Hot Ticket

by Janice Weber

  “No cab,” I said, sailing past.

  Headed toward the White House, where the president’s soirée, or a major fire, still raged. Lights from the East Room threw buttery shafts across the lawn. Tourists along Pennsylvania Avenue pressed their faces to the high iron fence, chattering in a stew of tongues as they photographed the distant chandeliers. By now my accompanist Duncan was either tangoing with a princess or puking in LBJ’s toilet. Minister Klint would be in one of those overstuffed reception rooms, sipping champagne as he allowed Paula & co. to think they were getting the better of him. President Marvel? Engaging a cigar or a woman: end result about the same. Hard to believe I had been with them an hour ago.

  Found a phone at Pershing Square, called a local number. The line fizzed and clicked. Finally Maxine answered. “Play well?”

  “I would have been a bigger hit at Arlington Cemetery.”

  “Meet anyone interesting?”

  “Was I supposed to?”

  I could hear her patiently swallowing coffee four thousand miles away. “How’s the weather?”

  “Stinking hot.” Same as two weeks ago, when Maxine had been in town rooting around the NSA computers with her five-star general. Maybe she had been trying to dig up some easy work for me. “Can I come back to Berlin now?”

  “Drop in on Barnard first. She’s right down the street.”

  Something wrong. Not once in all these years had one of Maxine’s other agents dropped in on me, or I on them. Now that five out of seven of us were dead, perhaps the Queen was relaxing her social policy. “Is she expecting me?”

  “She knows you’re in town.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  Again I heard a quiet swallowing. “You got me.”

  Hard to say which was worse, Maxine not knowing what was going on or actually admitting so. She gave us girls a long leash, but we were expected to bark at reasonable intervals. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Just check her out.” Maxine told me an address: Watergate.

  “Come on, the place is a fortress!”

  “You’ll see three fountains outside the north lobby. Keys are in the middle one. Apartment 937. Her name’s Polly Mason.”

  Before Maxine could explain how to unlock Barnard’s door, I hung up and joined the tourists cruising the Ellipse. Hard to be invisible in this town: too damn broad and bright, zero foliage cover, and every other pedestrian carried a videocamera. No wonder there were so few assassinations anymore. Crowds, lights, thinned after the Lincoln Memorial. Soon even the sidewalks disappeared. I walked along the Potomac, reacquainting myself with the rhythm and insinuation of shadows as adrenaline began seeping into my blood. It was a heavier mix than my brain had put out for Bobby Marvel’s concert a few hours ago; then again, no one killed a violinist for bad intonation. I could feel the rush in my arms and legs. They were already in super shape; during my time off, I had been working out. Smith had never been leaner or stronger. Odd that the less I cared to live, the better care I took of my body.

  Cut through the bushes behind the Kennedy Center. Though all was now quiet on the immense back palazzo, tonight’s opera would end in fifteen minutes, spewing several thousand witnesses my way. Even now a few spoilsports were scuttling out before the final curtain. Limousines crawled up the ramp, motors rumbling, masking low frequencies; a battalion of taxis would invade any minute. Hurrying, I crossed the street to the Watergate complex, where once upon a time a few cocky amateurs had performed the mother of all botch jobs. Careful, Smith: bad karma here.

  Heard water before I saw it. Ahead of me, three oval basins tinkled into each other, exactly as Maxine had described. Three tiny moons danced on their surfaces. I froze, horrified: my last assignment had begun in a fountain in Leipzig. Now Maxine had brought me halfway around the earth to not one fountain, but three. Was this the Queen’s way of telling me to get on with it? Worse, a dare: If I couldn’t make this first hurdle, she’d know my guts were still soup, my nerves steady as ice in a desert. I’d sink to the bottom of her class, maybe for good.

  On a nearby balcony, a woman laughed softly, ecstatically: stopped me dead. She was watching the moon with someone she loved. I had laughed like that once … did that woman have any idea what was to come? If so, she laughed anyway. Goaded by her defiance, her hopeless bravery, I stalked to the middle fountain. No fish. Just pennies, pebbles, balls of gum. I had nearly circled the basin when the phantom of a shadow wavered beneath the water. A jellyfish with straight edges? My hand raked the slippery bottom: keys all right. Clear plastic.

  Above, I heard another low, maddening chuckle. Up the street, cars began to honk: opera finita. I quickly circled the Watergate complex, a hulk of jags, tiers, and curves—half yacht, half Moby-Dick. Like most buildings in Washington, it was a tad too white. Out back, a grove of pines shielded the service entrance. Pulled on my gloves and hid my face in the scarf. Tried one of Maxine’s keys. No alarm sounded, but up in security a little beeper had probably gone off; armed guard would be checking in any minute. I trotted down a humid, linty corridor. Behind closed doors, machinery whined so that folks upstairs could coast through four seasons at a comfy seventy-two degrees. I ran up the stairwell to the ninth floor. Barnard would live near the top, of course. Ostentation was the best cover, she always claimed. But Barnard would have stuck out in any crowd. She was a stunning six-foot blonde. Liked her hair in a high chignon and shoes with four-inch spikes: working altitude easily six six. She could do a mile in under four minutes and after a half bottle of gin she could still pick off a chipmunk at two hundred yards. Maxine had scooped her out of med school and somehow convinced her that squashing bad guys was more patriotic than finding a cure for cancer. I think her love life was like mine but with a few hundred more correspondents, thus fewer wrenching finales. What could she be doing in Washington? Rang her doorbell, concocting my spiel. Hi, remember me? We went to camp together. After a minute I rang again. Through the peephole, lights burned. I unlocked her door.

  “Polly?” No, Ella Fitzgerald crooning from the speakers. I was looking at more art and carpet than Barnard could have afforded after working a century for Maxine. Maybe she still did a little brain surgery on the side. The decor favored beige and live, the colors of dollar bills. On a sideboard flared an enormous bouquet of purple orchids. Beyond the music, an ominous silence pressed the nerves. My heart began thumping erratically: I was not alone here. Drawing my knife, I entered the bedroom.

  Gloriously naked, Barnard sprawled facedown across the bed. A tattoo glowered on her left buttock. From the looks of the rumpled bedding, she had either fought—or fucked—very hard. But no blood. And no pulse in her still warm neck. The faintest scent of grilled pineapple lingered in the air. I was inspecting a puncture near the edge of Barnard’s hairline when the phone rang. The answering machine picked up.

  “The ice-cream man will see you at midnight.” Woman’s voice. Contemptuous, biting the t’s. “Don’t be late.”

  I pocketed the cassette and rolled Barnard’s lush, heavy corpse over. Blue eyes bulged from a blue face. Strangled? No welts on the throat. Pills? Drano? I pried open her jaws. Tough work, since they were beginning to mortise. Her mouth looked pink and healthy except for a dash of white down by the tonsils. Dug my finger in: eh? String? I pulled, felt the resistance, knew, didn’t believe but continued to tug, almost gagging when the thick, white head of a tampon loomed like a giant maggot at the base of her mouth. Slow suffocation: what a terrible way to die.

  I went to the bedroom, found a safety pin and another tampon. Sorry, friend: stabbed Barnard’s neck, near the original puncture. She bled heavily, warmly, still so alive. I was swabbing the last beads of blood when a key slipped into the front door. In a few seconds I’d be at a bad pajama party so I cut to Barnard’s plant-clogged balcony. No chance of winging the twenty-foot gap between here and the neighbor’s begonias. Nine stories below I saw only trees. Damn! Where were all the swimming pools when you needed them?
Looped my scarf around a balcony post and somersaulted over the edge as a figure burst into Barnard’s bedroom. Whoever it was stomped onto the balcony, pausing in the moonlight as I swung by the wrists a few inches below. Breathless, we both listened to the wind, to the hum of traffic along the Potomac. Should the intruder look down, should a pedestrian look up, I was finished. But a terse whistle inside the apartment saved me. The footsteps retreated and I was left alone to calculate the number of seconds I could hold on before my grip melted or the scarf tore. Minutes crawled by. My wrists became numb, white hot, numb again as I dangled in the breeze. Diversion necessary so I ran the first movement of the Brahms concerto, note by note, through my head. Curtis had scheduled me to play it in Frankfurt next week. I was almost through when the lights snapped out in Barnard’s living room.

  Counted to ten, willing strength to my dead arms. Mind gradually won over matter and I began to swing back and forth, finally gaining enough momentum to curl knees to chest, then clamp the ankles around a balcony post. One last pull and I lay gasping, threatening as a squid, behind Barnard’s azaleas. Acrid fumes of hundred-fifty-proof sweat rose from every pore, evaporating along with my energy. Eventually I dragged an ear to the sliding door: Ella still sang the blues. I went back inside.

  Dim light played evenly over Barnard’s bed. Her body was gone. So was the answering machine. In the living room, paintings had been slashed, pillows disemboweled. Even the oranges in the fruit bowl had been sliced and squeezed into grotesque parabolas. Maximum damage in minimum time, yet they had overlooked the dead weight hanging off the balcony: amateurs? Worse: zealots? I doubted they had found what they were looking for. You had to know Barnard, and Maxine, for that.

  Found the crème de menthe at the back of the liquor cabinet, where one would normally keep the more repellent digestifs. Although the bottle looked and felt full, few would be tempted to decant the sticky emerald liquid. Just as well, because it wasn’t alcohol, and that wasn’t really a bottle. Snapped off its neck, took a few scraps of paper from its belly. On the way out I noticed deep, fresh dents in the door frame, paint on the floor: Barnard hadn’t been hauled out of here in a rug. Near the Arlington Bridge I got to a phone. “I found her, Maxine.”

  After ten years reading tone of voice, the Queen didn’t even sigh: six of the Seven Sisters confirmed dead, and the violinist had outlived them all. Unbelievable. “How bad?” she asked.

  “Naked in bed with a tampon down her throat.”

  A moment of silence as Maxine considered the mechanics of that. “Barnard could have fought off three men with one hand.”

  “Puncture on her neck. I got some blood.” The second tampon lay stiff as a finger in my pocket. “They took the body away in something big.” I sighed: how banal.

  “Where were you, hiding behind the shower curtain?”

  “No, under the bed with a teddy bear. You would have preferred casualties?”

  Her silence shouted yes. “Who were they?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. I was hanging off the balcony. My arms are a lot longer than they were an hour ago.” That got no sympathy whatever. “I found a theater ticket in her bottle. Show’s tomorrow night.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “La Ronde. The ticket cost a thousand bucks. Fund-raiser for endangered species.”

  “Bizarre.”

  So was Schnitzler in English. I felt for my knife as a man in tennis whites sauntered by. When he wandered around the bend, I squinted at the little slip of paper that had been in Barnard’s bottle with the ticket. “‘Yvette Tatal. Saint Elizabeth’s,’” I read. “Mean anything to you?”

  “No.” Heavy breathing on Maxine’s end. “Why didn’t they find you hanging off the balcony?”

  “Amateurs in a rush.”

  “They kill a pro, toss the apartment, take the body, and miss you?”

  I had never heard the Queen raise her voice before. Her fear galloped through my blood. “Maybe I got lucky.”

  Maxine only chortled. “Look for me after the play.”

  I returned to the Watergate complex, circled a few times but saw no large, clunky objects leaving the premises. Nothing emerged but toilers and spoilers, all alive. Each time I passed the triple fountain, I listened for that soft, knowing laughter, proof that another woman, drunk with love, had defied the gods. But the sound had vanished with Barnard. I went back to my hotel. Same doorman: damn, he had seen me go and come. I entered the elevator with a Korean whose eyes crawled torpidly over the curves in my black leather. Left that poor sod on the third floor and unlocked my door. My white concert gown still draped a chair. Bed looked wide and barren as Antarctica, with two silly chocolates on the pillow now. I stashed the bloody tampon, all I had left of Barnard, in the minibar. As I grabbed a beer, the phone rang.

  “How’d it go?” Curtis asked.

  “Better than last time.” I could hear eggs and sausage crackling on my manager’s end of the line. Sunshine would just be warming the violets on the kitchen sill. Home, Curtis, safety: all a fantasy now. He listened to “My Night at the White House,” aware that the pull in my voice had nothing to do with Brahms. “I might stay here a few days,” I said finally.

  “What about Duncan?”

  “I left him dancing with a few menopausal Cinderellas. He’s probably booked for lunch until Thanksgiving.”

  “Leave yourselves a little time to practice. Carnegie Hall on Saturday, remember.”

  I’d be lucky if circulation returned to my fingers by Christmas! “Yes, Mother.”

  Took a bath, thinking about Barnard, whom I had last seen eight years ago. Camp Maxine had just opened for business and the Queen was intent on exterminating the weaklings in the bunch. She’d almost succeeded with me: I was the drinkin’, smokin’ musician, unused to sleep-outs and twenty-mile hikes before breakfast. Barnard thrived on such abuse. She was also off-the-charts smart, a fatal attribute in a beautiful female—but the perfect requisites for Maxine, who had managed to find seven of us with that peculiar nimiety. Barnard could play Texas bimbo, Swedish hippie, frigid WASP, to perfection. I wondered which persona she had used last. Whatever the pose, Barnard could enslave a man in fifteen seconds. Ordinary women hated her. Sad that she and I had not become closer as our sisters fell. Not smart, but sad just the same. After Wellesley turned up—in two pieces—in Johannesburg, Barnard had called me. “Looks like you and I are holding the fort, Smithy. Care to place your bets?”

  “Fifty thousand bucks.”

  “Son of a bitch! On you or me?”

  “I bury you, babe.”

  “I’ll use it for violin lessons,” Barnard had snorted.

  “I’ll spend it on push-up bras.” Now I was fifty thousand, plus interest, richer: Smith’s survival bonus. Maybe I’d donate it to Maxine.

  At precisely ten the next morning, Duncan Zadinsky knocked. My accompanist liked to breakfast with me after a concert to discuss all the mistakes we had made the previous evening. Sometimes I think he enjoyed the postmortem more than he did the performance. Today, however, music was not uppermost in his mind. “You missed the party of the century,” he crowed, seating himself at the trolley a steward had just wheeled in. “I was dancing till dawn.”

  “Four-fifteen, dear. I heard you come in with a few elephants.”

  Duncan constructed a meticulous still life of granola and prunes before submerging it in tomato juice. He had read somewhere that this alleviated baldness. “Paula’s one hell of a dancer. She’s got hips like butter. Feet like feathers.”

  Brain like Iago. Bobby was just her Moor. “I’m sure you swept her away.”

  Duncan tucked half a muffin into his mouth. “After our dance, she left. Why settle for second best?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but she had a staff meeting. Whom did you ravish next?”

  “Justine Cortot. A very attractive woman, believe me.”

  No kidding: White House press secretary. She and Bobby had graduated from the same high school in
backwater Kentucky. Both had gone to the same Ivy League law school, but only Justine had won the Rhodes Scholarship. While she was in England, Bobby had married Paula. “I hear she shot Marvel a long time ago. Missed his balls by inches. He was gentleman enough to call it a hunting accident.”

  “That’s absurd! Where’d you hear that?”

  Maxine had sent an unexpurgated bio of Bobby Marvel along with my ticket to the White House. Great bedtime reading, if you were a satyr. “Don’t remember.”

  Done with the prunes, Duncan attacked a mound of beignets. Maybe they cured impotence. “I’m surprised you believe rumors,” he chomped. “Of all people.”

  A dank wind, heavy with ghosts, blew by. “So what did you think of the concert?”

  He launched into a note-by-note recap of our horror show: twangy piano, poor lighting, cold audience, mushy acoustics, jet lag, insufficient rehearsal … obviously my accompanist was a saint. Never in our years together had we performed under humane conditions. “We’ve got to work our asses off before New York,” Duncan concluded. “We’ve been out of action for months. Playing live upsets me now.”

  It upset me, too; I just didn’t let anyone know how much. I went to the window. Outside the hotel, a sheik deboarded from a stretch limousine. All that white hurt my eyes. “How about staying in Washington a few days instead of going to New York?”

  “Don’t tell me you hooked up with that marine at the White House!”

  On the pavement, three veiled women followed their leader into the hotel. I wondered if they fought for his attention or jeered at him behind his back. “There are a couple new exhibitions in town.”

  “I suppose I could do some research at the Library of Congress.” Duncan speared a sausage. “Meet Justine for lunch. She’d be delighted if I changed my mind.”