Smoke

by Meili Cady

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “We need to talk first.”

  I took a breath, then started. “Lisette, I apologize that I wasn’t acting in, well, a professional way during trips.”

  Lisette looked stern and unflinching as she said, “Listen, I know that you have it in you to rise above your immaturity, get smart, and be responsible. I am willing to give you another chance, but I need to see your commitment.”

  Commitment to her or commitment to working for her?

  It seemed they were one in the same in her eyes now. I was taken slightly aback when she immediately began talking about work. I hadn’t come here expecting to get my job back. I thought that ship had sailed, and part of me was glad. It hadn’t even crossed my mind on my way over to her condo, though I was still out of a job. All I could think about was trying to save our friendship. But if she wanted me to work for her again, I’d do it. She might have been a “crazy bitch” as David said, but she was my crazy bitch. I still loved her and would do just about anything she asked of me.

  “I won’t let you down again,” I told her.

  “You need to grow up and learn fast, babe,” she said. “Can I count on you?”

  “Of course you can,” I assured her. I was relieved to be back in Lisette’s good graces. Trying constantly to please her was exhausting at times, and I had to fight an urge to be defensive or angry when she regarded me with a condescending tone. I still believed that there was a lot I could learn from her. She could be harsh, but I was grateful to have someone around who wanted to push me to grow and be stronger.

  “I’m glad you said that, because I need you tonight,” she said, looking pleased. “It’s actually the perfect way for you to prove your commitment.”

  “Sure, absolutely,” I said. “What is it?”

  “The owner of JetSetter Charter is coming into town from the East Coast today and he is bringing Carol,” Lisette said. “They want to have dinner tonight and meet me in person. I’ve made a reservation for four people at the Ivy.”

  “Fancy,” I said. “I’m sure that’ll go over well.”

  “I’m one of their biggest clients, and they’re very curious about me,” Lisette said. “As you know, Carol has been our contact point for every flight we’ve chartered.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said.

  Lisette went on. “Carol is expecting to meet my assistant Stephanie at dinner tonight. You might remember that she’s developed quite a rapport with her over the phone. They’ve never met, and Carol has been excited to finally get to meet her.”

  “Nice,” I said. “That’ll be fun for them to meet.”

  Lisette looked at me straight on and said, “Yeah, well, there’s been an unexpected problem. Stephanie wasn’t able to fly into L.A. at the last minute. But it’s in our best interest to make sure that Carol gets to meet ‘Stephanie,’ regardless.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “Can’t Stephanie just fly in tomorrow for lunch or something?”

  “No. Carol is only available tonight,” Lisette said. “If Stephanie isn’t at the dinner, it could send up a red flag to the company, and we need them for transporting. I need you to come with me and pretend to be Stephanie.”

  “What?”

  “Just be yourself,” Lisette jumped in. “You don’t need to act any differently. Just answer to a different name. It’ll be easy.”

  “You want me to straight up act like I’m the person she’s had dozens of phone calls with? What about the next time Carol talks to the real Stephanie and Stephanie says she was never in L.A.?”

  “Obviously I would tell Stephanie and she’d play along with it,” Lisette said. She was getting agitated. “This is serious. We need this.”

  I grasped for some thread of logic that would talk Lisette out of this. “Doesn’t Carol know who I am, anyway, from the flight records and the wire transfers?”

  “Of course she knows your name, but that’s all she knows,” Lisette said. “She has no idea what you look like.”

  “What if I just called her? Like before! You said that my voice sounds similar to Stephanie’s. I could just tell her that I got sick and can’t make it. Or the real Stephanie could do that. But I can do it if you want! I’m sure that Carol would understand.”

  “Meili, you’re an actress. You should have no problem pretending to be someone you’re not. Think of it as a job. Wait, this is your job.”

  I saw no way out of this one. My choices were to either do this or lose my best friend and my job. Lisette had made it pretty clear that if I stopped working for her, she would be upset enough to cut me out of her life completely. I was intensely anxious about meeting Carol. Lisette seemed to notice.

  “Oh Jesus, it’ll probably be fun,” she said. “It’ll only be for a couple of hours, and we’re going to the goddamn Ivy in a limo. You’ll survive.”

  I went home to get dressed and ready for dinner. Lisette told me to come back to her as soon as I could. Brie was home when I arrived at the apartment. She emerged from her room to greet me. “Looks like I got my job back,” I told her as I hurried into my room to decide what to wear to dinner.

  “That was fast,” Brie said, coming up to stand in my doorway. “How did you get it back? Did Lisette calm down?”

  “Uh, yeah, basically,” I told her.

  She watched me as I selected a black cocktail dress from my closet. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m meeting Lisette for dinner. Sorry, I’m kind of in a hurry.” Brie stepped aside so I could pass her on my way to the bathroom. Nerves were building in the pit of my stomach as I took out my curling iron to style my hair. Brie stayed nearby in the hallway. I could feel her studying me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked me.

  I turned briefly in her direction and nodded. “Mm-hmm, I’m good. I just . . . I’m worried about traffic. I don’t want to be late.”

  LISETTE GREETED ME AT THE door of her penthouse draped in diamonds and a fur coat. “Hi, sweetie!” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” I told her.

  “You’ll be perfect,” she said. “Nice necklace.”

  I was wearing a crystal-studded Louis Vuitton necklace that she gave me. The ring she gave me was on my finger, as usual. Even through the tension in our friendship, I had worn the ring every day as a symbol of our bond.

  A black limousine waited for us downstairs. The driver took us a few miles away to the front of a hotel in Beverly Hills. “All right, here we go,” Lisette whispered to me as the limo pulled up to a sidewalk. “I told Carol to meet us outside. The owner of JetSetter will be with her. His name is Steve. Here they come.” Through the tinted limo windows I saw a blond woman in her early forties walking out of the hotel alongside a tall, dark-haired man of the same age. He wore a suit, and Carol wore a business-style dress. She was beautiful and reminded me a bit of Heather Locklear.

  “You get out first,” Lisette said, ushering me toward the door. “Go hug Carol and say how good it is to finally meet her or something. Remember, you’re Stephanie and you’ve talked with this woman a hundred times, so don’t act like a stranger or it will be weird. Treat her like a long-lost friend.”

  I took a breath as the driver opened the door for me.

  I can do this.

  I stepped out of the limo and immediately found myself face-to-face with Carol. She looked excited with a huge smile. “Carol!” I said with a grin to match hers.

  “Aw, Stephanie!” she said. “You look just like I imagined!” We embraced warmly.

  “It’s so good to finally meet you in person,” I told her, just as Lisette had instructed.

  “I’m just so happy that you were going to be in town while we’re here,” Carol said. “Great timing, huh?”

  “Aha, yes! I know!” I said, laughing along with her.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  Within seconds of meeting her, I already ha
d a sense that Carol was a kind, genuine person. It made me sick to look into her eyes and tell her Lisette’s lies.

  I noticed that Lisette was out of the limo and standing at my side, waiting to be introduced. “Carol, this is Miss Lee,” I said.

  Lisette smiled as she shook Carol’s hand. “You can call me Lisette,” she said.

  Carol gestured to the dark-haired man in the suit. “This is Steve,” she said.

  “What a pleasure it is to meet one of our favorite clients,” Steve said, looking Lisette up and down. I didn’t imagine that they had many clients who looked like her.

  After Carol and Steve had been thoroughly filled up with dinner and lies, we dropped them back off in front of their hotel. I hugged Carol good night, then climbed back into the limo. I sank into my seat. I felt ashamed for having been so dishonest with her. She seemed so open and sincere, and I was the opposite tonight. I was acting like myself most of the evening, but it was all done under a false pretense, so essentially everything that came out of my mouth was a lie.

  Lisette was the first to speak once we were alone in the back of the limo. She smirked at me, then said, “A job well done, sweetie.” I forced a smile back at her. “Babe, I have to tell you, I’m impressed,” she said. “That was quite a performance.”

  “I should say the same for you,” I told her in a drier tone than intended.

  “Well, I’ve had more practice,” she said. “But seriously, you did a great job tonight. You really stepped up your game. I’m proud of you.”

  I was back on the team.

  12

  THE CRIMINALS

  There was a disruption in our plans when we arrived in Ohio for our next trip. It was the dead of winter in the Midwest and snow was heavy on the streets.

  We drove from the private airport to an aging Extended Stay hotel on the outskirts of town. This time, rather than leaving a key at the front desk and abandoning our luggage in a room, Lisette said that we needed to wait at the hotel until the merchandise was collected. Frankie, Henry, and I waited with Lisette in a cramped, dingy room containing seventeen suitcases. “Meili, go outside and chirp David,” Lisette told me. “They should be here soon. Take the room key with you so you can lead them in.”

  I called David on my burner phone once I was outside. “Hey,” he said, “so there’s gonna be a white van comin’ any minute. They said they’re close by. They got delayed because of the weather. Man, no one can drive in this shit. I already told ’em you’d be there so they know to look for you.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. I could see my breath as I spoke. I wasn’t used to this kind of cold, not even in Washington. I stood in the dry winter air, moving around to keep some feeling in my legs. I paced and looked out on the parking lot in anticipation of the white van that David had instructed me was coming.

  Come on, come on. Let’s get this over with so we can check into our hotel and I can get into a hot shower.

  After twenty minutes of waiting, I saw a rusty white van creep into the lot. It moved slowly over the icy concrete and blew filthy exhaust in its wake.

  This can’t be them. I don’t want to wait any longer, but please don’t let this be who I’m waiting for . . .

  The decrepit van stopped in front of me. Just from looking at it, my instinct was to turn away and go inside, but I had a sinking feeling that this was the van I’d been instructed to greet. Two black men sat in the front of the vehicle, both wearing faded black hoodies and looking skittish. They looked at me, sizing me up from inside their van. I lifted my chin to give them a subtle acknowledgment. I’m sure they were just as surprised to see me. Two sets of eyes stared blankly back at me, then they exchanged a look with each other. They pulled the van into a parking space and got out. They walked toward me with their heads down, glancing around them on their way across the lot. The van scared me at first, but these men scared me more. There was something wild in their eyes. I wondered what they saw when they looked into my eyes.

  Without a breath of exchange between us, I turned around to access the side entrance of the hotel. I felt exposed and vulnerable with my back to them as I used the key. My hands were shaking. I got the glass door open, and they followed me down the hall to the room. I used my key to enter and was startled by what I saw when the door swung open. The room was dark, save for one floor lamp that cast dim light over the shadows. Lisette and Henry were nowhere to be seen. They were hiding in the bathroom with their ears pressed to the door. Frankie sat facing the entrance in a chair at the back of the room. His six-foot-eight body of muscle was dressed in a full business suit, and he held a stare so menacing that one would have expected him to have his trigger finger on a gun. His massive frame was silhouetted in shadow. He tilted his head to the men. He didn’t need to say a word because his message was already loud and clear: Get what you need, then get the hell out. I could feel the energy shift behind me.

  Thanks, Frankie.

  In silence, I assisted the hooded men in hurrying the luggage into their van through a side door down the hall. We never spoke a word to one another.

  I watched with intense relief as the van turned out of the parking lot, disappearing into the night as quickly and strangely as it had arrived. I was shaken by what I’d just experienced. I’d tried to keep a stiff lip when they were in the room so as not to show weakness or fear, but with them out of sight I felt both intensely. The men hadn’t shown up in a limo, wearing suits, like we did. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it. They came dressed like burglars, with shifty demeanors. These were criminals. But so were we. We were all criminals. This unnerving idea began to sink in. Wearing fancy suits and chartering private jets didn’t change the fact that we were just like them in this operation.

  I never wanted to be a criminal. I wanted to be an actress. All those scenes from famous crime films that I’d performed at Bonnie Chase’s acting studio hadn’t prepared me for the real thing. Lisette told me when she hired me that this would be the role of a lifetime. I didn’t understand what she meant. It all felt like an innocent game then. Maybe what she said could be true, but I didn’t want it to be the role of my lifetime. Someone else’s, not mine. But the fact remained that I was now actively and consciously working in a criminal enterprise. When I decided to shed my good girl persona and “live a little,” I’d planned on wearing tighter pants and partying with Lisette, not smuggling illegal drugs and risking my life ushering thugs into shady hotel rooms to collect suitcases of contraband. I was trapped by decisions I’d already made. I’d built my own cage and I knew it. I’d ridden this slippery slope from the top like a water slide at Magic Mountain. I didn’t know what might be waiting for me at the bottom, but I knew that’s where I was headed.

  LESS THAN A WEEK AFTER we returned from our trip, Lisette sent me to Ohio by myself. “I just need you to pick something up,” she said. “We have to get this done before we can leave again.” She told me that I’d be collecting money there and wiring it to JetSetter Charter through a local bank. She gave me a ticket for a commercial flight to arrive in Columbus in the afternoon and be on a flight back to L.A. before sundown.

  I got a taxi from the airport in Columbus. I went to a suburban shopping area. Once the cab left me, I called David on my burner phone for instructions. “Yo, you there?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I told him reluctantly, glancing around me to make sure no one was paying attention.

  “You see a parking structure across the street from a little hotel?” he asked.

  “Uh, hold on,” I said. I walked half a block and turned a corner to see a hotel and two giant parking structures right across from it. I walked up to stand in front of the one closest to me. “Yeah, I got it. I’m right in front,” I told him.

  “Go inside.” David spoke slowly into the phone as he gave me coded instructions. “On the first level there is gonna be a yellow Volkswagen Beetle on your right. It’ll be unlocked. The driver just walked away so you guys ain
’t gonna see each other. You need to pop the trunk from the driver’s seat, then grab a bag from the back. The bag is gonna have paperwork in it, and Seven wants that moved through the bank. Call me when you got it from the trunk.”

  “Right,” I whispered into the phone. “I’ll talk to you in a minute.” I walked into the parking garage and looked around for the car. No yellow Beetle. I walked to the other side of the lot. I called David again.

  “You got it?” he said.

  “No,” I told him. “I can’t, um . . . I can’t find it.”

  “The bag’s not there? Yo, look again. My guy said it’s there.”

  “No, the car,” I told him. “I can’t find the car.”

  “Oh shit, really?” he said. “Hold on, let me call him. Keep lookin’.” David called back a minute later. “Are you sure you’re in the right garage?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, pretty sure,” I said. “I mean, it was the first one.”

  “There’s two?” he asked.

  “There’s another one next to it, yeah,” I told him.

  “Shit,” he said. “Okay, let me call him.”

  As I stood in the middle of the top level of the garage, I watched a yellow Volkswagen Beetle drive past the entrance and head for what I realized was a third parking garage in the shopping center. I called David. Finally, he said, “Okay. Eight?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Look, usually we wouldn’t want to do this in such an open spot, but this shit is getting complicated. Just go to the parking lot of the hotel. Be fast, though. My guy just left the car.”

  When I got there, the Volkswagen was unlocked, as David said it would be. I sensed someone watching me from nearby. I glanced over my shoulder before opening the front door to pop the trunk. There was forty thousand dollars in cash (“paperwork”) inside of a small duffel bag. I took it and slammed the trunk.

  I flagged down another taxi. “Hi, I need to go to the bank,” I told the driver. I couldn’t remember the exact location of the bank Lisette usually took us to when we’d see Barry. I’d never been the one driving or giving directions, so I didn’t have a good sense of where I was in relation to where I’d been. I didn’t want to ask Lisette to text me such specific information over the phone, so I winged it.