by Tod Goldberg
I've always preferred to get mine in Italy.
As soon as I pulled my black 'seventy-four Dodge Charger up to the valet station in front of the hotel, a valet descended on me.
"Staying the night, sir?" the valet asked. He looked at the Charger like it was covered in smallpox, as if he was so used to parking Bentleys that he couldn't conceive of a reason anyone would deign to roll in a car made in America and at least a decade before he was born. He tugged on my door but I hadn't unlocked it. This seemed to confound him even more.
"No," I said.
"If you're making a delivery," he said, his voice losing any of the politeness his very nice Armani suit would indicate was bred into him, "receiving is around back."
I smiled, because sometimes it's fun to smile at those who condescend to you because they think their job assigns them some social importance. I took a brief inventory of the valet: diamond studs in his ears, an absurd jade pinky ring, one of those crusted gold watches that pimps and gamblers prefer. I had a pretty good idea that this was one of the men on Sam's list of former and current felons. The neck tattoos were also a good indication. "Let me ask you something," I said. "You ever do any time?"
The valet cocked his head like a golden retriever and then leaned into my window. He had this sneer on his face that I thought made him look like he was suffering from a kidney stone, like maybe he'd been pissing blood and vomiting all day, or had maybe accidentally swallowed lighter fluid, but which probably scared a lot of people not used to seeing how people really looked when they were angry. The one thing about being a spy and knowing how to really hurt people, which this guy probably thought he knew how to do, too, was that it's always nice feeling vaguely feared and respected at the same time, even if it's unearned. "Who the fuck are you?''
I got out of the car without any covert movement whatsoever, knocking the valet back a few steps. I handed him my keys and a ten dollar bill. "The guy whose car you're parking," I said. There was a row of luxury cars lined up in a perfect diagonal to the entrance a few yards away, as if passing tourists would see the Mercedes phalanx and simply drop dead from envy. "Keep it close to the front, maybe move one of those Mercedes, give me the over on the Dolphins and, when you get the chance, maybe visit HR and correct some of the errors on your resume."
I turned my back on the valet and walked toward the entrance, though I could still feel his eyes on me, likely trying to figure out if I was a cop, a rival or just a particularly enlightened member of the hotel's management. Or maybe he just liked the cut of my suit.
The inside of the Oro looks like a perfume commercial. You walk in and to your left is a sunken bar filled with bone white couches set in relief by bronzed women wearing mostly their own flesh and men who seem to be waiting for the photo shoot to begin. Morning, noon or night, these people are sitting on the couches, idly drinking martinis or eating finger foods that are more accurately fingernail foods. To the right is another bar, this one decorated like a bedroom you could never sleep in: twenty cabanas shrouded in white silk house plush king-sized beds covered in a Caligula of bodies and white chenille pillows, a fluffy sofa and a small bedside table. These then encircle a dance floor that always seems to be playing a song about hustling coke, whores, strippers or coke whore strippers.
In order to get to the registration desk, you have to walk through the middle of these two bars, which might be why so few people ever end up checking in. It's not a family environment, unless you're practicing to make one, which is why I should have been curious from the get-go that my mother wanted to dine there this afternoon, but sometimes, with my mother, it's better to just nod your head and agree than to actually listen and interpret.
The registration desk isn't actually a desk. It's a twelve-foot-long S-shaped aquarium filled with goldfish, though no actual goldfish, and the people standing behind it all look fashionably bored tapping away at computers or talking on their Bluetooths. I walked up to the one fashionably bored person who wasn't otherwise engaged. She was about twenty-five, looked about sixteen, and probably thought I looked a hundred.
"I'm Michael Westen," I said.
The girl nodded once, tapped a few keys on her keyboard and handed me a room key without looking back up. "Ms. Copeland is expecting you in room one fifty-three," she said. "She also asks that if you have a gun, to leave it in our safe."
I smiled, because, sometimes, when you're faced with the absurd, it's good to do just that sort of thing. "That's not going to happen," I said. I slid the room key back across the aquarium. "What's option two?"
The girl started tapping on the keyboard again, still not looking up, which was too bad because I was still smiling. "Yes, Mr. Westen, I see," she said. "Ms. Copeland is expecting you in cabana six"
I turned around in time to see two security guards yank three writhing bodies from a cabana. "Will the sheets be changed?" I asked.
"Of course, Mr. Westen," she said. She tapped something on her keyboard again.
"What are you typing?"
The girl stopped typing, but still didn't look up. "Nothing, Mr. Westen," she said.
"Then why are you typing?"
"Just following Ms. Copeland's directions," she said.
I leaned over the aquarium and turned the computer monitor so I could see it. Under Special Instruc tions it said: Keep typing until Mr. Westen leaves the counter. Do not make eye contact. I spun the monitor back so that it faced the girl.
"What's your name?" I said.
"Star," she said. She was already typing again.
You never meet a woman in Miami named Sue anymore. An entire generation of women has decided that adopting stripper names sounds somehow more interesting. "What's your real name?" I said.
The typing paused. "Joanne," she said quietly.
"Joanne," I said, "look at me."
The girl tilted her eyes up but her head remained firmly downcast. "I'm just trying to do my job," she said.
"I understand that," I said, "but your job sucks. Now lift your head up and look at my face." Joanne did as I asked. "My name is Michael Westen. I have a gun-that's true-but in my case it's okay. I have a license. Or, well, I did. It's confusing. My point is this, Joanne: you need to quit your job the next time you're asked to tell someone to stow their gun in the company safe. You understand that that request is not normal, don't you, Joanne? You understand that if you ask the wrong person to do that, it's likely they'll shoot you in the face, don't you, Joanne?"
"I guess," she said.
"There's no guessing here. You either understand or you don't."
"Okay, yeah, I understand."
"Good," I said. "Now, Joanne, tell me something. Have you ever met Ms. Copeland?"
"Of course," she said. "She's the general manager. I see her every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I'm trying to get on Wednesdays, too, but things have been so hectic with my modeling and stuff, but it's, like, a toss-up, you know, because I can go on an audition or I can just be here and hope that someone notices me…"
In addition to having the names of strippers, every woman in Miami is trying to be a model, which I've always thought was like aspiring to be a mannequin. Who would be interested in someone who posed their entire life? If there's one thing that has always returned me to Fiona, eventually, it's that the only photos of her in print have been where she's in the background of some burning wreckage. "Joanne," I said, "stop speaking." She did. "How long have you worked here?"
"Forever."
"How long is forever these days?"
"Almost a month."
"And has Ms. Copeland been here the whole time?"
Joanne, who, really, should have rechristened herself Black Hole if she wanted to be more personally accurate, tapped a finger against her chin. I waited while she thought things through, though I had a pretty good sense already of what I was walking into. The Hotel Oro had all the hallmarks of the perfect cover job for an operative-a transient population of employees, most of whom were just waiting
for that big break (which likely meant that they were hoping The Real World put out a casting call), guests who didn't stay long enough to notice anything peculiar and a job that generally required no work whatsoever.
"I think she got here two weeks ago," Joanne finally decided, though it sounded absolutely possible that Joanne could be wrong, possible that Ms. Copeland's first day started about five hours previous.
"Thank you, Joanne," I said. "Why don't you check your computer and see if Ms. Copeland has given you the okay to let me walk over to the cabana?"
Joanne clicked away. "Yes, Mr. Westen, your cabana is ready."
"Excellent," I said. "You may now resume staring idly at your keypad and typing, if you don't think it's too late to keep your job."
Joanne shrugged. "Whatever," she said. "I've got an audition for an Abercrombie shoot after work today, anyway."
I would have wished Joanne good luck, but my sense was that if I were to wish her anything, it would have less to do with luck and more to do with common sense, but I've found wishing people good common sense is rarely a nice way to depart. So, instead, I just gave her a little nod meant to connote a larger, deeper understanding between the two of us.
Besides, my larger concern at that point was trying to figure out who this Ms. Copeland really was. The name "Copeland" made me think she was British, but British agents rarely have anything against their American counterparts, apart from armory envy. When you're working undercover, it's important to keep your backstory as close to your own as possible so that you don't trip yourself up being more convoluted than you need to be. If you like pepper steak in real life, so does your cover. If you went to high school in Miami in the 1980s, so did your cover. And if your last name is Copeland in cover, then your real last name probably is something very close to that as well, at least something that sounds like it, even better if your cursive scrawl might normally approximate the same letters, too. You spend your entire life signing your name one way and then suddenly have to sign an entirely different name, and it's likely you'll screw up at least once, and one time is all it will take to get you killed. In addition, even a halfway decent handwriting specialist would be able to point out the pregnant pauses in your penmanship, the deliberation over a letter that you'd normally move fluidly through, and could thus point you out as a fraud.
I ran the name through my head, chopped off letters, thought about different iterations and decided that, in about thirty seconds, I was going to either have a chat with an old friend or I was going to be strangled to death with a bedsheet. If the person was who I thought it was going to be, there wouldn't be much wiggle room between the two, but I did think it was unlikely that any employee of the hotel-be it just a cover or not-would want to try to explain the bloodstains all over so much fine white fabric.
Standing in front of my assigned cabana was one of those guys who think lifting weights will make him a good fighter. Lifting weights will make you strong. Lifting weights will make you lose fat and gain muscle. Lifting weights will not give you a strong chin or teach you how to defend yourself when someone who weighs a hundred pounds less than you is punching you in the throat. To be a good fighter, flexibility is an asset, whereas muscle mass will help you if someone tries to stab you, but won't change anything if they poke you in the eye. Guys like this, your average bouncer, might know how to get someone drunk and stupid to submit, of they might have the strength to pick you up and throw you through a window, but they're probably no use to anyone if you happen to kick them in the knee. Bulky muscle is slow. Lean, manicured muscle is fast. You want lean and manicured.
Naturally though, he, too, wore an Armani suit, except his bulged along the seams of his shoulders and knees, and he'd accented the outfit with a black Under Armour T-shirt so that I could actually make out each hair on his chest. I didn't notice any weapon on him, apart from what I learned was stunning intellect.
"You Michael Westen?" he said when I approached. Actually, it was more like a low grumble. They must have an employee training program at the Oro that requires their security guards to speak with gravel in their mouth for a week before taking the floor.
"Why do people forget verbs when they're trying to sound intimidating?" I asked.
"Yes or no?" he said. I tried to get a peek around him, but he was so wide that I couldn't quite see inside the cabana. All I could make out was a single leg, which was all I really needed to see anyway.
"There you go again," I said.
"Just let him in," came an exasperated voice from inside the cabana. It had a British accent, which was new, but not unexpected. The guard gave me a little glare-not enough to actually cause me any offense, but enough to inform me that he didn't know what a verb was and therefore thought I'd really insulted him-and then swept open the rest of the thin curtain to reveal Ms. Copeland sitting aside the bed on the small sofa.
Except that it wasn't Ms. Copeland.
Oh, it was Ms. Copeland as Joanne knew her and as the meat standing in front of the cabana knew her, but to me she was Natalya Choplyn. The last time I saw her was in Bulgaria.
She tried to poison me.
"What a surprise," I said.
"Is it really?" Natalya said.
"No," I said. I was still standing in the entrance to the cabana, trying to figure out where I was going to sit. It was either unfold myself on the bed, which seemed not only compromising but presumptuous, or sit directly next to Natalya on the couch, which was really more of a love seat, which, really, is just a fancy name for a big chair not made for two spies who've slept with each other and tried to seriously hurt each other. I decided just to stand.
"I don't bite," she said, patting the space next to her.
"You do stab," I said. Natalya shrugged. Not much you can do with the truth but accept it. "I like the accent. Let me guess: Sandringham, Norfolk?"
"Conveys a sense of elegance, don't you think?"
"It's so simple," I said. "Where's the challenge?"
"Worked for Princess Di, didn't it?"
"I suppose," I said, "though I've always thought of you more like Camilla. Maybe move across the country, say you're from Wales. Thicken your vowels a bit and aim for more of that singsong style and you'll have it nailed."
"Do I not sound convincing?"
"It will work here," I said. "But I doubt it will fly in an interrogation. A couple of well-placed electrodes and you'll be screaming Nyet! Nyet! in no time."
"Is that what you'd do to me, Michael? Electrodes? I don't believe that's covered by your Geneva Conventions." Natalya stood then and walked a few steps to the marble nightstand beside the bed, where there was a silver teakettle and two cups. She was taller than I remembered, though the last time I saw her we were stooped over in a cave, which always makes everyone seem slightly more diminutive than usual. Her hair then was short and black and likely still was, since her hair on this day was shoulder-length and deep red, which made me presume it was a wig. An expensive wig, but a wig no less. She wore a perfectly tailored black Gucci suit, alligator and lambskin Chanel pumps and had tasteful diamonds on each ear, around her neck and, notably, on her wedding-ring finger.
"I'm not exactly covered by the Geneva Conventions, either," I said. Natalya's back was still to me as she poured the tea, but I thought I saw something slacken in her posture. There was no use lying to Natalya, since she thought, for some reason, that she needed to see me, which likely meant that she thought I'd crossed her in some way and was giving me the professional courtesy of asking me about it before she blew up my car with me in it. Telling her I was out of work would likely cause her to reevaluate whatever her specific beef was.
"I heard you were still under contract," she said.
"I got burned," I said. Natalya dunked a cube of sugar into each cup of tea, turned back around and offered me one of the cups. "The last time I saw you, you poisoned me."
"You didn't die."
"I spent three days in a hospital," I said.
"Suit
yourself." Natalya stepped past me, her shoulder brushing my chest, instructed her security guard to pin both sides of the curtain up so we could have a view of the dance floor and then handed the guard the second cup of tea and told him his services were no longer needed. As he walked off, he sipped absently at the tea and didn't once convulse. "Now," she said, settling back down on the sofa, "where were we?"
"You were just about to explain to me why you used Fiona and two dozen armed agents to let me know you were in town," I said.
"I never understood what you saw in that terrorist," she said.
"She's not a terrorist," I said. "Not even an enemy combatant. Not technically."
"Oh, that's right," Natalya said. "The IRA is a peaceful, nonviolent organization. Like Amnesty International, only with car bombs."
"Just like the KGB was," I said. "And we're no longer dating, so there's that."
A smirk danced around the edges of Natalya's mouth. "Really?"
"Really."
"And yet here you are," she said.
"That's a nice ring you have," I said. "Did you and the president of Albania finally make it official?"
Natalya lifted her hand and made a show of the diamond. "A prop," she said. "Just like your precious Fiona."
"What are we doing here, Natalya?"
"Catching up," she said. "Reviving an old friendship."
"You could have sent me an e-mail," I said. "You didn't need to set up Fiona."
"Yes," Natalya said, "I'm sorry about that. But she's a smart girl, that Fiona. I knew she wouldn't get caught. I didn't realize you and your lovely mother would be there, too. She seemed to be having a splendid time. Shame she didn't get to enjoy her lunch. I oversaw the preparation of her salad myself. And I think you would have enjoyed your egg whites."
