Her grandmother’s voice broke her reverie. “You keep saying you want to alter the way Sydney does business, when to me it seems that how he does business is how America does business. Hell, maybe the world for all I know.”
“I want something different.”
“I know it. You’ve told me a thousand times if you’ve told me ever. ‘A new standard by….’ What is it you said?”
“By which to measure global entities,” Daci reminded her. “A corporation whose wealth—”
“—was measured by its knowledge rather than its dollars. See? I listen.”
“But you don’t believe.”
“Sometimes I do but not that often. It’s hard to free the world, kid. Seems to me like you’re a little tiny David against the Goliath of world industries. Old men who have been doing this since the dawn of time. I’ve told you and I’ll tell you again: Men own the world. We women just run it.”
“How come you got me this job, then?”
“I didn’t get you this job. Your resume got it for you.”
“You know what I mean. I couldn’t have simply submitted my resume and gotten the old company president ousted.”
“I’m talking about the stuff you don’t put in writing.”
The following silence weighed palpably. Her grandmother referred to her vine collecting trip. All those countries, with their men. Younger perhaps than businessmen but they too had been “doing this since the dawn of time.” From the rush of memories a single image surfaced, an image actually captured on film and stored, Dacianna knew, in a box somewhere in this very penthouse.
Herself, dressed all in black, except for the Kalashnikov, a gift from the two men with her, Radu and Drakko. She and Radu were perched on the hood of his car, a battered and muddied black Land Rover. His arm cupped her shoulder with the careless possession of the young lovers they were for those few weeks; for their sunburned grins they could have been sharing margaritas.
He’d bragged openly about the theft of his vehicle from the twosome whose skulls adorned the top of its cab where mounted lights should have been. Drakko, Radu’s bodyguard, loomed next to the car, grinning like the madman he was. She’d been too young and ignorant at the time to appreciate the depths of depravity these men represented. Today she knew. Recalling the picture made Dacianna uncomfortable, like she needed to wash her hands or apologize.
GrandMama narrowed her eyes, seeming to recall the photo along with Daci. “So many places in Europe your father could have taken you.”
“He was trying to teach me something.”
“That’s right. Few women experience war. Not like that. Mostly we wait. At home for letters or the dreaded man at the door with his hat under his arm. To run the world, first a girl needs to run with the big dogs.”
Daci gave a short breath. “I ran with the wolves. My name is wolf.”
“You kidding?” Dark laughter flapped out of GrandMama. “You walk the wolves on a leash! And that’s what got you this job. If anyone can make a change, I guess it’s you.”
“And what if I smash it into a million pieces? Drown it in a sea of bankruptcy-red?”
GrandMama put both hands up in surrender. “C’est la guerre.”
* * *
A 20-minute jaunt up the 5 took Daci from the nursing home to Survivanoia in the abhorrent luxury of her stunningly atrocious vehicle, the newest, biggest Hummer. Hers was a hybrid, but she kept that a secret, and today she planned to track down Arturo Rivera and convince him to make one run on brine for her and that would be secret too. At least for a little while. But just this moment the tailgating red Jeep consumed her thoughts, riding close even for Los Angeles, especially given that they were on surface streets now and not the freeway.
She careened into the parking lot and slowed purposely. The jeep followed, speed around her and dove into a spot. Its driver, tall and slender, cute with his scruffy dirty blond hair and immaculate goatee, chattered into his cell phone as he strode across the asphalt. Daci eased her monster into the spot next to him. She couldn’t have started the day off better. The tailgater was Geo Rivera, and now she had the perfect opportunity to begin taming him.
She phoned his extension, figuring on scheduling something between her morning and afternoon meetings. Grab him just before lunch, see what he’s like when he’s hungry and cranky. He didn’t answer his phone, instead his voice mail picked up. And it made her laugh so hard she had to call him back. Twice. Then she used her cell phone to call her friend Terri, and left Geo’s message on Terri’s voicemail.
“You’ve reached Survivanoia’s BiiiiiiIIG MAC DADDY!!!” He sounded utterly triumphant, like a Mexican radio announcer. All that was missing was the reverb. “If you’ve got my money press one. If you’re calling to purchase goods press two. Wanna see my grill? Leave a message.”
Charmed, Daci decided not to leave a message, just to go see him in person.
But other things came first. Like informing the sales staff that they no longer had country club memberships. “From now on instead of golfing, you’ll be taking clients to Magic Molehill.”
Jack Millstone complained first and loudest. “How will that make us look to important clients? How will we be taken seriously?”
“You won’t, that’s the point. Our products are serious enough. I think it’s wholly appropriate to inject some levity in their presentation.”
“Nonsense!” He banged a wizened fist against the table.
“It does seem unorthodox.” This from frumpy Bill Teegs, whose real hair looked like a toupee and who couldn’t seem to match his ties with his shirt.
Then his conspirator, red headed and gin-blossomed Kelsey Woznyack. “Ha! Unorthodox? It’s obscene. Why don’t we just burn the place down, Mizz Von—”
“It’s Baroness. And—”
“Who else does it?” Jules Scott’s question, to Daci’s pleasant surprise, was aimed not at her but at Kelsey. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he told her. “I apologize.” The pleasantly large man gave her a bright grin that lit up his big moon face, then looked over the entire table, thus including them in his argument.
“What CEO is going to forget the company that took him on a roller coaster and made him lose his hotdog-and-cotton-candy lunch?” he asked, rhetorically. “Who is not going to appreciate a break from the stodgy and predictable? I mean, wouldn’t you? Just once wouldn’t it be fun to go, say, go-karting, instead of taken for the predictable steak-and-golfing? Not to mention that Magic Molehill is across the street. And doubtlessly cheaper.” He turned to Daci. “Right?”
“A tenth of the price.”
“And you will all recall that even the old company President believed in cost cutting. As does Mister Scalinescu, Senior”
Daci watched the men mutter in begrudging approval at the invocation of the Good Old Boys, and wasn’t sure whether she wanted to kiss Jules or kick him.
Next up were the Vice Presidents, six in all, who she planned to inform that the quarterly meetings were to be held in clown suits from now on, just to keep things in perspective.
The VPs included Sydney’s son. Daci had intended to schedule some “pre-meeting face time” with him but somehow hadn’t worked into her calendar. She had yet to see the boy—no, man, he was her age. Sydney Sr. claimed he’d told the son nothing. But Sydney Sr. had also proven himself a liar in matters of business. Still, maybe it was best not to attract undue attention to herself by singling him out.
She pondered this while browsing the internet for acceptable clown outfits to include in her PowerPoint presentation. Her cell phone rang. Fifteen minutes before the meeting she should let it go to voice mail but who is it calling at this—oh! “Hey Terri! Did you get Biiiiiig Mac Daddy’s message?”
“Who is that, Syd Junior?”
“Nah, it’s just Geo.”
Terri laughed. “Well Geo made my day. And now I’mma wreck yours.”
“Promise?”
“I’ve got bad news for you.”
“Can it wait till after lunch?”
Terri, Daci’s lawyer friend, shifted into mode, sounded like it was all the same to her when Daci knew her well enough to know that meant things were indeed at their worst. “It can but you don’t want it to. I’ve got good news too, we can start with that if you’d prefer.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way up there.”
“It’s like that, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll cut the meeting short. You want to meet at the Austrian Place?”
“I’ll swing by Survivanoia and get you.”
Terri met her out front not quite ninety minutes later, driving her environmentally respectable three-wheeled red Mini-Coop with an orange, flowing sun painted on the top. Despite the crippling heat, Terri refused the use of anything beyond rolled down windows for air conditioning. Daci lunged into the car, shouting “Go, go, go! Cool it down already!”
“Very funny. I can make you walk you know.”
“Nobody walks in L.A. I’d drive my monstrosity. So check it out: I met Sydney.”
“Little Sydney?”
“The very same.”
“And?”
“He’s not so little, number one. Get on the 5, it’s faster.”
Terri veered left to enter the freeway. Daci swore the car cooled off in logarithmic proportion to the miles per hour, and Terri shot her another you-can-walk smirk. “Syd’s taller than you?” she asked.
“Yeah. Just, but yeah. Geo is comparatively short, about six feet, even.”
“Geo whom you have to break like a twig, as per GrandMama.”
“Yes. He’s a hottie. He kinda looks like, you remember that Faith No More band? He looks like their singer. Exit here.”
Terri eased the car off the ramp. “Oh, he was cute. He was the only person I ever thought looked good with an eyebrow ring.”
“Geo in fact has an eyebrow ring.”
“Does he wear it?”
“He hasn’t yet but I can see the mark. Anyway, beyond his height, Little Sydney is not at all what I anticipated.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s…. modest.”
“In a shit-eating kind of way? Oops, just passed it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, it’s in that western looking building. No, not shit-eating at all. Like, he wears nice fabrics but nothing showy. Geo is all about the clothes. Flashy names, little bit of cologne, touch of bling.”
Terri paused at the next intersection, then pulled the car in an impossibly tight U-turn. “Huh. Yeah, that’s how I pictured Syd Junior.”
“Nope. Junior drives a Volvo. The new sexed-up Volvo, but a Volvo nonetheless. He’s unassuming and soft-spoken and generally eager to please. Just seems to want to put in a good day’s work, do something positive for the company, and then go home to live his life. You can turn here, there’s an entrance.”
A large parking lot appeared behind the stretch of buildings which avoided appearing like the strip mall they’d been converted to by the preserved western externalities, including but not limited to wood-slat walls, a steeply pitched roof, and an old wagon wheel resting against the big oak tree out front.
Terri pulled open the swinging door and a bell announced their entrance. “So what are you going to do?”
“About Junior? I’m not sure. Maybe try to get him to come over to the dark side. You know: I’m your stepmother, Syd.”
A woman came to seat them wearing what could have been a can-can outfit but Daci assumed was traditional folk wear that probably nobody in Austria had worn in decades. “It’d be like us opening a restaurant in Austria and wearing House-on-the-Prairie dresses,” she’d once joked with Terri. From an atmospheric standpoint, the Austrian Place (creatively named just that) defined dump. Plastic booths reminiscent of a fast-food joint offset dead animal heads mounted on every inch of the dark wood walls. The dead animals included a jackolope. None of this mattered, however, because of the food.
“How’s your dad?” Terri asked the waitress.
“His ankle is all healed!” The svelte, honey-blonde’s English carried only a hint of an accent. “He’s back cooking, so your Kaiserschmarren will once again have brandy in it. But Mom made the entrees today, so it’s Fiakergulasch, you know the red goulash? Or cabbage rolls. All the usual sides, of course.”
They ordered one of each, with appropriate sides and beer. Terri stood, tossed an accordion file in Daci’s direction. “Oops. Fell out of my bag. Read up while I powder my nose.”
Daci opened the file and read its contents. Then she read it again. She tried a third time but couldn’t get her head to accept what the photocopied lab notebook pages were telling her. “Transferable from the Flytrap to the Human.” This would not process because the date on the top of the page was nearly ten years prior.
Luckily, Terri returned.
“Well?”
Daci gaped at her friend. “Where’d you get this information?”
“It showed up at the office. Hand delivered, tucked under the door.”
Daci examined the papers again, a graph, some sample data, and that significant scribble concluding transferable from the Flytrap to the Human.
“This means someone knew about the virus before the vaccine was purportedly developed.”
“Right.”
“So the virus didn’t come about on its own, someone made it. On purpose.”
“Right!”
Daci grimaced, shook her head. “I’d rather not be. Don’t things like this usually get sent to media outlets?”
“It came from a media outlet. Epstein’s L.A. I know this because there was a blank sheet of letterhead in the envelope.”
“Why? Why would they send you this? I’m very confused.”
“What media outlet can touch it? If Epstein’s doesn’t have the resources to prove it, no magazine in the country does.”
“How do you know it’s authentic?”
“We’ve had the science verified and it checks out.”
“Sure, but it could have been dummied up retroactively. To incriminate. Who are they implicating?”
“Anyone who knew this much about that virus would be able to devise a vaccine for it. Without too much trouble.” Terri peered at Daci. She cocked her head and seemed exactly half way between irritated and sympathetic.
Daci’s eyes hooded. “That doesn’t match our lab notebooks.”
“It might have ten years ago.” Terri swiped the file and tucked it neatly back into her lawyer bag. “Who’s got the best research team in the world?”
“No.”
“Who’s the company retroactively recognized as having combated AIDS most effectively, most efficiently, and fastest?”
Daci shook her head.
“Who’s withholding the treatment for Flower Flu until other companies catch up? Face the ugly truth here! You guys made this.”
“I’ve reviewed Survivanoia’s research so extensively I could describe it to you backwards. There’s nothing like this anywhere in it.”
Terri leaned back in the chair, crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do you have any kind of proof?”
“No,” Terri admitted. “That’s your job.”
“We have the smoking gun we just need a crime?”
“We have the evidence, we need a link. Something that can confirm these notebooks came from Survivanoia.”
Daci remained quiet for a long moment. Terri misunderstood. “I’m sorry,” she offered.
“No, I’m wondering. Do you really believe it’s coincidence t
hat your law firm was given this information?”
“Is there someone you’re aware of who knows both of us? Is aware of our friendship?”
Daci paused again, then shrugged, defeated. “Well, Tehzan, Preston, and Guite is a well known law firm.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“Maybe it is just chance.”
“Yeah, don’t get paranoid.”
Their food arrived, heavy with the luxurious scents only slow-cooked, well-tenderized cuts of meat can produce. The earthy sting of onions and paprika reminded Daci of Romania and the fanned gherkin and fried egg garnishing the top of her stew made her think of the flowing sun on the top of Terri’s car. Still, Terri’s words weighed heavily. Daci picked up her spoon but only nudged the food a bit.
Terri cut open her enormous cabbage roll, similarly spiced as the goulash but made sweeter by ground pork and with a less earthy, more zingy sauce. She wedged a steaming chunk of it in her mouth, then immediately reached for her beer. “HOT!” She swallowed and caught Daci’s glare, shrugged in response. “I told you I was gonna wreck your day.”
Daci sulked at her goulash. “You could have at least waited until after we’d eaten.”
Not quite an hour later, after Tess finished her cabbage roll and Daci had her lunch wrapped to go but did indulge in a cup of coffee and some freshly prepared Kaiserschmarren (“Like a funnel cake with brandy soaked raisins,” she’d once described it to Terri, who had then tasted it and said dreamily, “Oohh, just the soft, fluffy center of the funnel cake!”), Tess stopped her Mini neatly outside Survivanoia’s front entrance. She snapped her fingers, “Oh! Hey do you wanna go on Okrah?”
“Okrah Winspear?”
“Is there another?”
“Why, is she doing a show on best friends who make you want to eat your own head?”
“Something about strong women who have turned their lives around. Or some shit.”
“My life has always been fabulous.”
Survivanoia Page 25
