Jezebel's Ladder (25 page)

The clerk’s smile went up a hundred
watts. “Excellent!”

After Jez signed for an
astronomical bill, they ran her magic card—no limit yet. Handing over the key
cards, the clerk said, “Very good, Miss. A pleasure to see you again. I’ll send
the complimentary meal vouchers and champagne up to your rooms with the
luggage.”

“No champagne for my room or the
minors,” Jez insisted. The clerk seemed to perk up at this bit of information.
To Claudette, she said, “As for the food, I think I’ve gained enough weight
lately.”

The starlet said, “Hon’, for the
last month, you’ve had a valid medical excuse.”

The clerk immediately texted a
hundred of her closest friends that Jezebel Johnson had to get married because
she was one-month pregnant.

As they left the lobby, Benny
grumbled, “Why didn’t anybody recognize me?”

“Be quiet if you want to get laid
by midnight,” Claudette said. “Tan, get him to the chapel. Trina, I need your
help to wrangle this woman into wrapping paper.” When Daniel tried to follow,
the starlet sent him off with the boys. Being that far away from Trina caused
him discomfort, but he obeyed when they promised to make the separation brief.

Jez’s dress was simple and modest,
showing off her legs, but with shoes that covered her toes completely. Jez
worried about Benny seeing her ‘deformed’ foot so much that Trina loaned her
slippers for later.

Claudette said, “Hon’, I will bet
you a hundred dollars that he never even looks at those slippers tonight.”

With the delays, celebrating, and
photos, they didn’t manage to get back to the room until 1:30 in the morning.
Benny stripped down to his boxer shorts and socks while he waited for her to
change. While not as sculpted as a body builder, Benny was proud of the muscle
definition he had achieved for his aging body. The delay seemed to be taking so
long that he picked up the TV remote.

Her voice came from the bathroom, “Mr.
Hollis, are you feeling adventurous?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Hollis. I’m
pretty exhausted,” he teased. “It would take a lot to inspire me.”

She sauntered up to him in a thin,
gauze wrapping, causing him to drop the remote. “Once I use my line, it’ll take
less than a minute.”

He cracked his neck, and made
sparring warm-up motions with his arms. “Okay, hit me with your best shot.”

From two feet away, his wife wet
her lips with her tongue and stared into his eyes. His empathy talent made the
base of his skull tingle. With all the sincerity she could muster, she
whispered one word. “Yes.”

A shudder of pleasure went through
his body. “Yes, to what?” he gasped.

“For you, anything.”

They never made it to the hot tub.

****

At two in the morning, she asked, “Disappointed?”

He was barely conscious. “No. You
were right, best move ever. We can talk more tomorrow.”

“What makes you think I’m waiting
till then? I came here for the tub,” she said, sliding her right hand under the
sheet and across his lower body with a purpose.

“When a guy reaches a certain age…”
Instantly, his whole body was awake and rigid with anticipation. “Holy Cow, is
that legal? Screw legal. There has to be a commandment against this. How did
you get me to…?”

She grinned, leading him to the
water. “I had dancer friends who were pros. Don’t worry; I checked with your
church on this already. The marriage bed is sacred. We can do whatever we want
and it counts the same as kneeling in the pew.”

Indeed, her new husband called out
to God several times that night.

When PJ woke up Saturday morning, he was alone in Amy’s
living room. His neck hurt, his hair felt oily, his teeth were scummy, and he
had just lost his job. However, he felt strangely buoyant and free. Sunlight
streaming in through the kitchen window prompted him to look at his watch:
eight o’clock. Someone had put a thin blanket over him during the night. As he
folded the blanket, Amy came out of the bedroom, putting on an earring. He
admired the way her hair cascaded when she turned her head.

“Oh, thanks. You didn’t need to,”
she said.

“My mom always told me to be a
polite guest if I wanted to be invited back.” His volume level dropped
considerably as he thought about the implications of what he was saying. He
actually blushed.

Amy smiled gently and continued as
if he hadn’t made any misstep at all. “I’ve put out towels in the bathroom in
case you want to freshen up.”

“Thanks. I could really use that
about now.” The Minnie Mouse shower curtain was a pleasant surprise. After he
dried and changed into clean clothes from his duffel, PJ opened the door and
said, “I like the décor.”

On the phone, Amy held up a finger
to silence him. “By credit card. The number is…” He tuned out politely while
she finalized the arrangements. When she hung up, she said, “The flight leaves
at ten. We’re going to see Nick. I don’t trust that snake Paulson or his
cronies. Here, I made French toast. We have to leave in about fifteen minutes
if we want to make it to the airport on time.”

His mouth watered, so he sat down
obediently. That’s when he noticed the neatly folded e-mail by his plate. “How
did you manage this?”

“I figured we’d need proof if
Paulson turned on us. So I waited until everyone in the room was concentrating
on the Einstein book and slipped the paper into my jacket.”

“You’re a genius,” PJ told her,
putting the paper into his back pocket.

She sighed. “I know. Now eat!”

After a lot of maple syrup and
several healthy-sized bites, he said, “Breakfast is great, but aren’t we
breaking Paulson’s rule about not interfering?”

She brought a small, red suitcase
out of her bedroom. “I’m not interfering. You’re visiting a sick friend. I’m
investigating wetland exploitation. This trip has been on my calendar for
months.”

“For today?”

Amy raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

“Guess not. You travel light,” he
noted.

She went into the bedroom a second
time. This time she brought out a bulging garment bag. His trip would be a
companion ticket purchased with her frequent-flier miles.

As he was rinsing the plate, she
said, “Just put it in the dishwasher.” After a brief pause, she added, “You
know, you’re different from most guys. You’re not such a pig.”

“High praise, indeed. Can I use you
as a reference?”

She appeared to consider this as
they grabbed their luggage and headed for the car. As they pulled out, PJ
spotted a couple of guys dressed like Mormons who had been watching her place.

****

Half an hour before landing, Amy
used the air phone to contact a research assistant in Miami. Her associate had
located three potential asylums and had arranged for the senator to fly to Florida instead of Washington. Then she briefed PJ on the game plan. “We’ll rent a car and
go straight to the hospital. We have about six hours to find something before
the senator arrives.”

He gathered maps while she signed
for the rental car. Unfortunately, that relegated him to the role of navigator
and made her the driver. He missed driving. By the time they reached the first
destination, PJ felt he’d worn a hole in the carpet trying to step on the passenger-side
brakes.

The closest hospital turned out to
be a rehab center for rich people recovering from substance-abuse problems. No
Nick there. At the hour-and-a-half mark, they got to the second hospital. PJ
waited in the visitors’ room while Amy dealt with the receptionist at the front
desk. It was an elite institution that didn’t like uninvited guests.

While he waited, Amy alternately
flattered and bullied doctors. Although, even threats of obstruction of justice
and contempt of Congress wouldn’t budge them. PJ got bored with the magazines
pretty fast and started wandering around looking at the wall decorations. The
establishment believed heavily in the healing power of art therapy. The works
of their patients hung from the marble walls in the waiting area and hallways.
He looked over a collection of recent works propped against the base of the
wall near the men’s room. Someone had left them there momentarily while
answering the call of nature. One chalk drawing in particular struck PJ like a
physical blow, forcing the air out of his lungs.

Amy was at the end of her rope.

“He’s here,” PJ managed to squeak
out.

“The senator?” she asked looking
around.

“Nick!” he hissed. “This drawing is
his.”

He held up a drawing. The center
held a giant infinity symbol filled with stars, tinged with blue sparks around
the edges. In one corner was a rocket launching, the second a planet, the third
had an open book with seals broken along its edge, and the fourth, a sea of red
with a smoking, black object in the center.

While Amy phoned her researcher, PJ
brought out the big guns and called Nick’s mother. As the only living relative,
she held a great deal of sway over whom the doctors let in. As the wife of a
millionaire, she held even more. Since PJ had been Nick’s best friend for the
last eight years, the mom demanded that he and his ‘girlfriend’ be allowed
access. “Unless you’re mistreating my son in some way and you don’t want anyone
to see.”

The receptionist had them in a
pastel room with puffy furniture inside of two minutes.

“How?” asked Amy, impressed.

“I’m from Jersey. I’m connected.”

When Nick came in, PJ barely
recognized him. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating well; his eyes were hollow
and haunted. He was wearing soft, blue pajamas and appeared heavily sedated.
When the interns who transported him left, he stared blankly out the barred
window.

“Nick,” PJ said, trying to get his
attention. “The launch went up early. We couldn’t stop it.”

Nick blinked.

PJ introduced Amy, but Nick just
grabbed her pocket calendar and pen to doodle with.

Amy said, “We know about the water
problem, but the e-mail message was intercepted. They’ve scrubbed Mycroft. What
is it they’re hiding? What is it they don’t want us to know?”

“Chicken Little,” he explained.

She was taken aback at the free
association, but persisted. “Mr. Cassavettis, this is serious. A United States senator is on his way.”

Nick ignored her and kept drawing.

PJ intervened. “I talked to your
mom. She’s worried about you. Are they treating you okay here?”

The scientist shrugged. Something
about the way he was acting made his friend suspect this was all a show. Amy
was busting a gut, so PJ put a finger to his lips. They would play along as
much as possible.

“Your librarian friend Doris told
me about your overdue book. I’d be willing to help if you let me know where to
find it.”

Nick didn’t take his eyes off the
paper. “Just going to burn. All going to burn.” If he had shouted or raved, the
statement wouldn’t have made much of an impact. Instead, he said it the way
most people discussed what was going to be on TV next. “T.S. Eliot was wrong.”

PJ only knew one poem by T.S. Eliot
and it said the world would end with a whimper not a bang. He walked the fine
line between discretion and the need for clues. “Sometimes it just
feels
like your world is coming to an end, like what happened with Gloria.”

“Get away!” Nick ordered as he
threw the pocket calendar. As PJ caught it, he glimpsed a message written
inside.

When Amy tried reasoning, Nick
raised his voice. “Gloria is a whore, the Whore of Babylon!” As he bellowed,
the orderlies rushed in, and PJ pulled Amy away as quickly as possible. He
couldn’t wait to get to the parking lot to read that note.

“Are all your friends this
charming?” Amy demanded when we reached the car.

The programmer had a weak smile on
his face. “It was all an act, or most of it. He didn’t want anyone overhearing,”
he explained. To her credit, she didn’t complain when he flipped through the
pages of her calendar.

Eventually, he found a crude sketch
of a nuclear symbol with a skull inside. Scrawled beneath it were the words
‘Crupkin model.’ He read it like a declaration of proof to Amy.

“What’s that mean?” she asked.

“I have no idea, but if it’s
anything like the Reuter equations, Crupkin is probably a scientist he wants us
to talk to. I’ll lay you odds we can find him with an online,
scientific-literature search.”

Jez woke at six Saturday morning with a pain in her foot
that warned of rain. She smiled at the exhausted man sprawled on the bed beside
her. Putting on her bunny slippers to protect against the cold, tile floor, she
went to the bathroom to take some pain pills. She hobbled like an
eighty-year-old. To give the medicine time to kick in, she checked her texts.

Claudette had sent, “Gone to
breakfast with Steve.”
Smart move taking a guard
, she thought. Jez was
still paranoid herself. She kept two Tasers within arm’s reach at any given
time, one under the bed and one in the emergency bag by the door.

She snickered at the most recent
message from Trina, “UR2 loud!”

Jez sent back, “YRU up?”

“We have nightmares,” the young,
beauty-pageant winner replied. That was a can of worms they couldn’t discuss on
the small screen.

After grabbing a hotel bathrobe,
Jez sent, “Meet IRL.”

Jez left her own door slightly ajar
so it wouldn’t click or beep to wake her sleeping lover. Jez was waiting in the
hallway when Trina came out in a Lycra exercise bra and shorts. Today, her
color scheme was black with hot-pink racing stripes. Even this early, she wore
her makeup. Sitting on the windowsill, the girl asked, “Why are
you
still up?”

Daniel must have been asleep
because Jez couldn’t hear the usual mental echo in her words. “I only get an
average of four hours most nights,” Jez said, avoiding mention of the pain.

“You look different today.”

“I’ve got a boatload of warm fuzzy
combined with just a little ‘what the hell did I just do?’ I haven’t even seen
his bedroom in the house yet. There could be rock-band posters all over the
walls.”

“Don’t worry; Benny loves you more
than Zeppelin—and that’s saying something. We’re happy for you both.”

“You’re trying to change the
subject,” Jez said shaking a finger. “We came out here to talk about
nightmares. Are they yours or Daniel’s?”

“We share. Daniel’s are about
losing the use of his legs, seeing you tortured, and Una splattered against a
wall. Mine are about rape, what someone sounds like when you shove a
screwdriver into their skull, and seeing Una splattered against a wall. We have
trouble being this close to her killer.”

“Claudette? I didn’t realize. How
can I…?”

Trina held up a hand. “You’re not
super-mom. You stay awake dealing with enough people’s problems. We’ll work
through it on our own. We’re strong. We are we.”

Jez put an arm around her
ex-roommate. The girl continued, “It helps that both of them did it for you.
Una could still have killed you, but chose not to. As horrible as it sounds,
what Maverick did to Starlet erases a little of my hate for her. One of my
sisters died in a similar way. Daniel apologizes for his part in Una’s death
every night.”

After a moment of silence, Jez
sighed. “We didn’t use protection last night. I think Benny really wants a
family. You girls keep referring to me as a mom, but I don’t know if that will
ever happen. The pages are hell on my body, worse than long-distance running on
Mount Everest. I was good for the past two weeks—no sneaking calculations—but
now my cycle is half the mandatory length for implantation.”

Trina pointed to the butterfly
around Jezebel’s neck. “Get rid of that and you might stand a chance.”

The former dancer had forgotten she
had the device on. “Oh. Without it, quantum sneaks really hurt. If I try one
without this, my organs get damaged. Doc Weiss told me to keep it until I heal
more. I don’t know when that will be. There’s always another emergency.”

Trina laid her head on Jez’s
shoulder and said very quietly, “If you need us to, we would carry a baby for
you, yours and Benny’s. It would be like having one of our own.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Jez said, crying and
hugging her old roommate tight. Then she got hit with cramps, gripping her
above the stomach, almost into the chest. Doubled over, she screamed, “Aaaaah!
An active is coming up the elevator!”

An instant later, Trina pulled up a
two-foot stake from the potted plant by the elevator and crouched off to the
side.

This time Jez’s senses were
different. When she concentrated, she could feel weaker lights–five normal
humans with the active. Was it the medication or was she just evolving? She
could tell the man in front was nervous, the only non-professional, probably an
innocent clerk with the key.

Using the butterfly computations,
she could see the scene play out in her mind. Benny was unconscious. Daniel
wouldn’t get to his wheelchair in time. Jez could get the clerk out of the way
and maybe stun one agent with her weapon. Her guard, Carl, probably wouldn’t
make it into the foyer until the conflict was over. Trina would kill the Rex in
the first second and probably disable a few more agents. But one of them
would
shoot her. Because of the girl’s new talents, the resulting wave of pain or
death scream would broadcast through everyone on the Ladder side. They could
all end up dead or incapacitated.

Holding her Taser out to Trina, she
ordered, “Escape down the stairway.”

Trina gripped the stake tightly. “We
won’t leave us.”

“Run or I’ll have to zap you and
drag you into the stairs. Trust me!”

Trina was conflicted. “Give us the
butterfly, and we’ll leave.”

The girl was right. The page couldn’t
fall into the wrong hands, but would Trina give it to someone else? It all came
down to trust. This woman had just offered her a child, so Jez handed over her
two most prized possessions: her only weapon and her greatest tool. The loss of
these and her friend left Jez dazed. She heard the stairwell door click shut
just as the elevator dinged open.

The agents had flak vests and caps
that read FBI.

“I’ve come to turn myself in,” she
announced.

The men were puzzled as they moved
cautiously into the foyer. Brooklyn Carl opened his door, gun in hand, but Jez
ordered him to stand down. “I’m surrendering.”

One of the agents patted her down
and confiscated her phone. Another cuffed her and began reading her rights. The
others frisked Carl and searched his room for accomplices. She recognized the
active as a Rex who had been arrested after the raid on the LA headquarters.
She recalled that he had been a professional weightlifter of some kind. “Isn’t
he supposed to be in jail?” she demanded.

“He’s an informant who saw a
terrorist suspect in a recent internet video. He is assisting us in tracking
this dangerous fugitive.” The agent’s voice reminded her of the actor Darren
McGavin.

The weightlifter said, “She’s not
the blonde you want. This is her lesbo girlfriend.”

The head agent was of medium height
and medium build. The only traits that would have pulled him out of a sea of
faces were the hint of red in his short, thinning, brown hair and the highly
polished military shoes. He rolled his eyes. “We tracked her here because Ms.
Johnson got married to a
man
. The clerk tweeted it last night. The east
coast TV morning shows and blogs are showing her wedding photos from this
hotel.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s not a lesbo,”
the Rex insisted.

“Do you have to make up these
fantasies in prison?” asked Jez.

“Horvath told me herself when I
asked her on a date,” said the lifter.

One of them might have been
,
thought Jez.
Or that could have been her standard kiss-off line.

“You’re right, this is not the
woman we have the warrant for,” said the lead agent. He turned to the clerk and
asked, “Which room was the suspect in?”

“Wait,” she stalled. “Special
Agent, what was your name? I haven’t even seen your credentials.”

Daniel was struggling to look
through the peephole in his door. Benny was sleeping through it all. The agent
in charge flashed a photo ID and introduced himself as Paul Normandy.

“I’m paying for all these rooms.
May I see that warrant you were discussing?” she demanded.

He pulled the document out without
a second thought and held it up for her examination. However, while she was
reading the theft and espionage charges against Nena Horvath in great detail,
Agent Normandy blinked. He seemed to shake off something. “I think I should be
the one asking questions around here.” He pulled out a black-and-white photo of
a woman in skin-tights robbing an office.

“Do you recognize her?”

“When was this taken?”

“Last Tuesday night.”

Jez shook her head. “You have the
wrong person.” The weightlifter was taking too much of an interest in their
discussion. “That steroid monster is ten times more dangerous to you than Miss
Horvath will ever be. He’s stronger than anyone you’ve ever met and nothing
short of a bullet to the brain is likely to stop him.”

Normandy raised his eyebrows and
reassessed the informant. “Thanks for your concern. I’m told this perp only
guarded the escape vehicle, and was a model inmate. Even so, I brought two
extra agents to guard him.”

She pulled her hand loose from the
cuffs while Normandy’s head was turned. When he faced her again, she whispered.
“It won’t be enough. He’ll kill at least one of you before you can blink. He’s
excited now, heart-rate elevated.”

“Our documentation lists the
suspect as Nena Horvath.”

She shook her head as she watched
the hulk shamble across the room. “Nena is a myth. Check any of her references,
phone numbers, or back story. You’ll find no leads: no DNA, no fingerprints,
not even on applications. Unsnap your weapon,” Jez said without changing her
tone.

The weightlifter moved behind the
agent questioning Carl by the stairwell. The criminal was waiting. The two men
were only inches apart. Multitasking, she continued, “Slowly wrap your hand
around the grip. Trina Horvath, however, is real. She is my personal assistant.
Trina was with us Tuesday night. We have at least two witnesses. What you have
is a picture of her sister Sedna.”

When another agent disappeared into
the hotel room, she could feel the Rex’s eyes as they went to the holster in
front of him. The brute’s left arm went around the FBI agent’s throat with
crushing force to silence him while the right drew the man’s gun.

“Turn, now!” she shouted and dove
with her hand toward her own doorknob.

Normandy fired three shots into the
Rex as she dialed 911 on Benny’s phone.

She handed the phone to one of the
agents trying to save the man with the damaged windpipe. She got some of the Rex's
blood on the hem of her robe. “Ambulances are on their way. The woman on the
line will try to talk you through first aid while you’re waiting.”

In all the commotion, no one
re-cuffed her. Agent Normandy stared at Jez the entire time, trying to figure
her out.

After his man was taken care of and
the ambulances were leaving, Normandy’s voice cracked with emotion, “Who is
Sedna and why didn’t this guy want me knowing about her?”

“You’re very perceptive,” she admitted.
“Though, I’m sorry; you’re not cleared for that information.” She went to the
evidence bin and pulled out her phone. She hit the button for the head of the
Midas Project. “Colonel Tannenbaum? Sorry to wake you. Can you tell this nice FBI
agent what he needs to know?”

After a brief discussion, Normandy asked, “Why does a fired cocktail waitress have Homeland Security on speed dial?”

Jez switched to her original
distraction script, “My first crime was a violation of the 1976 US Foreign
Powers Act. Elias Fortune bribed minor officials of the Tibetan government to
look the other way when… well, you’re not cleared for that either. But I didn’t
report it. That makes me an accessory. I demand you take me in.”

“Why don’t we have a seat in Carl’s
room and finish our conversation in a civilized fashion. You’re obviously a
very conscientious citizen. Bribing low-level officials in most of those
countries is practically a requirement. Unless you have something more severe?”

She considered this. “Fortune
bribing officials in Brazil to speed an acquisition of an aerospace company?”

Normandy shook his head. “The US government helped to expedite that transfer. They wouldn’t arrest him for that. Is there
anything that you in particular are guilty of?”

She changed the subject again. “My
friend Daniel can attest to the identity of the woman in the photo. He can tell
the difference in the girls by sight. He’s been sleeping with Trina and somehow
he can tell which is which just by staring at their ass while they walk.”

Not being an idiot, the agent
caught the shift. “Your confession, Ms. Johnson?”

She winced. “Mrs. Hollis now. If
you’ll wake up Benny, he’ll tell you.”

Normandy stared at her. “What did
you do?”

Jez struggled but eventually said, “I’d
have thought it obvious by now to a man of your training. I’ve been stalling so
Trina could get away.”

****

Benny woke at eleven o’clock to
find a swarm of federal agents in his suite. A fully-dressed Jez was
entertaining them and serving coffee while an older man from Homeland Security
explained, “The Horvath girl was trained by ex-KGB agents. She should be
considered armed and dangerous.”

Daniel was curled in the corner
with his arms over his head muttering, “Have to follow.” His frantic breathing
and strained face reminded Benny of a junkie going through withdrawal.

“Babe,” he called, poking just his
head out. “Could I talk to you for a second?”

Jez excused herself and scampered
into the bedroom. When she saw him naked, she cooed, “Trying to tempt me? I
don’t think I’m
that
naughty.”

Her smell brought back fantastic
memories, but he backed away. “For right now, could I just get my underwear and
an explanation?”