Double Agent

by Gretchen Archer

  “So Jug called and asked me if I wanted to make a quick buck.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “Today, but way back today because it was still dark. Maybe two or four in the morning. Maybe three. I heard Jug’s voice and BAM! I remembered everything. Like I remembered I was broke.”

  “Make a quick buck doing what?” Bradley asked.

  “Get money out of boxes. Jug said come downstairs, help him, and he’d cut me in. I helped and didn’t get cut in. I got roped and tied and left under slot machines.”

  Which was better than the imposter gaming agents got out of the deal.

  I wondered if Danielle knew how lucky she was to be alive.

  Then I wondered why Danielle was still alive.

  “Did you know what you were doing was wrong?” Sandy Marini asked.

  “No.”

  Classic Danielle.

  “Jug said we were helping Davis.”

  That shut things down.

  “You know what I couldn’t figure out?”

  There was no telling what Danielle couldn’t figure out.

  “Was it like one thousand and two thousand and three thousand and four thousand added up? Or was it four thousand all together? Because I didn’t want Jug cheating me.”

  “Stop, Danielle,” I said.

  “You’re incriminating yourself,” Sandy explained.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said. “Next time somebody says don’t open that door, you better believe I’m not opening that door.”

  Jug, when, wherever, and if we found him, was going to prison. Somehow Jug Dooley had avoided prison time his whole life. He had a misdemeanor record that would stretch from Pine Apple to Biloxi, then back again, had spent more nights in lockup than he had his own bed, had paid enough court costs to own a small island, and had racked up so many community service hours he could run Wilcox County Services in his sleep. But that was then. In the commission of his latest crimes, he’d aided, abetted, and profited too much to avoid hard time. Even turning on the faucet in a hotel room would be ruled felony for willful destruction of private property.

  And to Jug, it was just turning on a faucet.

  But to what end? Why would someone willfully destroy our property when their goal was to rob us? And why the fourth floor? The fourth floor was the first level of guest rooms, and they were fine. The damage happened below, on the third floor, which was ninety percent artists’ residences, or, better put, theater dorms, housing for visiting entertainment acts and their entourages. Cirque du Soleil brought two hundred performers at a time who moved into third-floor rooms for weeks on end at least twice a year. And several of their rooms had suffered heavy bathtub runoff damage—furniture, carpets, linens, wall treatments—all waterlogged.

  Why? The other ten percent of the third floor was the guest business center—never used by guests, ever, because no one came to the Bellissimo to work—but often used by non-Bellissimo contract employees when they were onsite and in need of workspace. Including the Mississippi Gaming Board. And that was why.

  The Mississippi Gaming Board office plus flooding equaled abduction.

  Because flooded hotel rooms meant copious amounts of laundry. Laundry that was lobbed into huge canvas carts. Then emptied into a large metal laundry chute. Then picked up in the dungeon by Gulfcoast Laundry.

  The dungeon.

  Again.

  “We need to go back to the dungeon.” I crawled out from under the craps table. I turned around on all fours to announce, “The real gaming agents are in the laundry chute.”

  Half an hour later, by the light of our single flashlight, and after another trip down the trapdoor steps, through the graveyard, down the long hall that led to laundry pickup, we tore the metal panels of the laundry chute away with metal strips we pulled off graveyard slot machines, then dug out enough casino laundry to get to the agents from where they were trapped, somewhere near the second floor.

  The first gaming agent to fall through the chute was wearing green paisley boxer shorts. He stood, groaned, stretched his back, then scanned our faces until he found Bradley’s. “You’re going down, Cole.” Five minutes later the second gaming agent, wearing blue-gray boxer briefs, tumbled out to say a version of the same thing. “Your casino days are over, Cole.”

  The good news was that the dirty laundry sopped up what was left of the dungeon flood water the pump hadn’t had a chance to relocate.

  The bad news was everything else.

  I waited with Danielle around the mountains of laundry in the hallway while the other rescuers and the two rescuees trudged to the exit door, the same exit door that had almost killed Danielle. If we could make it out the door, up the ramp, and around the building, then we could use Sandy’s serviceable radio to contact Biloxi PD and ask them to contact someone on Disaster by satellite phone to let us in. Heads down, traveling in a life-lock chain, we could make it through the rain to safety. If lightning didn’t strike us first.

  And I’d promised my father I’d stay safe.

  We didn’t have to worry about rain, or lightning, or life-lock chains, because the exit door was blocked. Bradley said it looked like the flash flooding had carried all the debris in Harrison County to our service drive. There would be no escape through our dungeon door without chainsaws.

  So, as it turned out, I survived the first few hours of Hurricane Kevin in the casino under a craps table with my real husband, drowned-rat Danielle Sparks, Biloxi Police Captain Sandy Marini, Jackson Police Department Emergency Response Agent Werner Graham, three dead bodies, and two all-but-naked Mississippi gaming agents who’d spent more than twenty-four hours in a laundry chute.

  FOURTEEN

  The storm raged on.

  And still, it was just the outer bands.

  The gaming agents, eating bag after bag of potato chips from Snacks, the only food we had access to, crunched out the sound of the rain. They stopped chewing to listen when Sandy’s radio interrupted.

  “All units standby for a Weather One broadcast.”

  Amused radio affirmations followed.

  “Is anyone taking this storm seriously?” Emergency asked. “Are you people that weather resistant?”

  Sandy said, “Laughing to keep from crying.”

  “Does anyone know what time it is?” Bradley shook his watch.

  One of the gaming agents, whose watch hadn’t drowned in the dry laundry chute, checked the glowing face on his wrist. “It’s two o’clock.”

  “The hurricane hasn’t made landfall yet,” Sandy said.

  “We’re hours from landfall,” Bradley said. “You’ll hear panic when it hits.”

  “If my radio still works,” Sandy said.

  Danielle asked for a Coke.

  Bradley told her the soft drink dispensers ran on electricity. No Coke.

  She said, “What about a Sprite?”

  I stayed out of it, because I was thinking.

  The potato chip gaming agent stopped chewing when he realized I was staring at him. He pressed his bent knees together tighter and held out his potato chip bag. I shook my head no, because with the thought of what might be happening on Disaster, there was no way I’d be able to swallow.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He swallowed.

  “We went to the office we use on the third floor, printed our paperwork, then we made a pot of coffee and waited for your call.”

  “Next, we woke up naked in a laundry chute,” the other one said.

  “How much later?” I asked.

  “A long time later,” the potato chip gaming agent said. “The weather woke us up.”

  “And the last thing you remember?” I asked.

  “Coffee,” they said together.

  Someone spiked their coffee.


  Did the same person drop them down the laundry chute?

  I remembered poking my head in the great room door on Disaster the night before, at least an hour after dinner, and seeing tables laden with dirty dishes, empty wine bottles, and lobster shells. And then there was Bianca’s musty Disaster bed. And Bianca complaining her Disaster suite had been inadequately serviced and she couldn’t find her prescription medications. Every bit of it pointing to Broom, the Storm housekeeper. My head thudded to my bent knees with a horrifying thought about his cousin, Filet, the Disaster chef, handing off my children to the Weather One crew, for which, the more I thought about it, I would be forever grateful. Regardless of the circumstances, they hadn’t spent more than a few minutes with Filet. And no minutes at all that I knew of with his cousin Broom.

  I placed a hand on my husband’s wet sleeve. “It’s Broom. He would have removed the laundry from the flooded rooms. It was Broom.”

  “What?” Emergency asked.

  “It was Broom,” I said. “Broom.”

  Bradley took a deep breath. “Mop. And you’re right. It’s Mop and Filet.”

  “Please don’t talk about real food,” the paisley boxer-shorted gaming agent said.

  “Filet?” Emergency asked.

  “Who is my person?” Sandy asked.

  His mouth full of chips, the boxer-briefed agent said, “Honestly?” He threw down the cellophane bag. “The minute I get out of here I’m putting in my papers. Casinos are crazy. All you people who work in casinos are crazy. Everyone who goes to a casino is crazy. And I’m not spending one more crazy minute with any of you if I can help it.”

  “Bradley.” I said his name the way I said it when Bex or Quinn had fevers. “We have to go.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Let’s go.”

  “No, I’m serious, Bradley. We have to get to Disaster.”

  “Do you have any bright ideas?” Sandy asked.

  “We need a magic elevator,” Danielle said.

  I heard the word elevator and BAM! I remembered everything. “We have one.”

  “We have no power,” Emergency said.

  “The Disaster elevator runs on generator power.” I blamed not remembering the Disaster elevator earlier on sleep deprivation. “We don’t have electricity to call the elevator, but what if it’s already on this level? Can we manually pull open the doors? Once we’re in, we’ll have electricity.”

  We sounded like a herd of horses.

  Thirty minutes later, the casino level Disaster elevator doors destroyed, we stepped into the steel-walled hall of the thirteenth floor. It smelled like a garlic factory and looked like a massacre. Bodies were stretched out side by side in two long rows. No Hair, Baylor, Fantasy, and one of the women from Michigan, Jenn Chojnacki, were walking between the bodies. Everyone but Jenn drew on us.

  Danielle Sparks screamed bloody murder.

  Jenn Chojnacki clapped her hands over her ears.

  I’m not sure I was breathing.

  “Where have you people been?” Fantasy tucked her gun. As casual as could be. As if she weren’t standing between two dead Storms. “And what happened to you?” We looked, collectively, like the wrath of God, two of us in our underwear. I was horrified to spot four pig feet in the air among the bodies. One of the underweared gaming agents, the one who intended to put in his papers, dropped to the floor in a heap.

  “This is everyone who ate the lasagna.” No Hair was between dead Chip Chapman and dead Miller the Medic. “Some of them fell asleep on their plates.”

  Bradley took slow steps, his footfall echoing off the great hall walls. “They’re not dead?” He turned back to us. “They’re not dead.”

  “They’re all alive,” Baylor said. “They were lasagna doped.”

  Bianca’s missing Ambien. Bianca’s missing Xanax.

  Jenn Chojnacki waved. “I’m vegan.” She waved again.

  My wobbly legs carried me to my husband. I hid behind him and looked over the sea of sleepers. The pig’s face was covered in Filet’s Secret Sauce. She must have been one of the lasagna lunchers who’d fallen asleep on her plate.

  “How is it the three of you skipped lunch?” Bradley asked.

  “We were too busy to eat,” Fantasy said.

  “Where’s Bianca? Where’s your family?”

  “They’re all in the suites. Reggie wouldn’t let the boys go to the cafeteria for lunch because Davis’s boobs were on fire.”

  The megatower slot machines. Again.

  Danielle pushed through to Eddie and the pig.

  “Where are Filet and Broom?” I asked.

  “Gone,” Fantasy said.

  * * *

  We interrupted our regularly scheduled program of transferring the lasagna sleepers to beds in the bunkroom when a satellite phone ringing in the Weather One producer’s pocket wouldn’t stop. Bradley did the honors.

  “Wake him up.”

  “I don’t think you understand.” Bradley had the phone on speaker mode. Those of us who hadn’t had lasagna for lunch were gathered around it. “He’s not just asleep. He’s completely passed out.”

  “I don’t care if he’s dead. Haven’t you seen Weekend at Bernie’s?”

  On the other end of the line was media mogul Joe Blain, founder, owner, and president of Cable One.

  “Get him in a chair,” Mr. Blain said, “push the red button on the camera, and get his ass on air. Weather One’s highest ratings ever were when Chippie kept getting hit in the head with the hail glaciers in Texas, and he was so stupid drunk he couldn’t even stand up. We had six million people watching him try to lick his own elbow while a hail glacier the size of a barn was dropping through the sky headed straight for him. It’s a wonder it didn’t flatten him like a pancake. Are you one of the two hundred and sixty million people who’ve watched the YouTube video?”

  “I’ve seen it,” Sandy, who’d changed into a Storm suit, whispered.

  Emergency, also in a Storm suit, waved. He’d seen it.

  The gaming agents, wearing Storm uniforms as well, lifted me-too fingers.

  “Ratings gold, Cole,” Mr. Blain said. “Gold.”

  “I’m sure,” Bradley said.

  “You know how many people are tuned in now?” Mr. Blain asked.

  “I do not,” Bradley said.

  “Then let me tell you,” Mr. Blain said. “I’m sitting on a forty-three percent rating and a sixty-eight percent share. Let me put that in layman’s terms for you, Cole. Those are Super Bowl numbers. One hundred million people are tuned in to my weather channel to see Chip and his drunk girlfriends from Missouri.”

  “Michigan.” Jenn Chojnacki jumped in. “Me and Summer are from Michigan, Mr. Blain. It’s a pleasure to meet you on the phone, and Chippie really is way asleep. He ate some bad lasagna.”

  Silence on the other end of the satellite call.

  More silence.

  Jenn opened her mouth to say more. We stopped her with hand gestures; let him think about it.

  “I can see where that might go south on us fast,” Blain said.

  We all breathed a sigh of relief.

  “How do you feel, Miss Michigan?”

  “Me?” Jenn Chojnacki poked her chest. “Me?”

  “Yes, you,” Mr. Blain said. “Have you checked your Instagram account? You have more than three hundred thousand followers.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Me?”

  “How’s your girlfriend feeling?” Mr. Blain asked.

  “She ate the lasagna.”

  Joe Blain cleared his throat.

  We waited.

  We heard him gulp something, then slam down a glass.

  “What do you know about weather, Miss Michigan?”

  “Well.” Jenn Chojnacki tapped a finger to her cheek, took a deep breath, and spoke to the ceiling
. “I know about snow. Michigan, you know. We get snow. Personally, I’m okay with it. Or I should say I’m used to it. Now this rain? Not so much. I don’t even carry an umbrella anymore. You know when you’re trying to get in the car? And it’s raining? And you’re trying to close your umbrella? And you get wetter than if you weren’t fighting your umbrella and just got in the car? And another reason I stopped carrying umbrellas is because I kept losing them. I thought, why waste all that umbrella money? When it’s raining, you know what I do? I look up at the sky and say, ‘Why don’t you just freeze?’”

  She didn’t seem to notice Joe Blain was carrying on an entirely different sideline conversation with someone else on his end.

  “But I do like weather. Clouds,” she mused to the ceiling, “the sun, the moon, rainbows, the springtime, and my favorite, fall. Now in Michigan—”

  “Can you read cue cards?”

  We all looked at the satellite phone.

  “Excuse me?” Jenn Chojnacki said.

  “Can you read cue cards?” Joe Blain repeated. “If someone held up cue cards, could you read them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, get ready to read cue cards on national television.”

  Jenn Chojnacki bounced in place and clapped her hands in absolute glee.

  Everyone else went back to lining up sleepers for transport to the bunkroom. I turned for the suites, having put it off as long as I possibly could. I coded myself through the vault door, took a deep breath, and knuckled Bianca’s door. After a minute, I tapped a little harder. After another minute, I beat on the door. “Bianca!”

  If something had happened to Bianca, I’d never forgive myself.

  If I had to give Bianca CPR after giving Danielle CPR, I’d never forgive her.

  I ran to my own suite, flying by a bedroom full of (Xbox) Fantasy’s boys, past the room my mother-in-law slept in the night before, past the room my mother and my daughters had slept in, and finally reached mine and Bradley’s Disaster bedroom, where I turned a few panicked circles before I spotted the keycard to Bianca’s suite on the nightstand. I flew back, past the boys and their Xbox again, keyed myself into Bianca’s room, my heart beating out of my chest, to find her stretched out and facedown across the gold sofa of the sitting room, a half-eaten plate of lasagna on the small dining table beside her. When my dizziness passed, I rolled Bianca over and covered her with a gold throw. Then I stepped into her bedroom, returning with her pillow and her Facial Radiance sleep mask. The one with the embroidered eyelashes. I slipped the pillow under and the sleep mask over her head. I stood beside her, catching my breath, until hers was deep and steady again. “Sweet dreams, Bianca.”