“Lemme just turn this off,” Holt said, although he did cast an eye on the phone’s display screen. “Shit,” he grumbled, “I gotta get this…hold a sec.”
Gunnar glanced at Kelly. She was obviously relieved by Holt’s distraction.
“Yeah?” Holt spoke into the phone, his eyes back on Kelly, methodically checking her out. “What? ... Now? ... Okay. … Yeah. … Whatever. … All right.” He tapped the phone’s screen to shut it off. “Shit,” he added, punctuating the exchange. “Hey, look,” he told Gunnar, Frank, and Kelly, “this is totally ridiculous and pissing me off, but I gotta take care of something before we get back on stage.”
With that, Holt turned and lumbered away, disappearing into the rest of the beefy crowd.
“Do take your time,” Kelly said, making no effort to hide her unalloyed distaste for Brad Holt.
“Don’t worry, Kelly,” Frank said, obviously picking up on the negative impression of the Caught in the Buff impresario. “I own him! I’m gonna blow him off the stage.” Then he added with a wink, “And I’m dedicating it to you.”
When the contest resumed, the people took their seats in the auditorium. The fervid throng knew the good part was about to begin. To keep them perked for the show to go on, Jeanie O’Shaughnessy and Arnold Tempelton’s return to their seats must have been delayed on purpose. After being met by a cameraman and an interviewer at the foot of the stage for one more round of questions, Jeanie and Arnold sat down.
“Now this is what it’s all about,” Gunnar whispered to Kelly as the auditorium lights dimmed and the free-posing began.
“I can barely contain myself,” Kelly deadpanned.
So Gunnar added, “Frank told me he’s single, you know.”
CHAPTER 9
Everything has fallen into place at last, Laura kept telling herself with relief as she looked out her hotel room’s peephole. She could see Holt’s room on the far end of the corridor.
Holt had picked up his phone and hadn’t spoken her name, much less anything to the effect that he would come and talk to her in person.
Right now, Laura was not supposed to have been in the Palace Hotel at all. The setup for the next moves of the game had been pulled off perfectly, and the entire WBBF officiating team downstairs believed she was driving to the Fleming Psychiatric Institute in Pasadena.
The first move, scheduled to pay off when room service would arrive at Holt’s room, had been made in the morning. Using the phone in the hotel’s business center, Laura placed a very demanding, quite belligerent order for broccoli salad to be delivered to room 315 exactly at 8:30 p.m. She didn’t use names, only room numbers. A big bowl of broccoli salad had better arrive in her “boyfriend’s” room, WBBF-reserved room 315, exactly on the dot at 8:30 this evening.
Preparations for the Sun State took up the rest of the day, with contestants, many of whom came from parts far enough from Los Angeles, checking into their reserved rooms on the third floor. Holt took a room there, although he spent most of his time at one of his L.A. residences when not ensconced in his Big Bear Lake cottage. Nevertheless, Laura persuaded him to take a room in case they “needed to discuss private matters.” Laura, although living in West Hollywood, reserved a room for herself because she told the rest of the WBBF staff that she wanted to be on the premises at the crack of dawn to oversee every aspect of the setup for the contest. Indeed, she had impressed everyone all day by personally attending to every single display and banner placed throughout the hotel. To be able to do all this, she told everyone, she had checked in last night, spent the night, and was up and at the preparations while most of the WBBF people were still fighting their way through morning traffic.
Unfortunately, the biggest snag in her plans—as the WBBF personnel were to believe—would come up by 5:30 in the afternoon. Laura had spoken to Dr. Collier, her sister’s chief physician at the Fleming Institute, she told the rest of the WBBF team, and the doctor noticed a bad relapse in Emily’s condition. Indeed, Laura had talked to Dr. Collier, called him on her cell at 5:15, as her phone records would attest, yet in truth, there was no change in Emily’s state that was in any way cause for alarm. All of Laura’s colleagues, though, understood why she would announce the beginning of the contest, then quietly slip away as the preliminary rounds got under way.
Actually, Laura slipped away quietly but quite visibly. Marching up the center aisle and out the main doors caught her on the Full Eclipse Productions’ time-coded footage of the contest.
After leaving the building, Laura made small talk with Bo Sullivan, a USC film student working part-time as a parking valet. She asked him whether or not production internships were a part of his studies and if he would be interested in talking to the people managing Jeanie O’Shaughnessy’s YouTube channel. Of course, Laura had been lucky that Bo was an actual film student, although she could have gotten just about any valet’s attention with that offer anywhere in L.A. A statistic Laura read somewhere claimed that one out of every third person in L.A. County was working on his or her Big Screenplay. A large percentage of the L.A. service industry was also comprised of aspiring actors, writers, singers, and directors. The important part of the encounter, however, was the fact that Laura now had a witness who could swear that she indeed had gotten into her car and left the premises at 7:20 p.m. The time of her departure, she hoped, would be impressed on Bo’s memory because they had talked within view of a large electronic display board towering over the parking lot. The board advertised special rates and special happenings at the hotel, as well as the current time and temperature.
The only snag came when Laura tried to swing around to the rear of the hotel. It was impossible. Nearly a third of the parking lots surrounding the building, particularly the section in the rear, were taken over by construction trailers, trucks, and dumpsters. Whatever they were doing to the top floor of this godforsaken place, the construction company in charge had set up camp in back.
Laura would have parked by one of the rear entrances and slipped back into the building there. Now, she parked in the east lot instead and noticed the closest way back into the hotel was through the kitchen entrance. Hurrying through the chaos of the kitchen, she wound up in a corridor going to the backstage area of the convention auditorium. Entering the backstage, because the door to the stairwell on the end of the corridor was chained shut, she crossed what had been the women’s preparation area, then exited into the stairwell through an emergency door on the end of the backstage. She took those back stairs and got up to the third floor. There, she returned to her hotel room until intermission.
“And here he is,” Laura breathed as she saw Holt at the far end of the corridor.
CHAPTER 10
Holt was right on time. Laura watched him swiping his key card to enter his room. Before he stepped inside, he looked around. He was obviously agitated. Laura was supposed to have been meeting him, yet she was nowhere in sight.
Laura’s heart seemed to be hammering against her ribcage. The point of no return was moments away.
She felt inside her jacket pocket for the vial of powdered antidepressants.
Hoping her timing wouldn’t fail her now and no one else appeared in the corridor, Laura stepped out the door and hurried toward Brad’s room. Feeling exactly like she was inside a primal nightmare as she tried to make it to Holt’s door, she tried to move as fast as she could, yet she seemed to be making no progress.
So what if someone comes? So what if someone comes? she almost wound up chanting halfway down the corridor. The only people bound to step into the corridor were the out-of-town competitors who had rooms here. None of the WBBF staff, the people who were aware of her absence, had a reason to be up here.
“What do you want?” Holt barked as he yanked the door open in front of her.
“Brad,” Laura fought to sound calm and catch her breath. “Let me inside for a second.”
“What’s going on?”
Although back on his feet after the fainting spell that preceded the contest, Holt was in horrendous shape. Laura knew she could push and shove her way past him if she wanted to. “Let’s talk inside, please.”
Holt backed off at last, and they went into the room.
While he closed the door, Laura glanced at her watch. Almost time for room service.
She also sized up the contents of the room. She saw Holt’s duffel bag on the bed, open. His half-empty water bottle was on the night table, its cap flipped off. Next to the bottle lay his open wallet and the two key cards for opening the door.
The target.
“All right,” Brad seemed to wheeze. “Now, since you got me up here, you mind telling me what the hell you want?”
Laura took a deep breath. She had to be steady to sound convincing. “There’s an emergency. I need to leave right away. My sister—”
“Why in the hell are you telling me about any of this?”
“Listen, Brad, I need to go right away. I can’t stay until the end of the contest.”
There was a weary, pained, yet quite malicious grin stretching onto one side of Holt’s face. “Of course, I better not have anything to worry about. With the outcome of the judging…and so forth. Right?”
“No, you have nothing to worry about,” Laura said evenly. “The contest is yours.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But could you let me make the announcement to the WBBF about…about my resignation tomorrow? Just let me do it myself?”
Holt looked straight into her eyes, not saying a word for the longest time. He just enjoyed tormenting her, the sadistic bastard prick.
“Please?” Laura said weakly. She knew how much he enjoyed seeing her squirm. As long as he thought he was in control, he wouldn’t be suspicious.
“All right,” he said at length. It also looked like there was something else he wanted to add, but a knock came from the door.
“Room service,” a voice announced.
“What the hell?” Holt turned toward the door.
“Room service for 315. Broccoli salad, sir.”
“I didn’t order—”
“Brad, just go get rid of him, will you? He won’t go away unless you talk to—”
“Shit!” Holt snapped and stalked toward the door.
And Laura lunged toward the night table. First, she snatched one of the key cards and slipped it into her pocket. With her other hand, she had thumbed the cap off the antidepressant vial upon hearing the first knock on the door. Now, with one flash sweep, she emptied the powdered drug into Holt’s energy drink. As she heard the latch opening, she gave the bottle a quick couple of swirls and placed it back on the table.
As an argument proceeded at the door, with Holt refusing to take the salad, making threats, cursing at the delivery man, Laura stood by the balcony window, her back toward the entrance the whole time. She couldn’t be recognized in here by anyone, although the L-shape of the room, created by the bathroom next to the entrance, kept her out of sight of anyone standing just outside the door.
“Stupid jerk-off!” Holt yelled and slammed the door shut once the guy with the room service cart admitted the mistake and took away the unwanted broccoli salad.
He stalked back to the bed and nearly collapsed. Both his legs looked rubbery, and like his joints, his tendons were protesting the weight they had to bear with almost zero nourishment and energy. He panted and wheezed as he sat on the edge of the bed, his face a hideous skull shrink-wrapped in a grotesquely taut, desiccated covering of skin.
Laura snatched up the bottle with the tainted energy drink. “Here, you better drink this, or you won’t have to worry about the judging.”
Holt looked at her but took the bottle without a word.
And now the point of no return, a voice said calmly inside Laura’s head. She couldn’t believe how calm she felt, considering that up until a moment ago, she thought her heart would explode.
For a fleeting instant, her mind raced through what her options could have been had she not poisoned Holt’s drink. Give in to him and step down? She had been making a high six-figure income at the WBBF for long enough, and she had saved enough and invested enough that she had just over two million dollars stashed away that could have allowed her to live more than comfortably had she chosen never to work again.
Except Holt and his threats would never go away. Blackmailers never did.
In front of her, Holt slowly drained the entire contents of the bottle.
CHAPTER 11
At around the time the contestants should have been getting ready to be called out for their individual routines in the auditorium, Laura left her hotel room for the last time.
Before leaving the building, though, she had one more thing to take care of on this floor. Using Holt’s pilfered key card, she had to go into his room again and take his empty water bottle. The antidepressant overdose he had been given should be doing its thing shortly, Laura calculated, knocking him down just like dehydration did before, except his worn-out, malnourished, weakened condition would let the drug kill him with a massive heart attack. Just like that bodybuilder who had died of pre-contest dehydration and dieting three years ago. Exact same symptoms. The only trace of the drug’s effects, should an autopsy be done—more than likely—would be visible in the slightly damaged liver. But, then again, the condition of his liver would be consistent with that of someone who had been as legendary a hard-core steroid abuser as Holt.
After taking the water bottle—lest anyone test it for foreign substances—and leaving behind Holt’s card key—minus fingerprints—Laura wiped the bottle clean of prints and jettisoned it down a garbage chute in one of the equipment rooms on the floor.
At last, Laura went for the emergency stairway. This time, she would go out the back, negotiate the trucks and dumpsters in the back of the building, go back to her car in the east lot, and get away from the hotel.
Except the exit at the bottom of the stairwell threw her a horrifying curve.
It won’t open!
Panic flooded through Laura’s mind. There was something wrong. The door wasn’t locked, although she still couldn’t push it open. There was something pressed against the door from the outside, and it wouldn’t let her open it. For all she knew, some piece of heavy equipment, a dumpster, something among the construction equipment in the back of the building was obstructing the exit.
Laura stepped away from the door and tried to calm herself. She needed to get out, but she couldn’t go back upstairs. That way only left the front lobby as an exit. She couldn’t run into Bo Sullivan again.
She looked behind her. Double doors leading out into the corridor, running past the kitchen. Except she had already seen that the double doors were chained shut on the other side.
Goddamned piece of rotten fucking shithole dump!
There was only one way out. She’d hoped to avoid the backstage prep area, but now she had no choice. She heard music coming from beyond the door leading backstage, signaling the start of the individual rounds. The WBBF people should be back in their seats.
Taking a deep breath, steadying her moves, minding her composure, Laura ascended to the women’s prep area. A few seconds, she told herself, and she would be out of this place. She could slip back into the kitchen, out the back door, and be gone once and for all.
And then she saw something that nearly froze her circulation.
Easy! Easy! Easy! she tried to command herself to stay under control.
Ten feet away, she saw Christy Gilmore doing a quick set of curls with a pair of light dumbbells. No problem in itself, as Christy couldn’t have known about the emergency at the Fleming Institute, but Christy was now the subject of one of the Muscle Quest photographers.
And the photographer doesn’t know anything about the supposed emergency eithe
r, Laura’s inner voice commanded.
She had to maintain self control, move with purpose, and just walk to the exit into the corridor and get out.
Just as logic dictated, neither the photographer nor Christy took a second glance at Laura.
In just a little over a minute, she had left the stage area, crossed the kitchen, stepped out the side door, and rushed to her car.
CHAPTER 12
The order of the gender divisions performing was reversed when the individual posing rounds began, with the female contestants going first. As it turned out, their posing was a varied medley of styles, alternating between high-tempo dance moves and slower, emotional combinations of sound and dramatic muscle.
“Admit it, you’re hooked for life. Right?” Gunnar whispered to Kelly.
She didn’t answer.
The men followed with a preference of slower soulful music that tended to finish with a rising crescendo. It was an awesome sight of living mountains of mass moving and shifting to classical and instrumental New Age music, with some of the men striking poses meant to imitate classical art and sculptures. Following several renditions of the Farnese Hercules and Michelangelo’s David, Brad Holt presented his display of the Dying Gaul, melting to the floor in the final movement of his routine. The fans, in turn, replied to his performance with an uneasy silence. Some murmured unheard comments about the dark irony. But when Holt got up and walked off the stage, he did so with an ambiguous half-smile creasing his lips, as if saying that the old master of the sport rose from the dead again and again.
The individual posing was followed by the all-out war Frank had previously referred to. The men took the stage first. They marched onto the dais single file as they had done for the preliminary rounds.
“Gentlemen,” a voice came over the speaker system. “Pose off!”
The battle was on. All the men hit sudden poses, showing off what they felt was their best body part. Then the lineup disintegrated as the contestants rushed forward to get closer to the judges. This was the time when the bodybuilders struggled to upstage each other by matching a strong point to an opponent’s weakness. A man feeling he had superior biceps would rush up to another man hitting the double-biceps pose and block him with a matching posture. It called for the judges to make an obvious differentiation. If someone had a strong chest with a good pose that might threaten to take the title, an opponent stood next to him and matched him with an awesome back or staggering legs. Whenever too many men crowded together to outdo one another, a smart athlete rushed away from the pack to show a most muscular pose or a double-biceps shot, letting the judges see him unobstructed in his full glory.
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