Hot Ticket

by Janice Weber

  “Ralphine Preston leads a quiet life. The day she signed that transfer order, she got ten thousand bucks wired to her account. Guess where the money came from.”

  “Fausto?” I croaked.

  “Tuna. She’s in his pocket. Why would he transfer Louis to Lorton? It’s in the middle of the country.”

  No fucking clue. “What about Tougaw?”

  “Nothing comes up on him. I think he’s a nobody.”

  “What about the mercenary?”

  “Fits the profile of James Bassinet. RAF pilot with a drinking problem. He became a jungle training instructor in the seventies. Definitely past his prime. Does odd jobs now.”

  “How odd?”

  “Nothing you couldn’t handle. He’s not listed in any passenger manifest to Dulles. Has Bobby Marvel tried to contact you?”

  “I’m seeing him tonight.”

  “Don’t take any baths, for God’s sake.”

  My brain was in tatters. Returned to the hotel. Put on my new dress and started early for my tryst with Paula Marvel’s husband, who had a lot of explaining to do. Traffic was brutal way into Virginia, slowed even further by rain squalls. I didn’t bother checking the rearview mirror: this time I didn’t care whether I led a caravan to Aurilla’s summer cottage. Rolled up to the first security check fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. “Leslie Frost,” I told the guard. “Marvel’s expecting me.”

  I got frisked. Thick drops of rain, tired of life in the clouds, hit the hood of my car and lay where they fell. I saw Bobby on the porch swing, reading what looked like a term paper. He watched me cross the wide lawn. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “It’s starting to rain.”

  “Bad day?” I asked hopefully.

  “It’s getting better.” He poured me a drink. “You don’t know how you cheer me up.”

  “Where’s Paula?”

  “At some ladies’ dinner.” He noticed my ring. “Now that’s a new bauble.”

  I swallowed a belt of gin. “I married Fausto last night.”

  “Jesus Christ! You didn’t!”

  “I did. He didn’t tell you this afternoon?”

  Bobby slowly blinked. “Was he supposed to?”

  “You weren’t at his house playing duets?”

  Bobby laughed badly. “Would you like to hear about my afternoon? I had lunch with a bunch of shits who contributed fifty grand each to the party and think they own my balls now. Then I had an interview with a shit from the Post who’s been writing nothing but shit about me for four years. Then I had a meeting with a bunch of shits from the House who are going to screw me on the welfare reform bill. Then I had a fight with my shit of a wife. Then I had a meeting with my shit of a press secretary, who’s been less than worthless ever since she started screwing that shit pianist of yours. Then I had a shitty drive out here and have been reading shitty reports about corruption in the Justice Department. Now I hear you married the mother of all shits.”

  “So you weren’t at his house?” I repeated.

  “What did I just tell you?” Bobby exploded. He stalked out to the porch and flung his beer bottle into the pines. “Fuck!”

  A Secret Service agent stepped into the clearing. “Everything all right, sir?” he called.

  “Just dandy!” Bobby reeled back into the house and fell onto a cushion in a window nook. “Why’d you do it?”

  “I love Fausto’s brains.”

  “I hope so, sugar. You ain’t gonna be getting much of his cock.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Polly told me.” His laugh sounded like a groan. “Have you slept with him yet?”

  Trick question. “We did get married last night.”

  Bobby lay inert for a second or two before pulling me inches from his mouth. “Then what are you doing here with me?” he whispered.

  There were overt and covert ways to take a woman. I had married the covert and already received my first little lashing. Maybe I had made a mistake. Careful, Smith. “I thought you should be the first to know.”

  “Thanks so much.” He kissed me ferociously. I almost washed over to the other side, and Bobby knew it. “Thought I was losing my touch for a minute there.”

  “You’ll never lose your touch.” I straddled him and began moving my hands under his shirt. “Last time you saw Polly was here, wasn’t it.”

  “Not her again! Forget that bitch!”

  “Where’d you do it? Here in the window? Upstairs after you took a bath?”

  “I hate baths. Haven’t taken one since I was in diapers.”

  My hands stopped. “You were never with Polly and a bottle of champagne in that big tub upstairs?”

  “She may have misinformed you, sugar. We had a nice time in this exact spot. And I hate champagne.”

  A shudder in the back of my brain before a great cold splash, like ice shearing off a glacier into the frigid sea. I smiled foolishly. “You hate baths?”

  “I just said so.”

  “And you don’t play the piano?”

  He stroked my butt. “Your husband plays the piano. I play the cornet. Don’t be mixing us up already.”

  Then who the hell was playing piano with Fausto this afternoon? My foolish smile wouldn’t go away. “When was the last time you slept with Justine?”

  “Justine? Don’t tell me you’re jealous of her, too.” Bobby’s mood was improving by the second. “About two months ago. We were marooned in Toledo.”

  Oh Christ! Should have known the minute I touched Bobby’s squishy ass that he wasn’t the guy in Barnard’s bathtub! I was stupider than a snail: we had a double here, a good one. But Fausto could afford the best. Then whop everything connected and I got twenty thousand volts of insight right between the eyes: whatever the double was here for, he was doing it right now, while I deflected the real Bobby. Ah, bravo Fausto.

  “Forget Justine,” Marvel whispered, kissing my neck. “She’s history.”

  Thoughts buzzed back to Louis Bailey’s empty house, to the picture of Bobby above the desk, the videos, autographs, his signature traced in red pen … oh dear. Signature. Forgery. The double was going to sign something. What the hell did Bobby sign? Laws. Proclamations for National Pickle Week. Bills. Treaties. None of the above could be forged without dozens of witnesses. Think, Smith. What else did presidents sign? Memos? Letters of appointment? Big deal. Didn’t need a double for that. Fausto wanted not only the signature but a reasonable facsimile of Bobby Marvel scribbling it. Think harder, Smith! I started lobbing anything I had into the cold pot. Tuna: was he in on this? Only deep enough to be double-crossed. Fausto had already duped him into thinking he had met the real president. My spouse was playing a dangerous game. Didn’t want to think about that now so I passed on to Bendix. Forget Bendix. He saw the real Marvel too often to be taken in by a fake. Ditto Aurilla and Chickering. How about Louis? Why would Louis need a fake Marvel? To visit him in jail? That was absurd. Presidents didn’t go into jails. They put people in jail and got them out of jail. Stays of execution. Pardons.

  Bingo.

  “Something the matter, baby? I mean it. Justine means nothing to me.”

  I pulled back. “I have to go.”

  “Now? Don’t tell me you’re worried about cheating on Fausto. I did speak with him a few hours ago. Everything’s all right.”

  Grand pause. “What do you mean?”

  “He told me to take good care of you tonight.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I slapped Bobby in the face since he was the same gender. While he was rubbing his cheek, I left the cushion. “Why didn’t you tell me that first thing?”

  “It was a little tough once I found out you married the guy. Damn, that smarts.” He smiled: maybe slapping turned him on. “I tried to warn you about Fausto, sugar. What kind of husband would give his wife away the day after he was married?” Again that boyish smile. “I think I know.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  He caught up with me at the door. “Don’t run away. I’ll
give you a wedding present you won’t forget.”

  I gave him a knee he wouldn’t forget and ran outside. The Corvette didn’t like aquaplaning through puddles at ninety miles an hour but I didn’t like being the last maggot to turn fly so we screamed to Lorton in twenty minutes. Parking lot quiet as a morgue: visiting hours long over. I pulled up to the main gate. A guard with a gun looked down from the watchtower as another came to the chicken wire. “You can’t park there.”

  I pushed a little green linen through the mesh. “There’s three hundred bucks. One quick question and I’ll leave. Any special visitors tonight?” I got that not-telling-you stare tantamount to a yes so I added two hundred to the kitty and waited. “I’m running out of time.”

  I was taking the cash back when the guard said, “Warden came out to see some friends.”

  I stuffed two more bills in the diamond. “How many cars?”

  “Three.”

  Excellent: impostor arrives with two security vehicles, just as Marvel would. Doesn’t go in, warden comes out. Dark night, dim lights: who wouldn’t believe that was Marvel in the backseat signing a secret executive order releasing Figgis Cole? Last thing the warden would ask for would be ID. Fifteen minutes later, Louis Bailey walks. Fausto was probably waiting for him out here with a bottle of champagne. Then what? See you at Dulles tomorrow night. All clear.

  All clear all right. Maxine hadn’t been able to find James on the inbound passenger lists because he hadn’t been a passenger at all. He had been a pilot. I stuffed another hundred into the fence. “When did the meeting break up?”

  “About ten.”

  Fausto had a forty-minute head start on me. I was thirty miles from Dulles. No way you’re going to catch him, Smith. True, if one discounted a wife’s fury. “Thanks.”

  Traffic was thick but rolling at a placid seventy. I did forty better than that. Screeched into a parking slot at General Aviation, sprinted to the hangar. No private planes pulling onto the runway: either I had beaten Fausto here or he was already at fifty thousand feet. I ran to the kid at the gas pump.

  “Did a private jet just leave?”

  “Piper pulled onto the runway about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Was one of the passengers a fat man?”

  “A blimp.”

  “How many people were with him?”

  “One passenger and the pilot.”

  “Could you describe them?”

  “The pilot had an English accent. The passenger was tall and thin.”

  Sounded like James and Louis: so they had left Bobby’s double behind. “Anyone mention where they were going?”

  “No.”

  “You filled the tank, right? What kind of range would that give them?”

  “Three thousand miles easy.”

  I looked down the runway as a 747 thundered toward us and gracefully lifted off, taillights slowly disappearing in the rain. Every ounce of cargo on that flight was accounted for. Its path through the night would be monitored by dozens of controllers and their computers. Somewhere a crowd of people would eventually gather, waiting for it to land. Why put up with that crap? Nice thing about private planes was you didn’t have to tell anyone where you were going or who was aboard. You just turned the keys in the ignition, called the control tower, got in line, and flew away.

  The gas man heard the far-off tenor whine before I did. “Look there,” he said, pointing down the runway. “It was behind the 747.”

  A pretty little jet stood at the head of the line. It would get clearance in another thirty seconds, when the turbulence from the 747 had dissipated. I thought about making a mad dash for it, clinging to its rear wheels like they did in the movies. Instead I just stood with my heart pounding as it glided past, smooth as a bullet with wings, and joined the clouds. So much for honeymoons.

  Slopped back to the Corvette and listened to the rain. Excellent job, Fausto. You got your man … and your woman, too. Rolled the Corvette out of the lot. Could have gone to the zoo, reported to Maxine. Instead I drove to Fausto’s, to return this hideous ring, find my violin … and leave.

  His lights were on. I cut the engine, coasted to a halt at the front door. Ever so faint melody tinged the air. I slithered through a sea of dead leaves to the windows of the music room. Fake Bobby sat at the piano mauling a Chopin mazurka. I circled the house: kitchen lights off, upstairs dark. Let myself in, crept upstairs. The Colt, still loaded, lay in Fausto’s night table drawer.

  I slowly opened the door to the music room. The mazurka didn’t stop as a cheerful voice called, “Ah, there you are. Come in, I’ve been expecting you.”

  Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This man, down to the eyelash, was Bobby Marvel except for the voice and the dead, cold eyes of a trained killer. He fumbled calmly through the Chopin, unfazed by the .45 trained on his chest. When the mazurka was finished, he lit a cigar. “Put that down, would you? If I wanted to kill you, you’d have been dead halfway down the driveway.”

  I didn’t move. He still had plenty of time to kill me on the way out. “Start talking,” I said. Instead he kept puffing so I shot the cigar out of his mouth. My husband could repair the hole in his wall when he returned from his plane ride. “Thank you for not smoking. Sit on that couch.” Great ass. That was definitely the one I had seen in Barnard’s video. For a long moment we studied each other. “That warden at Lorton must have pissed in his pants when the president came to visit.” Impostor didn’t say a word so I continued, “Bet you could sign Marvel’s name in your sleep by now.”

  “Clever girl,” was all he said.

  Not clever enough. “Make you a deal. You tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.” I took over the piano bench. “Start with your name.”

  “Cecil Ruske. Soldier of fortune. Why’d you kill Polly?”

  “Bad start, Cecil. I found her dead. Fausto didn’t do it, did he?”

  “No. He thought you did.”

  “Wrong again. Polly was an old friend.”

  “You were hanging off the balcony the night she disappeared. I was watching from the street.”

  What the hell, I’d go first. “She followed a man from Belize to Washington. Looked all over but couldn’t find him. Two weeks later she bought it. Her body’s missing. I’ve been trying to find out who did it and why. I keep coming back to. Fausto. Your turn.”

  “So you didn’t kill her?” he asked incredulously.

  “Cut the shit,” I snapped. “I found her dead. Her body disappeared while I was dangling nine floors above the pavement. Where’d you get your face?”

  “Mexico, about a year ago. Fausto paid for the operation and told me he’d be using me someday. Kept me on retainer until the call came a few weeks ago.” Cecil admired his features in a silver plate. “They didn’t have to change much.”

  “You’re a perfect clone except for the ass. Marvel’s got more mush.”

  “That’s what Polly said, too. You ladies work for the same boss?”

  “Irrelevant. What were you supposed to do for Fausto?” I sniffed the Colt barrel. “Don’t irritate me. I’ve had a hard night.”

  “He brought me to Washington. Stuck me in this house in the burbs with tapes of Marvel and told me to perfect his voice and signature. Said I was going to help him have a laugh with an old friend. That’s all he told me. I wasn’t about to ask him any questions. But pretty soon I was climbing the walls. Fortunately, Polly dropped in one afternoon.” He chuckled. “Nearly broke my neck.”

  That was her preferred foreplay. “Of course you never told Fausto the two of you had met.” Correct. “So you entertained each other for a week to relieve the tedium. Then someone else moved first. Exit Polly. What were you doing, spying on her the night you saw me hanging off the balcony? A little jealous, maybe? Wondering if she were really serious about Bobby Marvel?”

  He flushed. “I didn’t make the same mistake with you.”

  “But you followed me. Sorry, tried to follow me. I suppose the orchids were your ju
venile idea of a joke.”

  “I was bored stiff, luv. My only sport was visiting the florist and following you. There was a car in the garage and I kept my breakouts to a minimum.”

  “Fausto didn’t order you to follow me?”

  “God no! After I told him about you hanging off the balcony, he forbade me to leave the house. But I couldn’t tolerate being cooped up for so long. You became my secret project. A hired man’s got to keep himself in trim.”

  “So you finally got your first role playing president for Tuna. Poor guy really thought he was meeting Marvel, didn’t he.”

  “That was a spur-of-the-moment joke,” Cecil replied. “As well as dress rehearsal. Fausto knew I was going mad waiting for the main event.”

  “What did you tell Tuna?”

  “Said I’d try to cut him a couple of deals with the Pentagon. Pure hot air but he bought it. I did well that night.”

  “Didn’t do too badly with Justine, either.”

  He flushed. “You’re a friggin’ cat, that’s what you are.”

  If only I had nine lives. “What does that floozy have to do with all this?”

  “She manages Marvel. Gives me tips on his personal habits. Liaises with Fausto.”

  Repays old debts. “Does she have any idea how far she’s sticking her neck out?”

  “She’d stick her neck out from here to China if it wrecked Marvel. But that’s her problem.”

  “Why is she screwing my pianist?”

  Cecil looked surprised. “I don’t know a thing about that.”

  “Fine. So after you snow Tuna, Fausto puts you on the shelf for another week. You behave except for a few more attempts to follow me. Fausto finally calls tonight to say the show’s on the road. Who told the warden at Lorton you were coming?”

  “Justine. She rode out with me. Brought him to the car. Made sure I did what I was supposed to do.”

  “And you came through with flying colors. Why didn’t you leave tonight with Fausto?”

  “I didn’t feel like going back to Mexico just yet,” Cecil smiled pleasantly at me. “Thought I’d kill you first. An eye for an eye.”