, even the same people slouching in the same armchairs. Only the road kill
had been rearranged.

After a quick downpour, a plague of frogs flopped onto the highway. I tried not to flatten too many of them but I feared slowing
down, letting daylight slip away from me, because with it went my sight and most of my nerve. I buzzed past the bus from hell
and, one by one,
les misérables
waiting for it. No traffic whatever at Belmopan, the capital in the middle of nowhere. Rattled across the bridge at San Ignacio.
With each mile, mechanical sounds were increasingly displaced by the noises of birds, insects, water, until finally only the
purr of the jeep reminded me that I had come from the twentieth century. I made the mountains by dusk.

A few thousand tons of water had pummeled the side road since my last visit: whatever time I had gained on the highway, I
lost in the ruts. Muck slurped my tires, shimmied the axle this way and that. Bats zipped inches from the windshield as the
sun crashed behind the mountains.
Keep rolling, Smith.
I parked in the ferns. The moment my feet touched moss, the cicadas shrieked. Their noise was ugly, menacing, everywhere:
already I was outnumbered a billion to one, and that was only the insects. Would have turned back but Fausto was on the other
end of this path, chortling at his cleverness.

Brandishing my machete, I stomped into the jungle. This time around, my fangs grew much more quickly. The heavy smells, the
gnats, the sweat, were not unfamiliar and I had a working flashlight now. Would have preferred a rifle and wings but hey,
fire and rocks had done the job for the Neanderthals. The terror would never recede, though, not in this darkness. The ratio
of appetite to food was just too overwhelming.

Hours later the jungle ended and I hit tall grass. The black sky shivered with stars. Leaves dipped in the slow wind. Anywhere
else, props for a romantic evening; here, weapons for the hunt. I played my flashlight over Ek’s shack but no one came to
greet me. Nothing inside but dead beetles. Even his hammock was gone. I sat on the stoop, watching heat lightning buffet the
hills: only one place left to go. First I drank a liter of water. Every seam on my body had turned slimy and fragrant. Dirt
had settled in all cavities and I itched from head to toe. Didn’t know if I could make this next hike without Ek. If I got
lost between here and those hills, no one would ever find me. Was that such a dreadful thing? This time around I didn’t think
so.

Took my last look at open sky and dipped back into the jungle. Perhaps someone was expecting me after all: Barnard’s notches
in the tree trunks had recently been refreshed. I thought of Ek as I followed the trail. Was he glad that Louis had come back?
Would he be glad to see me again? Then the cicadas went fortissimo, I came too close to a growl in the brush, and subjective
thought ceased. I began to hallucinate that Ek’s flare was just beyond the next vine. I thought I heard his voice.
Stay with it, Smith. You’re almost here.
The hell I was. Sooner or later those notches would lead me to a river.