Hot Ticket
Page 35
“I’m a tour guide.” Pause. “Easy walks. Nothing like yours.”
My insides slid over a bottomless waterfall. “Louis settled your score. The man who killed Dr. Tatal is dead.”
“Should I send money?” Ek asked.
“Of course not. Just take care of Louis as best you can.”
“Thanks, Cosima.”
One innocent soul corrupted, or perhaps civilized: great work, Smith. I spent a lot of time on the Harley chasing dead leaves. A few reporters wouldn’t go away because they kept hearing ugly rumors about me dancing in an all-night muffin market on A Street. Fausto’s lawyers visited with a pile of papers to sign. They were aghast that I had already scattered his ashes. Their client had married, died, and vanished within a space of three days: was that another of his huge jokes? Wish it were, boys.
I stopped reading newspapers when the NATO conference began wresting headlines from the debacle across the sea. One fine evening I had just blown in from a little Autobahn therapy when the phone rang. Curtis took the call. “Go wash your face,” he said. “President Marvel’s waiting for you at the embassy.”
Traffic wasn’t bad for three in the morning. I drove to the new digs near the Friedrichstrasse station. “Leslie Frost,” I told the marines guarding America’s most valuable human being.
They let the Harley and me inside. I passed the metal detector and another few guards who tried not to look at my black leather legs as I was escorted to a room with heavy curtains and deep chairs. Bobby was inside smoking a cigar. He looked a lot wearier since the last time I had seen him, but he had been stabbed in the back a half dozen times. I knew I didn’t look any younger.
We stared across the room for a few seconds, taking in the wreckage. “Welcome to Berlin, sir,” I said.
“Smith,” he answered, tossing the cigar. “You tricked me.” Another long glare, then, “Get your ass over here. Tonight you sit on my lap.”
I obeyed. “Sorry about Aurilla.”
“I’m sorry about Fausto.” He patted my thigh. “Mother-fuckin’ weasel. The gall of him, thinking he could just get some clown to impersonate the president of the United States. I still want to tear him in itty bitty pieces.”
“He was just trying to get Louis out of jail.”
“That was only half the fun, sugar. You know that. Burning my ass was the other half. Where’d that shit impostor go? You have no idea how irritating it is knowing someone’s walking around with my face.”
“He’s getting rid of it,” I said. “I think.”
“He’d better be. You’re as bad as both of them, putting me to sleep like a mad dog while your impostor tells Aurilla to pack her bags. I didn’t know what hit me the next morning when she resigned. She wouldn’t speak one word to me. Simply left town.”
“I was just trying to spare you some aggravation.”
“The hell you were! You and that faker just wanted to play one last joke! Why didn’t you just tell me the truth and let me take care of it?”
I ran a finger over Bobby’s unshaven cheek. “The truth, my dear, is that your wife found out you were seeing Polly and had her killed. That’s how this whole mess started. I came to Washington to pick up the pieces.”
Obviously the Queen had not informed the president of this preludial detail. He was stunned. “Why would Paula do that?”
“For God’s sake, think a little.”
He did, and sighed. “Oh.” He thought some more. “Did she try to kill you, too?”
“Chickering volunteered for that job. It was a little over her head.”
His eyes sharpened as he finally understood her sudden death. Bobby’s head, overloaded with thought, dropped back to the up-holstery. “What a mess. Your boy Fausto was right. I sold my soul for nothing at all. I wish I could start over again, with Justine instead of Paula.”
“You wouldn’t have ended up in the White House without Paula.”
“Wrong, sugar. She wouldn’t have ended up there without me.” More long, glum thought, ending with a snort. “I think she only deserves one term.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to leave her. Marry Justine as soon as she leaves the hospital. That should be around Christmas.”
“White House divorce. It will be a first,” I said unenthusiastically. Poor America!
“Paula will go quietly. She wouldn’t want to be convicted of homicide. Besmirch the office of First Lady.”
I had to smile: tarnishing office was one area in which Bobby clearly outperformed his wife. “What about your approval ratings?”
“What does a lame duck care? First they’ll drop. After I make a few speeches about love and marriage, they’ll go through the roof again.”
Unfortunately he was right. I played a little with Bobby’s tie. Red: probably a gift from his second wife. “I understand Bendix had a heart attack.”
“He died of frustration. Aurilla didn’t even have the decency to attend his funeral. Although I’m sure she has her hands full with that little abomination of hers. What a perfect punishment.” Bobby absently stroked my thighs. “Tell me something. Was I just another job to you?”
“You started out that way.” Then all the other tin soldiers melted.
He tugged my head to his shoulder. “The war’s over, sugar. We’re the only ones left.” Survival: what a tired punch line. Ah, Fausto. “Will you stay in touch? I became rather fond of our little talks.”
If I ever returned to Washington, I’d be going to a clinic on Wisconsin Avenue, not the backseat of Bobby’s limousine. “Didn’t you just say you were marrying Justine?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Hopeless. I just couldn’t get mad at the guy for nosing through the jungle as best he could. Neither of us could have guessed that the plumed birds like Fausto and Barnard would expire first … leaving us bugs behind. “I’ll think about it,” I said, sliding off his lap.
“Leslie,” he whispered, catching my wrist. “Thank you.”
For what? Salvaging his presidency? We both knew Aurilla would have been a better leader. But Bobby was a nicer guy, and he had gotten there first. So much for survival of the fittest: morality imposed its own exceptions to the rule. I kissed the top of his head. “Good luck, sir.”
Rode until the night ceded to dawn. Chilly outside. The cool air was like a gift, a reminder of civilized life—whatever that was. I crept up to bed but couldn’t sleep: Fausto pressing on the heart. He had come and gone much too quickly. Something unfinished there. Perhaps I should defy the gods one more time, reclaim what they had snatched from me in a simmering jungle. Fausto had provided the means to hold him in my arms again: what I had lost in the heat I might yet find in the ice. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate flush against a Dealer who always won in the end.
Went to the window. Only a few leaves remained on my trees. It was going to be an early winter. Maybe I should forget saving the world. If statesmen like Marvel were running it, I had nothing to save. The wind lifted, a few more leaves fluttered to the ground. When I closed my eyes, I heard Fausto playing Brahms and, ever so faintly, a woman’s low laughter.
I SPY …
SIZZLING ACCLAIM FOR
HOT TICKET
“A joy to read. Men and women will love sexy super-secret agent Leslie Frost.”
—NELSON DEMILLE, bestselling author of Plum Island
“A cross between Ian Fleming and Erica Jong… . By turns smart, funny, and sexy, superspy Leslie Frost fiddles while Washington burns, and the lucky reader has a front-row seat.”
—MICHAEL WALSH, author of As Time Goes By
“I haven't had this much fun reading a novel in a long time. It's fast-paced, fresh, and sophisticated. Leslie Frost is my new hero! I want to read the first one and everything that comes after.”
—NANCY PICKARD, author of Twilight
… AND FOR FROST THE FIDDLER
“An amazing tour de fo
rce… . Turns the espionage thriller into a magnetic lure which won't let you go even after you have read the last word.”
—New England Review of Books
“Leslie Frost … a person one would very much like to know better. May she return.”
—New York Times Book Review
“A brash spy novel … witty, and sexier than I dare to say.”
—Boston Globe
“Thanks for coming.” The President of the United States peered at my face in the dim light. “Can I get you something?”
Sure. Gin and a chastity belt.
HOT
TICKET
Super-secret agent Leslie Frost, a concert violinist who rides Harleys and breaks men’s hearts, begins her assignment in Washington with a black-tie concert at the White House. Within an hour of her last encore, she is dangling from a ninth-floor balcony at Watergate as murderers make off with the body of Agent Barnard, a brilliant fellow operative who last reported to Controller Maxine from a bubble bath—with President Bobby Marvel.
Frost’s hunt for Barnard’s killers resumes in the arms of a randy commander in chief and takes her from the salons of Washington to the sweltering jungles of Belize, where a slightly mad ethnobotanist labors to distill a compound whose deadly effects will reach directly back to the Oval Office. Her search is complicated by a vice president in the last throes of dengue fever, by a chillingly perfect female senator, and by a Rabelaisian insider with the finances—and the chutzpah—to turn the Beltway (as well as Frost’s heart) inside out.
Wildly inventive, HOT TICKET resonates with Washington insider gossip, characters all too wickedly human, and the acerbic wit that is Janice Weber’s trademark. Booklist says Frost “makes James Bond look like a Quaker.” Fans of Frost the Fiddler will be delighted that the sexy, deadly violinist is back again, hotter— and cooler—than ever.
LYNN WAYNE
JANICE WEBER is a renowned concert pianist who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of Devil’s Food, an extramarital comedy, and Frost the Fiddler, a New York Times notable book of the year.